#epic plots

[wheredostarsgowhenyoudie]

Fic where????? I love it

an irondad frozen au that is both not entirely thought out and incredibly thought out at the same time. buckle up. i have a lot to say about this.

the fight with thanos is much, much earlier in the timeline. tony doesn't die from the snap exactly, but he isn't the same. essentially, the stones embedded themselves in his hand. and sure it's weird, but thanos is gone and the world is safe, so it’s a small price to pay. regardless, tony’s seen first hand (no pun intended) how dangerous the stones can be, and is very cognizant of the fact that people may not find it comforting that iron man has the very stones that wiped half the population and nearly destroyed the world, so it’s decided that this new development will stay under wraps for a while.

and all tony really wants is to relax, maybe move out to a secluded cabin by a lake, but there are people who have lost their jobs, homes, family, and he feels partially responsible so, of course, stark industries helps however they can - including hiring a certain recently widowed and homeless nurse for their medbay, and offering her a place to stay while she tries to find someplace new for herself and her wide-eyed ten year old nephew, who is practically buzzing with excitement to be "living with mr. iron man stark sir!"

but the kid is smart, real smart. and tony - against his better judgement and newly bejeweled arm - takes a liking to him. with his aunt's permission, he takes him down to his lab and honestly, tony has never seen anyone so excited. one trip turns to two, then five, and before tony knows it, one peter parker has somehow wedged his way into tony's heart.

peter's full of surprises - the biggest being that once seeing the after effects of the war with thanos, peter's not scared. he's actually floored at how "awesome it is that iron man is magic now!"

so, lab nights became magic nights, too. peter was just so amazed by it, that tony felt like these stones could actually be used for good. they talked about ways the stones can be integrated into tony’s suits, how they could help so many people, how one day tony will build that cabin by the lake, and everyone will come, and they can create anything and everything.

and that was fine, really.

until peter got hurt.

now, tony's seen a lot of scary shit. but watching peter crumble to the ground unconscious and unresponsive, and a gray streak appearing in his hair where he was hit, that was definitely up there.

they rush him to strange, who is, thankfully, able to help. "help", meaning erasing all memories of the stones from peter's mind to keep him safe. they were lucky, apparently, that peter was hit in the head, rather than his heart.

tony won't risk it, though. not again. so, since that night, he's kept himself a safe distance from everyone he dared to care about - especially peter, a kid who almost died because of tony's carelessness.

peter didn't understand. but tony would rather live with peter broken hearted because of him than peter dead because of him.

but peter parker is relentlessly stubborn. and his hero shutting him out one day out of nowhere? that won't fly.

three years pass, and everyday, peter knocks on tony's door and talks to him. tony never responds (he wants to, really, he missed this kid) in hopes that one day, peter would just stop. he never does.

so, tony listens to all of it. he listens to him rant about how some kid with a stupid name keeps bugging him. he listens to him pridefully boasts about how he got a full-ride scholarship to midtown high which tony knows nothing about, and had absolutely no part in.

he listens to peter hold back tears as he tells tony how he had to bury his aunt. listen to him come to terms with how he is the one parker left, worry about where he was going to go now, quietly ask why wasn't tony there, up until he is reduced to hitched breaths and tears.

(tony sits against the door throughout all of it, wishing he could hug the kid on the other side.)

time goes on, peter stays in the tower until they can find him a family, and peter parker lives a lonely little life, wanting desperately to be wanted.

his life becomes decidedly less lonely after a certain gala to celebrate five years since tony stark saved the world with a single snap, as well as tony stark's first public appearance since. for peter, what really matters is that this marks the first time in what feels like forever that he's going to be around people that aren't pepper, rhodey, or happy. he has his first conversation with tony that lacks a door and involves actual responses, and it's awkward and weird, but peter can pretend he''s ten again, in tony's lab, and everything is okay.

he meets this man, quentin beck, who says he knew his parents, and cares about what peter has to say, and wants to adopt him. wants him. and his lonely little life seems to be growing into something full, and happy, and -

and tony says no.

