#author essay

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

secrets of farming (1863) - john w. large

"yeowch augh taking damage ough eurgh"

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[that-butch-archivist]

"Femmes, through a reshaped femininity, exhibit an assertive sexuality that does not conflate desire with political practice. This very assertiveness can be politically empowering for femmes who like to play with the idea of power but are not disempowered by this play. For example, femmes with a bottom identification can renegotiate the dynamics of passivity/activity such that their feminine position is one of receiving pleasure rather than of being receptive solely for someone else's pleasure. What seems to be passivity is actually activity: she allows the butch to control her pleasure, but this control and the pleasure are exactly what the femme has demanded. For the bottom femme as for other varieties of femme sexuality--top, s/m, bisexual, or others--her own female sexual agency is paramount. The femme who plays with power provides a model that negotiates rather than ignores power differentials in relationships. [...] In many ways, femmes' chosen pleasures rather than politically prescribed pleasures are radically feminist."

-- "An Introduction to Sustaining Femme Gender," written by Laura Harris & Liz Crocker. (Emphasis in bold mine.)

[cy-cyborg]

The Perfect Prosthetic: Video Version

The perfect prosthetic is a super common trope surrounding amputees and people with limb differences who use a prosthetic limb, so let's talk about it!

This is a kind of extended version of the written post from yesterday with mostly the same stuff, plus additional examples, "red flags" that this trope is showing up in your work to watch out for and some additional detail that got cut from the written version.

[drenched-in-sunlight]

saying this as respectfully as possible but. Do not put fandom content creators on a pedestal. We are also just fans contributing to a community just as you are. We have boundary on our own work and that’s it. What I say is not and should not be considered sth the whole fandom should listen to. I’m just a normal ass person ranting about things on my blog. If it does not have a fandom tag for others to engage in, do not make it out to be me trying to start fights or addressing the whole community. Because it’s not.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, my art, my lore talk, is biased. I’ve never tried to hide that I view Marika a certain way and will always develop my theory following that base assumption.

Aside from translation stuffs and pointing out in-game items, everything else I say you can look at it, agree or disagree, and move on to form your own opinions. Just because I draw stuffs doesn’t mean you get to saddle me with responsibilities about managing fandom expectations. What the hell? I’m a fan artist, I’m the last person who you should look at for “leaderism” (?) WHAT?

I can and will be a hater in my own space, like I know sometimes other artists will just post their stuffs and not engage too heavily with fandom, and for a while I did try to do that here (because I’m already a dramatic ass on twitter), that’s just not me though.

You will get art and you will get my opinions as well.

[larkingame]

hello hello! this november bianca (@beeanca-writing ) and I our hosting our very own writing and productivity challenge!

this is an indie (and slightly more lax) alternative to NaNoWriMo, where the focus is routine, accountability and above all else progress!

the rules for this challenge are simple:

prior to friday, november 1st 2024 choose a writing goal. this can be a total word count, daily word count, a page count, a certain number of chapters or an amount of time spent writing. remember to choose something attainable for you in thirty days. make a post on tumblr, discord, substack, twitter...(somewhere) presenting yourself (basically who you are as a writer!) your goal and discussing your writing projects or plans using the tag #novemberwripro!

plan and establish a routine. productivity isn't so much about time management, a packed schedule or any sort of fancy tools. productivity is about consistency. by establishing a writing routine for yourself you'll put yourself into a familiar enough rhythm that not only will you be able to write when you don't necessarily want to--you're setting yourself up to produce the best work you can possible put forth.

use your routine to help you work on your writing goal daily throughout the month of november. the goal of any writing challenge is to show some sort of progress on your current projects after all.

document your progress in some way. whether this be through a month long journal, a vlog on youtube or tiktok or even just posts in the discord server or on tumblr--it's important to reflect on all the work you've done and help build a community of accountability!

all are welcome to join--whether that be novelists, non-fiction writers, interactive fiction developers, fic writers, essayists, poets, screen-writers, academics or those simply looking to do more writing!

helpful links you may need:

challenge discord | substack

[neproxrezi]

someone else could write it better than me but i love how the fucked up nasty shit you can make harry do/say/be in disco elysium isn't just like, random stuff caused simply by the player having free will and control over him but they're parts of who he is and who he has been

you're not a tabula rasa. you're a sudden shock of blank pages in a big, aged, damaged book and sometimes the paper you're trying to write a better man on is torn and you see something through the gaps nobody needed to see ever again. and it's just there now again, back to the surface

