#for ethnic reference (if you want to assist)

[neoflorilegia]

are men not beefy anymore? i'm gathering pics for old school moodboards (this is my writing blog this is my party) and every single man on faceclaim directories is muscular but not beefy. this character EATS. this character LIFTS. he was raised on literal mountains and the first time the other main characters see him they're stunned by his vibes alone

he's also a cutie pie. he giggles.

[lamaery]

100 Portraits Training | Part 1 In autumn 2021 I started a series of practice portraits to get a better feel for different kinds of facial features. I wanted to get better at drawing people of colour of all kinds and variations and also at different variations of skin colours. My plan was to do a more fully rendered image from reference and then try to draw it a second time in a more simplified comic style to find the essences of what gave each face its own characteristics. The series didn't progress continuously (I hope to finally do 92 to 100 until the end of the year) and, as you will see, went very obviously through my reference folder for various Stormlight Archive characters :D This first page is still a vague starting point it features:

1) Brenda Myers-Powell from the documentary Dreamcatcher which follows her work of assisting sex-workers in Chicago

2) Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo in the role of Chrisjen Avasarala in The Expanse

3) East Asian female presenting model from a fashion photography on Behance…

4) The incredibly fashionable Billy Porter

5) A young woman that was interviewed for German documentary series in an episode about Uzbekistan. Sadly I could not find out retrospectively which ethnic group she is part of, since I could not find the episode online.

6) Chinese-American actress Ming-Na Wen as Melinda Quiaolian May from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

7) Kavinthida, a young woman from Thailand that appears in the series of portraits at the airport by Mustafa Çankaya, a photographer from Istanbul  (link to the series , Kavathinda is number 8) Also on the side I tried to collect links and articles that discuss representation of PoC in media in a broader scope. I might share some of these in case other people find them interesting, too. If you have any good sources, please add them in the comments, reblog or tags :D Hmm, let's start with this wonderful and extensive article about understanding how to light and paint darker skintones ------------------ Part 2 – Kaladin Part 3 & 4 – Adolin and Renarin Part 5 – Dalinar Part 6 & 7 – Shallan and Jasnah Part 8 & 9 - various people and skin tones Part 10 – a little bit for The Lopen Part 11 & 12 - Wit and Navani Part 13 - ofmd und Dev Patel :) Part 14 - more ofmd and Patel

[whimsylueur]

question- do you have a sp oc/self insert??

Up until I received this ask, no lol

But since I have been asked, I actually wanna make one. :)

I guess this counts as an ethnicity reveal too haha. Otherwise, he’s based (mostly) on my beloved bf.

Edit: this name felt right, I liked the word Tetany though so it remains incorporated.

Maruwehi = to inspire respect or dread, Te Tini = the many (taken from a saying “te tini me te mano” meaning the many and the thousands, referring obviously to his spiders), the pronunciation is identical to ‘tetany’ which is a condition similar to seizures that is the first condition of Maru’s spiders’ venom.

Maruwehi (pronounced ma [“mu” in mud] ru [“do” w/ rolled r] we [“whe” in where] hi [he as in he/him]) is a pretty cheeky guy with a big heart, he’s family oriented and would be homesick quite often while attending Corrival. Even so, he loves Ireland and took up good work as a gamekeeper, teaching mortals and sorcerers alike to hunt, soon after graduating.

He talks with plenty of slang and while he isn’t the most eloquent speaker he isn’t intimidated by (some) big words. Despite being a Child of the Spider, his appearance is charming and demeanour approachable. His name isn’t that frightening either. His father “Tūiri” is a different story, considered extremely dangerous by the NZ sanctuary and constantly maintains his gigantic spider form. Maru respects his father greatly and promises to take his discipline but isn’t keen to be apart of the temple.

He crosses paths with Arbiters Valkyrie Cain and Skulduggery Pleasant when some mages go missing in the hunting grounds Maru frequents, he assists in surveying the area and identifying some suspects after the mages turn up deceased. He can appreciate the detectives’ deadpan humour and simultaneous diligence when solving a case.

Abilities- Spider creation and control, they look similar to katipō (a species native to NZ) and have potent venom that is easily fatal. He doesn’t use them to hunt but he uses them to track and spy. He can’t quite achieve his entire spider form but he wants to before his surge takes place. His second favourite discipline is Elemental magic. Weaponry and combat, obviously being trained at Corrival made him a competent fighter, he has a great knowledge of guns too, preferring his reliable Henry rifle (modified for range) for work. Sigils have been incorporated into his puhoro (tattoo extending from his waist to his thighs) by his older brother, a Signum Linguist and tattoo artist, that simply allows Maru to be tracked by his family.

Hobbies- Muay Thai he enjoys above all martial arts taught back home and at Corrival, likes to compete when he’s got some time. Maru has played rugby since he could manage to run in a straight line and joined a club in Ireland, playing with his mortal and mage mates. Growing up, if he wasn’t at the temple he was in the bush hunting with his cousins and siblings on horseback, it’s no coincidence that it became his life’s work.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 63 – The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia

This was the last WFA finalist for best novella I was able to get at the library, so I will I suppose just have to accept that I am not going to have an informed opinion on the category. The book is, well – Jamnia’s only other work listed on Goodreads is “Positive Interactions with At-Risk Children: Enhancing Students' Wellbeing, Resilience, and Success”, and you can really kind of tell. Not a bad book – there really is a lot of good stuff here – but subtlety is just nonexistent. Though I suppose better a plot that telegraphs itself from a hundred miles away than one that feels like the author was coming up with it as they went.

The story takes place in a ‘free and democratic’ city state established after a successful war of independence from a struggling and unstable empire, and now a not-particularly-enthusiastic sanctuary to refugees from the rest of the empire. Firuz is one of those refugees, with the added issue of being a mostly-trained blood magic adept, the proximate reason why they and their family had to flee in the first place. Disguising the exact sort of magic they practice, they get work as an assistant healer to the one of (and soon the) only free clinics in the city, doing their bits to try and help the refugee populations through the plague ravaging the city. The meat of the plot is about their investigation of the source of a second strange disease that begins spreading among the refugee population a year after the first plague dies down – looks a lot like anemia, though the word’s never used – and how they try (and just totally fail) to balance their relationships and family against the good they do working in the clinic.

The book is just very earnest, and awkward, and trying to do altogether too many things at once for its length. Also the fantasy!Iranian refugees are called ‘Sassanians’. Which, like, come on. That’s literaly calling your fantasy!France ‘Gaul’.

The medical mystery was fun – strange diseases! Dissections and autopsies! Hiding the magic that’s the only hope you have of figuring out what’s happening! - but it was too strangled for space competing with family drama and a subplot of Firuz adapting and teaching another natural blood mage and just general ruminations to really shine. Which is to say there were exactly two named characters who could possibly be responsible, and it was almost instantly obvious which of them it was.

Which left the book needing to be carried on those interpersonal relationships and character dynamics. Which were like, fine? But every character basically had their key traits and the point of their arc announced on the page – the only character written with any real subtlety or layers was the eventually revealed villain.

The book’s very much queernorm – the protagonist is nonbinary and their kid brother is trans and spends about half the book lashing out as he struggles to cope with his dysphoria. Absolutely no one cares. The brother does get hatecrimed on account of being an ethnic minority and a refugee though, which I admit is a mindset about what bits of reality need to be softened I struggle to wrap my head around. More annoyingly (and, like, actually important at all) it is kind of disappointing that it cuts off any real worldbuilding about sexuality or gender; there are three major cultures in the book, and we go through the entire thing without learning anything much about any of their standards or expectations of femininity or masculinity. The brother’s dysphoria is portrayed as a purely physical ailment – you could replace it with some exotic variety of chronic pain and his role in the narrative would remain functionally unchanged.

Which just seems like a profoundly wasted opportunity to me – it’s fun that there’s one pronoun set that’s used exclusively to refer to the divine! But also I desperately want to know what the differences in cultural understanding between the usage of the two different neopronoun sets used to refer to random tertiary characters are, y’know? If you’re going to devote such a relatively big chunk of wordcount to this stuff then, like, dig into it.

Anyway yeah – as a debut effort, this is really very good. But I’m pretty surprised to see it on any best-of-year lists.

[brassandblue]

ALASTOR (the RADIO DEMON) // INTEREST TRACKER

MUSE STATUS: PRIMARY

(By liking this post, you are indicating interest in plotting with this character, and are OK with me sending memes/prompts to your inbox!)

