#and troy here… well he is disaster too

[higgssupremacy]

bad movie, good vibes of young Peter😏

[luminouslumity]

Parts One and Two!

THE UNDERWORLD: JAY, YOU BASTARD!

Anyway, after Odysseus and his crew arrive in the Underworld, that not only does he see his fallen men—including one named ELPENOR (Ἐλπήνωρ), who'd actually died while at Kirke's after he'd fallen off the roof in a drunken state—as well as his mother, but many other famous mythological figures besides Teiresias as well; perhaps most notable among them is Agamemnon, who'd been killed by his own wife KLYTEMNESTRA (Κλυταιμνήστρα), Helen's sister and Penelope's cousin, as vengeance for the sacrifice of their daughter IPHIGENIA (Ἰφιγένεια) in exchange for a fair bit of wind (in some versions, she lives), which only happened either because Agamemnon had displeased the goddess ARTEMIS (Αρτεμις) in some way—be it by boasting he was more of a hunter than she after killing a stag or because that stag had been killed in her sacred grove—or because his own father ATREUS (Ατρέω) had failed to sacrifice a golden lamb to her after promising he would, so she cursed his son as punishment. In any case, Odysseus is horrified and says that both Helen and Klytemnestra have brought nothing but disaster, and Agamemnon then tells him not to treat Penelope too well, though he does praise her sensibilities.

As for Antikleia, I've mentioned before how she is a granddaughter of Hermes, and specifically, she is a granddaughter of Hermes through her father AUTOLYCOS (Αὐτόλυκος), who'd been a trickster in his own right, having had the power to change or make invisible whatever he stole. According to later sources, such as Suida's Sisyphus, the consequences of Autolycos' thievery eventually caught up with him when the titular king demanded his fellow trickster give him his daughter to bed as compensation for Autolycos having stolen his cattle. Odysseus was born not long after. Callimachus also tells us, Antikleia had once been a companion of Artemis herself.

And because I'm feeling particularly evil today:

‘My child! How did you come here through the darkness while you were still alive? This place is hard for living men to see. There are great rivers and dreadful gulfs, including the great Ocean which none can cross on foot; one needs a ship. Have you come wandering here, so far from Troy, with ship and crew? Have you not yet arrived in Ithaca, nor seen your wife at home?’

I answered, ‘Mother, I was forced to come to Hades to consult the prophet spirit, Theban Tiresias. I have not yet come near to Greece, nor reached my own home country. I have been lost and wretchedly unhappy since I first followed mighty Agamemnon to Troy, the land of horses, to make war upon the people there. But tell me, how was sad death brought upon you? By long illness? Or did the archer Artemis destroy you with gentle arrows? Tell me too about my father and the son I left behind. Are they still honored as the kings? Or has another taken over, saying I will not return? And tell me what my wife is thinking, and her plans. Does she stay with our son and focus on his care, or has the best of the Achaeans married her?’

My mother answered, ‘She stays firm. Her heart is strong. She is still in your house. And all her nights are passed in misery, and days in tears. But no one has usurped your throne. Telemachus still tends the whole estate unharmed and feasts in style, as lords should do, and he is always asked to council meetings. Your father stays out in the countryside. He will not come to town. He does not sleep on a real bed with blankets and fresh sheets. In winter he sleeps inside, by the fire, just lying in the ashes with the slaves; his clothes are rags. In summer and at harvest, the piles of fallen leaves are beds for him. He lies there grieving, full of sorrow, longing for your return. His old age is not easy. And that is why I met my fate and died. The goddess did not shoot me in my home, aiming with gentle arrows. Nor did sickness suck all the strength out from my limbs, with long and cruel wasting. No, it was missing you, Odysseus, my sunshine; your sharp mind, and your kind heart. That took sweet life from me.’

Then in my heart I wanted to embrace the spirit of my mother. She was dead, and I did not know how. Three times I tried, longing to touch her. But three times her ghost flew from my arms, like shadows or like dreams. Sharp pain pierced deeper in me as I cried, ‘No, Mother! Why do you not stay for me, and let me hold you, even here in Hades? Let us wrap loving arms around each other and find a frigid comfort in shared tears! But is this really you? Or has the Queen sent me a phantom, to increase my grief?’

She answered, ‘Oh, my child! You are the most unlucky man alive. Persephone is not deceiving you. This is the rule for mortals when we die. Our muscles cease to hold the flesh and skeleton together; as soon as life departs from our white bones, the force of blazing fire destroys the corpse. The spirit flies away and soon is gone, just like a dream. Now hurry to the light; remember all these things, so you may tell your wife in times to come.’

NO LONGER YOU: According to one myth, Teiresias of Thebes came across two snakes in the middle of mating one day and hit them both with a rod. As a result, he was changed into a woman, until she saw the same pair of snakes again years later and was then changed back into a man. Zeus and Hera then asked him which gender enjoyed intercourse more, with Zeus favoring women and Hera men; when Teiresias said that women enjoyed it more, Hera blinded him and Zeus then gave him the power of prophecy afterwards.

Teiresias would go on to become a rather notable figure in myth, but to Odysseus specifically, the prophecy is described thusly:

‘Odysseus, you think of going home as honey-sweet, but gods will make it bitter. I think Poseidon will not cease to feel incensed because you blinded his dear son. You have to suffer, but you can get home, if you control your urges and your men. Turn from the purple depths and sail your ship towards the island of Thrinacia; there you will find grazing cows and fine fat sheep, belonging to the god who sees and hears all things—the Sun God. If you leave them be, keeping your mind fixed on your journey home, you may still get to Ithaca, despite great losses. But if you hurt those cows, I see disaster for your ship and for your men. If you yourself escape, you will come home late and exhausted, in a stranger’s boat, having destroyed your men. And you will find invaders eating your supplies at home, courting your wife with gifts. Then you will match the suitors’ violence and kill them all, inside your halls, through tricks or in the open, with sharp bronze weapons. When those men are dead, you have to go away and take an oar to people with no knowledge of the sea, who do not salt their food. They never saw a ship’s red prow, nor oars, the wings of boats. I prophesy the signs of things to come. When you meet somebody, a traveler, who calls the thing you carry on your back a winnowing fan, then fix that oar in earth and make fine sacrifices to Poseidon—a bull and stud-boar. Then you will go home and offer holy hecatombs to all the deathless gods who live in heaven, each in order. Gentle death will come to you, far from the sea, of comfortable old age, your people flourishing. So it will be.’

MONSTER: I really wanted to focus on this part here:

Does a soldier use a wooden horse to kill sleeping Trojans cause he is vile? Or does he throw away his remorse and save more lives with guile?

I went over the Trojan War pretty briefly in the first post of this series, but as for the horse specifically, though Odysseus is credited as the architect, the idea—according to Dictys Cretensis—came to him from the captured Prince HELENOS (Ἕλενος) of Troy, who'd been a seer like his twin sister KASSANDRA (Κασσάνδρα). From what we currently have available of The Sack of Troy:

The Greeks then sailed in from Tenedos, and those in the wooden horse came out and fell upon their enemies, killing many and storming the city. Neoptolemus kills Priam who had fled to the altar of Zeus Herceius; Menelaus finds Helen and takes her to the ships, after killing Deiphobus; and Aias [Ajax the Younger] the son of Ileus, while trying to drag Cassandra away by force, tears away with her the image of Athena. At this the Greeks are so enraged that they determine to stone Aias, who only escapes from the danger threatening him by taking refuge at the altar of Athena. The Greeks, after burning the city, sacrifice Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles: Odysseus murders Astyanax; Neoptolemus takes Andromache as his prize, and the remaining spoils are divided. Demophon and Acamas find Aethra and take her with them. Lastly the Greeks sail away and Athena plans to destroy them on the high seas.

Afterwards, it's said that only Nestor and Diomedes returned home straightaway, but Menelaos and Helen get stranded in Egypt for years after a storm blows them off course and destroys most of their ships, Ajax the Lesser gets thrown against rocks after also being caught in a storm while accompanying Agamemnon, who gets killed immediately after returning home even despite being warned by Akhilleus, some Greeks make it to the city of Colophon, and Neoptolemus is instructed by his grandmother THETIS (Θετις) to return home, during which he even ends up reuniting with Odysseus for a brief time.

[moonjunio]

Continued from pt 1 Age of Bronze vol. 1 teaser

Hektor tries to get Paris to understand why he needs to stick to his mission, and simply bring King Priam’s sister home. Cassandra has earlier warned that Paris will cause the downfall of Troy, and Hektor can clearly see the cost of such folly, but does anyone listen? SMH

“What’s that got to do with bringing Hesione home?”

“We’re Priam’s sons — his strong right arm. He can’t risk his arm being weak, so he’s testing you to see how far he can trust you — to see what you can accomplish — if you can live up to your promises.”

“I can do it.”

“…May the gods guide you! At least you’ll have Aeneas along. You can trust him to help however he can.”

“I’ll have more help than that — help from the Achaeans themselves. Priam sends me first to Lakedaemon — to the palace of Menelaus in Sparta.”

“Ah, now it’s becoming clearer…”

“What is?”

“The reason Hesione’s suddenly so important after all these years. Menelaus and Priam recently concluded a treaty. Priam is using you to test Menelaus’s reliability — and if he can drive a wedge between Lakedaemon and Salamis at the same time, well, the better to divide Achaean strength.”

“I don’t care about that. I just think it’s too bad that I’ve got to "liberate" an aged aunt that no one but Priam cares about.”

“What do you mean, "too bad"?”

“It’s just, well…what if Hesione really doesn’t want to leave Salamis? It’s useless to bring her here if she’s only going to go right back.”

“That’s not the point —”

“And she’s so old by now that she can’t live much longer — why make the effort? But if Priam sent me to carry off a young Achaean princess —! That would pay them back equally for taking Hesione in the first place!”

“And bring disaster home to Troy!”

“I don’t see why — what disaster came to Telemon for taking Hesione?”

“Troy was in no position to retaliate then.”

“So we retaliate now!”

“Don’t you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you? Priam knows what he’s doing! Just fulfill your promise and everything will be fine.”

“Don’t get so excited, Hektor! Look, forget it. My ship leaves at dawn — and things will be back to what you’re used to.”

Excerpt from A Thousand Ships, volume 1 of Eric Shanower’s Eisner award winning version of The Iliad and related tales. Available from Image Comics or Hungry Tiger Press. 📚

[skymaiden32]

Bad News

AO3 link here

Fandom: Thunderbirds, Stingray

Tagging: @dragonoffantasyandreality @thundergeek59 @janetm74 @katblu42 @liseylou @amistrio @uniwolfcorn @idontknowreallywhy (Please ask if you would like to get alerts when I update or post new stories.)

Continuity: TOS

Last chapter, here we go!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Gordon learns who Trench really is.

------

The walk along the beach was surprisingly peaceful, and Gordon found himself relaxing a little, although he knew there was no way he could fully let his guard down. 

Trench broke the ice. “So, you must have questions. What do you want to know?” He asked in that tinny voice of his.

“Okay, that one’s easy enough.” He chuckled without any humour. “Who the hell are you?”

Trench paused. “Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me.” The mask was off before Gordon could even blink. He held back a gasp when he saw who it was. “It’s been too long since I felt the crisp sea air on my face. Can’t take the mask off in front of the Aquaphibians. I’d be dead in two seconds flat.”

“Troy Tempest…?”

The man in front of him bowed. “The one and only.”

Gordon frowned, trying his best to regain his composure. “You’re the last person I’d expect…” Shore hadn’t been kidding at all, had he? This was bad. This was really bad. “You and Titan hate each other.”

Troy hummed. “That was before he… shall we say… opened my mind to Marineville’s faults.”

More like brainwashed, Gordon thought, but didn’t say aloud. “What about Atlanta? Phones? Fisher? All the people you left behind? I’m sure they all miss you.” When Troy didn’t answer, Gordon changed tactics. “Okay, then what about me? I know you’ve met Scott and Virgil before, so that explains how you knew we were siblings, but it doesn’t explain how you knew I was IR.”

Troy smiled. “X20. He was on a routine mission to Marineville and overheard your little conversation with Shore. Which he then reported back to me.” They approached a large rock, and Troy gestured for Gordon to sit next to him. Gordon glared at him in reply, but eventually complied, fearing what might happen to his brothers if he didn't. “It was simple to set up a disaster that would be too hard for International Rescue to ignore.”

“So it was you who attacked the USS Rodgers.”

“I would’ve thought that would be obvious. It was my tracker that allowed me and my men to follow you here.” The other man hummed. “The plan originally was to follow you to your base and seize your technology. Well, that was Titan’s at least.” Gordon raised an eyebrow. “My plan was to just talk to you. I’m glad you found the tracker. Makes my task of explaining our failure to the King easier.”

The aquanaut froze. “Wait, just making sure I’m understanding. You were never going to attack our base? You really were just going to talk?”

Troy grinned. “I may not be on the surface dwellers side anymore, but I still consider you a friend. And Titanica has no pre-existing quarrel with International Rescue. Attacking you would be unwise.”

“You’ve changed your tune.” Gordon hissed, not falling for any of it. “You were taking my brothers prisoner less than ten minutes ago, and now you’re saying that ‘attacking us would be unwise’. I see right through you, Tempest.” He frowned. “Or should I be calling you Trench now?”

Captain Tempest, Captain Trench, whoever it was in front of him, sighed. “Look. I meant what I said. No harm will come to them. As a matter of fact, if the Aquaphibians hurt them, I’ll end them myself.”

“Bet Titan won’t be happy about that.” Gordon scoffed. 

“I learned he doesn’t care a long time ago. So long as someone does the work and the work is done.” Troy retaliated. “And I learned that when I was in WASP.”

“I see.” An uneasy silence followed. Gordon had just one question to ask. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why talk to me in the first place? Why not just disappear?”

More silence. For a minute, Gordon didn’t think Troy would answer him. But eventually, he did. “To say sorry.” He said in a low voice. “Sorry I didn’t manage to say goodbye.”

Gordon’s eyes widened in realisation. It had been too quick, leaving WASP after his accident. He hadn’t been able to stay at Marineville General for long. His injuries had needed to be specially treated. And since he’d already been honourably discharged following the whole mess, he’d never gotten a chance to wave farewell to the group of aquanauts who had taught him so much, who’d done their best to steady him and be a secondary family. He’d never gotten that closure. But then of course, neither had they.

“I’m sorry too. Sorry that I lost touch with all of you. Sorry we’re on opposite sides now…” For the first time since Troy had made his presence known, Gordon looked at him. Really looked. “You look exhausted, Tempest.” He said honestly, and was surprised at his own concern. “How hard is Titan working you?”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.”

Gordon gave him a look, channelling his best Scott impression. “Troy.”

“The undersea races don’t need as much sleep as humans do.”

The look hardened. “Troy. How much sleep do they get?”

Troy winced. “Four hours? At most?”

“And Titanica is the better option over Marineville?”

The other aquanaut huffed. “I’m not going back there.”

“Then leave Titanica at the very least. You don’t have to work for WASP. Just…” Gordon paused. “Just come back to the surface. You said yourself, you haven’t felt the air on the surface for ages.”

Troy sighed, looking out to the sea. “I can’t do that. The ocean is my home now…” He frowned. “Plus, I’d be in for one hell of a Court Marshal. They’d track me down, make me pay for leaving WASP, and then I’d be stuck in a prison cell.” He laughed dryly. “What sea air would I feel then, Gordon?”

“That’s what you think, Troy, but the truth of it is that WASP will defend you. And that’s because you didn’t leave. You were taken.” Gordon frowned when Troy froze, confirming his worst thoughts. “I’ve got it, don’t I? Titan abducted you. He moulded you into someone you’re not, and then he forced you to fight your friends.” Troy’s continued silence was damning. “Tell me I’m wrong!”

“How dare you speak of Titan in that way? He saved me from that life.” Troy’s voice was barely above a whisper, and Gordon immediately knew he’d pushed too far. He couldn’t stop himself from looking down. He knew though, he was right about what Titan had done. The tyrant couldn’t kill his worst enemy, so instead he shaped Troy and his mind as he saw fit. “I will not return to life on the surface.” 

Out the corner of his eye, Gordon noticed the mask slip back on. He supposed Trench was fully back. A crunch was heard as he crushed something in his hand. Gordon recognised the tracker that had let the Aquaphibians follow them here in the first place. “I will not tell His Majesty about this conversation we had, but I believe that conversation is over.” He pressed something on his collar, and began speaking in the Aquaphibian language. Gordon could only barely make it out with the little he’d been taught at WASP. His brothers were being released. “As promised, your brothers are unharmed. I strongly advise that the three of you leave. The rest of your family must be worried.” He gestured in the direction of the Thunderbirds, letting Gordon lead the way there. 

The aquanaut breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them standing there in front of Thunderbird 2. He broke off in a run, just wanting to stick to them like glue now. When they saw the look on his face, they frowned. Scott glared in Trench’s direction. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No! Absolutely not. Just…” He looked back at Captain Trench and his Aquaphibian men. He didn’t like what he saw in his old friend, now a new enemy. “I just want to get home.”

His two brothers nodded, clearly agreeing with his decision. It had been a difficult day. And as Thunderbirds 1 and 2 both lifted into the air, Gordon processed everything that had just happened. It took a while. All throughout the journey home and the debrief, where Scott had the unfortunate task of telling their father what had just happened. Jeff Tracy was out for blood now, and Alan had looked mortified. . 

Gordon took his secret to bed with him, locking the door for as much privacy as he could get with three brothers in the house and one able to get in contact from space at any given moment. He turned on his video-call, taking a deep breath as he typed in the familiar number. His heart beat in his chest as it rang. Finally, the person he was calling answered. 

“Hello?” Voice only. Dang it. Oh well, it was better than nothing. 

Swallowing down his nerves, he continued what he’d started. “Hi Atlanta. You probably don’t remember me, but I’m Gordon Tracy. I used to work with you at WASP.”

