#dido cover

[call-2-arms]

And when we meet Which I'm sure we will All that was there Will be there still I'll let is pass And hold my tongue And you will think That I've moved on

[nacho475]

Me singing White Flag by Dido

It’s one of my favorite songs by her

Hope you enjoy

[edenfeather]

caroline polachek photographed by aidan zamiri

[majordelilah]

i recorded this way back in may

happy new year, and all my love to those of you who have been supportive of my artistry and all the pain that I’ve poured out this year. Something a little less melancholy for you <33

[nonenglishsongs]

Thursday's Covers Day! | Flans - Gracias ("Thank You", Spanish)

[aleksandra-czudzak]

"Dido pulled out of her chest a sword covered in flames, the same sword that Aeneas had left behind while fleeing in disgrace from her palace in Carthage." 🔴🔴🔴 One of the illustrations I did for @ratatafestival Watercolor on paper

[infiniteeight8]

I don't know if you watch White flage from

Dido MV or no, please if you didn't watch it and write an ironstrange but make it crack !

Thanks !

I had not previously seen the music video, although the song was familiar once it started playing.

I, uh, didn’t stick very close to the song. At all. Pretty much pulled one line and ran with it. You said make it crack, so this is what you get. LOL.

-

“Are you aware that some of your fans are writing fan fiction about you?” the interviewer asked, half smiling like she thought she was about to get some juicy reactions. And she was. Just not the ones she was expecting.

Steve, Sam, and Carol groaned loudly while Bucky and Stephen just shook their heads. Natasha shot Steve an unsympathetic look. “You had to know this would happen eventually.”

“Is it wrong to hope?” Steve said.

Tony, meanwhile, cackled like a madman. “Why, yes, I am,” he replied gleefully. “And while the quality of much of it is impressive, and I’m very gratified by the authors’ evaluation of my sexual prowess—” he winked at the camera, “spot on, good job, keep at it—I have a bone to pick with shippers.”

“The–”

Tony cut the interviewer off mercilessly. “Steve Rogers?” he demanded. “My most popular pairing is with Steve?” He turned briefly toward Steve. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Steve said tiredly. 

Tony turned back to the interviewer. “Completely aside from the fact that we’re not remotely compatible,” Tony went on, “his most popular pairing is with Bucky. Which is great! They actually work together. But more importantly, I am not second place!”

The interviewer’s mouth opened and closed for a stunned moment. “Then who–”

“I am so glad you asked,” Tony said, rubbing his hands together and grinning. “It’s got a canonical enemies to lovers arc–”

“‘Enemies’ is a little strong,” Stephen said, amused. 

“–it’s got opposites attracting,” Tony went on, “it’s got style, and, most important of all, it’s got excellent facial hair.” Tony waved his hands towards Stephen like Vanna White unveiling a prize.

“To be fair to the authors,” the interviewer rallied, “you and Doctor Strange really haven’t interacted much in the public eye.”

“Why do you think I agreed to this press tour?”

“That’s why you agreed?” Natasha burst out.

Sam covers his face with one hand. “This explains so much.”

“You don’t think that’s going a little too far?” Carol asked, amused.

Tony raised one finger. “I will go down with this ship!”

Stephen patted him on the knee. “And I appreciate that.”

“You realize that’s just going to encourage him, right?” Bucky said.

Stephen smirked.

[funeral]

Nothing can stop the wind. Least of all a branch of willow that weeps on the riverbank!

In vain, in vain I ran wildly, disheveled, on the steaming sand.

I tore at my heart, out of it black doves flew in droves. Until nightfall I remained motionless as a rock under the brutal pounding of the waves.

Observe: on returning home I no longer recognize myself. I find my house razed by the furies. I walk along roads covered only by a veil torn from shame; with only a band of despair circling my temples. And madness, a monotonous buzzing about me, pursues with the sting of a gadfly.

My friends watch through the veil of their tears; my kinsmen turn away their faces. Because misfortune is not a spectacle for all to contemplate.