NAME: Alastor

PSEUDONYM(S): The Radio Demon; Al

TITLE(S): Overlord

OCCUPATION: Sinner Demon/Demon Overlord/Radio Host/Whole Lotta Murder

SEX/GENDER/PRONOUNS: Male, he/him

SEXUALITY: Asexual

FACECLAIM: ---

AGE: Died in his 30s/40s

NATIONALITY/ETHNICITY: American/United States; mixed-race Creole

HEIGHT: 6'4"

BUILD/BODY TYPE: Tall, thin, wiry, broad shoulders

HAIR: Red (As a human: Black)

EYES: Red (As a human: Dark amber-gold)

PINTEREST BOARD

ALL ABOUT ALASTOR:

**Sources on Vodou, Louisiana Voodoo, Hoodoo and Conjure, can be found at the bottom of this post.**

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**WARNING: Hazbin Hotel's canonical material contains blood, gore, cannibalism, murder, suggestive and potentially sexually explicit content. Alastor's wiki and comic are to be viewed with discretion.**

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**NOTE #1:** (Written as of 01/26/2024) Most things I have pulled either from canonical instances or "word of God" (hah!) from Vivzie. Some things I have extrapolated, due to the (current) lack of content, and others I have inserted from my own bullshit. The rest is from research from a variety of cultural, religious, and heritage sources. I still try to stick to the core aspects of his character as seen in canon; and he is subject to change when more material becomes available on new episodes this coming January.

**NOTE #2:** To avoid misappropriating New Orleans Voodoo traditions, as well as hoodoo practices, I will be implementing a sound-based magic system to replace the use of veve. Essentially, the veve will NOT be used, and I will have him use musical notations instead. I cannot abide by cultural erasure, however, nor am I entitled to the use of symbols STILL used in religion and folk practices belonging to groups that have been enslaved, colonized, and oppressed. I want to acknowledge Alastor's Creole heritage without appropriating it and without perpetuating harmful depictions of the past.

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ALASTOR'S BACKGROUND:

Alastor is an Overlord in the Pride Ring of Hell and a notorious deal-making demon-- a former serial killer radio host on Earth in 1930s Louisiana. Once he'd died and arrived in Hell, it is said he suddenly began to wreak havoc, toppling other Sinner Demons (humans who have died and gained power in Hell) with terrifying abilities of reality and shadow manipulation. He became feared by the denizens of the Pride Ring after his massacre and broadcast of the carnage across all of Hell.

In the pilot, Alastor shows up to offer assistance to Charlie Morningstar (Lucifer's daughter/Princess of Hell) with her hotel project to rehabilitate Sinners and hopefully send them to Heaven, thus dealing with the overcrowding of formerly human Sinners in the Pride Ring. Alastor has made it clear, however, that he has no faith in this project working and believes that his fellow Sinners had their chance up on Earth.

His stated reason for wanting to assist Charlie is boredom: Specifically, he gets great enjoyment out of watching Sinners climb and climb, only to end in failure. He claims he's been bored for decades, and in the first episode of the series proper, it's revealed he has been "absent" from Hell for seven years. What he was doing, why, and where he actually was, are all still a mystery.

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PERSONALITY:

(From the Wiki, linked below. I'll write a proper bio soon enough.)

Alastor stands out from many of the more chaotic residents of hell for his well maintained amiable persona. He gives the first-impression of a good-natured and charming man, wearing a permanently wide grin on his face at all times. Alastor's behavior, mannerisms, and even his voice are similar to an old-fashioned radio announcer and speaks with a transatlantic accent, often using quaint anachronisms such as "the picture show" and refers to Charlie as a "charming demon belle". This playful dandyish exterior, however, obscures a much darker side to him - one with high levels of self-importance - and he will not hesitate to use physical violence when others don't act in line with his very particular values or expectations. Alastor is described as a man of duality. He values good manners, affability and intelligence very highly in others, and will actively look down on those who do not meet his standards, however he will often play fast and loose with these arbitrary rules in regards to himself and his own conduct. His smiling is also a show of power and dominance, and miserable people are seen by him as weak.[23] Alastor has an odd sense of morality, which is described as "not normal",[24] and has been noted to be quite sadistic, even cannibalistic, devouring lesser demons or those that have incurred his anger. Despite this, he keeps close friends with the other cannibals of Hell, including the denizens at the Cannibal Colony. He is noted to be narcissistic, not seeing many people quite up to his level. However, that does not make him reckless. Despite being extremely powerful, Alastor is aware that there are other demons and entities that rival him in terms of power, such as other Overlords. For this reason, he is wary around such demons, as they could potentially harm him if he is not careful.[25] Despite everything, Alastor does genuinely seem to want to help Charlie run the Happy Hotel, albeit for his own amusement and hopes for its failure over siding with her idealism. Alastor also dismisses the idea that redemption is possible as laughable, nevertheless, he fulfills his role as patron as promised, providing the hotel with staff, and protecting Charlie and her business from outside threats. He views the whole endeavor as a fun distraction from his decades of boredom.

POWERS/ABILITIES:

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(WIKI HERE)

(COMIC HERE)

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**Sources on Vodou, Louisiana Voodoo, Hoodoo and Conjure are below. This list is subject to change over time to be pruned/updated.**

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WEBPAGES/DISCUSSIONS:

"Is voodoo a closed practice?" Answered by a Priest of West African Vodou (Quora)

"Is voodoo a closed practice? If so, who is it open to?" Answered by a Haitian Vodou Initiated Practitioner (Reddit)

"Is hoodoo/voodoo closed?" General discussion (Reddit)

"Who can/can't practise hoodoo/voodoo ?" General discussion (Reddit)

"A Visual Guide to Vèvè: Vodou Symbols and Cosmograms" (VisitHaiti.com)

DIGITAL MEDIA:

Yronwode, Catherine. Hoodoo in Theory and Practice, An Introduction to African-American Rootwork. 2019(?) / (Lucky Mojo Curio Co.)

[Incomplete/Potentially Outdated Bibliography for the Above] via Wayback Machine

Louisiana Voodoo (Wikipedia)

Hoodoo [Spirituality] (Wikipedia)

African Disaspora Religions (Wikipedia)

Kennon, Alexandra. A Conversation with a High Priest of Vodou. 2021 (Country Roads Magazine)

Crone, Moira. Lives of Voodoo in New Orleans. 2012 (Country Roads Magazine)

Lee, Nadia. The Appropriation of Magic: How White People Demonised Voodoo. 2020. (Brizo Magazine)

https://visithaiti.com/haiti-up-close/haitian-vodou-gods-goddesses/

https://visithaiti.com/haiti-up-close/haitian-vodou-revealed/

PRINTED MEDIA:

Seven books on Haitian Vodou (VisitHaiti.com)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0872865746/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0872865746&linkCode=as2&tag=mawozo03-20&linkId=5b0b9aae316802e47b757f6928c4c121

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WARNINGS: RPing with this character may involve sensitive topics such as various world religions/religious beliefs, occultism, murder, s*rial murder, as well as topics on mental illness/depression/PTSD, sexuality/sexual themes, drug addiction/substance abuse, war/violence/gore/injuries, cannibalism.

By liking this post and indicating your interest to engage in RP with this character, you are accepting the above warnings and have read the rules posted here on this blog.

[vartouhix]

jjk verse profile

Name: Moon Jangmi Pronouns: She/her Age: 26 Ethnicity: Korean* Nationality: Japanese*

*Please see this headcanon post about it.

Occupation: Law school student, semi-grade 1 jujutsu sorcerer, teaching assistant at Jujutsu High Cursed Technique: Unrelenting Force. It's similar to telekinesis in that she can move objects through the air by exerting a pushing or pulling force. However, she can only push or pull in one direction at a time. In order to move objects in curved or diagonal paths, she must continuously perform her technique over and over, stopping and starting within a nanosecond, rather than a continuous stream of cursed energy. History: From elementary school to middle school, she was bullied heavily for being Zainichi Korean. As a result, she was quite timid when she first began as a student at Jujutsu High, in the same class as Nanami Kento and Haibara Yu. Upon graduating Jujutsu High, she enrolled at University of Tokyo, studying pre-law, as she wasn't sure whether she wanted to work in the sorcerer or non-sorcerer world. She still went on missions during this time, of course. After undergraduate studies, she went on to be accepted into Todai Law School, where she currently juggles her studies and work as a jujutsu sorcerer. She worked out a deal with Principal Yaga that would allow her to work as a teaching assistant at Jujutsu High in order to fulfill her law degree's volunteer hour requisite, the paperwork handled to make it look like she was volunteering with a private religious school. Appearance: Her faceclaim is Lee Sunmi, specifically when she had pink hair. You can check this artwork I commissioned to see an accurate representation of Jangmi dressed as she usually would be, and fighting with a cursed tool dagger. Clothing Style: Dark and light academia, as well as some cottagecore. You can check this post for more information. Voice: Hard to describe. Please check this post for more information and references. Languages: Japanese (native), Korean (near-native), English (fluent)

[i-myeoni-blogs]

Remembering Who I am!

How many of us talk about our ancestors' ethnicity? There may be a few people who are still connected to their roots, but the majority of us in generation Z are influenced primarily by western culture and fashion. Though it’s not bad but somehow, we’re losing our own authenticity. 

I am no exception; having been born and raised in a town, I shaped myself in accordance with the trends that emerged. When it comes to natives, I am a member of the "Santhal Tribe," an indigenous minority group.