The woman on the other end gasped. “Of course, Lieutenant Tracy! It would be difficult to forget you.” Gordon smirked. His reputation still preceded him, then. “Father said he’d contacted you about temporarily replacing a crew member. Have you changed your mind?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I called to talk to you about something else.”

“Oh?”

“I, umm…” He hesitated. This wasn’t going to be easy to tell her. “I… saw Troy earlier today.”

“Oh.” Atlanta’s voice wilted. “So you know then.” It wasn’t a question. “He tracked you down.”

“Yeah, and…” Gordon sighed. “I just wanna talk to someone about what he said. Someone who’d know…”

“You don’t have to finish that sentence, Gordon. I understand. Do you want to talk now?”

“Yeah, I would.” 

So that’s just what they did together. They shared what had happened among themselves. The conversations they’d had with Troy since his turn and how they felt. And Gordon felt so much lighter, to know he wasn’t alone in this feeling.

[panthera-tigris-venenata]

Ginny Gothel prompt: “I have such soft hair and nobody is playing with it!”

Obviously involving disaster threesome.

@humaforever I’m tagging you here since you asked for similar prompt, hopefuly you don’t mind.

Anyway. Ginny Gothel. If you were wondering what’s wrong with her, she’s massively iron deficient, through definitely absolutely NO fault of her mother’s. (She’s probably also high, but psst.) (She’s not okay.)

I didn’t mange to write Harriet into the actual plot, she’s only mentioned, but this is very much disaster threesome story. Just saying.

I hope you enjoy!

„My hair is so soft,“ Ginny sighs, pulling at one of her curls and then letting it spring loose. And again, and again. It’s pretty.

„Mmhm,“ mutters Mad Maddy in obvious disinterest. If she didn’t run her „Apothecary“ as she did, Ginny might have considered poisoning her. …Then again, it might not have been effective anyway. (Don’t ask, you’re better off not knowing.)

„My hair is so soft,“ Ginny repeats, lifting her head to look at Maddy, who is still sitting opposite her, which is neat.

„And?“ Maddy finally answers.

„And?!“ Ginny squeals in exasperation and sits up fully, which has the unfortunate effect of making the world spin in front of her eyes. „My hair is so amazingly soft, Maddy, and no one is playing with it!“

„Well, that just sounds like a you problem,“ Maddy says. To make the matters worse, she is playing with one of her broken dolls, running her nails through its tangled hair. Which is very mean of her, and Ginny tells her so. But Maddy only preens in response.

Yeah, Ginny was going for that, totally. After all, Maddy is her dealer.

So Ginny bites her lip and continues playing with her hair herself, which is extremely unfair and heartbreaking, really. She sighs audibly every few moments, hoping to get a more sympathetic reaction out of the other girl.

„For fucks sake, Gin!“ Maddy finally snaps, „Go annoy someone else! Harriet or Anthony! You’re being a horny bitch in my Apothecary, and you know the rules!“

„The rules are “No kissing in the Apothecary”!“ Protests Ginny.

„The rules are “No kissing or fucking in the Apothecary, and also no traitorous purple headed fae”, and they’re being updated!“ snarks Maddy back, „Besides, Junior and Trois said they’d be coming in the evening, and I don’t need you scaring off customers!“

It is dim already, but it is dim always. Anyone’s guess when „evening“ is. Or when the Gaston twins think it is.

Ginny makes a face: „And what are the rules being updated to?“

„No being a whiny horny bitch,“ concludes Maddy triumphantly, and raises her doll to the face level. Ginny makes a face at the doll too–

„Out!“ commands Maddy, pointing at the door with her free hand.

Ginny stands up abruptly, and fuck, the world whites out for a moment. She hisses through her teeth, and knows that Maddy doesn’t even look at her; her hand shots out against the wall, to steady her, and her nails leave incisions in it.

Neat.

„Fine,“ she says as she rakes her nails along the wall for greater effect, „I didn’t wanna stay here anyway.“

As she leaves, she almost runs into the Gaston twins by the door – they only just step away from her way, which is good, because otherwise she’d fall and she might not want to get up again.

She steps into frigid Isle air and behind her, Maddy yells at the twins: „Well what are you waiting for? One of you go with her! If something happens to her, Harriet will throw a temper tantrum and it’ll be my problem!“

Needless to say, Maddy does not wish to deal with angry Harriet Hook. Unfortunately, Ginny – if she says so herself – doesn’t need a bloody bodyguard.

She whirls around as fast as she dares and tells Trois so, with her dagger pointed vaguely in the direction of his neck. As if that would do any good – she aims the dagger to a significantly lower place. Trois pales a bit.

He doesn’t tell her to relax or calm down, which earns him a small insignificant plus.

Ginny narrows her eyes at him anyway.

A broken doll flies through the still open door and whacks Trois in the back of the head: he drops her voice to barely more than whisper: „I’ll go behind you. Respectful distance. You won’t even know I’m here.“

Silence. Her knife doesn’t move.

„Come on, Gin, we both know the next thing she’s throwing at me is gonna explode–“

Yes, and it would likely ruin both her clothes and her hair, which would be absolutely unforgivable – And she simply isn’t talking with Maddy anymore, thank you for asking. So without another word, Ginny turns back around and marches straight ahead; her head protests the sudden movement, but hey. That’s fine. She’s not smelling ozone yet, not really, and as long as she’s not fainting, she’s good to go.

She takes a moment of her precious time to curse her mother and her dubious rituals – Auradon and it’s fucking Barrier.

Trois stays in respectful distance, as he promised, but Ginny can hear him behind her all the same. She ignores him. She doesn’t bother hiding her dagger.

It doesn’t take her long to cross the Isle to Anthony’s saloon, not with that look in her eyes and Gaston’s son at her back. Just the last corner – she exhales loudly and waves Trois away. He can only now leave without Maddy yelling at him (His fault for being a horrible liar, really.)

However, Ginny finds she’s hard pressed to care.

Instead, she checks her reflection in the dark window: A cape of the colour of fine dark wine, and the lipstick to match, smudged just enough to drive Anthony crazy. A dagger in her hand – she should probably hide it now. (So the knife disappears, though not before she checks her reflection in it too.) (Her eyes are open wide.) She pulls at her hair and watches as her reflection’s curls spring back into place.

She is jealous of her reflection.

With a resolute shake of her head, (her hair bouncing all around), she stops looking at herself and walks into the saloon. „Anthony!“ she exclaims over the awful wind-chimes that Dizzy loves and that give her an instant headache.

To her eternal annoyance, no one comes.

„Anthony–“ the doors click shut behind her and she allows the slightest hint of whine to slip into her voice.

Finally, footsteps – though far too light and perky to be his. Ginny grimaces and pulls at her hair.

She doesn’t bother hiding the grimace as Dizzy Tremaine rounds the corner, only narrowing her eyes at the younger girl. Which effectively freezes her mid-greeting, which is good, since she’s always so annoyingly cheerful and the world is so rude and unjust.

Dizzy’s accessories are sparkling in the lacklustre light of the saloon and it’s giving Ginny headache, too. She closes her eyes for just a second, just to stop looking at little Dizzy’s honestly offensive jewellery.

„Holly evil–“ When Ginny opens her eyes again, little Dizzy is standing right next to her, her hand hovering over her elbow. „Come sit down,“ Dizzy says as she guides her to the worn out sofa.

„I wish to speak with Anthony–“ protests Ginny quite fruitlessly, as the little Tremaine has disappeared already. Finding little usefulness in going to look for her, Ginny sinks into the once–decadent pillows – It’s Tremaine’s saloon, isn’t it? Anthony will come to check sooner or later. She is tired.

Dizzy reappears, holding out a glass of clear liquid for her to take: Water. Probably. Possibly. Poison. Bleach. Ginny reaches for the glass and brings it to her lips, almost, almost – She tips the whole glass down, lets the liquid pour down and the glass clutter uselessly on the floor. It doesn’t break. She stares at Dizzy; Dizzy stares back, for barely a heartbeat. Then she sighs, bends down to pick up the glass, and says: „Alright. I’ll go get Anthony for you.“

As she bounces away, Ginny pulls at her curls. „You’d be such a dear for that,“ she manages to say as the little Tremaine bounces away, just the right level of saccharin in her voice.

If she’d care to listen, she might have heard the Tremaine cousins talking and giggling upstairs, Anthony disciplining them. His steps as he walks downstairs. No annoying chimes this time.

„Ginny?“ She looks up at him, and abruptly stands up. Her world goes white again, and she tastes metal for just a heartbeat, „Sunflower, what’s wrong?“ In another heartbeat, he’s hugging her tight, which is probably a good thing. For closely unspecified reasons. She clings to his shoulders, tightly enough for her nails to hurt him even through all the layers he is wearing, and breathes in through clenched teeth. Then again. And again. If she’d have to guess, she’d say that the world has returned to its miserable true colours by now, but, you see, checking would require her to lift her head from his shoulder. Which would be a shame.

She breathes in again and loosens her grip on him. „What’s wrong?“ he asks again, as if the answer wasn’t „Every-fucking-thing,“ or, alternatively, „Existence.“

Instead, she leans away a bit, his hands moving to her hips, and slowly answers: „I have such soft hair, Anthony–“

He smiles: „I know. I did your hair just this morning, remember?“ As if that was relevant just now.

She swats at his shoulder lightly – don’t interrupt me! He presses his lips together in an exasperated expression, holding it only long enough for her to notice. Which is, of course, why she pretends she didn’t see.

„As I was saying,“ she starts again, „I have such soft hair,“ („Thanks to me.“), „And no one is playing with it!“

„Oh?“ he flashes a half-smirk at her and runs his fingers along her scalp, „That better, then?“

„Much.“

Ginny would be content to stay like this for quite a long time, so she’s understandably quite annoyed when she realises Anthony doesn’t agree. Selfish traitor.

„Ginny, what did you do the whole day?“ he asks, as if it was any of his concern.

„Visited mother. Then Maddy,“ she answers anyway, because he is playing with her hair and because it is nice. She hides her face in his neck again.

He mutters something like „I’m gonna kill both of them,“ but his fingers are still in her hair, so it takes her a moment to react. „You leave Maddy alone–“

„Perfect,“ he says with a teasing smirk, „I’m gonna tell Harriet we’re free to take a go at your lovely mother.“

„No!“

„Why not, though?“

Well, for starters… Ginny presses closer to him and says: „If you’d both go track my mother down, I’d have no one to play with my hair. Again.“ She keeps the absolutely genuine betrayal and hurt and accusation clear in her voice.

He tugs at her hair: „And we can’t have that.“

„Exactly.“

Now he’s getting it.

Though, one must say, Harriet sure looks hot when on the warpath.

It’s quiet for a while, save for some giggling girls that are quickly glared away.

„You feeling better now, Sunflower?“ he asks finally, „I’ve got work to do, you know?“

Ginny leans away and summons tears to her eyes: „Ditch,“ she breathes out.

„I can’t–“

„Fuck your grandmother. Ditch,“ she looks up at him, leaning closer, and his grip in her hair tightens, „I want to see Harriet.“

He swallows heavily, eyes at her lips and the smudged lipstick, which is probably printed into his shirt too, now, and moves his hand to her cheek. „Okay,“ he says, „Let’s go find Harriet.“

[taiblogcomics]

War of the Cameos

Hey there, vegan skeletons. Ready to hear me waffle on for two to five sentences before I start the review? Coz, like, what else is there to say? It's Countdown, you all know it's Countdown, and there's nothing we can do about it~

Here's the cover:

Hoo boy. Well, then. Like, normally I'm in favour of a cover that looks like it'd be a cool poster. But I'd be pretty concerned if anyone hung this poster up in their room, y'know? There's no good side in this fight scene, let's just say. Speaking of, let's make fun of this Nazi Superman here. Like, I get the idea they were going for, but trying to fit that symbol inside the Superman logo diamond does not work. It just looks like you can't draw it. Which, let's be fair, most of them can't. If you've ever seen how much difficulty some of them have drawing their hate symbol, it's very funny~

Anyways, recap time. The Multiverse Crew found Ray Palmer, only for Bob the Monitor to betray them. Mary Marvel fought Eclipso, only to depower herself and land on Themyscria. Holly Robinson and Harley Quinn got recruited for Fury training on Themyscria, only to ally with Hippolyta behind their backs. Jimmy Olsen got superpowers, only to end up making out with Forager. Karate Kid and Una came back from the future to look for a cure, only to get too sick to continue. Pied Piper got chained to Trickster, only to abandon his corpse in the desert. And we started this blog for fun, only to spend a year reviewing Countdown in real time~

Frankly, the comic opens continuing right from the cover itself. The Monitors are embroiled in battle with Monarch's multiversal army. As a reader, though, we don't give a shit about either side, y'know? Monarch steps in to taunt Solomon personally, thanking him for making all this possible. I'm not exactly sure how he's to blame, but it's fine. And in the middle of it, Solomon gets teleported out by his other fellow Monitors, for them to mock him as well. And he realises why he couldn't absorb Bob: they've changed too much and are genuine individuals now. Oh, how tragic for you.

Which, speaking of individuals, this issue is largely being narrated by this universe's Monitor, Nix Uotan. He's floating out in space, preparing to join the battle whenever it seems right. Meanwhile, Monarch's goons note to him that the humans of this Earth are fighting back, which is unexpected to them. If you remember some of the backstory, all the superheroes of this world retired except for Batman. And we get a brief shot of Batman basically going "I told them so" while preparing something.

Elsewhere, Kyle Rayner flies away with Ray Palmer, who's still pretty stuned by the deaths of his friends. Kyle apologises for Bob, since he tricked them all by pretending to be a friend. And that's when Ray lets the other shoe drop: he's not the one who will stop the Great Disaster. It was this world's Ray Palmer who was supposed to do that. But he's dead, and our Ray was doing his best to fill in. Before they can get any further, however, they're halted by an evil Booster Gold, a version of Power Ring (the evil Green Lantern), and… I can't even tell who this is. Evil Supergirl, I guess?

We finally get back to our original Multiversal Duo, Jason Todd and Donna Troy. Jason is typically annoyed, mostly because Donna's ditching him and he wants to help. Donna points out it's a little hard for him to participate on a battle of this scale as a non-powered human dude, but she is at least nice enough to leave him behind in this Earth's Gotham City. Before she can get too far, however, she gets ambushed by her own evil Earth-3 counterpart, who doesn't seem to ever have grown out of her Wonder Girl phase. Makes it easy to tell them apart, at least!

While those two are knocking each other about, Jason finds himself with his own problems. They sure picked the wrong random rooftop, because he's found almost immediately by another of Monarch's goons. It's one of Lord Havok's Extremist, a guy by the name of Gorgon. Each of the Extremists is actually a pistache of a Marvel villain, with Gorgon being based on Doctor Octopus. In this case, Gorgon is a diminutive man in monk robes, with orange skin and multiple tentacles growing out of his head. Ironically, he's more like an anthropomorphic octopus than the actual Doctor Octopus~

Donna and Wonder Girl-3's fight continues until a fighter jet accidentally crashes into them, separating them from each other. And at the same time, Jason keeps running from Gorgon until he's cornered. Gorgon wonders if not giving up is Jason's superpower, and I guess he isn't wrong. Before he can get his tentacles on Jason, though, he's blasted away by Batman-51, who is astonished to recognise Jason. And speaking of astonished recognition, we get a brief cameo of… remember that fairytale bug queen from, like, 20 issues back I swore would never be relevant again? Hey, she's here now, part of Monarch's crew~

Well, following Queen Suddenly-Relevant-Again's reveal, the comic ends with a few more single pages to further more plot developments. Solomon continues to mope about the Monitor's base, until he's suddenly confronted by Superboy-Prime. Oh good, as if this situation couldn't get worse. Second, here's a fanservice scene of Forager getting out of the shower and revealing the truth of Jimmy Olsen: he's a soulcatcher, and he's filled up with the souls of the New Gods. Lastly, we end on Batman-51 having brought Jason to his Batcave-51, demanding to know who he is, since he can't be Jason Todd. His Jason died in his arms years ago!

Well, nothing special about this issue. Like, it's not good by any means, but compared to a number of others, it's not ass-clenchingly awful either. At least these fight-scene issues tend to go real quick, since you can only recap a blow-by-blow fight so much. Also, on a personal note, seeing Queen I-Still-Don't-Care-What-Her-Name-Is turn up and be relevant again is hilarious to me, since I genuinely had forgotten about the character and didn't know she'd be reappearing later. It's as big a surprise to me now as it would have been reading this issue by issue back in the day, which is exactly the feeling I wanted to capture~

[katerinaaqu]

It depends on the source. Apollodorous names Diomedes as one of the suitors of Helen so according to him, they met during the time they were courting Helen (but I agree with those who state that it doesn't seem likely since Diomedes would have been a child) so most likely they met at Aulis where the fleet was gathering up for the preparations of the war or Troy itself. There isn't much of a source to say they crossed paths before given that Odysseus was but a lad when he went to Messina to collect the dept so Diomedes was either not born or just a baby at that time or very very young (which could still be cute to imagine if somehow they crossed paths! Hahaha!) It doesn't seem likely that they met somewhere on the way when Odysseus went to Parnassus either. His age there was not specified but most likely as they say it was "when he passed adolessence" aka when he was like 15-18 years of age so probably Diomedes was not even born at that time (or was very young).

So seems more likely that they met at Aulis during the events of the sacrifice of Iphigenia and all or at Troy itself (Unless you take Apollodorus as the source and you take the theory that they met at Sparta as suitors of Helen). Part from that it seems unlikely that they somehow had some sort of face to face connection before given how Diomedes was busy fighting wars since he was 14 (Epigonoi, restoring his grandfather etc)

~~

Now for the disasters they caused together well hahaha we can only take the Trojan War as we see it in Homer how the two of them were spies to the Trojan side and ended up capturing and killing Dolon, the Trojan spy (Diomedes killed him and Odysseus stood at the side and watched), and they captured him by lying on the ground among the corpses pretending being those! XD Later they entered the camps and stole some horses while killing a few men in the process and then brought the horses back as gifts!