which is rich, considering he does everything in his power to avoid peter. and peter, after years of being ignored, finally lets himself be angry. angry that tony shut him out - and the world out - with no reason why. angry that tony wasn't there when he had to bury may. angry that tony thinks he has a say in this, but he isn’t his dad,

and then, there’s a flash of something, a crumbling building, and tony stark, his fist glowing with infinity stones no one knew he wielded, watching guests cower in fright because of him. because he has the very things that almost destroyed the world, and he hid that.

and shit. peter knew this was his own, stupid fault.

tony disappears to god knows where, and despite many protests, peter sneaks out to find him. he doesn’t remember much from when he was younger, but he remembers a cabin and a lake. and that’s a start.

he asks beck to try his best to keep press away from the tower. he’s insistent that he will find tony, and even if tony was bothered by peter, he would never hurt him. he runs into a scary girl, mj, and her much-less-scary friend, ned, who decide to help him as long as peter can slip their resumes into the stark internship files. and, surely, you can imagine what will come next.

i could keep going, but this is probably long enough as it is. but… please. take this. write it. draw it. make something of it. ask me about it. i’ve yet to see this done and i am begging someone to take this silly irondad frozen au from my incapable hands and give it the life it deserves.

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[dootznbootz]

Sorry, not sorry but I see this too often and it bothers me :)

Before people get mad: Notice how I put “Me and Penelope fans” there? I know there's others. this ain't about you <3

edit: This is about how people in the fandom prioritize Odysseus and Telemachus (and even Diomedes, who is not in the Odyssey) despite the Odyssey also being HER story as well. I've seen many fics about Odysseus and Telemachus in their youth, and never really seen that for Penelope.

[kupidachillea]

I was bored

Images from Pinterest

[nondelphic]

note to self: stop adding more characters. you already have a cast of thousands.

[bambiilooza]

someone just told me (with a straight face) that they do not like modern adaptations of greek myths that change aspect of the story

they are an epic the musical fan

[quirkle2]

it's nice to feel childlike wonder again

[ptieuca]

buffy + angel's claddagh ring

[starry-bi-sky]

im on my hadestown bullshit again but im also still on my SVSSS bullshit too so au where Shen Yuan gets transmigrated into a nameless NPC sometime after Bingge merges the realms and becomes the demonic emperor over like, basically everyone. And Shen Yuan manages to become an immortal cultivator and has a few years to himself to explore the world he's in, conveniently avoiding Bingge the whole time. Until eventually Shen Yuan joins what is essentially a traveling theater group.

They all love the strange stories he tells, ones he claimed he learned from far away places, and eventually ask him to write one as a play so that they can share it with the world. He does one better and writes a musical and slightly xianxia-izes Hadestown so it fits with the times better.

Eventually they learn everything, the music is st up, their lines learned, and the group rents out some kind of low-class stage for a night in a town that's neither too big nor too small. One that Bingge is conveniently passing through.

The actor for Orpheus falls 'sick' the opening night, and Shen Yuan gets convinced into taking the role by his. He has the prettiest voice, and he knows Orpheus' lines and character the best! Shen Yuan agrees.

Bingge attends that night too, and sits in the far back, in a seat where nobody can see him that well.

There is nothing to prepare him for the Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Not the actor, who looks distressingly, uncannily similar to Shen Qingqiu, from the sharp curve of his jaw to the sound of his voice. It's Shen Yuan's saving grace that he has just enough differences that Bingge doesn't fly to his feet immediately.

Not the character Orpheus either. Who shares a distressingly similar worldview to the one Bingge once had a long, long time ago. A young man, a boy really, with so much hope for the world around him to near the point of naivety. Who believes that there is still good in the world and the people around him.

There's nothing to prepare him for Epic III. A song the lone Orpheus sings to convince Hades to let him and Eurydice go, one that rends Bingge of his flesh and leaves him feeling raw and wanting.

Suddenly he's no longer watching the stage; he's on it, standing in Hades' place, jaded and bitter and cold and reigning over all. Having become cruel like Shen Qingqiu once was. He stands in Hades' place, tall and imposing and powerful.

And there is a shadow of the past sitting at his feet. A boy in love with the world looking up at him, stripping him down to his soul, and asking him where he's been. Bingge stands in Hades' place, and just like that, becomes a man again.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

You know really thinking about it.