[sirghostheart]

Thinking about the post that says "Congratulations! You've fallen for that character's facade" but it's about how Ginger Fitzgerald and Jennifer Check's relationship to monsterhood is misinterpreted as a #FemaleRage and #GoodForHer girlboss power fantasy instead of tragedies about about kids way over their heads surviving a traumatic assault that robbed them of their humanity and now lash out in a desperately grip for some resemblence of power.

[cookie-nom-nom]

Reading Barrayar I felt trapped in Cordelia’s head. It’s incredibly effective for the dread of war as a civilian. Plans and machinations happening beyond you, with no input. Hearing of things happening that seem far off and like yeah that’s awful but then suddenly it dominoes in a way that destroy your life and it’s not your fault and you could've done nothing at all to prevent it. Especially the tension of being hunted in the Dendarii mountains with no idea how the war is going, if they’ve already lost, if it is already too late. Cordelia is doing actively important things in service of the war by sheltering Gregor, yet there's this pervasive feeling of helpless lack of control. She spends most of the book with this dread of not knowing when the next threat to their family will come, and I don’t think it could’ve been done so effectively if we had access to the information Aral had. I found it frustrating at times, since it felt like Cordelia was swept up in events with little agency (at first; obviously our dear captain didn’t remain there). I wanted so badly to be with Aral seeing and knowing and making the decisions.

But that’s the point! Most people have absolutely zero agency in those situations and little information and it’s terrifying. Barrayar captures the feeling of being a civilian in war where so many narratives narrow in upon the heroes and 'men of history' that control conflicts. That's what readers expect. I think that’s why I loved the ending so much. After so long trapped with Cordelia, just trying to survive the larger machinations of Barrayar’s bloody politics, it felt so, so good to finally be on the offensive, to have information the opponents don’t, to finally have power and the means to control what happens. It's a relief to the constant tension of having no agency in a giant conflict that frankly Cordelia had no business being affect by, yet was swept up in because of her love of Aral.

Which is the second thing I deeply enjoyed in Barrayar. I love how the war is made so human. A messy tangle of human relationships control it. I can’t stop thinking about the hostages. There are just so many children being used because the war holds the future hostage. Tiny precious Miles utterly incapable of comprehending how large a pawn he is. Young grieving Gregor vital to the plans of both sides whether dead or alive. Elena, who should be of no importance but she is because that's the kid of an unimportant soldier, just like every other hostage is another piece in the web of the war. I keep thinking about the relatives of Aral’s men caught in the capital. The hostages that Aral refuses to take. Everyone just trying to take care of those they love, and the points where they must put other priorities over their relationships are heart wrenching.

Barrayar looks dead on at how little people try to survive a civil war. From the mountains where the fighting seems so far, and information is slowed to a trickle of the singular mailman. The invasion of forces that disrupts people who may not even know there’s a war yet. The scientists and the genius lost in a single blast that goes unnoticed. The urban populations trying to sneak in food and people and keep their heads down. Random citizens debating who to sell out, weighing risks and bounties, if it will get them the favor with the occupiers that will help them survive. All so small in the grand scheme of things, and yet they are who Barrayar concerns itself with.

Cordelia’s uncertainty and fear would’ve been undermined if we were allowed to see in the heads of people driving the conflict, because Barrayar isn’t about those people. It is the desperation of two mothers, powerless and kept in the dark, that topples the regime.

Addendum: Cordelia’s relationship to Aral firmly places her in an upper class position that is important to note when discussing the role of civilians/‘little people’ within this analysis. But as a woman on Barrayar she is extremely limited in the power she is allocated, especially compared to someone like Aral, which would be the military leadership POV that novels more focused on the grander scope of war would utilize. Again not to say Cordelia has no agency or power, but it is not to the degree of the people in charge. Thus I place her alongside the average people swept up in a war outside their control. Still, her position as a Vor Lady gives her some access knowledge and connections that she turns into power, which while limited are far more than the average citizen. Her significance to Vordarrian is exclusively viewed as yet another hostage, an underestimation that Cordelia readily exploits, but still afforded only due to her status. Cordelia occupies a position of importance but not power beyond the scope of the people she’s formed direct relationships with, which only further ties into the essay's thesis.