Odysseus rescues Diomedes when his foot is striken by Paris's arrow and he in turn gets trapped in the battlefield and receives a spear to his side, making both of them abandon the battle for a little while.

Post-homeric sources have them team up to killing Palamedes (more specific Pausanias unlike Hygenius doesn't mention the framing but claims that Odysseus and Diomedes killed Palamedes in a fishing expedition by drowning him in the sea.

They were also teaming up according to some sources to bring Philoctetes from Lemnos along with his bow and arrows that belonged to Heracles.

They also disguise themselves as beggars and enter the city of Troy to steal the Palladium of Athena according to the prophecy and killing a few Trojans on their way out too (Here some post-homeric and mainly roman sources that tend to make Odysseus more amoral, make him try to stab Diomedes in the back so that he will get full credit for the stealing of the Paladium but his sowrd is seen at the shadow made by the moon and so Diomedes deflects him and still doesn't kill him back because he knows they need him for the war, giving the name to the popular phrase "Diomedes's need" which means do something out of necssity for the greater good even if it is unpleasant)

There isn't much to suggest that Diomedes and Odysseus met after the war. Since both Diomedes and Odysseus engaged to their own ardous trip each; Odysseus roaming about Mediterannean sea for 10 years and Diomedes was exiled from Argos when his wife cheated on him and conspired with her lover on that. Diomedes mainly kept founding cities in Italy and later earned the status of god.

It doesn't seem possible that they met after the events of the Iliad again especially given that Odysseus had to travel to mainland Greece after Odyssey to discover those who do not know what sea is or season their food with salt so that he would built a temple to Poseidon and appease his anger. Diomedes was probably fighting his own battles in Italy.

I hope this helps! ^_^

Do we know when Odysseus and Diomedes first met? They definitely know each other before the events of the Iliad, but I’ve never read anything about their friendship before all of that went down. 

Also I badly want stories about the two of them when they’re younger going on adventures and being a pair of bicon shit-disturbers 

[mediadiscord]

The Last of Us – Season 1 Episode 8 – Recap and Review

Hey everyone welcome back to my recap and review of another episode of The Last of Us. The show which I'm liking, based on a video game I've never played on a system that that I didn't continue playing after the second generation. As per usual this review will not feature any Easter eggs, because frankly I wouldn't know what one would be if I came across one. This episode ran 50 minutes it was honestly so fast paced, interesting and all around well done that the time flew by. I had to look at a clock at the end of the episode to make sure I wasn’t going to walk away and miss a significant chunk of the episode. I don’t know who sold what to whom, but this show has had consistently great episodes each week. I’m done gushing, let’s get into the review/recap. We start the episode off with a group of people in a big room getting read what sounds like a sermon by a gentleman. The sermon ends with it actually being a low grade funeral for a wife and daughter’s father who was killed. When the daughter asks if her father will be buried the man gives a look to a few others in the room and then lets her know that the ground is too cold and he’ll be buried in the spring. Right here is where the alarms are going off and the red flags go up. There’s something about religion and the apocalypse that brings out nothing but bad. There’s no story out there where there’s a disaster and the religious folks with a following aren’t monsters. It’s a simple trope that gets followed and every post-apocalyptic story has at least one religious faction side story. After the meeting the is identified as David and speaks to James who is played  by no other than voice acting treasure Troy Baker. It was known that Baker would make an appearance in the show, and it’s nice that he got a good chunk of time and then…well…we’ll get there. The discussion is about food and the lack there of. They determine that there’s only about a week or two worth of food left and they make a plan to go out hunting at some spots where animals may have been seen. We then cut to Ellie who is still caring for Joel, and she takes out her ration of food, which looks really like a small cluster of almonds. Surely not enough to live by, so she grabs the rifle and heads out. After a botched sneak attack on a rabbit, she finds a dear and knabs a shot. Like most hunts, if the animal isn’t taken out with a kill shot then it runs until it bleeds out. Fun fact, most deer will run towards water to die. Cut to David and James who have come up on Ellie’s kill and they determine that they’re just going to take it back to the village before the person who shot it comes to claim it. Ellie surprises them and takes charge and David offers her a trade as he tells Ellie the deer is too big for her to carry on her own. It's agreed medication for an infection will be given for half of the deer and David sends James back to the village to get it. David offers to start a fire as it’ll be a while before James comes back with the medication, so they go to a nearby cabin and have a chat over the fire. We learn that David started preaching after his quarantine zone and before the apocalypse he was a teacher. He left the QZ with a group of people and picked up stragglers here and there, also it’s at that time he found religion. This is pretty much textbook cult behavior. A person finds those who are lost and at their wits end, promises then safety and aid in a very convincing way and slowly gathers followers. Ellie calls him out on being a cult leader and eventually James returns with a gun trained on Ellie. No one is shot, but it’s revealed that the father that was killed and spoken about in the beginning of the episode was the person Joel killed in the last episode at the university. David knows she is with him and that Joel killed the man, but lets Ellie go with the medication and he keeps the deer. The village is eating dinner when David and James return with the deer. He addresses the rumor that they have found the man who killed their friend and the daughter says they should kill him and not bring him to justice as David suggests. David promptly backhands her and tells her that that’s not what they’re going to do. We cut to Ellie not knowing how to apply the medication via the syringe that she was given, so she injects it directly into Joel’s would that she had sewn up at the end of the last episode. The next day she wakes up and checks on Joel to see if he has a fever and then gives him another needle full of medication. She goes out to get some ice so their horse can have something to drink and she notices that men are coming. She runs back to Joel and tries to wake him up, but he’s too out of it. She leaves him with a knife and says she’ll lead them away. She goes out and get their attention and fires some shots before riding off. They give chase and James shots and kills the horse and Ellie falls off and eventually passes out from the fall. James and others decide to kill her, but David tells them not to and to take her back to the village. David addresses the others to locate Joel and be careful. This is the beginning of Joel being a complete bad ass as he takes out members of the party and leaves two alive to interrogate them. He finds out where they are and where the village is then takes the last two members out while showing just how much of a persuasive person he is. I don’t believe I have ever seen a situation where a knife is stabbed behind the knee with the promise of popping it off if the person doesn’t do what they want. We cut back to Ellie who has been locked up in a make shift jail cell where David is there waiting to speak to her. They have a brief chat where we learn David is not a nice man at all, he has violent tendencies and admits to eating people to help keep the village alive. Ellie questions if she will be killed and eaten and David says no, and then implies that he will take care of her in all ways, even the very adult ways. Please remember that Ellie is suppose to be underage in this show, so this is all kinds of bad. Ellie used David holding her hand to break his finger, so David runs off and gets James to take Ellie out and kill her. James and David remove Ellie from her cell and throw her on the table, but Ellie manages to grab a meat cleaver and stick it in the side of James’ neck, so long Troy Baker. She runs out up top and David grabs the clever and runs after her. We see Joel entering the area where everyone is and coming across a small building where the deer that Ellie shot is laying along with three hanging bodies where they have been taking meat from. We cut back to Ellie who is in a cat and mouse situation with David. She grabs a hot burning piece of wood and throws it at David, only to miss and start a fire on one of the walls. She hides and pops out and stabs David in the leg with her knife. He gets on top of her and attacks her as well as implies he is about to sexually assault her. Ellie is in reach of the clever and so she grabs it and hits David with it, then gets on top and starts whacking away at his body. She emerges bloody and in shock and as she is walking in the snow a man comes up from behind and grabs her, it’s Joel. She turns around, still in shock, and hugs him. He says, “I got you baby girl” and the episode ends. Oddly enough, my wife was putting down my daughter for bed and she muttered “ok baby girl” and I got a little emotional. While David was talking to Ellie as they were waiting for James to come back with the medicine, he tells her that Joel really cares for her and this goes back to two episode ago where he kept seeing his daughter. This truly shows Joel has becoming a full fledges father figure to Ellie and will do anything to keep her safe and be her guardian. You could look at it as a second chance as his anxiety attacks seem to come with thinking about his daughter. In some cases a person in that position will take blame and think that the situation, even thought they had no control over it, was their fault and carry that burden. Mental health doesn’t take a break during the apocalypse, everyone is having issues. Read the full article

[streets-in-paradise]

The Insolence of Beauty

Troy (2004) Oneshot

Word Count: 1.910

Characters: Agamemnon, Achilles (mentioned), Odysseus, Nestor, Menelaus, Briseis. 

Warnings: Swearing.(Should I warn that Agamemnon gets a bit gay for Achilles here? )

Genre: Friendship -  Humor. 

Summary: Agamemnon arrived to Troy fed up of Achilles’ attitude and he decided to do something about it, but their dispute begins to point them as a threat to the success in the war against Troy. When his brother and two of his friends decide to intervene on the situation, some never spoken thoughts about his rival come to surface. 

Note: This was completely inspired by the comments of Brian Cox about Brad Pitt on this clip. Special thanks to my friend @mysticaldeanvoidhorse because we started thinking this together and her encouragement made me want to write the concept as an oneshot.

Tags: @mysticaldeanvoidhorse​ @yerevasunclair​

The gathered kings left the celebrations on the order of their commander, but no one was calm knowing that he would be alone with Achilles. It was a recipe for disaster, everyone guessed that the only possible outcome of that meeting was a tremendous fight.  Agamemnon was incapable of thinking rationally when it was about that man and all he wanted was blatant revenge against him. Payback for his hurted pride, a compensation for the stolen glory that the crazy entrance of the myrmidons in trojan territory took from him. 

That time, Achilles went too far. Monopolizing the merit for the first acquired victory in the war was inadmissible. The soldier forgot which of them was King and for that he had to pay a price . He came up with a disciplinary sanction that would also work as reparation for him: to take him, without any warnings, his most valued piece from his share of the treasure. Thinking as he assumed a warrior would instead of picking like a king, he stole from him the only woman found in the destroyed trojan temple. The meeting was barely an excuse to enjoy himself observing his powerlessness, apparently sure of how that victory was going to positionate him as an indisputable leader. 

While the altercation was taking place, all the kings and captains took their different paths, but only three remained outside the tent and ready to deal with the latent danger. Menelaus, worried about the state of his brother during all the observational process of the battle from the ships, was mostly personally concerned about him. Nestor's worries were split in between actual preoccupation for his friend and fears about the lack of cohesion in the army. On his part, Odysseus was primarily thinking about the military and political consequences of what he saw as a new tantrum of the king with the warrior. He wouldn't admit it directly, but he was as well deeply worried about Achilles and his always fragile emotional balance. He convinced him of sailing to Troy and, as a close friend of his, he would feel somewhat responsible for what would be happening to him there. 

His state was terrible, he noticed it as they saw him furiously leaving the tent. Menelaus asked him to intervene, but Odysseus knew that the best thing to do when dealing with his friend's rage was waiting. In the heat of his anger, Achilles would listen to no one. He would not want reason, he would only seek for the chaotic explosion of his feelings. All he was able to do was to silently let him know that he counted with his support through a furtive glance. 

As soon as the myrmidon was out of sight, Menelaus rushed inside the tent back with his brother, followed closely by the other two kings. Talking with Agamemnon and evaluating solutions from his side was all they could do at that moment. 

Despite getting a sense of triumph from the fight, he was still angry. The stolen girl remained alongside him, staring at everyone with a rare challenging pride in her expression. Odysseus was the only one who bothered to ask her name, receiving a dry reply directly from her. Briseis didn't have interest in arguing with anyone else. 

Menelaus spoke first, trying to get Agamemnon's good side out. 

" Excellent choice, brother. She is beautiful and Achilles is furious. " He began the praising. " Very creative of you, I must say. " 

It made him smile, proud of still being the hero in his little brother's eyes. 

" I could have taken gold,   but i knew it would not affect him.  For as highly ambitious as he seems to be, he still thinks like a soldier. " He pridefully explained. " Women are needed among them more than any other forms of riches. He can live with less gold, but he will want to fuck. That's how the mind of the common man works. " 

Odysseus gave some credit to the reasoning, but still exposed his point. 

" ... Clever, unfortunately. Let's hope to see these sparkles of brilliance more often in the planning of strategies to attack our real enemy. We came here to fight the trojans, not to educate Achilles. " 

Agamemnon stared at Nestor, waiting for his words as if his opinion could bring the closure.

" I'm afraid I have to agree. " He completed. " What he does is not of our concern as long as he keeps winning battles for us."

His honest opinion didn't please him. When it was about Achilles, everything was black or white to him. 

Then, the inevitable happened. Instead of talking with reason, furious and incoherent venting of his hate.  

" HOW CAN I BE KING IF MY SCEPTER MEANS NOTHING TO HIM??"  Agamemnon complained really loudly. " SHOULD I LET HIM RULE THROUGH ME? NEVER IN THIS LIFETIME!! " 

" You can't think straight, you are obsessed with him." Odysseus replicated. " Your fun little gain can potentially lead us to ruin. I know Achilles, ríght now he must be thinking of retiring from the battlefield. " 

The trojan girl seemed slightly impressed by that claim, probably wondering how she managed to get such influence in him and the course of the war. She didn't speak, but the ithacan noticed it. 

Agamemnon didn't flinch with the news. 

" He has to see that he is nothing without me. Didn't you see our own men cheering his name? This is serious, Odysseus. Honors are meant for kings. " 

" I can live with less worship from subdits if that assures me to survive the war and maybe win it in the process. " He sarcastically snarked. " I'm sure the fellow kings here can understand what I mean. " 

The mycenaean became hysterical, any social filter of his speech completely lost to rage. 

" I GIVE THE ORDERS, I HOLD THE POWER AND I TAKE THE GLORY!'' He yelled. " WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS? DOES HE EXPECT ENDLESS WORSHIP, EVERYTHING HANDLED TO HIM JUST BECAUSE HE IS HOT??"

Silence invaded the tent as everyone else tried to process the new information unawaringly implied in his venting. Menelaus’s eyes went wide, Nestor was forced to hold a cackle and Odysseus was the only one with little shame and enough courage to keep digging. 

It was a fun discovery that the situation provided, the funniest opportunity he had in years to mess with the mycenaean king. 

“ Do you think that is a factor we are overlooking? How hot would you say he is?” He followed the lead of the sayings, willing to play with that for as much time as it would take for Agamemnon to calm down and realize what he was saying. 

“ The most handsome man in the army, in the country … and the bastard knows it!!” The king kept complaining.” I have no chance of obtaining the honors that are owed to me if i have to compete against him! Everything that gives him the illusion of mightiness comes from his looks. He is not special, only astonishingly handsome and that is ruining me. WHO WOULD LISTEN TO ME WHEN THIS GOLDEN HAIRED CHAMPION MAKES CONSTANT CALLS TO DISOBEY ME??” 

Nestor was starting to get the point of Odysseus' game and he chose to follow it out of pure amusement. 

“ Shall we come up with a male beauty measurement system to solve this problem?” 

“ I have one.” The ithacan struk back. “ On a down to up scale from Menelaus to Paris … how irreverently beautiful would you say that Achilles is?” 

The spartan king stared deathly at him. 

“ Couldn’t you use different extremes? That is offensive.” 

Totally messing up with him, Odysseus proceeded to explain himself. 

“ Agamemnon thinks that beauty affects the loyalty and modesty of men, not only of women. Who better than Paris to represent that? He is known for being beautiful and extremely insolent. “ 

The explanation satisfied Menelaus, allowing the mockery to continue on the sidelines of his disconcert. 

“ PRECISELY!! He wouldn't be so insolent if he wasn’t so stunning.” Agamemmnon agreed, picking only pieces of the conversation to connect his rant.” I saw him claiming the victory and I couldn't believe my eyes. That beautiful bastard in gleaming bronze was being worshiped as a God for a feat that should have been mine !! 

His brother tried to dissimulate the disconcert with attempts to calm him down. 

“ The feat is still yours because you are the commander of all the forces.” 

“ It doesn’t matter because he gets the influence … CURSE HIM AND HIS PIERCING BLUE EYES! “  Agamemnon remained unaware of the odd route in which he was directing the conversation. “ The world will end up at his feet … Who would dare to say no to him?” 

“ The conclusion would be then that Achilles is so beautiful that it is affecting you?” Nestor summarized for everyone, still in disbelief. “ How?” 

“ He is too beautiful to be commanded. Is that what you mean? “ Odysseus completed, sharing mischievous glances with the eldest king. 

Menelaus opted for a new deviation in the same topic, in hopes of ending the strange conversation. He asked for Briseis’ opinion because she was the only woman present there. 

Her initial reaction was remaining silent. 

“ Now you are being more insensitive than me.” Odysseus called him out for doing it. “ You are talking about the man who leads the men who brought her here. I don’t think she has a say in this.” 

Briseis was evidently confused and slightly weirded by the situation that she was witnessing, even more when asked to take part in it. 

“ Can’t you read the meaning of my robes? I’m a Priestess of Apollo.” She fearlessly replied to the spartan king. 

“ You are still a woman.” Menelaus snarked back.” Your cute sad face doesn’t deceive me, girl. The traitorous whore I married used to look at me like that and I once believed her incapable of looking at men with want. Stop pretending to be a cold bitch and give me what you have.” 

The pressure was intimidating, but she tried to hide it. For that, she gave an avoidant answer.

“ I wouldn’t willingly give myself to him, if that is what you are asking.” 

More fun implications were in development when Menelaus started to use the subject as his own rage outlet. Odysseus almost bursted into laughter as they saw him trying to force a confession of desire out of her. 

“ LIAR!! One month from now and you would be his whore. You would forget any promises you ever made and lay with him because it is in your nature. Who knows if you are a real virgin anyways? Do I have to believe in your dress? “ 

“ That’s enough, let her be.” Nestor stopped him.” She is not going to give any answers.” 