Rosario Castellanos, “Lamentación de Dido”

[didoldacc]

venus as a boy ● choi beomgyu

okay i normally don't write with a specific age in mind but this thought has been killing me, never left my mind ever

age yourself up or down to gyu's age while reading, inspired by venus as a boy by björk

minors, do not interact!

warnings: mean but soft dom!gyu, virgin!reader, corruption, experienced!beomgyu, praises, lowkey bullying, unprotected sex, fingering, slight dacryphilia, breeding, possesiveness, gyu babying reader, petnames, reader has a hymen and slight blood warning regarding that(dw, no one makes big deal out of it, it is just there i will cross that line just in case so don't worry), body worship, beomgyu being too good to be true but being a little shit still let me know if there is any i have missed, also dido writing everything but the yeonjun fic she was supposed to working on is a warning itself, put me in jail

imagine you being friends with beomgyu for years but only recently confessed your feelings to each other. annoyed by delayence, he still respected your boundaries but it was definitely hard. so once you become his, expect him to make it up for each day you both lost. amazingly planned dates, meaningful gifts that are obvious that has been put too much thought to it, song witten about you, a first kiss wothy of movies...

of course you also being your most romantic self with the experience and means. maybe they were simple as cooking his favorite meal or massaging him but he loved all of those. waited so long for this, having to spend time with some other dates that weren't you, he made a promise to himself to never let your honeymoon phase go. but he couldn't keep it. not that your relationship become toxic or boring though because nothing changed, he just understood the value of spending time together on a average day.

like now, he is soending with you. a deep conversation you are having reminding beomgyu the times you had these conversations as just friends. all of his exes jealous of you for you being the one understands him and being closest to him. it was obvious tou both had feelings but circumstances you were in made it impossible to date. so you have missed a lot while beomgyu got to experience. every single time wishing it was you instead, imagining you when he relieved himself. yet you are still pure even after starting to date him. he didn't want to rush things over but you wearing a gift he bought for you which was less modest than your usual wear made dirty things fly around his mind. wishing finally having to taste.

slowly losing his focus on the conversation , beomgyu decides to change the subject to his desire. manipulating the conversation to it's end "baby, there is something i wanted to talk about." his words captures your interest but also makes you anxious. nothing great comes after needing to talk about something. "yes, gyu?" he offers his hand to yours to lead you to his bedroom.

beomgyu sits on his bed, waiting for you to also sit. you both sit cross-legged while facing each other. he brings his hand to you to hold once more. "we don't even have to talk about this if you are uncomfortable. i will not force you to do anything." even with the start of his speech, you know where this is going. "i promise, i will be careful to not hurt you but i want you." getting excited, you still wait for him to finish. "i know you lack experience but i can be gentle and i can teach you." his gaze getting darker, making him look more attractive. "you don't have to force yourself to anything, okay? just give me a simple yes or no." he stops talking to let you answer.

you choose to reply with a nod following an unexpectedly determined yes. he gives you a thank you before pushing you gently to sheets. the smile covering beomgyu's face never stops even in your foreplay kisses. giving you all the compliments he can think of to show you greatful he is.

getting naked, him kissing and adoring every corner of your body... everything feels natural with him. you feel safe and taken care of and most importantly not used. beomgyu's knowing what to do fingers start to play with your folds. "i am loving how wet you are. just for me, isn't it?" he says before kissing your cheeks. "let me prepare you. you wouldn't want it to hurt, would you?" he says before pushing a finger insede you. your irises growing with the unfamiliar feeling. another finger follows. "how are you supposed to take me when you can't handle my second finger? my virgin doll~ isn't that funny?" he makes fun of you and your inexperience even though your purity and corrupting it is his biggest wish. seeing you getting wrecked by his fingers make it impossible to wait longer.

his fingers leaving your walls, beomgyu brings them to his mouth to taste your arousal. "next time i am getting the whole meal, not just the samples but right now, i need you to be my baby. don't worry, i will take care of everything. just stay still." you do as he says while he positions himself. "i want to feel you raw and cum inside, is that okay?" you say yes without a second thought even though not being on the pills. he smiles before slowly pushing himself inside. "baby, it- it burns." you say with teary eyes. feeling a little amount of blood releasing from yourself. mesmerized and more aroused by this, beomgyu only says "i know, pretty girl but it is okay i will give you time to adjust. okay? relax for me."