[raspberryusagi]

Me, rambling to my wife about this crackpot theory I came up with in the shower about how Les Miserables may have been an answer to The Count of Monte Cristo, or at least could be read as such: ... But then Valjean didn't personally screw Javert over like Dantes' enemies did-

My wife: Are you sure Valjean didn't screw Javert? I thought I read that on AO3 once.

[justbrowsinv]

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

protect your family from lead in your home (2020) - united states environmental protection agency

"im so full of lead paint yum"

[thankstothe]

He's so annoying <3

[that-butch-archivist]

"I am a femme. I pined for women for more than a decade following that visit to New Orleans, agonizing for months at a time until finally I would write in my journal, "I think I'm a L-E-S...," only to begin the cycle again, and again. Some of my fears were the usual what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-lesbian kind, generated by a homophobic society. I also had another kind of fear, which was that being a lesbian meant giving up my flamboyance and my love of changing myself through makeup and costume. I was afraid that I would have to wear army surplus pants for the rest of my life. And I knew fucking was important to me. If tribadism was controversial (as it was in the seventies), would I ever have wild, passionate sex again? That was quite a conflict. All my fantasies were about women, but it seemed as though being with women meant leaving my passions behind. It was made clear to me by the lesbian community that my conventionally pretty features and hourglass figure were not considered lesbian enough (being pretty wasn't politically correct). And society told me I was too pretty to be a lesbian. So was I judged, based on the same societal norms, by both groups. Being femme isn't about what I'm wearing, although it can be. I don't understand why being a lesbian who wears a three-piece suit is considered a social radical, while a lesbian who wears a dress, her sexuality up-front yet unavailable to the heterosexual norm, is not. Why is that only men get to be flamboyant in order to be considered socially radical? From my perspective that is letting men have all the fun again."

- An excerpt from "Femme: Very Queer Indeed," an essay written by Victoria Baker and found in The Femme Mystique. (Emphasis in bold my own.)

[whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk]

Hold Me Like A Knife (i) (ao3)

In the words of our lord and saviour Taylor Swift, it's been a long time coming but... presenting, for @nessianweek day 4, viking!Cassian 🖤

After a decisive battle forges a peace treaty between the king of the West Saxons and the leader of the viking horde, Anglo-Saxon Nesta Archeron is brought north for the first time in her life when the king’s court travels to Jorvik to settle the terms and draw up boundary lines. After centuries of bloody raids, she should be terrified of the invaders from across the sea— after all, tales abound of their violence and their brutality. And yet quickly she discovers that there are some things about the heathens that she can’t help but be drawn to… especially when a chance encounter brings her face to face with one viking in particular. 

Jorvik, 884 AD

In nomine patris, et filli et spiritus sancti.

With each step of the horses’ hooves beyond the borderlands of Wessex, the priest muttered those same words; a prayer offered at every turn, the sign of the cross made with stiff hands and a darkened brow as mile after mile gave way beneath their feet. Through the countryside and long grass, beneath the grey sky that loomed heavy above, the king’s court made its way north— and all the while, Osbert the Holy Man whispered. 

In nomine patris, et filli et spiritus sancti.

Like the ground itself was cursed, and only his prayers could save them. 

It was maddening.

With a scowl, Nesta Archeron cast her eyes to the sky, rolling her eyes as Osbert began another rotation of prayers, his fingers tripping over the rosary at his neck. 

She hadn’t ever wished to head north.

It was full of wild-men, her father used to say. Wild-men with bloodied swords and even bloodier hands, invaders who set fire to the coast and laughed as it burned. Men from across the sea, who spoke in strange tongues and worshipped strange gods, who murdered priests and monks and nuns only to revel in the violence. From the places civilisation had forgotten to reach, he said, they made their home beneath grim skies on stolen Saxon land.

Nobody wanted to head north these days.