There are over 100 tribes in India, and each one has its own clothing, food, festival, language, and rituals. But, due to school and other obligations, we were unable to visit our hometown as frequently as we would have liked. And perhaps this is why I know so little about my own tribe.

It was my cousin's brother's wedding—the only boy in our entire family tree, with only one brother to seven sisters. I was overjoyed, but no Indian function is complete without a hiccup, and so my exams fell on the same day as my brother's wedding.

I couldn't make it to the wedding, but I promised I wouldn't miss the authentic Santhali reception. Okay let’s not jump into the fact that I missed the ceremony. But visiting my hometown after almost a decade felt so relaxing.

Sagarbhanga is a small village located in the Jharkhand district of Sahebganj. Tribals can be found at every turn and are extremely friendly.

I don't want to brag, but my family home is the largest in the entire district, and it is referred to as "Bada Ghar" by the locals. Because of the village people's regard for us, they came to assist with the preparations. Women were involved in making decorations out of the palm leaves.

Oh, how beautiful their work was, and how natural everything was. Few men were painting on the walls, and they were tribal wall paintings with various creatures painted on them. It was absolutely lovely. The beauty of a tribe is that we live as one community and help each other unconditionally. 

I should be familiar with the local tongue they use, santhali, but alas, I am not able to communicate in it. We even have our own traditional clothing, known as "Panchi Parhat" for women and lungi or dhoti for men.

My sisters and I decided to dress in traditional attire for the ceremony. The dress was arranged, and a few locals assisted us in draping it. it was so pretty and easy to handle, light weight as it was made of cotton. My parents and other relatives were so happy to see us in our own traditional clothes. 

In the ceremony all the village people gathered and presented gifts to the bride and the groom. My brother is so lucky he got a lot of gifts and blessings, I can’t wait to have a ceremony of my own. 

It was time for food after the gift exchange. "The simpler, the better," is all I have to say. I'm sure the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word "marriage" is the food. Being Indian, we always want pulav, Manchurian, or paneer butter masala; it's just ingrained in our minds that it should be on the menu.

And I thought the same thing, but the taste of authentic simple food on a 'pattal' surprised me. Off-white perfectly cooked rice, dal, meat, and veggies, and that's it, all served on dried leaf plates. And, no offence, but all the dishes I've ever tasted in restaurants and hotels paled in comparison.

I know you're thinking it'll create a lot of trash, but pattals are biodegradable, so we dumped it in a large hole that was later covered by soil. "Khaane ke baad kuch meetha ho jaye," we say now that we've eaten. You won't be sorry, believe me. Aside from the usual sweets, there was one item that piqued my interest. Those yellow bead-like things called "Bundiya" just melted as soon as I took a spoonful of them.

Mesmerizing, a perfect way to round out the dish, but what I really missed was the authentic 'Dumbu' sweet from the tribe. It's made of rice flour, and the sweet dough is formed into many small balls before being steamed.

While I was eating the sweets, I overheard people discussing being a patient. Who got hurt, I wondered, until my mother explained that it was a ritual. A fun ritual in which the new bride pretends to be a doctor while the groom's sisters and relatives pretend to be injured by covering their legs and hands with mud and straws. And the bride is expected to treat them well (wash their hands and feet).

But the best part is yet to come: the bride tightly grips the patient's feet and demands fees (gifts), refusing to leave until you give her gift. That sounded like fun, so I tried it as well.

It was great to see the entire family enjoying themselves after such a long time apart.

What about the dance, though? The ground was cleared, chairs were moved, and music was played immediately after each ritual. I was expecting the barati dance, but it's an authentic wedding.

A few men who could play mandar gathered in the centre, and women formed a circle around them. It was a santhali folk dance, and it was a lot of fun. We danced until after midnight, which resulted in sore leg muscles next day.

Those were two lovely days spent in my hometown. I learned a lot about my own culture that I was unaware of because I had spent my entire life in a city. I enjoyed every minute I was there and hope to return soon. Yes, there is one thing I still regret: not learning my native language.

There is a misconception that tribal in Jharkhand live in jungles, wear leaves, and eat raw food. Well, the answer is already given; it is simply a misconception.

We as a tribe prefer to live close to nature, not in jungles, but in homes that only a few people know about, which is unfortunate. Remember that there is a distinction between being indigenous and being uncivilized.

And I've learned that it's important to know and respect your roots no matter where you live.

[mistypurplespark]

Chapter 49: Light Intellectual Conversation

Chapter 49.1: Light Intellectual Conversation

Translator(s): Zryuu

Editor(s): juurensha

“This little brother would like to ask all the brothers who are present here,” said Chen Xing with a smile, “who has a feud with the Tiele tribe? If anyone does, you may as well unsheathe your sword and come over. I’ll pay the debt with my life on my friend’s behalf.”

When everyone was asked like this, they couldn’t respond at all. The Tiele tribe that Xiang Shu belonged to had never slaughtered the Han. During the few times they entered the pass, all they did was assist Fu Jian in settling the internal disputes between the Hu people.

A scholar sneered. “The Hu have heads as small and sharp as a buck, and eyes as small and round as a rat. Also, vermin all work in concert with one another. It doesn’t matter if he is a Tiele, a Xiongnu, a Di, or a Xianbei. Those who have slaughtered our Han kin are all mortal enemies of our Great Jin, so what’s the difference? Isn’t a Tiele a Hu? Since he’s a Hu, what’s wrong with us taking revenge?”

Chen Xing thought, just now I clearly heard you guys praise Xiang Shu for being a gentleman as beautiful as jade, and now he’s a buck and a rat? Scholars truly are capricious. So he said sincerely, “According to what this worthy older brother had said, the Hu are people, and the Han are people too. If one wants to take revenge, then they could just kill them straight away. Why go through so much trouble like this?”

Once he spoke, some people who had remained in their seats couldn’t help laughing. That scholar was instantly enraged and refuted, “You’re being importunate! How are the two equal?”

“Of course it’s not equal.” Chen Xing thought about it, then answered, “According to me, since both the Hu and Han aren’t human, would

everyone still sit down to have a discussion?”

Xie Xuan couldn’t help saying, “What do you mean by that?”

“’Human’, is how the form is named,” Chen Xing said calmly. “’Hu’ and ‘Han’, are how the ethnicities are named. A ‘white horse’ is not a ‘horse’, and a ‘Hu human’ is not a ‘human’, it’s the same principle.”

Xiang Shu, “???”

The whole room roared with laughter. Xie An narrowed his eyes a little, understanding that Chen Xing was intending to follow their example and take the initiative in calling for a discussion. The meaning behind Chen Xing’s words was that ‘Hu’ and ‘Han’ were ethnicities, which were general terms referring to collective groups, so they could not concretely define the term ‘human’. This was the ability to use syntactic expletives, and the art of sophism, which evolved from the Warring State period’s Gongsun Long’s “A White Horse is not a Horse”. Jiangdong was a region that revered light, intellectual conversation, and everyone here had been familiar with this proposition long ago. Chen Xing’s move was no different from sending himself to their doorsteps to let them hang him up and hit him, so those who had gotten up to leave started sitting down one after another, intending to refute Chen Xing until he was dumbstruck and speechless.

“Hu people, are one type of Human,” another scholar said, “just like how Han people are a type of Human, like how streams are a subset of rivers, light  intellectual  conversation  isn’t  sophistry.  Little  brother,  this  is something we’ve all played with since a long time ago.”

But unexpectedly, Chen Xing diverted and asked, “Then I’d like to ask everyone, what is ‘human’? We should at least define what a ‘Human’ is before we can argue whether the Tiele people or Hu are humans or not, and whether they have feuds with everyone present.”

As soon as he said that, everyone fell silent. “Is a Hu human a human?” wasn’t a tough question to explain, but what defined ‘Human’ was an issue that very few people have seriously considered before.

At first, Xiang Shu guessed that the situation had no chance of being settled peacefully, so he was just waiting for someone to report him to the officials, and then he would rush out with Chen Xing. Although there were a lot of

people in the hall, they were all scholars and wouldn’t even be able to withstand one hit from him. In consideration for Xie An, he wouldn’t strike them down too hard. But who would have known that Chen Xing would be a gentleman who used his mouth and not his fists, and managed to stun everyone present with just a few sentences. From the looks of it, the situation didn’t seem too bad, but this Q&A session left Xiang Shu a little puzzled as well.

Wang Xizhi said with a smile, “Everyone present is human, is that a question that still needs to be asked?”

Chen Xing thought for a bit, then said, “From what I see, that’s not necessarily true. To know what you are, you must first specify what the definition of this ‘thing’ is, otherwise how can you use it to define yourself?”

“You’re right.” Xie Xuan was duped into the ditch by Chen Xing as well. Humans are the wisest of all creatures, this was a saying that had persisted since ancient times. But how can one give a clear and accurate definition of ‘human’? Even the former great sages would not be able to do so.

And thus, the hall remained quiet for a while before someone said, “Bodies seven chi long, hands and legs that differ from each other, hair on their heads, teeth in their mouths, able to stand and walk quickly -- that’s the definition of being ‘human’.”