"so funny that you cannot take me at this age~ and it's not just because i am big." he makes fun of you again. "we could have had so much fun... but better late than never. also i get to keep you. my beautiful princess letting me fill her up with my babies even in the first time. how cute~" he starts slowly thrusting into you. you heard so many thing about how it hurts in the first time yet thanks to beomgyu's preparations you can enjoy the moment. it doesn't take him to long to get you close. "pretty girl didn't even bothered to make herself cum, did she? but don't worry i am close too. cum with me." you moan his name one last time before your body shakes with orgasm, accompanied by his seeds filling you up.

"we will have so much more fun from now on~"

[missionkitty]

i finally got around to recording a cover of lament of orpheus last night!

i've talked about it in tags, but i'm a classically trained opera singer and i focused on a lot of early/baroque music in college--

when i heard the way darren korb wrote orpheus' and eurydice's songs, it felt very much like henry purcell, whose works i absolutely adore (i was the spirit in purcell's dido and aeneas)

and on top of it all, i was then possessed to draw myself as a shade...i would come to listen to orpheus sing and then find a quiet corner of tartarus to sing by myself...maybe upon hearing him for the first time, i was able to regain some sense of self and look a little less faceless

aNYWAY i hope you listen and enjoy. i'm no darren korb, but i definitely had fun singing and teaching myself a bit about sound production in the process

[thealexchen]

Big appeal of LIS franchise is the soundtrack for me, was curious which of the games in the franchise have your personal soundtracks? Either generally or like fav to least fav whatever works (:

I LOVE this question. Let me get this out of the way first, I think LiS has the best collection of licensed songs in probably any piece of media, ever. It's such a distinct, special mix of fitting lyrics and memorable moods that these songs set. No matter how many genres they go past indie folk, it all still feels distinctly Life is Strange.

I still think the montage set to "Red" by Mt. Wolf in Life is Strange 2, episode 2 is one of the most underrated in the entire series. The cinematography is unmatched, especially its use of fake depth of field and shaky cam. These montages are sorely missing from the later games!!

"Obstacles" to me feels like the theme song of the series. I really wish the Bae ending wasn't as half-baked as it was, but it fits for the ending. I also love its original usage in the ending montage of episode 1. You can really feel LiS's influences of shows like Twin Peaks (which again, is sorely missing from DE) to mimick these TV montages, and it adds depth to this small setting by showing what the other characters are getting up to and noticing/not noticing the strange snow at the end of the episode.

From BtS, I love the acoustic version of "Taking You There" during the neighborhood scene and Rachel and Chloe's first kiss. It perfectly captures that youthful nervousness, teenage elation, and fragile joy when everything seems perfect, just before the plot plunges into much more intense territory.

From TC, I was disappointed how most of the licensed soundtracks were relegated to Moments of Calm with looping shots or background music, so I really liked "Don't Matter" by Kings of Leon for actually playing during a fun moment. It also adds characterization and depth because it was one of Alex and Gabe's favorite records, and it's beautiful to see them reconnect and be silly together like no time had passed. On the flip side "Thank You" by Dido was used so well for encapsulating the tension, nausea, and dread of Alex desperately trying to drown out her father and brother's arguing in the flashback, and how tragic her broken home life had become since her mother's death.

I wish more people still talked about Captain Spirit because I think DN was absolutely brilliant for making a free sandbox game about Chris before LiS2. I also think they were geniuses for incorporating "Death with Dignity" by Sufjan Stevens throughout the episode: the gentle instrumental opener and different verses at different points, but only if you took the time to explore and piece together Emily's backstory. For example, once you discover the box of photos, then the second verse "I forgive you, Mother..." plays. It's a gentle and melancholic tune that reminds me of Chris himself.