“ … I have to find a way to control him or the beauty of that man is going to kill us all.” Agamemnon stayed in his own personal monolog. 

Surprisingly, she understood his claims, for as absurd as those sounded. Her meeting with Achilles was a confusing episode. Like Agamemnon, she hated him to the core but couldn’t help to admire his looks. The commander king was despicable and he still was a danger to her safety, but hearing his venting made her feel less worried about her own mixed emotions. She wondered if that was the effect that Achilles had on everyone. 

Maybe, hating him while feeling attracted to him wasn’t strange after all. 

[fandom-imagines-stories]

Transfer

Troy Bolton x Reader

Words: 4064

Summary: Moving schools isn’t easy. Moving to the rival school… Start of something new? Or complete disaster. 

Notes: I will stop writing for Troy when my love for him ceases… so never. (This is another one that is going to deal with bullying, even more so than the last one, so if that makes you uncomfortable, feel free to move along)

Warnings: Cyber bullying, angst

-

Nobody knew. That’s what you had to keep telling yourself. Nobody knew you or anything that had happened. Granted, that also meant you didn’t know anyone either. Strangers passed you without a second glance. This was good. If nobody noticed you, they wouldn’t attack. If you stayed invisible, you stayed safe. 

“Hey Chad, over here!” You were so busy looking at your new schedule that you didn’t see the basketball hurtling towards you. The ball hit you square in the chest, knocking the wind out of you and causing you to drop your books. “Oh gosh, I am so so so sorry.”

A boy crouched down in front of you, trying to gather up your papers before they were swept away under his classmates’ shuffling feet. 

“It’s okay,” You gasped, stilling trying to catch your breath. He helped pick up the last of your things and held out his hand to help you up. 

“I’m Troy.” He gave you a smile that would have made the entire cheer squad at West High swoon. You took his hand, feeling the blush on your cheeks. 

“Y/N.” So much for staying invisible. 

“Are you okay? That sounded like it hurt.” The apologetic puppy face was almost as cute as his smile. 

“I’ll be fine. I probably should have been paying more attention.” You laughed nervously. 

“And I should have caught the ball.” As he handed your things back to you, he caught a glimpse of your schedule. “Hey, you have Mrs. Darbus for homeroom!”

“Um, yeah, I was trying to find her room.” You anxiously tucked a hair behind your ear. 

“I can show you.” He offered, that gorgeous smile returning. “My friends and I have her too.”

“Drop something?” A blonde girl wearing the pinkest jacket you had ever seen held out Troy’s basketball. His smile strained. 

“Thanks Sharpay.” Her vicious gaze turned on you. 

“And who are you?” And here you thought all the scary girls went to West High. 

“I-uh-I’m-” You stuttered. Troy came to the rescue. 

“Look at the time! We’re all going to be late for homeroom if we don’t hurry.” He quickly ushered you away from Sharpay, helping you steer through the herd of students to Mrs. Darbus’ room. 

“Who was that?’ You whispered as seats started to fill up. 

“That was Sharpay Evans. The evil queen of East High. Just stay off her bad side and you should be fine.” He shuttered, grabbing his usual desk. All the seats around Troy were filled so you picked an empty desk in the back row. The scary blonde, along with a few other late comers got in the door just as the bell rang. 

“Troy, pass it.” One of the guys held out his hand. Troy threw him the basketball and he proceeded to spin the ball on his finger. “You ready for the game?” He grinned. 

“Are you kidding? The Knights are so going down.” Troy made a hoop with his arms and his friend tossed the ball in. The room pretended to cheer and you couldn’t help but smile at the antics. Your teacher wasn’t as amused. 

“Mr Danforth, Mr. Bolton, it seems you’ve lost your way to the court. This is a classroom. I will be seeing you two superstars-”

“In detention.” They finished grimly. 

“You must be new.” The girl next to you whispered. “She had gorgeous brown hair and a kind smile. “I know how you feel. I moved here last year. I’m Gabriella.” 

“I’m Y/N.” Your cell phone buzzed in your pocket. You opened up your messages, feeling that awful icy dread that you had tried to get away from.

“Miss Y/L/N, correct?” Mrs. Darbus stood over you, holding a bucket. 

“Y-yes.” 

“While your former school may have allowed electronics, I certainly do not.” She motioned to your phone. You slumped in your chair and dropped it into the bucket. 

“Sorry ma’am.”

“Not to worry I’m sure you’ll make plenty of new friends in detention.” She returned to the front of the room. You didn’t dare argue, burying your face in your hands with a sigh. You felt the words of the message resonate in your head. 

You can run. But you can’t hide. 

-

Detention didn’t seem so bad. You mostly just had to help paint sets for the end of the year one-act. You had your face buried behind a picket fence when a pair of blue eyes peaked at you between the boards. 

“Need some help?” Troy offered, leaning over the fence. 

“Be careful of the paint!” You exclaimed before his hands got covered. You swiped your arm across your forehead and Troy started to snicker. “What?”

“You’ve got a little…” He motioned to the spot above your eyebrow. Horrified, you scrambled to find a rag to clean off the paint. Troy laughed, but not in a mocking way. You couldn’t help but laugh with him. How long had it been since you laughed with someone? Let alone an outrageously cute guy?

“I meant to say thanks earlier, for helping me find Mrs. Darbus’ class.” You said, getting back to work on the fence. 

“It’s the least I could do after missing the ball.” He sat down next to you and grabbed a brush to help. 

You heard an outburst of laughter from across the stage and winced. You whirled your head around and saw a group of students messing around with funny looking masks from the costume trunk. You exhaled slowly to calm down. They weren’t laughing at you. 

“You okay?” Troy wondered, noticing your sudden change in demeanor. You forced a smile and said your well rehearsed line. 

“I’m fine.” 

For the first time, somebody saw through it. Troy may not have given any indication, but he could tell that something had upset you. He just nodded and smiled. 

“Are you coming to the game this weekend?” He changed the topic excitedly, hoping to distract you from whatever had made you upset. 

“I don’t know yet.” You sighed. “I have a lot to catch up on and stuff to set up.” His face fell into that adorable pout and you just couldn’t say no. “I can try and squeeze it in.” His eyes lit up. 

“Great!” Through his excitement, a slightly shy smile crept onto his lips. “I was kind of hoping that you’d want to get a pizza or something after the game?”

You tried to keep your jaw from dropping. 

“Are you… asking me out?” You gasped. He grinned. 

“Yeah. I guess I am.” His fingers brushed against yours as both reached for the paint. You blushed. 

“Then, um, yeah. I’d love to go out with you after the game.” You were smiling brighter than you had in a long time, but still, a little voice in your head was telling you this was a bad idea. Stay invisible. Stay invisible. 

“Awesome.” Troy was beaming, making that little voice of doubt disappear. “I promise, I play much better than what you saw in the hall.” You both laughed. Wow he has a nice laugh. 

Mrs. Darbus announced that the time was up and that all prisoners of detention were free to go. Honestly, you were kind bummed. With Troy helping you with the fence, you were actually having a good time. You had a skp in your step as you walked home. 

“Hi mom! Hi dad!” You greeted, snatching an apple for a snack. Your mom’s voice called from the backyard. 

“Hey! How was your first day?” She was elbows deep in tulip bulbs even though it was late January. Then again, you were in New Mexico.

“Really god, actually.” You grinned. “I met some really nice people and got invited to the basketball game this weekend.”

“Woah, what happened to laying low for a while?” She rubbed the dirt off her hands on her apron. Her usual perky cheerleader smile was gone, replaced by a glare of concern. “You know the basketball game is against West High, don’t you?”

“I-” You hadn’t thought about that. Trying to seem confident, you crossed your arms. “I can’t hide forever, mom.”

“Those girls are going to be there.” She said, putting her hands on her hips. “Wouldn’t it be better to just stay home and not drag out the skeletons in your closet?”

“They’re just cheerleaders, mom! They aren’t hitmen.” You exclaimed. You knew that this was more about protecting her pride than your own. 

“Yeah, well, you used to be one of them and look how that turned out.” the disappointed stare she gave you hurt, but you tried not to show it. 

“I'm going to the game and I'm going out for pizza afterwards with one of my new friends.”

“Is that new friend a boy?” She spat. You ignored her. 

“I’m going whether that fits your little ‘laying low’ plan or not.” You stormed off, but not before you heard her muttering under her breath. 

“Haven’t you humiliated me enough?”

-

The next day, you walked with your head down. Your mother’s pessimism had definitely brought your sunny mood back down to earth. Leave it to her to ruin the one good thing you’d had in months. Your attempts to disappear worked well for the fist two periods. Nobody even noticed that you were there. 

Of course, that only lasted until Gabriella spotted you. The bubbly brunette was quick to join you while you tried to navigate your way to your next class. 

“I heard you’re going to the basketball game!” She said excitedly. “I didn’t think I was much of a sports person, but the school spirit here makes everything exciting.” 

“Yeah, I'm not sure.” You shrugged. After all, half of your classmates from West High would be there, including the girls that started all this. Rob would be on the court, playing against Troy. Oh no.

“Well you are welcome to come with me and Taylor. We’re going to have a movie night afterwards, too.” 

“I’m- uh- I’m supposed to be grabbing dinner with Troy after the game.” You muttered, the excitement of the date having faded into dread. 

“You have a date with Troy Bolton?” A shrill voice joined the conversation, stopping you in your tracks. The terrifying blonde was giving you an icy cold stare. “That was quick.” 

“I think it's sweet.” Gabriella countered. She gave you a smirk. “Who knows? Maybe it was love at first sight.” Your eyes fell to the tiled floor. 

“I think he was just being nice.” Your grim tone made her give you a look of concern. Sharpay smiled sarcastically. 

“Well isn’t that just like our Troy?” Her sneer made her annoyance very clear. She put her hands on her hips and began a deeper interrogation. “You’re from West High, aren’t you?” Before you could even answer, she continued. “Won’t that be awkward, coming to the basketball game? Why did you transfer? It’s a little weird, right? Transferring a month into the semester?” 

“Okay!” Gabriella exclaimed. “I think it’s time we all get to class, don’t you think?” Sherpa was clearly irked by the interruption and tossed her hair over shoulder. 

“I guess I’ll just see you both at the game.” She strutted away and you exhaled the breath you had been holding. 

“Thanks.” 

“Don’t worry about her.” Gabriella shrugged. “Sharpay is usually all bark and no bite.”

“Somehow, I find that hard to believe.” You said to yourself. 

After third period, it was time for lunch. You found the same empty table that you sat at the day before. You were used to eating alone by now. 

Somewhere in the lunchroom, a phone dinged, followed by laughter. You flinched, waiting for the taunting to start. Like before, however, they weren’t really laughing at you. Keeping your head low, you tuned out the loud chatter of the cafeteria. For a while, it really felt like you were invisible. Invisible and alone. 

“Mind if I join you?” 

You looked up and found Troy giving you a sweet smile. You shrugged in reply and he took that as confirmation that something was wrong. He sat down beside you as you toyed with the green beans on your plate. 

“Gabriella told me about Sharpay. She said you seemed pretty upset.” His words only elicited another shrug. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m here if you do.”

“I can’t go to the game.” You blurted. 

“What? Why?”

“I just can’t, Troy.” You kept your face down, so he couldn’t see your tears. “I can’t go out with you either.”

“Y/N, if I said something wrong-”

“Can’t you see I’m doing you a favor?” You slammed your hand down on the table and you finally looked up to see his hurt expression. You almost took it back. Then your phone buzzed ominously and you grabbed your backpack. “I’m really sorry, Troy. But if they saw us together, if they thought I was happy-”

“Who are you talking about?” He was worried now. “Who’s they?”

“Forget I said anything and just… forget me.” Clutching your phone in a tight fist, you ran out of the cafeteria. 

You weren’t sure if Troy followed you or not as you sprinted down the halls of East High. You didn’t read the text until you got out to the parking lot. There weren’t any words. Just that stupid video. 

It was the cheer squad’s Christmas party. There had been some tension between you and the other girls, but you hadn’t thought much of it. ‘Girls as close as you are bicker.’ your mom had said. So you went to the party. 

Amber, the cheer captain and your supposed best friend, told you that Rob Mannington wanted to talk to you. She knew how much of a crush you had on him. Problem was, so did she. 

When you found Rob, you thought the two of you were alone. He took off your jacket and said a bunch of sweet things as he leaned in for a kiss.

“I can’t do this.” He burst out laughing, pushing you away. Other girls from the cheer squad appeared, cackling like a bunch of Prada clad hyenas. Hurt and humiliated, you ran. 

After that, it just got worse. Text messages, online harassment, and eventually, someone took a picture in the locker room and posted it all around the school. Your mother immediately had you transfer to East High. She was ashamed of you and blamed you for the loss of her social status. She didn't care that you lost everything. 

You let out a frustrated and hopeless scream and threw your phone as hard as you could against the concrete. The device broke apart and you stared at it. It wasn’t until you felt a gentle hand on your shoulder that you let yourself cry. 

You turned around and were in Troy’s embrace without objection. You let this sweet and caring boy hold you tight while you sobbed. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He was just there. 

-

“Wow.” Troy blew out a long breathing, running his fingers through his hair. “And these were your friends?”

“I thought they were.” You sighed, wiping a fallen tear off your cheek. 

After your break down at lunch, Troy told you to meet him for homeroom. He told Mrs. Darbus that you were going through some stuff and needed a friend. So he brought you to his favorite spot in the whole school; the roof. And you told him everything. It was the first time that you’d really talked about what happened with anyone and it was nice to get it off your chest. 

“I’m really sorry that happened to you.” Troy put his hand on top of yours. “And I totally understand if you don’t want to come to the game. What those West High kids did… I can’t imagine what it was like.” 

“I felt like my whole life- all the cheerleading camps, the coaching from my perfect mother, kissing up to every spoiled girl with pom poms- it all meant nothing.” You were quiet for a moment, Troy’s thumb gently rubbing the back of your hand. With a deep breath and your head held high, you made your decision. “I’m going to that game.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to get thrown back into everything because of me.” The concern in his voice was more than either of your parents had shown. You gave him a small, but confident smile.

“No. I’m tired of hiding from them. I’m done being invisible.” With your new confidence, you leaned over and kiss his cheek. 

Troy’s face turned a light shade of pink as he grinned. 

“What was that for?’ He wondered sheepishly. Your smile was sincere. 

“For being the first real friend I’ve had in seventeen years.” You leaned your head on his shoulder and he entwined his fingers with yours. You had only known him for two days, but he already seemed to understand you better than anybody else in your life. 

He turned slightly and pressed his lips on top of your hair, lingering there for a moment. Troy couldn’t understand his own feelings, but after less than 48 hours, you seemed to have won over the basketball captain’s heart.

-

You couldn’t hide that you were nervous. From the sounds of it, the gym was already pretty full. Even from outside the doors, you could hear the West High cheer section warming up. Gabriella gave you an encouraging smile to try and calm your nerves. 

“Remember, there is always plan B.” She said, reminding you of the message Troy had sent earlier. 

I can’t wait to see you in the stands tonight! Don’t forget you can alway sleeve if you need to. Gabriella is all set for an emergency escape. Look for #14. I’ll see you then!

You wished he was with you, but he belonged with his team. You could do this. Rob, Amber, the other cheerleaders; none of them mattered anymore. They could taunt you all they wanted, but you weren’t alone. Besides, watching the Wildcats whoop the Knights would be the perfect way to leave them all behind. 

Gabriella grabbed your hand and navigated through the crowd to get inside. The air was buzzing with excitement and you let the energy charge through you. When Amber’s eagle eyes spotted you, you just kept walking. 

After finding a good spot in the student section, you waited s the time ticked by. The gym was filling up, but you could still see Amber whispering to the other girls and pointing in your direction. You inhaled sharply and looked away, feeling the panic begin to resurface. 

“Look, there he is.” Gabriella was almost drowned out by the cheering crowd as the Wildcats ran onto the court. Sure enough, at the front of the pack of jerseys was #14. As the team warmed up, he scanned the crowd. He shot the ball into the hoop and gave you a big grin. 

Then entered the Knights. When you spotted Rob, you didn't feel those school-girl butterflies you used to get whenever you saw him. Now you were just angry. You were just a joke to him. Before you could look away, he saw you. With a smirk, he made a basket. 

Troy noticed the change in your expression and followed your gaze to the cocky player across the court. He felt a rush of defensive determination. He would make sure that the boy who broke your heart wouldn’t be making any points tonight. 

The game started off well for the Knights, with a basket and two foul throws. Their cheerleaders yelled and shook their pom-poms. You couldn’t help but feel like Amber’s sporty sneers were meant for you. 

Rob had stolen the ball and was sprinting towards the hoop. He threw it to one of his teammates, but a flash of red cut in between them. The crowd roared as Troy made it down the court for a basket. 

“Yeah Troy!” You shouted. Rob must have picked out your voice because he sent a furious glare in your direction. You just smiled. 

It was almost half time and the score was tied. Troy was guarding Rob as he dribbled down the court.  

“So Y/N’s your groupie too, huh Bolton?” He snapped. Troy tensed. 

“Just play the game, Mannington.”

“You know, I almost regretted rejecting her like that…” he smirked, “after that picture came out.” With Troy seething, he shoulder checked him out of the way and passed the ball for his teammate to score. The buzzer went off. 

“That marks halftime here folks; Wildcats 22, Knights 24.” 

East High fans breathed a collective sigh as the teams made their way into the locker rooms. 

“What’s wrong with Troy?” Gabriella wondered. You watched him storm angrily into the locker room, his whole body shaking furiously. Whatever Rob had said had set him off and a deep fear settled in your head. 

What did Rob tell him?

-

You bit your lip anxiously. If Troy made this free throw, they would tie the score again. 

“Come on Troy.” You uttered. 

He took a few deep breaths and quickly glanced up at you. He had to make this. He inhaled slowly and dedicated his focus to the hoop ahead of him. As he exhaled, he made the shot. As the ball swished in the net, the fans cheered loudly. 