That was an excerpt from “Liezi Huangdi”. Chen Xing retorted without even thinking, “Then what about those with bodies eight chi long? What about those with three chi bodies? Aren’t small people ‘human’?”

“Those born with two arms, two legs, and a head are human,” The scholar who had first clamoured about “reporting” Xiang Shu spoke.

“Then what about those who were born missing a limb?” Chen Xing said with a smile. “If anyone says that soldiers who have lost a limb on the battlefield aren’t human anymore, I’ll be the first to say ‘no’.”

Xie An said, “Those who are born with three yang and seven yin souls, no matter their form, are human.”

Xie An can be said to have pointed out the essence of being ‘human’ in metaphysics. Everyone seated were instantly enlightened and sighed in admiration. Yet Chen Xing said, “Then for a human, if their three yang and seven yin souls no longer exist, they won’t be ‘human’ anymore.”

Xiang Shu thought, isn’t that a given?

Xie An said, “They would just be a layer of skin then.” “We can take our revenge now,” someone said.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Chen Xing said. “Humans who have lost their three yang and seven yin souls, if I remember correctly, should be called ‘dead humans’, right? Then are dead humans, ‘human’?”

Everyone started scolding Chen Xing, but Chen Xing explained, “’Dead’, is a designated term. ‘Human’ is the name of the form. If ‘dead humans’ aren’t ‘human’, then ‘Hu humans’ shouldn’t be considered ‘human’ either.”

Everyone, “…………”

Xiang Shu: “…”

“How can the dead be the same as the Hu?” The Hans were quite dissatisfied with Chen Xing’s sophistry.

“Are you just trying to scold me in a roundabout manner?” Xiang Shu was quite dissatisfied with Chen Xing as well.

Chen Xing quickly said, “Then, let’s put it another way. Do cats and dogs have the three yang and seven yin souls?”

Xie An, “...”

Chen Xing said doubtfully, “If cats and dogs have souls, then can they be considered ‘human’? If they don’t, then who can prove that all creatures aside from humans don’t have souls?”

This time, Xie An had practically picked up a rock and smashed it onto his foot himself. Originally, if he had forcibly said that all creatures aside from

humans don’t have complete souls, it could sort of serve as a plausible explanation. But what about proving it? To prove that the only creature that possessed souls in this world were humans? To do so, one must first prove that no animal other than man had souls.

The theory of souls was still an unfounded one. If one tried to forcibly prove that there were none, not only would it not have the support of theories, but Chen Xing would also be able to suggest a ton of counter examples -- for example, the ‘Six Realms of Rebirth’, ‘Yin and Yang’, ‘Reincarnation’. After humans die in this life, they may reincarnate as animals in the next. That is to say, animals are the same as humans -- they have souls too.

Chen Xing added, “There are people who are born lacking a soul or two, but we can’t not treat them as humans, right? Let’s shelve that first. The legends say that there are fox yaos in the world who cultivate into humans and are no different from humans, except for a sliver of their beastly nature that they couldn’t be rid of. In that case, are yaos that turn into humans considered ‘human’? Why don’t people in the world regard yaos as humans then?”

Xie An decisively said, “That’s different. None of us have seen fox yaos after all, we can’t look into that.”

“In that case, no one has seen souls before either,” Chen Xing readily agreed. “So the talk about souls cannot be included in the discussion.”

“Yes, yes.” Everyone wiped their sweat away.

But after that, silence filled the hall again. After the topic made a detour back, they were even less able to answer Chen Xing’s question regarding the definition of ‘humans’.

“’Human’ is but a conventional reference,” Xie An pondered for a long time before saying. “How they are addressed depends on ourselves. There isn’t much meaning in bothering so much with a form of address.”

Chen Xing said, “But no one has ever told us how this form of address came about. Expressing one’s curiosity towards it, and for this little brother

here to want to discuss it properly and clearly with the Geges here is understandable.”

Xie An’s delaying tactics didn’t work. He scratched his back a few times and thought, what should I do now?

Xie Xuan said, “Then, Brother Tianchi, what do you think?” Chen Xing uttered in surprise, “It’s my turn again?”

Chen Xing dealt with the literati in the same way Xiang Shu dealt with martial artists, and he did so even more cleanly than Xiang Shu did. After all, Xiang Shu’s strength could rival a thousand troops, but he had to fight them off one by one. Chen Xing engaged in a duel of words with scholars and managed to get rid of a whole batch of them every time -- a classic group attack. Originally, Chen Xing had even prepared a bunch of “are immortal humans considered human?”, “if ‘immortals’ aren’t ‘human’, then why are they called ‘immortal humans’?” After resolving the problem regarding  ‘immortal  humans’,  there  were  still  ‘ancestors’,  ‘gods’, orangutans and monkeys who have their own sign language and can communicate through cries, parrots that can talk, and so on.

But unexpectedly, this group of people didn’t seem to be very strong, since they were ready to admit defeat so soon.

Chapter 49.2: Light Intellectual Conversation

Translator(s): Zryuu

Editor(s): juurensha

Xie An made a gesture, meaning to let Chen Xing speak. If Chen Xing wanted to prove his point of view, he needed to offer a strong argument to convince the masses.

“In my humble opinion.” After Chen Xing finished the last bit of tea in front of him, he said seriously, “Those who possess a Heart are human.”

All the scholars hissed in scorn, but after doing so, they suddenly fell silent again. No one was able to refute him.

Because the word “Heart” was a concept that was rather complicated to explain. Mencius once said,

“Fish is something I desire. Bear paw is also something I desire”, and cited the willingness to “sacrifice one’s life over principles” within as an example of Heart. However, according to what Chen Xing said, it was evident that the range this phrase encompassed was wider than what can be found in Confucianism.

“How would you explain the term ‘Heart’?” someone else said. “Are we going to start discussing that now? The wheel has come full circle, we’re just going around in circles, how...”

“No,” Chen Xing said. “The heart that distinguishes right from wrong, the resolution that remains unwavering in the face of outside pressure, a clear conscience not concealed behind selfish desires, an unfettered freedom, an innocent disposition that remains unswayed as it walks alone...”

After speaking up to this point, Chen Xing inadvertently glanced at Xiang Shu and realised that Xiang Shu had his attention focused on him from the start. When their gazes met for a brief moment, both of them looked away in awkwardness. Chen Xing almost forgot what he was about to say next.

“...En, so, it’s things like this that I can’t list out in detail right now. Everyone has read about it in books, so I won’t say more than what is necessary. It’s very difficult to outline clearly what ‘Heart’ means, but I believe everyone understands in your hearts, what ‘Heart’ is, that is, what is dictated by one’s Heart.”

“And thus, the problem arises,” Xie Xuan said. “So those who have lost their Heart can’t be considered human?”

“Of course.” Chen Xing smiled. From the corner of his eyes, he realised that Xiang Shu was still looking at him, so he could only pretend he hadn’t seen that. “When we castigate others for ‘being no different from animals’ or ‘you’re inhumane’, we shouldn’t have been saying that in jest, right?”

A young one from the Wang family spoke up, “So children who have not yet started schooling can’t be considered human? If that is so, I don’t agree.”

Chen Xing retorted with a question, “Who said children have no Heart? How would you explain the saying ‘simple and naive’? One’s Heart is like the bright lamp in one’s heart; what’s supposed to exist, will exist.”

“When  the  world  descends  into  chaos,”  someone  else  chimed  in, “oftentimes there will be parents who exchange their children for food, and there will be those who acknowledge bandits as their fathers, can you say they’re not human? From what I can see, it’s merely that there are some who are kind by nature, while there are others who are innately evil.”

Chen Xing continued, “Those who are born evil, I think, even if I didn’t mention it, everyone would’ve already not considered them human, right?”

“What if, after one loses their Heart, they give up on evil and return to being kind?” Another young Xie member asked.

Chen Xing, “If you guys can forgive this person, then of course, boundless is the sea of bitterness, yet a man who repents can still reach the shore nearby, so they can be considered human again. That’s the so-called

‘customary convention’, right? That’s the way of defining ‘human’ through ‘Heart’.”

“So, with a Heart as proof of being human, one would be able to recognise a human from a distance. My brother here, Shulü Kong, has always been able to clearly distinguish right from wrong and has upheld righteous principles. He has never killed innocent people, let alone bore any enmity towards the Han. Amongst the Hu, there are those who would wantonly kill the innocent in order to satisfy their cruel desires, but there are also those who are benevolent, who would save their country and people. Otherwise, why would he follow me all the way to Jiankang, just to suffer from your frigid irony and scorching satire?”

After making such a big round, at last Chen Xing returned to the main problem at hand. He smiled as he looked at Xiang Shu. At this moment, Xiang Shu finally stopped avoiding him, yet his expression now seemed a little complex.

Everyone’s hostility towards Xiang Shu had been washed away quite a bit. Plus, after being tugged here and there by Chen Xing, they all felt a little dizzy now and didn’t know what to say. After a long bout of awkwardness, it was the host, Xie An, who broke the silence with a cough.