Finally, nothing is quite as iconic as Max stepping out into the hallway, putting in her earbuds, and the title screen emerging with "To All of You" by Syd Matters playing. It's such a perfectly unassuming welcome to a game that will proceed to hurl you upside the head with feels.

Other songs I want to shout-out:

"Kids Will be Skeletons" by Mogwai in LiS1

"Mountains" by Message to Bears in LiS1

"D.A.N.C.E" by Justice in LiS2

"Blister in the Sun" by Violent Femmes (covered by mxmtoon) in TC

"Through the Cellar Door" by Lanterns on the Lake in BtS

"A Hole in the Earth" by Daughter in BtS

"I Don't" by Koda in BtS

"Santa Monica Dream" by Angus & Julia Stone in LiS1

Thank you SO much for asking!!

[maislovebot]

Thank you

Sigma x reader

(I was trying to come up with a title and realized Thank You by Dido fits this whole scenario sooo well. You should give it a listen!)

A request from my lovely mutual:3 I hope it’s to your liking!!

Contains: gn!reader, drabble, domestic fluff, established relationship, tooth rotting fluff, it gets a littleee suggestive but I don’t even count it, Sigma’s just shy about getting changed in front of you

You were relaxing in your bedroom towards the back of the casino. It was beautiful, covered from head to toe in big windows and large beds and silk furniture, very classy. The only problem was that Sigma wasn’t here with you! You understood it was because of all his busy work, but that doesn’t stop it from being demotivating. Oh the things you would do to sit with Sigma in your large, fluffy bed instead of sitting in it alone most nights.

Sigma does normally share the bed with you at some point, but he doesn’t typically get to bed until long after you’ve fallen asleep. Tonight was different though, as you heard the keys jingling in the deadbolt that lead to your bedroom. You perked up, knowing it was Sigma. You walked up towards the door, and Sigma giggled once he opened it and saw you in your comfy pajamas.

“Hey,” Sigma sighed, “I’m back.”

“Are you tired?”

“A little..”

You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, slowly swaying back and forth.

“Too tired to spend time with me?”

“Never.”

Now that’s what you wanted to hear! You guided Sigma towards the bathroom, taking off his blazer and his belt.

“I already showered, so I’ll meet you outside!”

You walked to the door, shutting it and sitting on the bed. You sat down on the bed for a few moments, brainstorming. What will help him relax? You thought.

You decided on tea.

You were in the kitchen, swaying your hips and holding two mugs in your hands when you heard the shower curtain being pushed back and the bathroom door opening. Sigma walked down to your bedroom, with you slowly trailing behind him.

“You look pretty..” you said.

“I could say the same about you.”

You smiled at his compliment and walked over to your shared closet, digging through it for some comfortable pajamas for Sigma.

“Is this okay?” You asked, holding up a pink long sleeve and black silky pants. You swore he didn’t own any dark colors, outside of the occasional black accent piece or blazer.

Sigma nodded, walking over to you and getting dressed in his soft silky pajamas. He was covering himself to the best of his abilities with his towel. You laughed at how shy Sigma was about it, despite you two being in a rather long term relationship.

As Sigma was getting changed, you flitted towards the small kitchen, bringing the tea to him and setting it on his nightstand. Sigma’s eyes softened at this, and he carried himself over and reached over you to get the tea.

“Want me to brush your hair?” You asked.

Sigma nodded, moving to the edge of the bed, sitting on the floor as you grabbed the hairbrush and began brushing through his long hair. His hair was wet, so you took his blow dryer and put it on the lightest setting while he sipped his tea here and there. You kept brushing his hair, scratching his scalp and rubbing his shoulders every so often.

Once you were finished, Sigma grabbed the hairbrush from your hand and moved onto the bed, your back facing him. He wrapped his legs around your waist, locking you in place, a habit of his.

Sigma finished brushing your hair and left small kisses along the backs of your shoulders. He wrapped his arms around you and slid you up to the top of the bed, lifting the covers up and over you.