Now it was the Knights’ ball and with less than a minute on the clock, it was a mad dash to stay out of overtime. Rob was going in for the shot. He planted his feet and tossed the ball. It seemed like the whole gym was holding its breath. 

The ball just bounced off of the rim and Troy snatched it out of the air, earning a chorus of cheers from the crowd. He passed the ball to Zeke who bounded to the basket and dunked the ball for the winning points. 

The buzzer was lost in the shouts from his team and from the ecstatic fans. Disappointed West High fans started to file out of the gym while East High students and families flooded the court. Troy was pulled into a crushing hug by his parents, his eyes searching the faces of people nearby. It took him awhile to find you, but he wasn’t the only one. 

“Rob told me that you found a new guy to creep on.” Amber laughed. “The captain of the basketball team? Really, Y/N, don’t you think that’s aiming a little high? You don’t really think that dreamboat Troy Bolton would be interested in someone like you?” Troy, hearing the conversation, stepped in.

“Hey are you ready to go?” He put a hand on your arm affectionately. Startled by his sudden appearance, you just nodded. “Great! I’m going to go shower and I’ll be back out soon.” He looked at Amber. “Can you believe it? This amazing girl transfers to East High and she agrees to go out with me. I must be crazy lucky or something, I know.” 

Baffled, Amber stomped off to find her posse. You just look at Troy, stunned. Was he just saying all that to get her to go away? As if he read your mind, he took your hand in his and brought it up to his lips. 

“I meant it.” He said and you got lost in his sincere eyes.”I am super lucky that you wound up at East High. That I found you.” A grin spread across his face. “And I am very excited for our date.”

“Oh, so we are officially calling it a date?” You teased. He laughed. 

“That’s what I was hoping for yeah.” You paused, your smile dropping a little. 

“Troy, what did Rob say to you just before half time?” You waited for him to say some rumor that had been spread from your school. Something awful that he would never forgive you for. Troy just smiled and shook his head. 

“Nothing important.” He thought for a moment before quickly kissing your cheek. When he stepped back, you were beaming. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.” He started to push through the people around you. “And Troy?”

“Yeah?” His smile could have knocked you off your feet.

“I’m lucky I found you too.” 

-

General Tag: @rae-gar-targaryen; @takemepedropascal; @childhood-imagination;  @mylovegoesto; @yellowbadgergirl; @itmejado; @suckmyapplejacks

[microsuedemouse]

Ok, since I have horrible luck and forced yet another sad Abedison on the world because of Spotify... can I ask for another prompt? How about a song ending in a multiple of 5? (5,15, 25, etc). I am an absolute sucker for bittersweet but maybe there's a happy one in there! :D <3

(send me a ship and a number from 1-100; I'll write a short scene inspired by the corresponding song from my Spotify top songs this year)

here's a happy one for ya! <3 since you gave me some freedom with the numbers, I spent a few minutes deciding which song I thought worked best for them. this one is a pretty good fit, I think! :) number 65 on my playlist:

a rly sweet song about the little things that make you fall in love with someone. feels very right for Annie and Abed.

All Night | 1 290 words | G

discount cigarillos in the parking lot dancing in the kitchen to country songs a million little pieces of a perfect life I want it to last all night

Annie used to think love happened all in one fell swoop. A spark, or an explosion of butterflies, or, hell, even a fire in the loins. Like in all those romance novels she discovered in the library shelves at age thirteen and used to read under the covers after her mother thought she’d gone to sleep. Whether it happened the moment the leads locked eyes, or not until the climax of the story when one of them narrowly escaped disaster and they had to acknowledge suddenly that the fear they’d felt was the result of a passion undeclared… that realization always came all at once, thunderously, like an epiphany. The heroine and her hero would just Know. That, Annie thought, was what real love must be like.

Back in high school, she thought she Knew, with Troy. He was handsome, and he was actually very nice to her that one time she collided with him in the hallway, and if movies had taught her anything it was that the shy, nerdy grade-grubber and the popular-but-actually-sweet jock absolutely could be soulmates. But then time went on, and she became friends with him instead, and those feelings just sort of… faded away. Then she thought she’d Known with Vaughn, who was kind and wholesome and made her feel pretty, but when the time came to test her commitment, she realized she couldn’t leave her friends just to stay with him. She’d thought, very briefly, that she Knew when she befriended Rich, who seemed in every way to be her ideal: smart, open-hearted, compassionate, outgoing, well-rounded. Even when he rejected her, he did it so gently and thoughtfully that she almost adored him more for it. Eventually, though, she’d come to see that she was a lot younger than him, and that he’d been right when he told her they weren’t standing on even ground.

Most embarrassingly of all, she thought several times that she Knew she was in love with Jeff. But when it really came down to it, she also Knew that she wasn’t, really. Whenever one of their bizarre, too-charged sort of phases wound back down, she found herself relieved. Every time he dated someone new (or not-so-new, when it came to Britta), she’d get all up in arms, and then a couple days later she’d realise it was actually a weight off her psyche. Anytime she started to trick herself into believing again that it really was Jeff all along, for her, she tried to remember the things she’d said when Abed pushed her to the very edge of her patience, that day years ago in the Dreamatorium: she loved the idea of being loved. She loved the idea that if she could make a man as cynical as Jeff love her, she’d never had to worry again about being left alone. She’d said a lot of very rash things that afternoon, and this had been one of them, but that was how she knew it was true. It had come up from her gut, instinctively, the moment that Abed-as-Annie had claimed that she was (they were) in love with Jeff. It wasn’t the healthiest conversation she’d ever had with herself – there was way too much to sort through, there – but it had, undoubtedly, been furiously honest.

Abed did have a strange way of always being just what she needed. And she tried her best to be the same for him. It wasn’t always pretty, but they were working on that. They were both kind of messy, mixed-up people, but they cared enough about one another to want to be better. That was why living together worked so well for them, even if they still made each other crazy once in a while: after all, who better to understand you than someone just as nuts as you are?

And it was because they knew each other so well that Annie knew, when she got the text that said gonna be home late again :/, exactly what their evening would look like. Normally it would’ve been his turn to make dinner, but sometimes work schedules and home schedules just didn’t cooperate. So she turned on the radio to motivate her through the little tasks that would make the rest of the evening smooth and easy: she made sure the couch was clear of clutter, and she pulled five DVDs from the shelf that she’d be willing to watch. Abed could choose his favourite from her selection, and that way they wouldn’t argue or spend an hour just trying to pick something. Then she preheated the oven and fished a frozen pizza out of the freezer. She wasn’t really up to cooking any more than Abed would be by the time he got in.

She heard him come in while she was getting the pizza into the oven, and as she stood up and pulled off the oven mitts, he stepped into the kitchen. He was smiling a bit, but he looked tired, pulling a lunchbag out of his backpack and going to the sink to rinse out his thermos.

“Long day?” Annie asked, leaning back against the edge of the counter.

“Long week,” he answered, shrugging one shoulder.

“Yeah. No kidding.” They’d both been busy, lately. She gave a small sigh, then smiled again when he turned back towards her. “At least it’s the weekend. How’re you holding up?”

Abed’s eyes crinkled as his own smile grew a little, like it heartened him just to be home with her. “Getting better, now,” he answered, and there was a trace of play in him. Though only a few minutes ago Annie had been thinking about how much she looked forward to settling into her spot on the couch and not moving again for hours, his attitude was as contagious as ever, and she found a little energy in herself somewhere.

“Yeah. Me too.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder towards the oven. “Pizza’s in. Already dug out a few movies for you to pick from. I figure it’s a good night just to veg out.”

“Sounds good to me.” Then he cocked his head, eyes going off to one side, and after a second she realised he was listening to the radio, playing quietly in its place atop the fridge. “Is this Country Roads?”

Annie paused, listening, then grinned. “Yes it is.”

“Been in quite a few movies,” he commented, almost absently. “Alien: Covenant, which probably could’ve been better. Kingsman 2, which got mixed reviews, but honestly I thought it was a lot of fun.”

“Don’t forget Whisper of the Heart,” she reminded him, a little amused.

Abed straightened up, his eyes coming back into focus on her face, and he beamed at her. “How could I ever forget Whisper of the Heart?” he asked. “That’s the best one.”

She bit down on her smile for a second before, impulsively, starting to sing along softly. “Country roads, take me home…”

“To the place I belong,” Abed continued, reaching out one hand. With a laugh, she accepted, and he pulled her gently into the middle of the kitchen and into a very loose hold, smiling his silly smile, eyes sparkling as he swayed side to side and spun her slowly.

So they danced, giggling at each other, half-singing along with John Denver, waiting for their pizza to cook. Annie didn’t think much about it in the moment. When she caught the way Abed was watching her, equal parts fond and entertained, she didn’t Know anything at all. But one day, looking back, she’d remember little things like this, and she’d Know. Even without ever being able to put a finger on when or how things changed, she’d Know, with absolute certainty.

[pinktatertots99]

Jyugo, Uno, Qi and Liang for the 'give me a character and i'll answer with' thing please? :)

-spit takes- gegus, alrighty here tf we go

give me a character and i’ll answer

Jyugo

do I like them: yes he's a good boi

5 good qualities: good hearted, laid back, pretty eyes, really good at fighting somewhat, and nice lockpicking skills

3 bad qualities: tad insensitive, a bit too oblivious sometimes, aaaand uhhh -fuck uhhh what else?- is too mean to seitarou.

favourite episode/etc: fuck uhhh, anime wise it'd be the one where he opens up to uno on his whole situation. manga wise def chapter 138 "what they both need". but also chap 188 "healed scars"

otp: well damn jyugo/uno mostly it's the only one i've been into so far.

brotp: honestly just about everyone for the most part, jyugo's a good friend. think it's tied between rock and nico tho.

ot3: hmmmm, well fuck probably just the rest of his cellmates thats too hard to figure out.

notp: -looks at the hajime related one- not even gonna type the name of it in but you know.

best quote: "i'll face you properly, you and everything else. so don't shoulder everything on your own. don't try to do everything on your own anymore. stop pushing yourself. i can hear everyone of your words. i believe in you. after all you and i are the same" -chapter 138

head canon: besides the obvious autism hc i always have for my faves, i'll say he has a vague interest in rodents.

Uno

do I like them: well yeah he's a good boi too.

5 good qualities: pretty hair, open minded, good eyesight for details, intelligent, positive.

3 bad qualities: insensitive, weird around girls or the subject, jealousy.

favourite episode/etc: probably the new years tournament vs honey and trois. manga wise chapter 95 "i can't stand your face".

otp: -points to jyugo-

brotp: also jyugo but also mostly everyone.

ot3: honey and trois those three would be a funny disaster.

notp: -points to hajime...or any of the supervisors tbh-

best quote: "-but if it's too hard for you to tell me about that, then you don't have to talk. since i'm sure i'm not in the same situation as you. i don't always know what your thinking, so i can only go by your words. i'll wait patiently until then." - chapter 95

head canon: finds gordon ramsey overrated. [random i know lol]

Qi

do I like them: yeah he's cool.

5 good qualities: level headed, relaxed, good hearted, pretty eyes pls take off your glasses more often, and nice arms.

3 bad qualities: too laid back sometimes, pls sir take care of yourself more often instead of giving too much to others, a dick.

favourite episode/etc: the hachiman background in both anime and manga.

otp: qi/liang ftw man

brotp: inori definietly.

ot3: hmmmmm, something bout him samon and inori intrigues me. god poor samon having two annoyingly lazy boyfriends. -or fuji san and kusatsu i ALMOST FORGOT MY OLD MAN POLYCULE-

notp: -gestures to upa-

best quote: "that's not what makes me happy supervisor-san. it wasn't because i was honest. it was because you believed me." chapter 91 "cell 8 is scary when they're pissed off"

head canon: functional bisexual outta the other disaster bi/pan's of the cast. also his glasses are just for show and protect him when doing his chemistry.

Liang

do I like them: i mean yall seen my thirst posts, 'like' is an understatement.

5 good qualities: pretty everything, naive, slowly growing open minded, good taste in food, caring.

3 bad qualities: selfish, closed minded sometimes, tempermental.

favourite episode/etc: the one where he and rock chat after the new years tournament in both anime and manga.

otp: -points to qi-

brotp: rock

ot3: hmmmmmm, -looks at both rock and qi-...intriguing.

notp: -points to samon-

best quote: ‘the “freedom” rock talked about. i finally understand, what it means. i think “freedom” for me is being able to do something. or being able to accomplish something. you were the one who gave me that chance. jyugo, you have my thanks’ - chapter 82 “motive, chance, revenge” also “sorry, i was taught to never hold back” - chapter 83 “dance performance’

head canon: would be a pretty good baker.

[nyarmand]

my ranking of the alex rider original series (stormbreaker through scorpia rising) from ‘book i least enjoy rereading’ to ‘book i most enjoy rereading’ let’s goooo

spoilers for all 9 books under the cut

9. Ark Angel

...He went to space. He went to space. Also the entire plot could have been avoided if Drevin had actually bothered to provide a photograph of his son. I’m sure he had one. I still like this book but it’s literally so insane that I just don’t know what to do with it. 

It is however really funny that Webber just goes and gives a speech insulting this super high-profile ecoterrorist group and acts like it’s no big deal and then they kill him. Shock of shocks.

8. Skeleton Key

Okay, points to this book for terrifying the shit out of me. God damn it does that shark scene scare me. Also, points for making me feel a little bit bad for a man who wants to nuke his own country because he thinks it will fix the place up. I’m still not entirely sure how that’s supposed to work, but that’s probably a good thing. I feel like understanding his thought process would say bad things about me. Still, I actually did feel sorry for him, if only a little. Dude was clearly mentally unstable and I doubt his son’s death helped at all. I also got sad about what happened to Carver and Troy. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a cringe fail American who has the American release. So sue me.) What a nightmare that must’ve been to endure... Otherwise, though, I’m not super into this book. The opening is just kind of meh and the way it leads into the rest of the plot seems a little bit unbelievable. Also, this might be an unpopular opinion, but Sabina annoys me. I would not get along with her at all and I can’t imagine her as a girlfriend. Skeleton Key does, however, absolutely excel at the emotional scenes. 

Also, why are all the spy agencies so comfortable with sending in a 14-year-old? Especially when they outright admit that the other attempts have all died horribly? Bureaucracy’s a bitch.

7. Point Blank

Boo, Dr. Grief! Boo! We hate your white supremacy! I’m so glad you got a snowmobile to the face, you deserved it. (Perks of books written by Jewish people--we aren’t afraid to give the neo-Nazis an unpleasant death.) Anyway, this book definitely isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t really say it stands out in the series. It definitely does hammer home the point of just how trapped Alex is, since MI6 isn’t going to just let him go after one mission, and let’s face it, the plot with the clones is creepy as hell, if highly improbable. But I’m largely just here to see the neo-Nazi get snowmobiled. That’s right, I just completely changed the definition of a pre-established word. I’m a rebel.

Also, I hate Fiona Friend so much and overall think she just didn’t need to be in the book, but the line about ‘I’d rather kiss the horse’ made me laugh so hard. Alex, you sass.

6. Snakehead

Okay, let’s talk about how genius the plan in this book is. I love it! I love how Yu wants to kill the people involved in the peace conference without making them into martyrs, so he comes up with this whole elaborate plan to stage a natural disaster. It’s incredible. This dude was thinking so far ahead. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid... But anyway, I don’t see a lot of books where the villain really acknowledges that killing their enemies could just cause more problems for them via turning them into martyrs for a cause. Also, the way he’s so polite and soft-spoken while also being a complete monster... This book genuinely gives me chills. Extra bonus points for the part in the hospital, the absolute nightmare of having all your organs slowly removed and sold off and everyone around you is being so nice about it? ‘Oh, don’t worry, Alex, it won’t be so bad. Here, take your medicine. Do you need anything?’ Literally just. What the fuck. 

Also Ash can fucking fight me. You put your own godson in horrible danger on purpose! You killed your best friend! Bastard. 

...And just in case the book wasn’t disturbing enough, Yu’s fate at the end lives in my mind rent-free and I think about it on a concerningly regular basis considering that the chances of that happening to me are so low they’re practically in the negatives. Damn you, Horowitz.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention just how much I love the tagline ‘once bitten, twice spy’.

5. Crocodile Tears

Ah yes, the book that kickstarted my drift away from the church... I kid, of course. I drifted away from the church for completely separate reasons. But Desmond McCain is always going to scare the shit out of me. The ability to kill countless innocent people while blissfully quoting Bible verses (that he takes wildly out of context and uses for his own self-serving means) is... well, I could actually say a lot about what that reminds me of, but I’m here to rate books, not religion. Moving on. This book has some really stellar antagonists, and the plot is chilling in a way that feels a lot more realistic than most of the other books. Even if some of it is a bit farfetched (sabotaging a nuclear power plant? Really?), the idea of using disasters for your own profit... well. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on why that is so believable. The Poison Dome is also a really cool and chilling scene--even Alex, who has the luck of the devil, can’t get out of that one unscathed. Further scares come in with the fate of Harold Bulman--imagine having your entire existence wiped and your identity changed while you were asleep! The breakdown he has over it is almost enough to make me feel sorry for him, even though he was ready to exploit a teenager and make his life a living hell just to turn a profit. Note the word almost.

Also. The opening makes me cry. Specifically the line talking about how Ravi’s kids would ‘never meet Mickey Mouse’. I lose my goddamn mind every single time I read it. That little personal touch turns the scene from a statistic to a tragedy. Once again: Damn you, Horowitz.