“It is pretty late now,” Xie An said. “Why don’t we… continue this discussion another day?”

“Okay, okay.” Everyone wiped their sweat away. Seeing how calm and composed Chen Xing was while talking, if they gave him a table and a folding fan, they could probably continue talking until dawn of the next day, so they quickly dismounted their donkeys with the help of a slope and left one after another as the host thanked his guests.

Chen Xing quickly shot a glance at Xie An, signalling that he could wrap things up. Otherwise, after the guests left, they could snap out of their daze and come back in to continue their debate. He wouldn’t be able to ward them off then.

Xie An shot a glance back at Chen Xing, signalling for him to follow him to the study. Chen Xing glanced at Xiang Shu. Xiang Shu looked just like

usual. Chen Xing had expected him to praise him, but Xiang Shu just looked as indifferent as ever, so he asked with resentment, “How was it?”

“I’m sleepy from all your talking,” Xiang Shu answered. Chen Xing, “...”

In the study.

The words ‘thank goodness’ were evident on Xie An’s face. His gaze was fixed on Chen Xing, then he started loosening his robes and undressed. He took off his jade pendant and threw it aside. Dressed in only an unlined garment, he removed his shoes and socks before plopping down on the couch in the study, then picked up a pot and drank from it straight.

“Light intellectual conversation,” Xie An casually uttered. “The only thing they do all day is engage in light intellectual conversation, such a useless bunch!”

Chen Xing: “....”

“What are you in a daze for?” Xie An saw that Chen Xing and Xiang Shu were still standing in the study, so he said, “Sit ah! What do you want to eat for dinner? I’ll have them roast a pig and deliver it here?”

Chen Xing, “Uh...um...did I cause you trouble? Secretariat Xie?”

“Should be Secretariat Supervisor now.” Xie An cried bitterly, “Little Shidi, you’re really not easy to deal with. Never mind, let’s not mention that. How’s the situation? We have the time to properly talk about it now.”

Chen Xing held his forehead with one hand. “Lord Xie, uh, I thought about it really hard, but the two of us don’t seem to be fellow disciples.”

Xie An got up and said, “Last time I went to Mt. Hua and acknowledged Chivalrous Baili as my teacher, I made sufficient preparations after my return. Look, in all these years, I went around inquiring and was finally rewarded by the Heavens--”

Then Xie An turned around and pushed the shelf in the study to one side. With a "whoosh", shelves in a dark square appeared. The shelves were full of precious sabres and swords, bottles, jars, jade pendants, rings, and all 18 types of weapons could be found there. Chen Xing almost fainted at the sight.

Xiang Shu frowned. “What’s this?”

In all seriousness, Xie An replied, “After Baili Shifu exhorted me, these are the magical artifacts I exhausted all of my power in this lifetime to find for the Exorcists’ great undertaking.”

Chen Xing, “……………………”

Xie An motioned to Chen Xing. “Shidi, why don’t you come examine them?”

Chen Xing, “L...let me calm down for a bit.”

Xiang Shu walked over to the dark square shelves and picked up a halberd, scrutinising it.

Chen Xing said, “You should have mentioned this earlier! Why invite all those scholars over for tea and a ‘light intellectual discussion’? All it did was tire me out, couldn’t you have just brought us to the study for a proper talk?”

Xie An responded helplessly, “You don’t know this, but the descendents of the upper-class in Jiankang City now only play up to those in power. If I don’t hold a reception for you, who would know of your name? Now see, after all that has happened today, the Emperor will definitely summon you in a few days. Won;t your name then be spread far and wide by then on its own?”

“Lord Xie!” Someone outside informed, “Lord Wang is here.”

Xie An quickly threw his robes on, closed the cabinet, and after tidying up, looked like how he did before. “Come in.”

It was Wang Xizhi who had come, so Xie An smiled politely and nodded. “I’m having a nice chat with my little Shidi here.”

Wang Xizhi was holding a document in hand as he smiled. “Qingming festival will be held in a few days. I would like to invite little brother Tianchi and Brother Xie to Nanping Mountains for a spring hike. After writing this invitation, I thought that sending someone to deliver it would be too impolite, so I thought it would be better if I came down in person to express my sincerity.”

“Good, good,” Xie An said with a smile.

Chen Xing quickly saw Wang Xizhi off and closed the door to the study. Xie An removed his robes again and sat back down on the couch, asking, “Where were we?”

Xiang Shu, “To be so different in public and private, don’t you feel tired?”

“I am!” Xie An said in earnest. “But I can’t help it. The imperial court is filled with civil and martial officials who only know of effete language without substance and how to look pretty, so what else can I do?”

Chen Xing, “It shouldn’t be that bad?!”

Xie An pointed to the north. “Fu Jian’s about to cross Yangtze River. Everyone’s in danger now, what do you think?”

“That won’t happen so soon,” Chen Xing said. “He’s too busy with his own affairs… but Brother Xie, you...”

Chen Xing looked Xie An up and down before sitting down by the side as well. He explained, “So it’s like this...”

Chen Xing narrated the course of events in Chang’an and Chi Le Chuan. Xie An listened quietly, then nodded after he was done and sighed. “I actually didn’t get to witness such a scene!”

“You’re fortunate for not having had to witness it, okay?!” Chen Xing turned frantic. “If something like that happens in Jiankang, everything’s over!”

Xie An pondered over it, then seemed to make up his mind in the end. “Staying in Jiankang isn’t a good makeshift strategem. The day I received your letter, little Shidi, I was considering whether to just cut the hemp knot right away and be done with it. I’ll resign right now and follow you to...”

“Stop!” Chen Xing interrupted. “Don’t even think about it! Shixiong, you’re over forty! I don’t know what Shifu said to you. I’ll leave aside the problem of whether this body of yours can fight yaos, the key now is that silence has fallen on all magic, so it’s impossible to train as an exorcist!”

Xie An said sternly, “Can you let Shixiong see your Heart Lamp?”

Xiang Shu was speechless as he faced Xie An. Chen Xing could only light up his Heart Lamp. Xie An was instantly lost in a daze as he stared at Chen Xing’s hand and held his wrist.

“Lord Xie!” The housekeeper outside informed again, “Another guest has come who wants to visit...”

Chen Xing kept the Heart Lamp. Xie An immediately tidied himself up and opened the door. “Who is it?”

The housekeeper glanced at Chen Xing, then lowered his voice to whisper to Xie An.

Xie An amicably said, “I have no money, please ask him to go back.”

“Let me take another look?” After the housekeeper left, Xie An turned back to Chen Xing and asked in earnest.

Chen Xing, with no expression on his face, lit up the Heart Lamp again to let Xie An study it as he pleased.

“So this is magic,” Xie An exclaimed. “This is magic that can move mountains, fill seas, and switch out the day in secret!”

“I would also like to move mountains, fill seas, and switch out the day in secret,” Chen Xing said. “Why don’t you tell me, Shixiong, other than

finding water to drink in the middle of the night, what other use does this Heart Lamp have?”

“There must be,” Xie An said. “This is truly a miracle on earth!”

“Enough!” Chen Xing said, “Why don’t you come save the world from its demise and go eliminate Chiyou! I don’t even want to be an exorcist! Why do you want to be one so fervently...”

Xie An pulled Chen Xing over to see a shelf filled with his collection. “Slowly look over these first, see if what I found is of use. In the time to come, the two of us can study them slowly.”

Chen Xing faced the shelves full of books and ornaments. Most of them were useless antiques, but there were one or two that looked like magical artifacts, but it was just that Chen Xing couldn’t tell which era they came from.

Suddenly, he saw a bamboo slip. It was the slip missing from the Exorcism Department in Chang’an’s mirror world - even the way it was tied together was the same.

Chen Xing unfolded the slip, and saw the first column of words written on the left: Exorcise and kill yaos, Budong Rushan.

Translator's Comment:

Zryuu: SORRY FOR THE DELAY!! This chapter gave me nightmares-

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For More Info:-

eCommerce developer in Singapore

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[pgcestuff]

Thursday 23 Feb 23: (AM) PoPA Alert!!

(+ New Brief)

UCLan meet/ Review - Deep dive into Popas!

Trainees must use college email, stuff that can must be uploaded/ complete.

Try not to copy and paste sections from spec, subject audit is about getting personal, identifying strengths and weaknesses (to work on/ discuss with mentor). LOOPED info all the time.

Per Ob stuff, adaptive learning activity (include reference to any SEND students you have in tour class), starter activities... PLEASE UPLOAD this morning.

All feedback must be reflected on. All mentor Obs/ conversations must be reflected on/ Mentor feedback reports???

Wider Perspectives (tissues and issues) Ideas for poster and report... Let's get cracking. Think broad, then sharpen focus (note: reflect on the issues you discard in your PoPA).

Potential topics include (as suggested by UCLan as a starting point), but are not limited to: 

Educational reforms (policies) and social context (e.g., the skills agenda, STEM agenda, English and Maths, employability etc.).