Telemachus is 20 years old.

Dude is definitely old enough to just be king.

Yet all of these Suitors are trying to marry his mom.

Also, how old is Odysseus?

Like Telemachus was just an infant when he left for war. And He was gone 20 years. For the sake of simplicity Odysseus must have been at LEAST 25 before the war.

He must be mid to late forties post time skip.

So to put that into perspective. all these Suitors are trying to bag a woman who (lets say Odysseus and her are close in age) is in her forties and likely past Child bearing age. So Marrying her would not produce an heir. So these guys would have zero claim to the throne, especially considering the fact that Telemachus is an adult. He would be the next king.

That being said, Good for Penelope being able to attract all of these men.

[that-greek-mythology-girl]

I'm very sensitive to minor characters in stories, I'm always mad when the author and readers treat them like random people who died or just another casualty, when no, those people had lives and dreams and hopes and I want to know them.

Like, in Epic, there's 600 Ithacans. We only know five. (Polites, Eurylochus, Elpenor, Perimedes and Odysseus himself.), in the Odyssey, we know of 3 others (Antiphus, Eurylus & Amphidamas.), they were 600, I WANT TO KNOW ALL OF THEM. I want to know if they were married, if they longed for their wives as much as Odysseus did, if they also had children they never met but wanted to, or sisters they wanted to see again, or mothers they longed to feel the embrace of. We only ever briefly know Eurylochus was married to Ctimene, but what else? And the trojan women? We know of the important ones, (Briseis, Andromache, Creusa, Hecuba, Laodice, Cassandra, Polyxena, etc..) but there must have been tons of women suffering there, who were they before the war? Did they have fathers, brothers, sons who died? Or were they enslaved with their mothers, sisters and daughters? Do they ever get to feel happy again? I hate in when a book goes: "The poets won't sing of this person" or "The Poets don't care about this person" LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER, I'M THE POET, I'LL SING, I CARE. LET ME EAT UP EVERY SINGLE STORY EVER. All to say I'm considering writting fanfics about either Odysseus' crewmen or the trojen women.

Would y'all read that?

[nice1cream]

And me? I'm the damn fool that opened the wind bag while you were asleep

[disabled-dean]

Changing channels 2.0 but Gabriel makes Cas the Bachelor and Dean is the P.A. having an excruciating awakening of homosexual lust

[animentality]

I forced my friend who hates epic fantasy to watch Lord of the Rings with me, and I mean that legitimately, like she literally said I'm not watching that, and I said while you're in my goddamn house, you're watching it. There's no negotiation.

Anyway, she spent the first half of the Two Towers bitching and complaining and saying everyone was boring and no one was pretty - she also called Aragorn mid, which honestly, to be honest, to be truthful, if I killed her, I'm pretty sure a judge and a jury would side with me for that one.

But I digress.

She spent the first half of the movie saying the movie sucked- and then she shut her goddamn mouth for the second half.

Because even the biggest epic fantasy haters in the world shut their whining mouths when they see the battle of helm's deep.

There is literally TOO MUCH cool shit happening for even the most normie of normies to hate on it.

Seriously. Elves showing up when the humans need them most, elven archers with the amazing long range volleys, orcs with ladders, orcs with HOOKS, bombing the wall down, Legolas riding down a shield as he shoots arrows, Aragorn throwing Gimli's ass at the bridge...

Gandalf arriving on his white horse with the Rohirrim to save the damn day...and yes, elsewhere, the Ents being awesome and fucking shit up...

Doesn't matter if you're a hater of all things epic fantasy.

This shit too fire for even you to resist the burn.

[transhawks]

this fandom doesn't get dabi tbh. Like outside of the aesthetic, if given half the chance, he would have become a workaholic to rival his dad. Like he'd complain about it more than Enji tho, but he'd still be out there working his ass off.

[artistdove]

Recently played Epic Mickey: Power of Illusions.

Salty Ozzy is just sidelined like bro doesn't even get an assist sketch. Anyways, bro must have gotten bored the whole time so he just interacts with all the other toons trapped in the castle