“Thank you.” Sigma mumbled as you fell asleep.

Wc - 0.5k

[afteriwake]

Fanmix for "Heart'Bit'-Burner" by Xenakis

This fanmix for "Heart'Bit'-Burner" was made for the @wipbigbang 2024 round.

Dutch Melrose, "RUNRUNRUN" | t.A.T.u., "All The Things She Said (Rusty Hook Remix)" | My Chemical Romance, "I Don't Love You" | S.J. Tucker, "Don't Get My Hopes Up" | Crusher-P, "Again" | Blackbriar, "Until Eternity" | Morat, "De Cero" | Cyndi Lauper, "Time After Time" | Richard Marx, "Right Here Waiting" | Dido, "Here With Me" | Jonah Baker feat. Celine, "Die With A Smile (Acoustic Cover)"

AO3 | DOWNLOAD | 8TRACKS (coming soon)

[justforbooks]

After the Funeral by Tessa Hadley

Class and character are sharply observed in this immersive collection

Tessa Hadley presents everything as fine at the front while it comes apart comprehensively at the back. The dozen short stories that comprise After the Funeral, her absorbing and thoroughly readable fourth collection, manage with a quiet dexterity the emotional situations that promote this kind of undoing.

Lynette, central character of Dido’s Lament, bumps into – or is bumped into by – Toby, her ex of many years. The collision, and what they make of it, will maintain a certain ambivalence. Who actually bumped into whom? Which of them, if either, has recovered from the damage they did one another in the past? Elsewhere it’s a different story, although as a story Old Friends occupies the same carefully curated kind of space: Christopher and Sally are made for one another – “she fitted into the shape of his own serious nature like a nut in its nutshell”. But Sally is still married to celebrity BBC war correspondent Frank, so she decides they’ll have to wait. Christopher isn’t sure what they are waiting for exactly, while the “whole exaggerated scale of Frank’s personal operation” continues to draw in everyone else “like a baggage train dragged after some showy emperor”.

That use of “personal operation” to describe a familiar kind of energetically middle-aged male narcissism sums up Hadley’s talent: the ruthless analysis of unstable situations, and of how we maintain them while we extract their resources. Her unpicking of character is focused, intense and yet always, somehow, in parallel, kind. What it does best is produce in the reader exactly what she offers her characters, for a sickening moment or two, in each story: a vast, difficult, unruly elation. For this to work, they need to arrive in front of us with comprehensive histories.

They’re often mature survivors of the 1970s or the children of those survivors: lecturers, musicians, civil servants, writers, comfortably off, less comfortably self-aware. Angie, for instance, has “escaped” a “posh county family” while Sally does “something or other part-time for the British Council”. Your overall impression – perhaps unfair – is that they have settled somewhere between Bristol and the Cotswolds in shabbily expensive old houses. The author lays off them a little but details their floor coverings and kitchen tables in gleeful closeup. They’re at ease enough with their class to enjoy the way someone holds a fork (“the poised, elegant angle of her wrist and her rather big tanned hand”). They support an affective regime in which everything from sex to nice cooking is a performance, a controllable resource that can be withdrawn instantly, “like a favour they were bored with proffering”. It’s not that the stories can’t be told without these densely worked characteristics of theirs, more that the character is the story. Often, perhaps, too obviously. Children at Chess, a study not much more than three pages long, remains unstorified by the strange little point-of-view flip in its last paragraph – although similar brisk redirections of readerly gaze are used successfully elsewhere to finesse endings that combine delicacy and horsepower.