The policy process (from the top down, from Westminster to the Classroom Assistant), hierarchal flow of power, knowledge and issues of control - e.g. the Ideological/ Repressive State Apparatus (Louis Althusser).

Mental health and wellbeing (escalation, challenges for students and teachers).

SEND  (how this directly links into 'adaptive learning' or recent Ofsted scrutiny in terms of the levels of support/ too many learner support staff are detracting from whole class progression).

Levelling up and the role of FE (a cause for social good/ education to feed the (shortfalls in) the labour market/ economy).

Quality assurance and compliance  (reviews, data management, surveillance measures, observations)

Equality (Equality and Diversity Duty, celebrating the identities (ethnicity, religion, gender status) of our students to promote an anti-racist, anti-disciminatory culture/ learning environment).

Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 

Funding  

Quality assurance  

Ofsted 

The history/context of the FE sector  

Safeguarding 

Education for sustainable development 

Decolonising the curriculum 

Public sector equality duty 

In terms of TEF above, it could simply be a matter of establishing/ reflecting on, where you are at?

... and where do you think we have or need to go (work towards) in relation to the issue?

What interests you/ what area of policy do you connect with or 'speaks to you' the most?

It MUST BE subject-specific.

How does it affect your PCK (strategies unique to you: why you do what you do...?)

What you know about subject content (I am a plumber) and how this links to then how your understanding of how you teach adapts or has changed (or recognising that perhaps it is always changing e.g. T&L as fluid, trial and error, grassroots, learner-orientated, link to lived experiences.

Light exercise (for your PoPA): Make a list of your unique PCK techniques across the timeframe you have taught... then you have snapshot of your own teacher Identity now (and can perhaps identify strategies you want to develop moving forwards).

POLICY 2) SUBJECT 3) PCK (Teacher Identity)

[phykios]

Five Times Percy Jackson Cheated At School (And One Time Someone Cheated Him) [read on ao3]

thank you as always to @darkmagyk for inspo and beta-ing 💙💙💙 and thank you to @arosnowflake for the homer idea!

1)

Percy squints at the paper prompt again, tilting his head, as if the new angle will extract some hidden information. It doesn’t change. The font is the special dyslexia-friendly one used by most departments at NRU, so he isn’t misreading it, either.

Your final will be an 8-10pp (TNR, 12pt, double-spaced) research paper expanding on one of the topics discussed in our class so far, or an alternate idea of your choosing, to be submitted in writing by May 7 with footnotes and bibliography. By 10am on the Wednesday before the Thursday class you will submit online a 750-word essay (word count does not include footnotes) on the research thread you have pursued that week (no written assignments due Week 6 or Week 12). 

Percy might hate college.

“Your neck bothering you again?” Annabeth asks, coming up behind him, her hands already on his shoulders. She’s sweaty, dressed in workout clothes, having just come back in from a jog. 

“My neck is fine,” he says. “Just preemptively freaking out over my Roman history final.”

He tilts his head back over the top of his chair, staring into the upside down, prettily frowning face of his girlfriend, and it does nothing to improve his mood.

“How bad is it?”

“Eight to ten pages,” Percy says, “not including footnotes.”

“Ouch.”

“And,” he grimaces, “it’s a topic of our choosing.”

Her mouth twists in sympathy. “Sucks.”

“Yep.”

“Anything I can do to help?” She squeezes his shoulders lightly, an open invitation. 

He shakes his head, stretching his arms back to grab her waist. “Promise not to break up with me when you catch me crying at 4AM over it.”

“Promise.” And she seals it with a kiss, bending down to reach him. “Dad wants to know if you’re free on the 16th.” 

“The 16th?” He wracks his brain. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t conflict with sailing, or Greek Club, or the monthly intra-pantheon relations council meeting that Chiron and Clarisse both guilted him into joining. “Pretty sure. Why?”

“Dinner--Charlotte’s out of town that weekend.”

“Sounds good.”

“Great, I’ll let him know. Now,” and she grins, “are you going to stare at that computer all day, or do you want to come and take a shower with me?”

Percy slams the computer shut. 

He doesn’t think about his paper topic for a while after that.

***

To his great dismay, Percy gets to her dad’s house first on the 16th. Drama in writing group 🙄 she texts him as he gets to the door, be there asap.

Great. Alone in the house with his girlfriend’s dad. Taking a deep breath, he knocks on the door. 

Not a minute later, Dr. Chase opens it. Last time they went to visit, Percy and Annabeth had ended up waiting outside for almost a quarter of an hour. “Oh, Percy,” he says, fumbling his flight helmet off his head. “Goodness, I thought I’d lost track of time again. Come in, come in.”

“Thanks,” Percy says, stepping inside and shedding his jacket. “Annabeth’s running late, but she said she’d be here soon.”

He frowns, looking so much like Annabeth that it throws Percy for several loops. “Well, that’s alright,” he says. “I’m sure we can entertain ourselves well enough until she gets here.”

“Yeah,” Percy chuckles, uneasy.

Several seconds pass. 

“Oh!” starts Dr. Chase. “Right, yes. Come in. Would you like something to drink?”

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t get much better.

A few minutes of staggered conversation later, it becomes eminently clear why they need Annabeth between them. It’s not the awkward small talk that doesn’t go anywhere (“How’s school going for you?” “It’s okay.” “Good, that’s good to hear.”) or the fact that Dr. Chase doesn’t really grasp how to relate to younger kids (“Have you heard of this website called ‘Vine’?”), but more that it’s just painfully obvious that the two of them don’t really know where they stand with each other. 

Now, he knows that Frederick Chase doesn’t hate him. Objectively, he’s aware of the fact that, if it weren’t for him, Annabeth never would have reconnected with her father in the first place, and he kind of owes him for that. Also, Percy knows that he’s a pretty chill guy--a little scatterbrained, but chill. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to make a good impression, though. Or that Dr. Chase thinks that Percy is smart enough for his daughter. Because, like, Percy isn’t smart enough for Annabeth--that much is obvious. Dr. Chase was courted by Athena. Percy barely made it out of high school calculus.

“Would you…” Dr. Chase hedges, plucking off his glasses and giving them a quick wipe with his shirtsleeve. “Would you like to see some of my current research?”

“Uh… sure. I’d love to.” 

At the very least, hopefully Dr. Chase will talk enough for the both of them, eating up time until Annabeth gets here.

A new spring in his step, Dr. Chase leads Percy to his study, where he’s got a setup worthy of Cabin Six: on his desk is a massive map of the Mediterranean, littered with miniatures of tanks, planes, and ships. Ringing the room are wall-hangings, depicting different types of planes, half of their structure in x-rays like people in an anatomy textbook, sandwiching the giant viking sword which hangs directly behind his chair. Every inch of floor space is occupied with a pile of books, some serving as additional desk space for mugs, notepads, spare toy soldiers, and, in one case, what looks like the leftovers of a handful of celestial bronze spearheads, melted down into shiny, useless nuggets. 

“You know I primarily study aviation,” Dr. Chase is saying, tidying up as he walks around the room, “but my colleagues and I are collaborating on an interdisciplinary re-evaluation of the entire North African theatre in World War II. It’s fascinating stuff; until very recently, they used to call it the ‘war without hate,’ given the lack of partisan roundups and, ah, ethnic clashes that you see in Europe--absolute garbage, of course. As if there weren’t civilians caught up in the fighting, too!” He chuckles, pleased at his own joke. Percy forces a laugh out of himself. “Anyway, with my prior experience studying the invasion of Sicily, I was brought on to assist in piecing the timeline together, working backwards from 1943.”

“Cool,” says Percy, filling the natural gap of conversation.

“Extremely! Operation Husky was a terrific endeavor of airborne, amphibious, and land-based combat.”

Percy nods. Amphibious? “Uh-huh.”

“Though, I must admit, I am having a little trouble retracing some of the ships.” Peering over his map, he leans down, fiddling with one of the ships. “You see this one here? The Palmer?”

Stepping up to the desk, Percy crouches down so the little toy ship is at eye level.

“Well, based on official records, the Palmer was supposed to have arrived at the rendezvous point at the same time as all the other ships, but ended up delayed by two days, and I can’t… quite…” He moves the ship again, frowning. “Figure out… why…” 

“Where were they sailing through?” Percy asks. 

Dr. Chase points to the map. “From Alexandria to Malta.” 

“They probably just hit a bad couple of currents,” Percy says, standing up. 

Tilting his head, Dr. Chase peers at him. “How do you mean?”

“If you’re going through the Cretan Passage, you’re going to hit all kinds of West-East currents which will push you backwards.” Snatching up a pencil from a nearby book stack, Percy lightly sketches on top of the map, tracing along the North African coast. “There are tons of overlapping currents in this area that push boats around in circles, especially around Sicily. That’s one of the reasons why so many historians figure that Homer was referring to the Strait of Messina when Odysseus goes through Scylla and Charybdis, here.” And he circles the strait, with a confident flourish.

When he pulls back, Dr. Chase is staring at him.