4. Stormbreaker

Yeah, this one gets the special cover shot. And why not? What we are looking at here is the birth of a legend. Move the fuck over, James Bond, Alex Rider is on the scene now. Anyway, yeah, this book is pretty damn spectacular. It has its stumbles, but as the first book in a series, that’s to be expected. Still, it pulls you in from quite literally the first line and keeps you going right up until the end. (If you came here from my post of memes, you know how much the line ‘Killing is for grownups, and you’re still a child’ destroys me.) It has the debut of much-beloved characters such as, of course, Alex--but also Jack Starbright, and of course, the best MI6 agent of them all, which is to say Smithers. Hell, even Yassen Gregorovich, especially once you get through Russian Roulette... Man, that was a rough one. 

Seriously, though. This is a really good book. The scene with the Portuguese man-o’-war still gives me the chills to think about. (Have you ever looked up pictures of those things? They’re beautiful, but holy shit will they make you regret being born. Nature is funny like that.) 

We also get the introduction of, of course, Alex’s patented sass (his response to Sayle saying he relates to the man-o’-war is HILARIOUS) and we get the inherent humor of Alex screwing up an alias one time and then just going by Alex for the rest of the series so he doesn’t do that again. Really, kid, I know you’re not a trained spy or anything but did you never play pretend growing up? Ever? You can’t pretend your name is Felix for a little while? That sounds like a you problem.

3. Scorpia Rising

I distinctly remember when this book came out, actually. I was on vacation at the time, and I remember my brother annoying the hell out of the poor workers at a bookstore we frequented there to see if/when they were going to get it in. They did, finally, and we bought it immediately, and I was of course absolutely desperate to read it. He got to read it first, though. -_-

This is a great book, an absolute emotional rollercoaster all the way through. The way Blunt tricks Alex back into service by staging a shooting was exactly the kind of cold, brutal behavior I’d expect from him. Seeing Julius come back was shocking, but very exciting, too. And Razim makes an incredibly chilling villain, with his absolute disregard for human life and his desire to measure pain. Also, seeing Smithers’s house was so much fun. Smithers in this book was just really fun in general, but he’s really fun in every book, so... nothing unusual there. But also, I want an unwelcome mat. Please?

2. Eagle Strike

‘But Penny,’ you might ask, ‘why is this book so high on your list? It has so much of Sabina in it, and you said she annoys you.’ That is true. What does not annoy me, however, is basically the entire rest of the book. I love the tense opening, and then reading through Alex’s real-life ‘playthrough’ of Feathered Serpent is still one of my favorite scenes. Cray is absolutely incredible as a villain, with the way that he truly believes in his cause--which is undoubtedly a good one! Yet the extremes to which he will go for that cause, and the fact that he very nearly succeeds, are what elevate him to one of the most dangerous villains in the series. That scene with Charlie Roper and the nickels is something I can never seem to stop thinking about. Actually, I think about it basically whenever I think about large amounts of money paid in small increments... 

Also, I really enjoy how he gets into the whole plot in the first place, and I really enjoy Smithers saying ‘ah, fuck it’ and helping him out anyway. Go, Smithers. You once again prove me right in saying that you’re the coolest adult in MI6.

The revelation that Yassen knew Alex’s father is one that absolutely blew my mind first time around. The way his life was threaded into the lives of the Rider family--he worked with John Rider, was saved by him, killed Ian Rider, and then died for refusing to kill Alex Rider--wow. Wow. It gets to me. It really gets to me. This book is a masterpiece. I heard that it’s going to be what the second season of the TV series is based off of, and I’m so hyped for that. We love to see it, we really do.

1. Scorpia

I don’t believe anyone who says this book didn’t get to them at all. I just think they are lying. I don’t think it’s humanly possible to not be affected by this book. God. Just thinking about it reminds me of why I don’t think it’s possible. I mean, come on. We get all this backstory about Alex’s parents, we get tricked along with him into thinking MI6 killed his father, then bam, that was a lie, and Alex may have just fucked himself over big time. Also, that plot is terrifying! (And I bet anti-vaxxers had a field day with it, huh.) Julia Rothman is a really great antagonist, one of the only ones who didn’t go and explain her plan in great detail to Alex--the fact that she didn’t actually being a plot point was something I personally found pretty clever. In general, this book is... I tend to hate when people say they ‘can’t put it down’ because it’s usually an obvious exaggeration, but that really is how I feel reading it.

And again. If that ending didn’t get to you... Well, I just think you are lying.

[clonetrobed]

For the first sentence prompt:

“I can’t believe you dragged me into this.”

this is very much NOT five sentences, i apologize in advance:

“I can’t believe you dragged me into this,” Troy mumbles.

Annie shoots him a reproachful look, just long enough to make him feel guilty about complaining before she turns her attention back to an approaching crowd of students, greets them, and passes them their programs for the evening with an almost aggressively cheery smile. He hands a few out to the people coming up by his side of the table too, with a touch less enthusiasm.

“You’re the one who said you owed me for helping you pass Astronomy,” Annie reminds him once there’s a lull in the crowd again. “We’ll be even after this, okay?”

It’s true, he did say that. He huffs in annoyance at his past self. 

“Yeah, okay,” he concedes, “But of all the events to work… a student film festival? You actively dislike hipsters, I don’t understand why you chose to do this.”

She bristles slightly at that, sitting up straighter in her chair and folding her hands on the table in front of her. “It’s just nice to volunteer, Troy,” she says firmly. Her voice sounds a little higher than usual.

Troy ponders her for a moment before a thought occurs to him and his eyebrows shoot up.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he shrugs, nodding at a few more students on their way in and keeping his tone as casual as possible. “So this has everything to do with you being a good person.”

Her lips are drawn tightly as he glances over at him, then back away. “Yes.”

Troy nods. “And nothing to do with Stacy from Astronomy, that girl with the blue hair and nose ring who happens to be double majoring in Film and Gender and Sexuality Studies.”

She slowly deflates in her chair and looks over at him pathetically. “Is it obvious?”

That makes him feel a twinge of sympathy, so he takes the smugness out of his tone and shrugs. “Well… maybe not obvious, but—”

“Shit!” She cuts him off when something in the distance catches her eye. “Shut up, never mind, shut up, here she comes!”

“Oh my god,” Troy whispers, “You’re a disaster. You know, if you’d just be yourself…”

He trails off as he follows Annie’s gaze to where Stacy is approaching their table. She’s actually dyed her hair pink now, it seems, but that’s not what Troy is focusing on at all. 

No, he’s focusing on the guy she’s walking with—tall and dark and handsome, dressed in skinny jeans and a flannel, with an adorable smile and big brown eyes and some je ne sais quoi that makes him feel weak in the knees, which would worry him a lot more if he weren’t already sitting down. He feels his cheeks heat up and his palms start to sweat.

“Annie?” He finally manages, voice soft and strangled as he wipes his clammy hands on his jeans. He’s sure his sudden change in demeanor is cause for confusion but he’s not looking at Annie’s expression to see if that’s the case. He can’t; he can’t stop staring forward. “Who’s that?”

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I really enjoyed your book review of Sebastian Junger’s Homecoming. Perhaps enjoyment isn’t the right word because it brought home some hard truths. Your book review really helped me understand my older brother better when I think back on how he came home from the war in Afghanistan after serving with the Paras and had medals pinned up the yin yang. It was hard on everyone in the family, especially for him and his wife and young kids. He has found it hard going. Thanks for sharing your own thoughts as a combat veteran from that  war. Even if you’re a toff you don’t come across as a typical Oxbridge poncey Rupert! As you’re a classicist and historian how did ancient soldiers deal with PTSD? Did the Greeks and Roman soldiers even suffer from it like our fighting boys and girls do? Is PTSD just a modern thing?

Part 1 of 2 (see following post)

Because this is subject very close to my heart as a combat veteran I thought very long and hard about the issues you raised. I decided to answer this question in two posts.

This is Part 1 and Part 2 is the next post.

My apologies for the length but this is subject that deserves full careful consideration.

Thank you for your lovely words and I especially find its heart warming if they touched you. I appreciate you for sharing something of the experience your ex-Para brother went through in coming home from war. I have every respect for the Parachute regiment as one of the world’s premier fighting force.

Working alongside them on missions out in Afghanistan I could see their reputation as the ‘brain shit’ of the British Army was well deserved. They’re most uncouth, sweary, and smelliest group of yobbos I’ve ever had the awful misfortune to meet. I’m kidding. The mutual respect and the ribbing went hand in hand. I doff my smurf hat to the cherry berries as ‘propah soldiers’ as they liked to say especially when they cast a glance over at the other elite regiments like HCav and the guards regiments.

Don’t worry I’ve been called a lot worse! But I am grateful you don’t lump me with the other ‘poncey’ officers. Not sure what a female Rupert is called. The fact that I was never accused of being one by any of those I served with is perhaps something I take some measure of pride. There are not as many real toff officers these days compared to the past but there are a fair few Ruperts who are clueless in leading men under their charge. I knew one or two and frankly I’m embarrassed for them and the men under their charge.

I don’t know when the term PTSD was first used in any official way. My older sister who is a doctor - specialising in neurology and all round brain box and is currently working on the front lines in the NHS wards fighting Covid alongside all our amazing NHS nurses and doctors -  took time out one evening to have a discussion with me about these issues. I also talked to one or two other friends in the psychiatric field too. In consensus they agree it was around 1980 when the term PTSD came into usage. Specifically it was the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-lll) published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 partly because as a result of the ongoing treatment of veterans from the Vietnam War. In the modern mind, PTSD is more associated with the legacy of the Vietnam War disaster.

The importance of whether PTSD affected the ancient Greeks and Romans lies in the larger historical question of to what extent we can apply modern experience to unlock or interpret the past. In the period since PTSD was officially recognised, scholars and psychologists have noted its symptoms in descriptions of the veterans of past conflicts. It has become increasingly common in books and novels as well as articles to assume the direct relevance of present-day psychology to the reactions of those who experienced violent events in the historical past. In popular culture, especially television and film dramas, claims for the historical pedigree of PTSD are now often provided as background to the modern story, without attribution. Indeed we just take it as a given that soldier-warriors in the past suffered the same and in the same way as their modern day counterparts. We are used to the West to map the classical world upon the present but whether we can so easily map the modern world back upon the Greeks and Romans is a doubtful proposition when it comes to discussing PTSD.

Simply put, there is no definitive evidence for the existence of PTSD in the ancient world existed, and relies instead upon the assumption that either the Greeks or Romans, because they were exposed to combat so often, must have suffered psychological trauma.

There are two schools of thought regarding the possibility of PTSD featuring in the Greco-Roman world (and indeed the wider ancient world stretching back into pre-history, myth and legend) – universalism and relativism. Put simply, the universalists argue that we all carry the same ‘wetware’ in our heads, since the human brain probably hasn’t developed in evolutionary terms in the eye blink that is the two thousand years or so since the Greco-Roman Classical era. If we’re subject to PTSD now, they posit, then the Greeks and the Romans must have been equally vulnerable. The relativists, on the other hand, argue that the circumstances under which the individual has received their life conditioning – the experiences which programme the highly individual software running that identical ‘wetware’, if you will – is of critical importance to an individual’s capacity to absorb the undoubted horrors of any battlefield, ancient or modern.

Whichever school one falls down on the side of is that what seems to happen in any serious discussion of the issue of PTSD in the ancient world is to either infer it indirectly from culture (primarily, literature and poetry) or infer it from a comparative historical understanding of ancient warfare. Because the direct evidence is so scant we can only ever infer or deduce but can never be certain. So we can read into it whenever we wish.

In Greek antiquity we have of course The Illiad and the Odyssey as one of the most cited examples when we look at the character traits of both Achilles and Odysseus. From Greek tragedy those who think PTSD can be inferred often point to Sophocles’s Ajax and Euripide’s Heracles. Or they look to Aeschylus and The Oresteia. I personally think this is an over stretch. Greek writers do; the return from war was a revisited theme in tragedy and is the subject of the Odyssey and the Cyclic Nostoi.

The Greeks didn’t leave us much to ponder further. But, with rare exceptions, the works from Graeco-Roman antiquity do not discuss the mental state of those who had fought. There is silence about the interior world of the fighting man at war’s end. So we are led to ponder the question why the silence?

This silence also echoes into the Roman period of literature and history too. Indeed when we turn to the Roman world, descriptions of veterans are rare in the writings that survive from the Roman world and occur most often in fiction.

In the first poem of Ovid’s Heroides, the poet writes about a returned soldier tracing a map upon a table (Ov. Her. 1.31–5):

...upon the tabletop that has been set someone shows the fierce battles, and paints all Troy with a slender line of pure wine:
‘Here the Simois flowed; this is the Sigeian territory,
here stood the lofty palace of old Priam, there the tent of Achilles...’

This scene provides an intimate glimpse of what it must have been like when a veteran returned home and told stories of his campaigns: the memories of battle brought to the meal, the crimson trail of the wine offering a rough outline of the places and battlefields he had experienced. The military characters in poems and plays show a world in which soldiers are ubiquitous, if somewhat annoying to the civilians. Plautus, for instance, in his Miles Gloriosus, portrays an officer boasting about his made-up conquests – the model for the braggart in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – and Juvenal complains about a centurion who stomps on his sandalled foot in the bustling Roman street.

Despite this silence, compelling works have been written that interweave vivid modern accounts of combat and its aftermath with quotes from ancient prose and poetry. At their best, these comparisons can illuminate both worlds, but at other times the concerns of the present-day author are imposed on the ancient material. But the question remains are such approaches truthful and valid in understanding PTSD in the ancient world?

So if arts and literature don’t really tell us much what about comparative examples drawn from military history itself?

Here again we are in left disappointed.

According to the Greek historian, Herodotus, in 480 B.C., at the Battle of Thermopylae, where King Leonidas and 300 Spartans took on Xerxes I and 100,000-150,000 Persian troops, two of the Spartan soldiers, Aristodemos and another named Eurytos, reported that they were suffering from an “acute inflammation of the eyes,”...Labeled tresantes, meaning “trembler,”. It is that Aristodemos later hung himself in shame. Another Spartan commander was forced to dismiss several of his troops in the Battle of Thermopylae Pass in 480 B.C, “They had no heart for the fight and were unwilling to take their share of the danger.”

Herodotus again in writing about the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., cites an Athenian warrior who went permanently blind when the soldier standing next to him was killed, although the blinded soldier “was wounded in no part of his body.” Interestingly enough, blindness, deafness, and paralysis, among other conditions, are common forms of “conversion reactions” experienced and well-documented among soldiers today

Outside the fictional world, Roman military history tell us very little.

Appian of Alexandria (c. 95? – c. AD 165) described a legion veteran called Cestius Macedonicus who, when his town was under threat of capture by (the Emperor-to-be) Octavian, set fire to his house and burned himself within it.  Plutarch’s Life of Marius speaks of Caius Marius’ behaviour who, when he found himself under severe stress towards the end of his life, suffering from night terrors, harassing dreams, excessive drinking and flashbacks to previous battles. These examples are just a few instances which seem to demonstrate that PTSD, or culturally similar phenomena, may be as old as warfare itself. But it’s worth stressing it is not definitive, just conjecture.

Of course of accounts of wars and battles were copiously written but not the hard bloody experience of the soldier. Indeed the Roman military man is described almost exclusively as a commander or in battle. Men such as Caesar who experienced war and wrote about it do not to tell us about homecoming.

It seems one of main challenges when we try to see military history through the lens of our definition of PTSD is to first understand the comparative nature of military history and what it is we are comparing ie mistaking apples for oranges.

The origin of military history was tied to the idea that if one understood ancient battle, one might fight and, more importantly, one might lead and strategise more effectively. In essence, much of the training of officers – even in the military handbooks of the Greeks and Romans – was an attempt to keep new commanders from making the same mistakes as the commanders of old. Military history is intended to be a pragmatic enterprise; in pursuit of this pragmatic goal, it has long been the norm to use comparative materials to understand the nature of ancient battle.

The 19th Century French military theorist Ardant du Picq argued for the continuity of human behaviour and assumed that the reactions of men under the threat of lethal force would be identical over the centuries: “Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second....Now, man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to, is paramount. But the mass always cowers at sight of the phantom, death. Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by a still greater horror, that of punishment or disgrace. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets an upper hand over discipline, and the fighter flees”

These words offer insight to those of us who have never faced the terror of battle but at the same time assume the universality of how combat is experienced, despite changes in psychological expectations and weaponry, to name but two variables.

Another incentive for scholars and researchers is to turn to comparative material has been the growing awareness of the artificiality of how we describe war. A mere phrase such as ‘flank attack’ does not capture the bloody, grinding human struggle. Roman authors – especially those who had not fought – often wrote generic descriptions of battle. Literary battle can distort and simplify even as it tells, but if the main things are right – who won, who lost, and who the good guys are – the important ‘facts’ are covered. Even if one intends to speak the truth about battle, the assumptions and the normative language used to describe violence will affect the telling. We may note that the battle accounts in poetry become increasingly grisly during the course of the Roman Empire (perhaps owing to the growing popularity of gladiatorial games),while, in Caesar’s Gallic War, the Latin word cruor (blood) never appears and sanguis (another Latin word for blood) only appears in quoted appeals (Caes. B. Gall. 7.20, in the mouth of Vercingetorix, and 7.50, where the centurion M. Petronius urges his men to retreat). The realities of the battlefield are described in anodyne shorthand. In much the same way that the news rarely prints or televises graphic images, Caesar does not use gore, and perhaps for the same reason – to give a sense of reportorial objectivity.

Another element in the interpretive scrum is a given author’s goal in writing an account in the first place: Caesar, for example, was writing about himself, and he may have been producing something akin to a political campaign ad. Caesar makes Caesar look great and there is reason to believe that, if he was not precisely cooking the books, he did give them a little rinse to make him look more pristine. Given the many factors that complicate our ability to ‘unpack’ battle narratives, Philip Sabin has argued that the ambiguity and unreliability of the ancient sources must be supplemented by looking at the “form of the overall characteristics of Roman infantry in mortal combat”. Again the modern is used to illuminate that which is obscured by written accounts and the “the enduring psychological strains” are merely unconsciously assumed.