A Hadley story will often require an outsider, or at least someone who thinks of themselves as an outsider – someone who performs that role not so much for us, the readers, but to and for the other characters. Difference is to be cherished, from the ad hoc hippy rituals of My Mother’s Wedding through the faddy diet and spectacular dissociation of Robyn, titular child of Funny Little Snake, to the cast of The Bunty Club, in which three middle-aged sisters still unconsciously await the “all transforming mystery” hinted at by their ramshackle childhood in a house by the sea. Adults who don’t fully remember an odd upbringing are still trying to find somewhere to fit in while their hearts seem to understand that childhood long ago shaped their adult circumstances. You could find this conclusion banal, but the author’s deft switches from comedy to drama won’t permit it. Sometimes a kind of gothic is required to turn the trick: there are pungent, luxurious descriptions of magic gardens, magic houses, magic families, and especially of magic interiors in which something’s not quite right – though never visibly wrong. Rain “comes sluicing” across big windows, wheelie bins blow over, rooms are either “greenish and spectral or bleak with the lights on in the middle of the day”. The disaster is sensed, if never quite consummated.

And anyway, down the road somewhere another story is always already fermenting. In Men, two women called Jan and Michelle find themselves in a hotel bar. They are sisters, but in the Hadley way: that is, they haven’t set eyes on one another for 15 years. We want to know why. Beautiful Jan is “tall and serene, and pale”. Michelle works in the hotel office, never was beautiful, has “a little pasty face as soft as putty”. She’s instantly aware of her sister’s presence, “like an animal picking up a scent, a smear of something rank”. The men, meanwhile, unaware of this suddenly resumed, weirdly tense relationship, are loud and middle-aged; stand easily at the bar, relaxing into their money.

What’s revealed before the story ends might change something, even for them, smug as they are. More likely, it will make a small but significant adjustment in the reader’s view of the world. In a 2007 review of Hadley’s first collection, Anne Enright described her as “immensely subversive” – a judgment that has only gathered force since. Whatever Hadley’s characters believe about themselves, they’re always working hard for change, striving, consciously or otherwise, to knock the props out from under whatever life they’re leading.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[holycatsandrabbits]

So excited to get my author copy of Anna Karenina Isn't Dead!

The anthology

Welcome to the rewritten lives of thirty-two literary legends

From Russia’s Anna Karenina to Vietnam’s Lady Trieu, from Cio-Cio-San to Frankenstein's second creature, suffering, madness, or death is the fate of far too many women in classic literature. Anna Karenina Isn’t Dead undoes that.

In this anthology of literary women, these women live. Do they have a happily ever after? You’ll see. Do they have a happy-right-now? Oh yes.

These are the reimagined tales of the famous, the infamous, the barely mentioned women in myths, poems, and legends. These are the stories of the Lady in Black, Wendy Darling, Dido, and many more, each getting a better journey than the one she originally got.

Here Anna Karenina and her literary kin are not dead. Very far from it.

Edited by @atlinmerrick ; Cover artwork by Claudia Caranfa

My story

My mother and I loved the poem “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes, and I jumped at the chance to write Bess a better ending. In my story “Love Knot,” I gave her five minutes’ notice of the soldiers’ arrival, and she did the rest.

King George’s men saw Samuel only as a highwayman, a rogue, a thief. They knew his rich clothes, but not how they smelled of sun and sweat and the cold road. They knew the weapons beneath his coat, but not how he liked to use his rapier to cut apples from a tree, how he would flash his shiny pistols at the children who gathered to hear his stories of daring battles for yellow gold. They knew he’d given a confession of love to Bess. They didn’t know what it had sounded like in the earnest voice of a boy who was then only eight years old.

Order here

AO3 ~ DannyeChase.com ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

[violethowler]

Thoughts on Atlas and Adrius

One of the things I realized while reading Light Bringer is that Atlas is a foil of The Jackal.

Both of them are Golds from families dating back to the Conquering, who oppose Darrow and have reputations for brutal and/or depraved methods – Atlas with his impaling of Republic soldiers on Mercury and ordering his Gorgons to rape Darrow in DA, The Jackal with his cannibalism.

Both are aligned with The Society but have their own faction of loyal followers – the Gorgons and the Boneriders – and even their own ostensible allies dislike and/or fear them.