Percy blinks. “Um… sorry I drew on your map.”

“You--I have been trying to figure that out for weeks.”

He coughs, shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry.”

But Dr. Chase just laughs. “You can make it up to me by helping me with these next.” Clearing crumbs off of southern France, he bends over, pencil in hand. “So, say you were trying to get from Marseilles to Tunis…” 

Forty-five minutes later, still embroiled in battle recreations of the Mediterranean theatre, they don’t hear Annabeth letting herself in with her key, not even registering her presence until Dr. Chase, grasping for a notebook, spots her leaning against the doorway. “Don’t stop on my account.”

“Oh, Annabeth, dear! I’m sorry,” says Dr. Chase, going over to give her a hug. “We didn’t hear you come in.”

“I can see that,” she says. “What are you guys doing?”

“Percy here has been assisting me with naval movements,” he says, proudly.

Lacing her fingers with his, Annabeth steps over to Percy, studying their battle map. “Really?”

“Oh yes, he’s been phenomenally helpful.”

She kisses his cheek, pleased. “Look at you, Mr. ‘Phenomenally Helpful.’”

“It was pretty fun,” he admits, warm all over.

“I’d bet. Although, I guess this means we should probably order in for dinner…?”

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Dr. Chase smiles. “Yes, I suppose we should. Does pizza sound all right to you two?”

“Let me take care of it,” she says, slipping from Percy’s side. “You guys looked like you were in the middle of something. Extra olives, dad?”

“Don’t forget--”

“And anchovies, Percy, I know.” She rolls her eyes, taking out her phone.

Rather than the three of them move into the kitchen, Annabeth ends up bringing the pizza in with her, because of course she has opinions she’d like to share about the Allies’ naval movements. 

“You know, Percy,” says Dr. Chase, “I must say, you have a real knack for this kind of thing. Have you thought about what you might major in yet?”

Ah, the million drachmae question. “Not yet,” he says, fiddling with a pencil. “I figured I’d get through my gen eds first and then see which one I hated the least.” 

“I think you should consider majoring in history.”

Percy’s head snaps up. “History?”

“Specifically maritime history, I suppose. Your predisposition to sailing and ocean currents would be a huge asset to your research.”

“But--wouldn’t history have, like, a metric ton of required reading? I’m not really sure that’s my area.” He has a daughter with dyslexia and ADHD; surely he’d understand Percy’s hesitation.

But he just shakes his head. “Graduate programs these days are very favorable towards interdisciplinary methodology, I sincerely doubt you’d have to barricade yourself in the library. And recently there’s been a significant push to make the field more accessible to students with disabilities, including things like digitization, screen reading for people with vision impairments, and even restructuring programs all together so that students no longer have to memorize the Encyclopedia Britannica in order to pass their general exams.”

“That’s really nice of you to say, Dr. Chase,” Percy says, “But history class isn’t like talking over naval movements with you.” He thought back to the paper that had lowkey been haunting his dreams. “Like, in my classical history survey, I can’t just… talk about currents and battle plans. I have to come up with a topic on my own, and then write about that.” 

“Surely something involving Roman naval movements would be well within your skill set. You have a second sense about these things,” he chuckles, “clearly.”

Percy glances towards Annabeth, hoping she’ll back him up, but she looks thoughtful. Considering. Like she’s actually thinking about her dad’s proposal. “I can’t just choose something in naval history.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it's too easy?” 

If it was anything like his afternoon with Dr. Chase, it might even be fun. And school isn’t supposed to be fun. 

He repeats that thought to Annabeth as they drive home. “School isn’t supposed to be fun.” 

“No,” Annabeth agrees, “but I don’t know… I like my intro art history class way better than anything we ever did in high school because I actually care about it. Maybe if you write about stuff you’re good at, like my dad suggested, you’ll like it more.” 

The idea follows him all the way to bed, where he’s still mulling it over at 2 in the morning. Before he can chicken out, he grabs his phone, shooting off a quick email to his professor with his potential paper topic, then rolls over, eventually falling asleep.

By morning, he has a response. 

Sounds good! Looking forward to it.

***

With shaking hands, Percy calls his mom. “Yes?” 

“Hey mom.”

“Percy?” He hears her perk up, almost visualizing her sitting up in her chair. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Mom instincts. They can always tell when something is different. His heart throbs in his chest. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says, smiling stretching across his face. “It’s just--I got my paper back.” 

Percy had ended up writing his paper about the Roman navy movements in the Battle of the Aegates in 241 BC. It was probably the most fun he’s ever had on a school assignment, or at least the most fun he’d ever had writing a paper. 

“And?” She sounds expectant, hopeful. His mom has always had such faith in him, even with thirteen years of schooling to prove her otherwise. 

He looks back at his email, just to make sure he’s reading it right. “I got an A.”

She gasps. He can hear the scrape of the chair as she stands up. “Percy, that’s wonderful!” 

“Thank you.”

“An A!”

He smiles into his fist, inordinately pleased. “Thank you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I am so happy for you!”

“Thanks, mom.”

“I’m so proud of you, Percy.” Her voice is soft now, like twilights on the beach with blue marshmallows. “I know how hard you’ve worked for this. You should be very proud, too.”

“I am.” And he is, weirdly enough. “I just can’t believe it.”

“I can.” His mom must be grinning, her eyes sparkling. “I always knew you could do it.”

“Sally?” He hears in the background, muffled. “Is that Percy?”

“Paul, Percy got an A on his Roman history paper!”

A second voice crowds its way in, equally excited. “An A? That’s great, kiddo! Congratulations.”

Why can’t he stop smiling? “Thanks.”

“I bet that feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Well, it is very well-deserved,” says Paul. “That was some great work you did. I could tell how passionate you were about your topic just from your first sentence.”

“Thank you.” Maybe he should be worried about all this praise going to his head, but damn, is it nice. “Listen, I have to go get started on dinner, but I just wanted to give you a call.”

“Of course,” says his mom. “I want to hear from you more, okay? Tell me more good news! Like when are you and Annabeth going to--”

“I’m working on it, okay?” says Percy, smiling even more broadly. “I’ll keep you posted, promise.”

She laughs, tinny and happy. “You’d better. Congratulations again, sweetheart.”

“Thanks mom. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” 

And he hangs up, puts his phone down on the table, tilts his head back, and sighs, full, happy, a release. 

Maybe college won’t be so bad after all. 

2)

“You don’t have to do this,” Frank says, hushed. “All you have to do is walk away.”

Five Greek Fire bombs, cloudy yellow, are lined up on the table in front of him, neatly laid out in front of five twenties. From the side, Frank stares him down, surrounded by an army of morbidly curious Romans. Someone turned off the music and turned on the lights a while ago, stopping the party in its tracks, every eye on Percy and his opponent. Figures, his first college party all year and he causes a scene. 

Percy grips the edge of the table. “He insulted the Mets,” he says for the millionth time. “I can’t let that shit stand.”

Frank sighs. “Annabeth?” he asks, hoping to stop this nonsense.

Turning to his side, Percy sees his girlfriend, two drinks in, her cheeks lightly flushed, but solid as she stands beside him, supporting him. Her eyes are hard, fierce, the warrior gaze of Athena all but leaping out of her. “Do it,” she says. 

William, the sour-faced Roman legacy of Juventus, scowls. “A hundred bucks on the table. Sixty seconds. No throwing them back up.”

“Deal.”

“Frank,” Annabeth calls. “Start the clock.”

He sighs. “You guys are idiots.”

“Frank!”

“Okay, okay.” He holds out his phone, thumb primed, hovering over the screen. “On your marks, in three… two… one…” 

He hits zero, and Percy grabs a shot glass. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brings it to his lips, and throws it back.

It’s… not what he expected.

The tequila is awful--no getting around that. Even to Percy’s untrained taste buds, having really only ever had some of Gabe’s sour beer (under duress) and some of the Demeter cabin’s strawberry wine (on his eighteenth birthday, a celebration for actually getting to graduate high school), he can tell it’s cheap, rank, unrefined shit, like he’s drinking straight toilet cleaner. But the garum, the weird Roman condiment that the shot is mixed with, the one that Percy had never heard of before, it’s… it almost tastes like the fish sauce that comes with the pork and rice noodles from the Vietnamese place down the corner of his mom’s apartment, only less… fishy? Yeah. Less fishy.

It’s a weird taste. It’s not bad, by any means, it just--straight up, it just tastes like saltwater. Like the sea. 

And, well. Percy can handle the sea.

He looks at William, and grins. “You are so fucked.”

The assembled Romans cheer, spectators at a gladiator show, as Percy knocks back the rest of the Greek Fire bombs, one after another, clearing them all in under thirty seconds. Annabeth swipes up the cash, shrieking as she throws her arms around Percy. William wanders off, red-faced and glaring, as whoever turned the music off before flips it back on, the night, and the party, saved.

Silly Percy. He should have known what was coming next.

Thirty minutes later, he is well and truly wasted.