These legitimate uses of comparative materials have led to a sort of creep: because military historians have used observations of how men react to combat stress during battle to indicate continuity of behaviour through time, there appears to be a consequent expectation that men will also react identically after battle. This creep became a lusty stride with modern books written about the ancient world and PTSD.

After I finished my tour in Afghanistan I read many books recommended to me by family and friends as well as comrades. One of these books is well known in military circles - at least amongst the thinking officer class - as an iconic work of marrying the ancient world and the modern experience of war. I read it and I was touched deeply by this brilliant therapeutic book. It was only months later I began to re-think whether it was a true account of PTSD in the ancient world.

This insightful book is called Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay. Shay is psychiatrist in Boston, USA. He began reading The Iliad with Vietnam veterans whom he was treating. Achilles in Vietnam, is a deeply humane work and is very much concerned with promoting policies that he hoped would help diminish the frequency of post-traumatic stress. His goal was not to explain ancient poetry but to use it therapeutically by linking his patients’ pain to that of the Iliad’s great hero. His book offers a conduit between the reader and the experiences of the men that Shay counsels. In the introduction to this work he makes a nod to Homerists while also asserting the primacy of his own reading:

“I shall present the Iliad as the tragedy of Achilles. I will not glorify Vietnam combat veterans by linking them to a prestigious ‘classic’ nor attempt to justify study of the Iliad by making it sexy, exciting, modern or ‘relevant’. I respect the work of classical scholars and could not have done my work without them. Homer’s poem does not mean whatever I want it to mean. However, having honored the boundaries of meaning that scholars have pointed out, I can confidently tell you that my reading of the Iliad as an account of men in war is not a ‘meditation’ that is only tenuously rooted in the text. “

After outlining the major plot points around which he will organise his argument, he notes, “ ‘This is the story of Achilles in the Iliad, not some metaphorical translation of it”.

The trouble was and continues to be is that many in the historical and medical fields began to rush to unfounded conclusions that Shay, on the issue of PTSD in the ancient world, had demonstrated that the psychological realities of western warfare were universal and enduring. More books on similar comparative themes soon emerged and began to enshrine the truth that PTSD was indeed prevalent throughout the ancient world and one could draw comparative lessons from it.

Perhaps one of the most influential books after Shay was by Lawrence Tritle. Tritle, a veteran himself, wrote From Melos to My Lai. It’s a fascinating book to read and there are parts that certainly resonate with my own experiences and those of others I have known. In the book Tritle drew a direct parallel between the experiences of the ancient Greeks and those of modern veterans. For instance, Xenophon, in his military autobiography, presents a brief eulogy for one of his fallen commanders, Clearchus. Xenophon writes that Clearchus was ‘polemikos kai philopolemos eschatos’ (Xen. An. 2.6) – ‘warlike and a lover of war to the highest degree’.

Tritle comments:

“The question that arises is why men like Clearchus and his counterparts in Vietnam and the Western Front became so entranced with violence. The answer is to be found in the natural ‘high’ that violence induces in those exposed to it, and in the PTSD that follows this exposure. Such a modern interpretation in Clearchus’ case might seem forced, but there seems little reason to doubt that Xenophon in fact provides us with the first known historical case of PTSD in the western literary tradition.”

Arguably in the West and especially our current modern Western culture is predicated at baulking at the notion of being ‘war lovers” as immoral. But such an interpretation speaks more of our modern Christianised ambivalence towards war; to the Spartans and Athenians the term would not have had a negative connotation. ‘Philopolemos’ is, in fact, a compliment, and the list of Clearchus’ military exploits functions as a eulogy. There are points where his analysis does not adequately address the divergences between ancient and modern experiences.

For all the talk of our Western culture being rooted in Ancient Greece and Rome we are not shaped by the same ethics. Our modern ethics and our moral code is Christian. There is no such thing as a secular humanist or atheist both owe a debt to Christianity for the way they have come to be; in many respects it’s more accurate to describe such people as Christianised Humanists or Christian Atheists even if they reject the theological tenets of the religious faith because they use Christian morality as the foundation to construct their own. Many forget just how brutal these ancient societies were in every day life to the point there would be little one could find recognisable within our own modern lives.

Now we come to third point I wish to make in determining where the Greeks or Romans actually experienced PTSD. This is to do with the little understood nature of PTSD itself. As much as we know about PTSD there is still much more we don’t know. Indeed one of the most problematic and complicated issues is the continued disagreement around the diagnosis and specific triggers of the disorder which remain little understood. We have to admit there are competing theories about what causes PTSD but, in terms of experiences that make it manifest, there are essentially three possible triggers: witnessing horrific events and/or being in mortal danger and/or the act of killing – especially close kills where the reality of one’s responsibility cannot be doubted. The last of these was strongly argued in another scholarly book by D. Grossman, On Killing, the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995).

Roman soldiers had the potential to experience all of these things. The majority of Roman combat was close combat and permitted no doubt as to the killer. The comparatively short length of the gladius encouraged aggressive fighting. Caesar recounts how his men, facing a shield wall carried by the taller Gauls, leaped up on top of the shields, grabbed the upper edges with one hand, and stabbed downwards into the faces of their opponents (Caes. B. Gall. 1.52). As for mortal danger, Stefan Chrissanthos in his informative book, Warfare in the Ancient World: From the Rise of Uruk to the Fall of Rome, 3500BC-476AD, puts it this way: “For Roman soldiers, though the weapons were more primitive, the terrors and risks of combat were just as real. They had to face javelins, stones, spears, arrows, swords, cavalry charges, and maybe worst of all, the threat of being trampled by war elephants.”

Such terrors are regularly attested. During his campaign in North Africa, Caesar, noting his men’s fear, procured a number of elephants to familiarise his troops with how best to kill the beasts (Caes. B. Afr.72). It should also be noted that it was not unusual for the reserve line to be made up of veterans because they were better able to watch the combat without losing their nerve. Held in reserve, they had to watch stoically as their comrades were injured and killed, and contemplate the awful fact that they might suffer the same fate. This was not a role for the faint of heart.

However, while the Romans certainly had the raw ingredients for combat trauma, the danger for a Roman legionary was much more localised. Mortars could not be lobbed into the Green Zone, suicide bombers did not walk into the market, and garbage piled on the street did not hide powerful explosives. The danger for a Roman soldier was largely circumscribed by his moments on the field of battle, and even here, if he was with the victorious side, the casualties were likely to be light: at Gergovia, a disaster by Caesar’s standards, he lost nearly seven hundred men (Caes. B. Gall. 7.51). In his victory over Pompey the Great at Pharsalus, his casualties numbered only two hundred (Caes. B. Civ. 3.99).

So we are left with the disturbing question: were the stressors really the same?

This is the part where I also defer to my eldest sister as a doctor and surgeon specialising in neurology and just so much smarter than myself.

My eldest sister holds the view in talking to her own American medical peers that despite  similar experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, British soldiers on average report better mental health than US soldiers.

My sister pointed out to research study done by Kings College London way back around 2015 or so that analysed 34 studies produced over a 15-year period (up to 2015) and found that overall there has been no increase in mental health issues among British personnel - with the exception of high rates of alcohol abuse among soldiers. The study was in part inspired the “significant mental health morbidity” among U.S. soldiers and reports that factors such as age and the quality of mental health programs contribute to the difference between the two nation’s servicemen and women.

She pointed out that these same studies showed that post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts roughly 2 to 5% of non-combat U.K. soldiers returning from deployment, while 7% of combat troops report PTSD. According to a General Health Questionnaire, an estimated 16 to 20% of U.K. soldiers have reported symptoms of common mental disorders, similar to the rates of the general U.K. population. In comparison, studies around the same time in 2014 showed U.S. soldiers experience PTSD at rates of 21 to 29%. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs estimated PTSD afflicted 11% of veterans returning from Afghanistan and 20% returning from Iraq. Major depression was reported by 14% of major soldiers according to another study commissioned by RAND corporation; roughly 7% of the general U.S. population reports similar symptoms.

It’s always tough comparing rates between countries and is not a reflection of the quality of the fighting soldier. But one finding that consistently and stubbornly refuses to go away is that over the past 20 years reported mental health problems tend to be higher among service personnel and veterans of the USA compared with the UK, Canada, Germany and Denmark.

However my sister strongly cautioned against making hasty judgements. And there could be many variable factors at play. One explanation is that American soldiers are more likely than their British counterparts to be from the reserve forces. Empirical studies showed reservists from both America and British troops were more likely to experience mental illness post-deployment. It was also worth pointing out that American soldiers also tended to be younger - being younger and inexperienced as well as untested on the battlefield, service personnel would naturally run the risk of greater and be more vulnerable to mental illness.

In contrast, the elite forces of the British army, such as your brother’s Parachute Regiment or the Royal Marines, were found to be the least affected by mental illness. It was found that in spite of elite forces experiencing some of the toughest fighting conditions, they tended to enjoy better mental health than non-elite troops. The more elite a unit is or more professional then you find that troops tend to enjoy a very deep bonds of camaraderie. As such the social cohesion of these fighting forces provides a psychological protective buffer. Not for all, but for many.

More intriguing are new avenues of discovery that might go a long way to actually understanding one of the root causes of PTSD. According to my sister, recent research carried out in the US and Europe and published in such prestigious medical journals as the New England Journal of Medicine (US) and the Lancet (UK), seems to establish a causal link between concussive injury and PTSD. 

One recent study looked at US soldiers that concerned itself with the effects of concussive injuries upon troops after their return from active duty during the war in Iraq.

Of the majority of soldiers who suffered no combat injuries of any sort, 9.1 per cent exhibited symptoms consistent with PTSD. This allows a baseline for susceptibility of roughly 10% of the population. A slightly higher number (16.2%)  of those who were injured in some way, but suffered no concussion, also experienced symptoms. As soon as concussive injuries were involved, however, the rates of PTSD climbed dramatically.

Although only 4.9% of the troops suffered concussions that resulted in complete loss of consciousness, 43.9% of these soldiers noted on their questionnaires that they were experiencing a range of PTSD symptoms. Of the 10.3% of the unit who suffered concussion resulting in confusion but retained consciousness, more than a quarter (27.3%) suffered symptoms. This suggests a high correlation between head trauma and the occurrence of subsequent psychological problems. The authors of the study note that ‘concern has been emerging about the possible long term effect of mild traumatic brain injury or concussion...as a result of deployment related head injuries, particularly those resulting from proximity to blast explosions’

Although these results are preliminary, if confirmed they have profound implications for anyone trying to understand the nature of warfare in the ancient world, especially the Western world. 

So why does it matter?

In Roman warfare, wounds were most often inflicted by edged weapons. Romans did of course experience head trauma, but the incidence of concussive injuries would have been limited both by the types of weapons they faced and by the use of helmets. Indeed the efficacy and importance of headgear for example can be deduced from the death of the Epirrote general Pyrrhus from a roof tile during the sack of Argos. It is likely that the Romans designed their helmets with an eye to blunting the force of the blows they most often encountered. Connolly has argued that helmet design in the Republican period suggests a crouching fighting stance (see P. Connolly, ‘The Roman Fighting Technique Deduced from Armour and Weaponry’, Roman Frontier Studies (1989). However my own view is that the change in helmet design may signal instead a shift in the role of troops from performing assaults on towns and fortifications when the empire was expanding (and the blows would more often rain from above) to the defence and guarding of the frontiers.

While the evidence is clear that concussion is not the only risk factor for PTSD, it is so strongly correlated that it suggests that the incidence of PTSD may have risen sharply with the arrival of modern warfare and the technology of gunpowder, shells, and plastic explosives. Indeed, accounts of shell shock from the First World War are common, and it was in the wake of that war that those observing veterans suspected that neurological damage was being caused by exploding shells.

For soldiers of the Second World War and down to our modern day, an artillery barrage is like an invention of hell.

As one American put it in his memoirs of fighting the Japanese at Peleiu and Okinawa, “I developed a passionate hatred for shells. To be killed by a bullet seemed so clean and surgical but shells would not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity. After each shell I was wrung out, limp and exhausted. During prolonged shelling, I often had to restrain myself and fight back a wild inexorable urge to scream, to sob, and to cry. As Peleliu dragged on, I feared that if I ever lost control of myself under shell fire my mind would be shattered. To be under heavy shell fire was to me by far the most terrifying of combat experiences. Each time it left me feeling more forlorn and helpless, more fatalistic, and with less confidence that I could escape the dreadful law of averages that inexorably reduced our numbers. Fear is many-faceted and has many subtle nuances, but the terror and desperation endured under heavy shelling are by far the most unbearable” (see E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleiu and Okinanwa, 2007).

The psychological effect of shelling seems to result from the combined effect of awaiting injury while at the same time having no power to combat it.

There is another aspect that I alluded to above which is the psychological and societal conditioning of the Roman soldier. In other words a Roman male’s social and cultural expectations of his place in the world. Feelings of helplessness and fatalism were probably a less alien experience for most Romans – even those in the upper classes. In general, the Romans inhabited a world that was significantly more brutal and uncertain than our own.

This another way of saying that the Roman and 21st century combat are very different in a variety of ways that subject the modern soldier to a good deal more stress than the legionary was ever likely to suffer. And the Roman’s societal preparation – his life before the battle – was far more robust than that we enjoy today.

Take infant mortality. In the modern developed world, our infant mortality rates are about ten per thousand. In Rome, it is estimated that this number was three hundred per thousand. Three-tenths of infants would die within the first year, and an additional fifth would not make it to the age of ten - 50% of children would not survive childhood. Anecdotal evidence supports these statistics: Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, gave birth to twelve children between 163 bc and 152 bc; all twelve survived their father’s death in 152 bc, but only three survived to adulthood. Marcus Aurelius and his wife, Faustina, had at least twelve children but only the future emperor Commodus survived. 


Then look at how that child grows up. The typical Roman child would be raised in a society that readily accepted ultra-violent arena entertainment, mob justice, frequent and bloody warfare as a fact of life. This was reinforced by religious and societal encouragement to see war as natural and beneficial, open butchering of food animals, a total lack of support structures for the poor and less able.

Compared to the legionary our modern soldier has been protected from such realities to a greater degree than at any other point in history, and will thus be far less well prepared for the horror of a warfare that contains far more stress factors than for a man who might fight a handful of battles in his military career, with long periods of relative calm in between, state of war notwithstanding. Modern special and elite forces training often emphasises the brutalisation and ‘rebuilding’ of the recruit in readiness for this step into darkness, but it seems likely that no such conditioning would have been needed two thousand years ago.

I would argue that we experience war very differently from the way the Romans did. Our modern identity is defined far more by our Western Christian heritage than our Western Classical roots. They are in fact world apart when it comes to ethics and morality. Consider the fact that when we talk of war and killing today we often do so through conflict between our civilian moral codes – which offer the strict injunction not to do violence to other human beings – and wartime, when men are commanded to violate such prohibitions. It is a terrible thing to try to navigate ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and the necessity of taking a life in combat.

It is sometimes the case that the qualities that make the best soldier do not make the best civilian, a point amply attested in Greek poetry by heroes such as Heracles and Odysseus.

The Romans, for their part, celebrated heroes such as Cincinnatus, who could command effectively and then leave behind the power he wielded to return to his humble plough. It is important, however, when evaluating combat and its effects in the ancient world, that we do not read our ambivalence about violence onto the Romans. They inhabited an empire whose prosperity was quite openly tied to conquest.

As M. Zimmerman writes in his academic article, “Violence in Late Antiquity Reconsidered’ (2007), “The pain of the other, seen on the distorted faces of public and private monuments, or heard in the screams of criminals in the amphitheatre, reassured Romans of their own place in the world. Violence was a pervasive presence in the public space; indeed, it was an important basis for its existence, pertaining as it did not only to victories over external enemies but also to the internal order of the state.”

Violence then was both the means and the expression of Roman power. The Roman soldier was its instrument. The Roman warrior then would have brought a different perspective to lethal violence, and would have had a far more restricted moral circle to his modern counterpart – his friends and family, clan, patron and clients, as opposed to millions of fellow citizens via the internet and social media.

Part II follows next post

[astringofmadhousefloozies]

Ghost Wedding: The Remix

So, uh, here’s the first actual fanfic I’ve written, and the first full length piece I’ve written in literal years. I wrote it for my own amusement, after weeks of eating up various bits of TWST lore and scenes and going “But, how would the whole Ghost marriage story have gone with a Yuu who was more like me a goth bisexual disaster?

What follows is a series of vignnetes, starring a Yuu who’s the only girl in NRC, with deeply questionable taste, told in the second person. Please let me know if you enjoyed it, I crave positive feedback and like when other people enjoy the things I like.

Contend warnings for blood, body horror, emeto, coarse language and pretentious word choices.

You've been here a while. En-Arr-See wasn't precisely a safe place, what with your dorm being a condemned hellpit of tetanus and black mold, and powerful magicians having mutagenic psychotic breaks only curable by kicking their ass so hard it flies out their mouth. But certainly, it wasn't boring, and you'd made friends. You had your scrappy ginger Ace in the hole; your serious mamas-boy Deuce; your funny little not-a-cat Grim. Hell, you even have your Horned Boy, he of the poison-coloured eyes that never seem to leave your face when you talk about fun things like books and music and the moral imperative of dissolving the monarchy. And, you were on speaking terms with a good chunk of others. So, when your favourite little robot came up to Crowley, yelling something about ghosts kidnapping his brother, you took his hand and said, "Ortho, show me what's going on." After all, you won't let anything happen to Idia. You have plans for him yet.

~*~*~*~

Some beauties might launch a thousand ships, and in your (objectively correct) opinion, while Idia's beauty wouldn't lead to a ten year siege of Troy, he'd certainly convince everyone attending Whitby Goth Weekend to haul off into the sea with a beat of his lashes. The first time you'd seen him, you'd simply stared in slack-jawed awe. He was luminescent; even leaving behind the fiery hair that flashed and swelled behind him, his eyes were a bright clear amber, and his skin translucent, with his own blue veins serving as the detailing in the marble. Add in the deeply circled eyes and the bluish discolouration of the lips, and the figure he presented was arresting, astounding, more beautiful and unreal than anything you'd conjured up after staying up all night reading ghost stories. "Magnificent," you'd said to yourself, and if your friends gave you a strange look, well, fuck 'em. They have no sense of beauty or taste.