Even the horses had slowed their pace, like after days of traveling they were reluctant, now, to reach their destination. Nesta scanned the landscape with narrowed eyes as her grey mare shook her head, the reins she’d held so loosely for the past hour becoming taut, and though Nesta hadn’t spoken to her father in two whole summers, his words came back to her now, as if carried by the wind that blew cold towards the south. Aedwulf had said many things over the years that Nesta had stopped believing in, but he had gotten one thing right. The skies were grim up here, overcast and heavy, the clouds like a swathe of slate rolling in from across the sea. The April sun was well hidden, and as the bite of the wind numbed her cheeks, it made her think of the depths of winter rather than the first breaths of spring. With another scowl aimed at the sky, Nesta pulled her fur-edged cloak more closely about her shoulders, the tips of her fingers aching as she clung to the fabric.

For what must have been the hundredth time, she cursed the day they’d left Wessex.

Ahead of her, as the sun made a rare appearance from behind the clouds, the gold of the king’s crown glinted weakly, like a spark attempting flame. She wondered if anybody else had noticed that the garnets studding the band about his temples gleamed dark like pools of fresh blood; reminiscent of the battles that had brought them here.

Their side will be known as the Danelaw, the king had announced after the last pitched battle; the one that had ended with weapons on both sides laid down, a tentative peace agreed as the Norse leader had the sign of the cross traced on his brow with holy water. They will have their own laws and customs, but their leader will be baptised a Christian.

With that hammered diadem about his brow, King Alfred led his court north now, chasing peace as they neared the city of Jorvik, where the pagan lands were to be ratified; the boundaries between their peoples hammered out like a sword fresh from the forge. The women, Alfred had insisted, were to be present too - to add ‘an air of civility’ to the proceedings, like he thought the Danes might stay their hand and sheathe their blades in the presence of ladies. 

Nesta had barely been able to suppress her snort at that.

They’d all heard the stories— gruesome ones, of the pagans and their rituals. Tomas had even taken great pleasure, once, in describing to her, in detail, the horrifying blood eagle. The way the Danes delighted in breaking a man apart, in snapping bone and twisting ribs until they spread apart like wings.

If the treaty between them wasn’t enough to ensure peace and prevent violence, Nesta doubted the presence of a handful of noblewomen would be enough to convince the Danes to behave.

And yet as the wife of the king’s right hand, Nesta had no refusal she could offer, and no reason good enough to keep her in Wessex when the king insisted that his court accompany him north— to that lawless place, where even the soil was saturated with Saxon blood.

Or so it was said, anyway. 

“We used to call it Eoforwic, you know,” Tomas muttered from the space beside her.

Her husband’s voice was a scathing rasp barely even audible above the sound of a hundred horses’ hooves. He looked ahead at the horizon, nodding to the city walls before them now, piercing the sky in a great wooden structure, stark against the grey of the countryside. Even from a distance Nesta could see that the ramparts were topped with wooden spikes, sharpened to a point that, she suspected, would be lethal if climbed. And yet, riding at her husband’s side, Nesta Archeron said nothing.

“And then the heathens took over,” he finished through gritted teeth. 

The heathens.

The word was almost enough to drive fear into the heart of any proper Saxon woman, but as they approached the gates in the long train behind the king, Nesta didn’t feel so much as an ember of it stirring in her breast. After all, for almost two full decades now the heathens had occupied the city that had been Eoforwic, and yet by all accounts the city behind those walls wasn’t lying in ashes like the monasteries scattered along the coastline.  No— it was flourishing. The men from across the sea that had raided these shores for so many years, to murder and pillage and burn, had settled. Renamed the place Jorvik, set down roots. And as the gates before them opened with the sound of creaking wooden beams, Nesta waited for all the signs of such infamous brutality to hit her— the smoke and dead silence, the smell of rotting flesh. The empty eyes of the people living behind those walls, the cruel smiles of the men from across the sea.

Without pause her horse crossed the threshold. She looked up— saw the symbols carved into the gate posts, the sharp lines of an alphabet she didn’t recognise. 

And still, she waited.

There were no screams, no rivers of blood pooling in the streets.

Instead, Jorvik stretched ahead of them, the roads wide enough for carts to pass two abreast.