Each of their respective groups also survived a harrowing experience together cut off from civilization – The Jackal and his Boneriders survived being buried underground together at The Institute, while Atlas and the Gorgons survived being marooned in the Kuiper belt in an endless guerilla war against the Ascomanni.

Both of them specialize in psychological warfare and manipulation – Adrius with his media ownership and things like MS mentioning him deliberately trying to make Darrow think Virginia betrayed him before he puts Darrow in The Box. Atlas with how he lured the Rim into the war and sent Xenophon to lead Sefi away from the Republic, etc.

Both of them also deliberately associate their factions with imagery designed to evoke fear and/or disgust – Atlas having his and the Gorgons’ armor covered in the faces of screaming children, Adrius and the Boneriders wearing the bones of their fallen enemies.

Both of them grow up separated from their siblings after the age of ten, and play a direct role in orchestrating the circumstances that lead to one of their older brothers’ deaths – Adrius paid Karnus to “sully” Claudius’s girlfriend, knowing that Claudius would challenge Karnus to a duel and get killed. Atlas used The Syndicate to sell the footage of Darrow destroying the docks to the Rim, which led to Dido’s coup and Romulus’ subsequent trial and death.

Both of them betray the family they were born into – Atlas with his attack on the Rim in LB, Adrius with the triumph massacre in GS – as well as the Gold they are allied with to carry out said initial betrayal – Atlas decides to betray Atalantia by putting Lysander in the role of his savior of the Rim plan, and Adrius attempts to usurp Octavia.

Both of them stab their ostensible allies in the back after they achieve victory in a battle around Mars – Adrius orchestrated the Triumph massacre at the end of GS after Darrow’s Iron Rain, Atlas launched his attack on the Rim after Lysander took control of Phobos.

Both of them also exterminate all but a limited number of a major Gold house of The Conquering and pin the blame on another party before the deception is eventually exposed and the aggrieved party changes sides to fight alongside Darrow against The Society: The Boneriders massacre all of House Bellona except Cassius and Julia and pin the blame on Darrow, with the discovery of the truth being used to flip Cassius over to Darrow’s side in MS. The Ascomanni invasion of the Rim was painted as the work of an independent warlord with no ties to either Darrow or the Society, but Diomedes and Darrow expose his involvement and flip not only the the Rim but also the Volk to the Republic’s side.

Both of them are killed in the third book of their respective part of the Saga without Darrow ever facing either of them in a direct one-on-one fight (at least not on-page in Atlas’ case. Who knows what happened during the war pre-IG).

And on top of all that, both of their factions demonstrate such a deep degree of loyalty that they’re willing to carry out their orders even after they die – Lilath and the Boneriders keep going with the plans to clone Adrius and place The Abomination as emperor of Luna even a decade after death. Meanwhile the constant references in LB to how Atlas “may be mortal but his work is not”, and that he trusts his operatives so much that they operate in Ilium on a perfect coms blackout, makes it extremely likely that Atlas has prepared contingency plans for the Gorgons to follow in case of his own demise just like The Jackal did.

But Adrius was only focused on himself and his own desires and glory, doing everything he did for either survival or personal gain. Neither he nor his Boneriders had any cause beyond doing whatever the hell they wanted, while Atlas and the Gorgons had a cause and did everything they did because they genuinely believe in the preservation and restoration of The Society as an institution.

Meanwhile the most prominent of their followers – both of whom use the same “horde of locusts” imagery to scramble their hologram appearances on comms – make deviations from Atlas and Adrius’s plans because of their own personal biases. Lilath edited parts of the information about The Jackal given to the clone because the reality of Adrius’s life and upbringing didn’t fit her personal image of him. Meanwhile Vagnar spares Thalia despite Atlas’s orders because of his own attachment to Volga and desire for his granddaughter to love him.

But unlike Lilath, whose decision fundamentally altars the Abomination’s psychological development, Vagnar’s deviations have no serious impact on the larger goal. If not for Lysander deciding to keep her as a potential future marriage option, all Vagnar would’ve done was buy Thalia a few extra days or life with no impact on the Gorgons’ larger plans whatsoever.