Unfortunately, the intensity of your gaze proved too much for him, and he'd fled. You'd had no time to pursue the object of your infatuation either, class would soon begin, and Grim was yelling. Later, then. There's all the time in the world to ask after the fine young man with the lamplight eyes.

~*~*~*~ "Oh no," you said when Ortho showed you the video. "She's really hot."

Grim gawked and Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you take from this?"

"You're the one with an all-boys school. What's a girl like me to do when a pretty girl pops up?"

"She's a ghost, Yuu."

"That's the best part."

"My brother-"

"I'll help you, dear." You set a hand on Ortho's shoulder. "He must be so frightened, right? I'll do what you need." 

Before anyone could say anything else, a racket started up outside, and things got a little busy.

~*~*~*~ "Do you mind if I sit?"

Idia looked up at you. starting at the intrusion. His face was awash in blue from the conjured screens around him, his lips gone black. "...Why?"

"Tables are full. I'd rather not eat standing." He didn't explicitly say no, so you settled across the table, a few chairs down. He made a fascinating tableau as you picked at your lunch, flicking through and typing at the screen. Lines of code, schematics for all sorts of tech, occasional comics all flit across the pane of light in a million shades of blue. Until...

"Could you pretend I'm a bug?"

You squinted. "What." What the actual hell did he mean by that.

"Pretend I'm not here. I'm beneath notice."

You stop for a moment and smile, faint enough that he can't see the devil in it. "You want me to treat you like an insect."

"Yes." Hard to see in the light, there was a small twitch by his temple, a barely perceptible shake in his long fingered hands.

"Alright." With that, you slide down the table to directly across from him, settle you chin in your hands, and stare at him unblinkingly.

"?!?!?" The squawk he made was undignified and deeply, deeply endearing. "What are you doing?"

"You asked me to treat you like an insect." You smile at him, full of mischief and good cheer. "So I'm looking at you very closely. I'm taking in every sweet action, and delighting that the day has conspired to put something so wonderful in front of me."

Oh, who would have thought that this blue boy could turn so pink! As he pulled his hood up, you chuckle and move back to your tray. "I'll let you be," you say, and did indeed, for the amount of time it took him to close up shop and flee back to the depths of Ignihyde. When you waved at him as he went by, he nearly tripped in his haste.

~*~*~*~ "Stop laughing."

The boys did not listen.

"May others show you the kindness you've shown Idia if you're in a bind."

"You're just mad because she's gonna kill your-"

"Grim? Shut the fuck up. Now; who's helping."

After a chorus of 'no's, you drag your fingers through your hair. "I hate all of you so fucking much right now... Ortho, your ideas?"

Ortho's idea was deeply enticing but Crowley would not have the school leveled, and thankfully, the two of them threatened and guilted the others into helping. You'd have to say thank you later, but god, then Crowley might think you actually liked him instead of just finding him funny, and who needed that in their life?

"Alright, so... A plan?"

~*~*~*~ As badly as he might've liked to have escaped, there was only one empty seat in the class, and it was by him. So, Idia threw his hood up, along with his headphones, and started blatantly ignoring you.

"Idia." Silence.

"Idia." A faint grunt and he turned away from you.

"Shroud," you intoned in the most sepulchral tone you could, setting you hand in his field of vision. He whipped his head at you, the fire in his eyes nothing compared to the changing colours on his head.

"WHAT."

You raise your hands in supplication, trying to still your racing heart. "I'm sorry dude. I wanted to ask where you got your screens?"

"My screens?" His eyes flicked back to his schoolwork, hovering in the air. "I made them myself."

Your face lit up in awe. "That's amazing dude, holy shit. How'd you do that? It's a damn miracle."

"Ah... well..." Two sides warred within him - pride that someone recognized his tech genius, and his deep seated anxiety that anyone trying to be nice was just fucking with him. Fortunately for both of you, pride won out. "It's certainly something complicated for a magicless normie like you to understand." He raised a questioning eyebrow. "Do you really want to hear?"

You fixed him with a level look. "Never call me that again. Now, start like I'm five and go from there."

He stared back at you, and you stared right back. "Indulge me, Idia."

He gave you a smile full of sharp, crooked teeth, and while you tried to still the palpitations the sight of them gave you, he started with very basic theory, and went from there.

~*~*~*~ "You are not going to seduce the ghost bride, Yuu."

"Why the hell not?"

"You're a girl?"

"You're kinda plain."

"You're fat."

"She's probably straight?"

You point in turn at Leona, Azul, Vil, and Kalim. "So?, no I'm plenty hot actually, get fucked, and... Okay, That is a good point. But Kal, you have no idea how many straight girls I've managed to kiss."

"I think you'd die, Shrimpie," Floyd said as he flopped heavily over your shoulders, giggling as you attempted to untangle yourself. "And you're short."

"Yeah, but you have no idea how hot I am when I'm actually try- Shut up, Vil - Like, I clean up so good you guys. I even made a suit a couple weeks ago -"

"That's convenient? Weirdly so?"

"I found suiting that wasn't moth eaten and decided to have fun, at least-" You finally escape from the noodly arms of Leech the Wild One. "Let me suit up and show you? I can be so sexy, you guys. Come on."

In answer to the confused silence, you took your keys out of your pocket and chucked them at Deuce's confused face. "Adeuce! Grim! It's on the vanity in my room!"

"But ghosts?"

"Say you're clearing out things so that we won't bother... No, actually just go the balcony way."

"You can't unlock the balcony from the outside without a lockpick, it only locks from the inside."

A moment of silence. "Lilia, what the fuck?"

He shrugged. "I moved everything two inches to the left once to see if you noticed."

"I wasn't imagining things?!?"

This'll take a moment to sort out, and the clock is ticking...

~*~*~*~ You truly liked the woods! Green and quiet. Full of things that crawled and scurried, little friends that squeaked and croaked and hissed. The occasional precious treasure of a small bone or edible mushroom. So, you were quite surprised when you found Idia, miserable, crouched beside a fallen log.

"... Skipping gym?" Going by the uniform, the most likely answer. "Or did you finally realize that outside doesn't always bite?"

He scowled at you, and you stifled a giggle when you realized that yes, he was actually covered in bug bites. "They should replace this with a mall."

"You hate malls. Too many people." You reached out a hand, and pulled him to his feet. Idly, you wondered if he'd let you try and fit your hands around his waist, but thought better of asking.

"Game stores are alright. No one bothers you in one, or in arcades. And." He stopped, as he brushed the dirt from his legs, before continuing in a mumble you only got the gist of.

"Me and Ortho will be your big, scary guard dogs?"

"... Who'll notice me with both of you?"

"Everyone." Because he's the most beautiful person in the room, and they'd be mad not to look. "Because you show up so rarely. It makes it all the more noticeable when you are out, so everyone pays attention." You held out a hand. "I'll take you out the back way so you don't get in trouble."

No dice. He held his hands in close. "I'll just follow."

"Alright. Why'd you go out this far in the woods with no map, anyways?"

"There's no cell service..."

"Clearly, we need to turn your blood into a wi-fi signal, instead of liquid sugar."

He huffed, but he did follow you, and was actually approaching a good mood once you escorted him through the Ramshackle gates.

~*~*~*~ "Hey, what did I miss?" It took entirely too long to get a single lock of hair to to a perfect insouciant flip over your forehead, even with the eternally stylish Sam's help.

"She's slapped everyone who went to propose, and when she does you're paralyzed for 500 years."

"Christ," You say as you adjust a pin on your lapel. "We have to get Idia back, he'll get what? A week before he gets the hand."

"She's so fussy!" yelled Grim. "You have to sing and have a dog and she hates poison flowers."

"Clearly, she has no taste." Honestly,you thought her taste was just fine, what with thinking Idia was the finest of the bunch. He was very princely, if your tastes ran to exquisite corpses with the personality of a neurotic goblin. "Who wouldn't want poison blossoms?" Tie? No tie? Tie? No tie? No tie. And unbutton. Leona wishes he had this chest.

"We know she has no taste because she chose Idia."

You chose to ignore that, and clapped. "Okay, Round Two!"

~*~*~*~ The truest tragedy of this school was that it was all boys. Not that boys were bad by any means, you certainly enjoyed them, but... girls. Tall girls! Short girls! Busty girls! Petite girls! Butch girls! Femme girls! Fat girls! Girls!

So many kinds of girls, and you, in all of your plump and handsome glory, were the only girl in an entire high school. Welcome to hell.

You accepted no gifts that came unvetted. You had friends ward the everloving bajeezus out of your dorm room. Grim was more than happy to test your food and drink for tampering, but it was exhausting. You at least knew that any food you ate at the Mostro Lounge was clear, but that was only because everyone was too damn scared of the eternally hovering Floyd to try anything while there.

 So, you eat a lot of vending machine snacks.

You've been standing there for fifteen minutes, trying to figure out the best combo with your limited funds, when someone coughed behind you.

"??? Oh, hey Idia." You stepped aside while he shuffled up to the glass and peered in. "Anything to recommend? I got this." You waved your bill in the air.

He only looked at you a moment before looking back at the machine. "That won't get you much."

"Ah, don't I know it. But it's all I got."

He still wasn't looking directly at you, but a smile started to creep across his face. "Get your bag."

"Wha-" He was already tapping out a beat with the keypad, blue sparks flying from his fingertips, the machine starting to groan and shiver. With a final note, the snack machine gave a final heaving shudder - and every single snack fell to the bottom of the machine.

He was so proud as he smiled at you, reaching down and pulling a single bag of gummies from the spilled mess. "You first."

And, as you stuffed your schoolbag and pockets full of thieved goods, praising his genius, his cleverness, his skills, he just glowed.

~*~*~*~ "I guess you were ahead of the game, Yuu. She hates that no one's dressed up properly. And..."

"And? You raised an eyebrow at Ace.

"You do look stylish. But you need backup."

"Of course. You'll all rescue people while I distract her!”

"But what if she slaps you?"

"You'll step in if that happens. But we have to dress you all up."

"Did you makes spares?"

"No." Tragic, everyone would look so cute in summerweight green wool. "Let's ask Sam, he's got everything."

~*~*~*~ "Okay, Ortho, you see?" You held his back to your chest, and raised your hand in front of his face, palm away from him. As you wiggled your fingers, you could see movement on the back of your hand. "Those are tendons. Those, and the muscles, are what move the bones, make your hands move. If you put your fingers here," you say as you place his fingertips over the moving lines, "you should be able to feel it."

"I do! They go up and down. What's the popping?"

"That's my faulty joints, we'll cover those another day. Now," you flipped your hand over, and moved his fingers to your wrist. "You feel that?"

"That is your pulse! It's not as string as it should be."

"I'm not always in the best of health. So, Ortho. My hand moves by muscles and tendons when I think of it. My blood moves through my body, one beat at a time, and you can feel it. Right?"

"Right."

"You," you say, as you take Ortho's other hand. "Your hand moves by motors and servos, when you think about it. Electricity and magic moves through your body, in beats so fast we can't perceive it, and it's as measurable as my pulse."

"... Because I am a robot."

"Because you are a bit different. But we're both alive, we're both real, just in different ways." You turn to look at Ortho directly, and he looks back at you with yellow eyes that are actual, real lamps. "Don't let anyone ever say you're not real, or alive, or good enough, just because you're different."

And though you can't see it, you can feel Idia smiling from the corner of his room.

~*~*~*~ Alright. No more time for memories, only the here and now. You've got a heart full of love, a pocket full of ring, and a head full of stupid. You're as prepared as anyone else who went in. Start on your left foot, and...

"Hello? Excuse me?" You make a cursory knock at the doorframe before stepping in. "I heard there was a wedding."

The bride - Eliza - whirled on you, and stopped. She was even more of a vision in person, airy translucence and fine, sweet features currently arranged in confusion. "Ah- Yes! I'm getting married to my darling Prince Idia! Right away, so-"

Not if I have my way about it, you thought to yourself as you arranged yourself in a perfect bow, one hand behind your back. You pretended not to notice Idia trussed up with rope, but you filed the sight away for later. "How wonderful. I wish you only happiness. But it must wait."

Before she could get her hand ready, you straightened and fixed her with your best smile. "My dearest princess, I cannot let this happen until I dance with the most beautiful person in this room. It would be improper to do so with a newlywed, and I cannot know peace until I dance. Would you be so kind, my fair princess?"

She was still baffled. "Aren't you a girl?"

You keyed up the brightness. "I am, and I dance very well. Would you indulge me, my dear?"

You could see her considering it. "You... are rather princely. Can you lead?"

"Of course. May I?" Again with the bow, and to your delight, she returned with a flawless curtsy. Hand in hand, you began.

~*~*~*~ It was delightful, to dance with this silly ghost girl. Everywhere your bodies touched, from her hand in yours to what would have been a fine chest, but was instead a clean and elegant ribcage festooned with pearls, heat seeped away and left only a chill as cold as clay. Her footwork was flawless, considering she no longer had feet, and she was so easy to chat with. She asked you about your dog (none currently, but you'd love to have one, and there was Grim in the meantime), your singing, (little voice to speak of, but that was what vocal coaches were for), and why you wanted to dance with her (because when would the chance ever come again? Unless fairest Eliza considered her for forever and a day.)

"But what of dear Idia?" She'd almost looked towards where Idia no longer was, having been unknotted long ago, but you drew her back in before she could notice the chaos around her.

" 'Dear Idia', though as beautiful as the moon in the sky, has cold feet, my love. He's afraid of dying. But I? I'd cherish you for all of eternity." You leaned in closer. "I am not afraid of dying, beloved. To journey with you through realms beyond mortal reach. I can think of nothing more exciting than to cross the barrier to the other side, hand in hand with you. In the words of a fine sir from my home, 'to die by your side/the pleasure, the privilege is mine'. Please, please consider me, please..."

Here's how it should have gone: She said yes, and you put the ring on her finger, and all was well. But you'd awakened such a sweet hunger in her, she could not wait for propriety. Instead, she grasped your face and kissed you with the passion of five hundred years search, found.

~*~*~*~ It was so pleasant at first, that you couldn't help but return it. When had anyone ever kissed you with such passion? But quickly, the chill began to overtake you. It could have been bearable, but after that was pain. You started to shake, uncontrollably, as every nerve in your body was scraped away with a rusty blade, and as you weakly tried to push away, as blood began to flow from your eyes, your mouth, every pore and orifice, she still would not let go. All you could think was it hurts it hurts it hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts and, as you slipped to a grey place beyond where pain could touch you, you barely noticed the cacophony around you, or something hurtling towards the two of you from the corner of your eye.

Something blue.

~*~*~*~ When you finally woke up, through a drugged and painful haze, you couldn't tell where you were. When you jolted up, the pain of it sending you into a nauseated fit of blood-flecked coughing, a familiar yelp sounded, and you turned to see Idia, little the worse for wear.

"You're up, uh..." He fumbled something onto the table, behind his back. "I."

You just looked. At him, at the surroundings. A hospital bed, with gifts and flowers (most filched from the wedding venue, but someone had stuck Jade's poison blossom into a vase and set it in the far corner). Idia was the only one present, seeing as it was the middle of the night.

"Ortho's getting things you might need. I... I hate hospital scenes..."

"Hurt's over.” You tried to settle yourself more comfortably, failing miserably. “Here comes the comfort." You reached out a hand, as he looked anywhere in the room but you.

"Idia." Silence.

"Idia." More silence.

"Shroud." He hesitantly placed his hand in yours, tinting pink as you pulled the sleeve up. The sight of it made you gasp. His fine wrist, so small even you could put your fingers around it, was mottled with deep bruising, blacks and purples set so deep into the skin that there was crusted blood on the surface, despite being unbroken. It was so, deeply, incredibly...

Beautiful. It was all you could do, not to press your lips to his wrist and taste his pulse as it flitted under his skin. To clean the blood away with your own tongue and cover the marks that your hungry ghost princess had made with your own teeth. Not hers. Yours.

Really, no wonder you'd been so enchanted with Eliza. You're cut of the same cloth.

"It must hurt."

He jerked his hand away, making you both wince. "What the hell is wrong with you? They only reason you're not dead is everyone pouring so much healing magic into you that it exhausted almost everyone. I." You could see flickers and flashes of orange sparking along the full length of his hair. "I'm not worth dying for. Why?"

What do you tell him? That it was the right thing to do? That you wanted to prove that you could woo a pretty girl? That you didn't want him dead? That you were a possessive bitch that couldn't stand the idea of someone else having him, even if unwilling on his part? All were true, but what do you say?

It proved a moot point, as when you opened your mouth to say something, anything, something shifted within you, and the only thing Idia received was a gout of blood square in his face.

~*~*~*~ After you'd slept, you reached for your phone in the thin morning light. Your friends where texting well wishes and condolences, and explanations of what happened after you went down (It seemed Idia had tackled Eliza clean off of you, and after some chaos she ran off with her retainer, rending this entire day moot). Even more interestingly, you found a text from an unknown number:

- I'm still mad at you.

You huffed to yourself, and after a bit of thought, start to text back.

- Dude I'm so sorry about the uh. blood puke. - I'll pay for cleaning - Also you know, you could have just asked for my number a long time ago? - Like a normal person? - Who doesn't break into phones to steal said numbers while I was unconscious next to you, what the fuck dude - That's not what this is about though. - You've got every right to be mad - That whole day was traumatizing, and you didn't deserve any of it - I'd rather sort this out in person but if text is easier for you right now we can do that - One last thing though

You stopped, and thought Do I actually do this? and went what the hell.

- I still need that dance I went in to get from you