Wattle and daub houses lined the roads, old Roman tiles decorating the walls of a select few— as well as old bricks and white stone, repurposed and used again, like the Danes hadn’t destroyed the city at all, merely… expanded on what they had already found. Woven fences separated buildings, clothes hung on lines strung in the narrow alleys between houses, and all around them the air was filled with languages that landed strangely on the ear, tongues both harsh and soft that Nesta had never heard before. Not the Saxon she was used to nor the Latin she heard in church, but something else, something that felt richer, somehow. And as she watched with a slackened jaw and widened eyes, her attention followed the sound of those voices, her focus dragged towards the river where the ships came in, laden with goods imported from all over the continent and beyond. 

Nesta had only ever seen her corner of Wessex before, but here— here it seemed like the entire world opened up before her. 

And though she knew she shouldn’t…

She wanted to see more of it.

With her eyes fixed on that river, on the horizon that seemed to hold so much in the way of promise, a kind of longing rose within her, and suddenly Nesta thought she understood just a little of why the Danes chased their home on the seas. 

Beneath it all, in the distance, there was the tell-tale sound of a forge at work too, the clatter of a hammer against an anvil. As it rang through the winding streets, she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of blade the smithy was beating into shape. Would it be great and heavy when it was done— as grand as the king’s own sword, kept in its sheath until battle called? Or would it be practical and small, light enough for even her own hands to wield—

“Nesta,” Tomas hissed at her side, little more than a scold as he leaned over and took the reins of her horse in his gloved hand. The horse whinnied, like even the mare couldn’t stand his closeness. “Did you hear a word I just said?”

“No,” Nesta shrugged, her eyes drifting back to the river, to the lines of ships gathered there. Ships that sat low in the water, heavy with stock. Ships that were wide and flat-bottomed, so unusual she couldn’t look away.

“I said, the pagans are too brazen. This was a Christian city.” 

He pulled away, shoving the reins back into her hands as he sat back in his saddle, his lip curling in disgust. His features twisted into a grimace; a sneer that held as his eyes roved over Jorvik’s streets. 

“Barbarous,” Osbert muttered, scowling as he rubbed a thumb over the cross he wore at his neck. “A violent and brutish people.”

Tomas hummed his agreement. The priests’s white robes fluttered in the wind, and Nesta glanced at the mud-spattered hem as the priest ran a thin hand over his tonsured head. His face was stark, all bloodless cheeks and dark eyes, and though she hadn’t ever been able to put a finger on it, there was something about the holy man that unnerved her, made her shudder whenever she found herself too close to him.

And she had been too close to him for days now.

Osbert had been by the king’s side almost as long as Tomas, and had struck up a companionship with her husband that meant the priest was frequently lingering in their rooms at court, never too far from the side of either the king or her husband. Both men rode directly behind King Alfred now, in a position of prominence that spoke to their influence, and as the streets of Jorvik grew even wider, leading them easily to an open courtyard close to the centre of the city, Nesta wondered how easy it might be to slip from her horse and disappear through those streets, never to see either of those men again.

Before she could let the thought take root, the king stopped his horse.

Ahead of them a great hall loomed; a towering wooden structure with two floors, its thatched roof a meeting of two large, carved wooden beams at the front— two serpents twining at the apex where they crossed.

The lord’s hall.

They could get no closer— the door was closed, the windows of the ground floor shuttered. Nesta frowned, taking in the crowd that had gathered before that closed door, assembled in a circle to leave a great space empty in the centre of the courtyard. At least fifty Danes she counted, all of them waiting, she thought, for the arrival of the King of Wessex.

But then there was the sound of steel ringing out upon steel, and as the crowd before them parted to let the horses through, Alfred’s trail of Saxons caught their first glimpse of the spectacle taking place just a stone’s throw from the lord’s hall and it’s resolutely closed door. As the spectators closed the circle behind them, she realised that the Danes weren’t there for Alfred at all. 

At the centre of that circle, two Danes prowled around one another like wolves. Nesta felt her eyes widen— her knuckles tighten on her horse’s reins. 

The nearest Dane towered above the rest, his skin like burnished bronze even in the dim grey light. In one hand he held a great steel sword— in the other, a short-handled axe. A seax. He wore a thin tunic, already clinging to his skin, and his hair curled haphazardly to his shoulders. Around his neck a silver pendant hung in the shape of a hammer, and when he lunged it danced, catching the thin light as much as his sword. The second Dane was similarly built, yet lighter on his feet and a touch more lithe, and as a manic grin split across the face of the first, a whisper rippling along the gathered crowd as coins exchanged hands, Nesta realised that the crowd had gathered to place their bets— to watch the fight like one might listen to a minstrel. 

The second Dane tilted his head, his raven hair cut short, and when he turned Nesta saw the smile that pulled at his mouth, like the fight… excited him.

Like there was no malice in it.

Like it was… fun.

The first was handsome in a rugged kind of way, a single scar splitting through his eyebrow and a hundred more littering the arms laid bare by his rolled-up sleeves. Tattoos snaked their way across his skin, shifting with each flex of muscle, and it was an effort to tear her eyes away from him, like somehow she needed to discover just how he’d earned each and every one of those scars. 

As the second Dane moved into her line of vision, she noticed that he had scars too— far more brutal ones that consumed both his hands, like he’d been caught in a fire. Like perhaps he’d started the kind of fire his people were so infamous for, burning down monasteries up and down the eastern coast. 

Nesta blinked once. Twice.

The first Dane dropped his sword to the ground, letting it clatter against the packed earth. He flipped his axe, clever fingers wrapping around the hilt as he crooked the fingers of his other hand in invitation. He murmured something in his native tongue, and Nesta tilted her head as he grinned again, shifting his weight and readying himself to make the next strike. The second smiled grimly, and even though both were already marred with blood - and a thin cut left a trail of blood weeping along the arm of the first - neither seemed particularly concerned. Like a little bloodshed was nothing.

The first wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and grinned as that, too, came away smeared with blood. 

“Barbarous,” the priest muttered again.

“Brutish,” Tomas agreed, an echo. 

The sun broke from behind the clouds, briefly illuminating the fighters in gold. They wore no armour, and Nesta’s mouth felt dry as she watched the first one fight, his arms corded with muscle that she suspected could break a man’s neck with ease. And he did make it lookeasy, the way he lifted his axe. The way he swept forward, dipping low enough to the ground to pluck up his discarded sword. 

The second warrior held his own, just as adept, but when the first landed a kick to his thigh that sent him stumbling—

Within a breath, the first Dane had his blade levelled at the neck of the second.

For a moment, Nesta’s heart was in her throat.

Here was the bloodshed— the easy violence that made the Danes so fearsome.

Would the first one cut the second’s throat with that smile still plastered on his face? Would he make that look easy too, when he opened his fellow countryman’s neck? 

Nesta held her breath.

Waited.

But after a moment, the first tossed his head back and laughed, grinning at his victory as his curls spilled across his shoulders. Then he extended a hand, helping the second to his feet even as the latter muttered something under his breath that Nesta couldn’t understand— something she suspected might have been good-natured grumbling after a fight lost between friends. 

Their hands clasped; all blood-stained skin and scars. 

“Next time,” she heard the second warrior say darkly, his chest rising and falling rapidly after the exertion of the fight. “Next time, It’ll be you on the floor.”

The first grinned, his victory lining his face with mirth. He opened his mouth, his dark eyes shining, but before he could speak, the doors to the hall behind them opened. Silence fell as a figure filled the doorway, dressed in deep black that almost made him one with the shadows of the hall behind, and as the warriors sheathed their blades, Nesta noted how the smile on the mouth of the first refused to fade, even in the presence of what was surely his lord.

“King Alfred.” The figure in the doorway stepped further into the grey light, his voice smooth and lilting beneath his accent, and as the weak sunlight glanced off the sharp planes of his face and illuminated the angular cut of his jaw, he looked like a man entirely content with command. His hair was smooth and black, kept short, and the deep black of his tunic was interrupted only by the silver rings on each of his fingers and the silver torc about his wrist.

“Lord Rhysand,” Alfred answered, his voice tight even as they met under the banner of peace. Tension wove through them like a breeze; the treaty between them hardly stronger than a reed in the river. Animosity was buried too deep, mistrust a currency of its own between their peoples. No matter what peace their leaders had agreed, Nesta hardly thought any of them were fooled.

Peace was a powder keg, just waiting for a spark.

Still, the leader of the Danes made a show of flashing a smile towards the Saxons. 

“Ignore my brothers,” he said, flicking a hand towards the two warriors they had witnessed sparring. “As Danes, the fight is embedded in our blood. We train for hours against one another,” he continued as he moved with purpose down the three steps that led up to the hall’s imposing door. His eyes glinted with something like arrogance as he canted his head, slowly, to the side. “To achieve the kind of prowess that wins our battles.”

Unease whispered through the gathered crowd, the smile on the first warrior’s face dropping to a darkened smirk as he looked up at the assembled Saxons from beneath his eyelashes. His hand shifted— fingers twitching towards the handle of his seax.

There was a threat there, Nesta thought, left so thinly veiled by Rhysand’s words. 

Alfred said nothing, only nodded sagely before glancing back, briefly, at his priest. Osbert’s scowl had deepened, his lips pressed so thin they were almost entirely invisible, and yet with a nod, both men’s horses stepped forwards anyway. The King of Wessex slid to his feet when his horse stopped in the centre of the courtyard, opening his arms in a show of perfect companionship as he walked towards the Danish lord.

It was a display Rhysand echoed, clasping Alfred’s hand as they embraced. The silver of his rings contrasted the gold of Alfred’s, and though no crown encircled Rhysand’s brow, authority rippled from him in waves. The warriors he had called his brothers took up a position on either side of their lord, like dark shadows that threatened violence, and as the rest of the crowd dispersed and serving men stepped forward to take their horses, they watched.

Smoothly, Nesta dismounted and handed her reins to a waiting groom. Beside her, Tomas still scowled, like just breathing the same air as the northmen was an affront to him. But then again, Nesta thought silently, most things proved an affront to Tomas Mandray. Even being one of the king’s right-hand men wasn’t enough for him. That scowl was permanently etched across his brow, like nothing and nobody was ever truly good enough.

Lifting her chin, Nesta straightened the silver rings that wound around her fingers. A sure sign of wealth— as sure as the belt at her waist decorated with gold, and the gold and garnet-inlaid brooches that held her cloak together at her collarbone. Tomas’ proximity to the king might not have given him land or a real title, but at least it had given him some wealth, and if gold and garnets were the only thing Nesta was to get out of this godforsaken marriage… well. 

She smoothed a hand down her cloak. 

So be it.

He left her standing alone as he drifted towards the king, a Saxon in a Norse stronghold. His gait was heavy as he stormed forwards, his hand on the hilt of the sword at his hip, and as their leaders spoke together with heads bowed, voices too low for Nesta to hear, all she could do was clasp her hands and wait for somebody - anybody - to show her to their lodgings. It took effort, sometimes, to keep her tongue behind her teeth. To keep from screaming as the rest of the king’s court moved to make way for the men, whilst the women lingered in the dust. 

She looked forward, cast her eyes over the Danes that remained standing before the lord’s hall. The warrior with the curling hair and scar-split brow glanced up, a soft breeze shifting those loose curls back to reveal both the high cut of his cheekbones and the curve of his ear, studded at several points with silver rings. His arms were folded over his broad chest, and when his eyes flicked to hers, Nesta felt his attention as sharply as the blade of the seax he had tucked into his belt. 

He was from another world— one so foreign to her that she didn’t know what to do when their eyes met, and yet there was something warm in it when he smirked again, a base heat that gathered at the bottom of her spine, constricting her lungs as she kept her head high. With a jolt that sent lightning forking down her spine, that mouth of his split into a grin as he inclined his head towards her in greeting.

“Come,” Rhysand announced, his voice echoing through the courtyard as he drew away from Alfred. With a sweep of one arm, he motioned broadly to the open door of the hall. “Let us get the business over with. The sooner it is done, the sooner we can drink.”

Several of the Danes let out a low cheer at that, more than one of them lifting an arm into the air as if to appease their gods. Skol, one of them proclaimed loudly, hammering a fist against his chest. 

Nesta didn’t pretend to understand, but as Rhysand led Alfred through that door, Osbert and Tomas in tow, she lingered in that courtyard, even as the cold air nipped at her skin. And as Tomas looked back over his shoulder and called her name with irritation lining each syllable, she looked back to the Dane that had snared her attention and watched as his lips kicked up at one corner, his head tilted as he looked at her with the full force of that determined gaze.

And as she watched, the Dane winked.

“Skol,” he echoed. 

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[prolibytherium]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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