“You’re, like, really pretty,” he shouts at Annabeth over the loud music.

She snorts, grinning at him. “Thanks.”

“Seriously,” he slurs, tipping forward on his feet. “You could be a model.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Remember when we were fourteen,” he yells, bracing himself against the wall, “and you got kidnapped by that monster?” Slightly soberer but still a little flushed, she bites her lip, nodding. “Well, I followed the rescue party--I told you that, that I snuck out of camp to follow the rescue party? Right?” 

“You did.”

He takes a sip of water, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Feels goofy as fuck. “We got hijacked by Aphrodite halfway through, and when I saw her, I thought--I thought, ‘Holy shit, she looks a little like Annabeth.’”

Her brows shoot up, smile pulling at her lips. “Really?”

He nods. “Totally! But you’re way, way p--” 

Still smiling, she silences him with a kiss, the lingering taste of hard cider on her tongue. “I appreciate it,” she murmurs, grinning, “but you probably shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“Gross.”

From out of nowhere, like he always does, the weasley little shit, Nico di Angelo is suddenly in their space, looking surly and emo as ever, red solo cup in his left hand. “Nico!” Percy crows, grabbing for him and missing. “How’s my favorite cousin?!”

Ducking his wildly swinging limbs, Nico grimaces in the way that Percy has to come to recognize as his attempt at a smile. “Better’n you,” he says, a little wobbly. “What’s up with him?” he directs towards Annabeth.

“Greek Fire bombs. Five.”

“You’re a psychopath.”

“What!” Percy pouts. “He insulted the Mets.”

“Aren’t you s’posed to be, like…” Nico snaps his fingers, words momentarily escaping him. “A--representation… person? For the Greeks?”

Percy waves his hand, hitting the wall. “Fuck that. The Greeks can handle themselves. The Mets are sacred!”

“Are you with anyone?” Annabeth asks, momentarily taking up Percy’s usual role of concerned parent friend while he is drunk off his ass. Theoi, he loves this girl so much. 

Nico shakes his head. “No, but Will and I are staying with--”

A thought suddenly blooms in Percy’s tequila-soaked brain. “Nico!” He shouts.

“What?” he hisses, glaring.

Percy pushes himself off of the wall, outstretched arms managing to box Nico in, falling on his shoulders and trapping him. He’s still a short, skinny little shit, the fuck, when are his Big Three genes going to kick in? “I need to talk to you about the thing.”

“The what?”

“The thing! The--the,” then he leans in, scream-whispering over the pounding bassline. “The thing.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“You know, it’s…” Percy licks his lips, language escaping him for a hot second. “Round. Metal. Jewelry thing.”

A beat, then Nico’s eyes widen. “Oh, that thing.”

“Yes, that thing!” Pulling back, he pulls Nico towards him, slinging an arm over his shoulders in a half-headlock. Annabeth watches, bemused, lips pursed as she tries not to smile. “I need to borrow Nico for a sec,” he says, words spilling out of him. “Back soon. Later. Soon.”

Her eyes crinkle, grey sparkling. She’s so fucking pretty. “Drink your water.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Then together, like some three-legged beast, the two boys lurch away deeper into the party, Nico leading them towards the kitchen. “Where’re you taking me?” Percy slurs. “‘M I being kidnapped again?”

“If I’m helping you plan out this stupid proposal,” he grumbles, pouring himself more vodka, “then I need to be less sober.”

***

Some mistakes may have been made.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Percy mumbles, looking back towards the house. The party is still raging, someone’s muffled Spotify playlist making a real racket, the greatest hits of ABBA still bouncing around his skull.

“Simp.” Nico, swaying a little, tries to stand up from his kneeling position, only to fall heavily back down on his knees. “She’s right where you left her.”

Discussing Percy's proposal plan had led to more drinking. More drinking had led to the two of them discussing their shared preference for blondes. (“Malcolm is pretty cute,” Nico admitted, flushing, and Percy almost screamed, “Isn’t he?! Sometimes I think about Annabeth with short hair looking like Malcolm and I almost start crying because she’d be so cute!”) Which then led to even more drinking. Which then led to general bitching about their lives, about Percy's hard-ass classics professor Dr. Bauer who he actually really liked but just pushed him so hard and expected so much of him, and Nico's half-brother Zagreus who was causing some family drama by picking fights with Hades all the time and also hooking up with both Thanatos AND the fury Megaera, which, ew, which then led to Percy inhaling his drink, nearly choking to death on unspecified college punch, Nico laughing at him all the while, as he had the most incredible idea.

"Nico!" He shouted, crushing the red solo cup. "Can you resurrect Homer for me?"

Nico gaped, staring. "What."

"Seriously! I need to ask him something for my paper."

"Percy." Nico gazed at him, all the power of the Ghost King boring into his soul, deep and haunting. Percy stifled a burp. "You're a fucking genius."

Which is how they found themselves around a shallow hole they had dug in the backyard, a large bottle of Pepsi originally intended as a mixer pilfered from the kitchen along with two slices of pepperoni pizza dumped on the grass beside them.

"Maybe we shouldn't do this," he says, uneasy even through his drunken haze.

"It was your idea!"

"I don't have good ideas."

“Fuck you, I’m doing it.” With all the force of a tiny, angry kitten, he snatches up the Pepsi bottle, wrestling with the twist cap for a good ten seconds. “I wanna give that bitch a piece of my mind for making me cry in school.”

Percy looks at him sideways. “Hector killing Patroclus got you, too?”

He snorts. “Fuck no. Achilles didn’t pay his dues to the dead.”

“Seriously?”

The cap pops off, and Nico tips the bottle over, dumping flat, lukewarm soda into the shallow hole. “It’s the ultimate dishonor!”

Freak. Percy would die for the kid.

“Let the dead taste again,” Nico mutters. “Let them rise and take this offering. Let them remember.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Says the guy who’s related to both horses and water.”

“I’m not related to water, I just control it.” 

The dirt turns black, dead soil mixed with sticky sugar water. Nico drops in the pizza, and begins to chant, that same ancient Greek that Percy heard in a dream once, talking of death and memories and returning from the grave or whatever. It’s still creepy as shit. 

Despite the warm California night, the air thickens with chilly fog. Silence, impenetrable, surrounds them, blocking out the noises of the party. From the earth, blueish, vaguely person-shaped figures begin to form, like thunderous clouds before a storm. “Which one is Homer?” he asks, hushed.

“Shh!” Nico hisses. 

Like little wells of gravity, the fog begins to coalesce. On one of them, Percy can almost make out, like, fingers. “Um, Mr. Homer? Sir?”

The figure doesn’t say anything. It lowers its mouth, drinking the soda out of the dirt. When it raises its head, Percy can see it more clearly, curly hair and milky white eyes and a straight nose. It--he?--seems a little more solid than your average run-of-the-mill ghost.

Nico frowns, eyes closed, concentrating. “What’s your name?” he mumbles. 

That mouth opens, soundlessly, jaw working on nothing.

“Speak.”

It--there’s a sound, like hissing, only it’s not coming from the mouth, Percy thinks. It sounds like it’s coming from the earth. “Nico?” he asks. “You good?”

The ghost opens its mouth again, moaning, raising its hands. Weakly, unsteadily, it stumbles forward on feeble legs, tripping over the shallow hole in the dirt.

“Nico?” he asks again, a little more forcefully. “What’s going on, dude?”

Nico blinks, slowly, mouth hanging open a little. “Uh.”

The… thing… raises itself up on its hands? He guesses, and knees, crawling its way over towards them.

Now, Percy may be drunk off his ass, but he has seen enough movies to know exactly what the fuck is up.

Moving with a speed he didn’t quite think was possible right about now, he grabs Nico’s wrist, and pulls him up, dragging him along as he lurches towards the house. “Percy…” Nico moans, stumbling over a rock. “I think I fucked up.”

“You think?” Percy wrenches the door open, tossing Nico inside, before following in after, throwing himself against the door. 

Nico groans, throwing his arms over his face. “Dio santo, my head.”

“Forget your head,” he says, “did we just raise a Homer zombie?!”

Panting, Nico stares up at him, sprawled on the floor of the house. “Oops.”

Percy thunks his head against the door. He does not have nearly enough mental capacity to deal with this right now.

But, he thinks ruefully, at least it’s just one. Even drunk, he’s pretty sure he can handle one zombie.

Nico’s eyes widen. 

Percy stares. “What.”

“I didn’t stop the ritual.”

His stomach goes cold.

Turning around slowly, he pulls aside the little curtain on the window. “What?” Nico asks. “What do you see?”

Percy can’t speak, mouth dry.

Slithering up behind, Nico peers over his shoulder. “That’s… not great.”

“Nico,” Percy says, eyeing the horde which slowly shambles closer, half-decayed bodies in togas bumping into each other, almost identical to the drunk college students inside, as the song changes, once again, to ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).’ “Please go get Frank and Annabeth.”

The following Monday, an announcement is sent out to the entire campus: Per new department guidelines, students may not utilize the ambassador of Pluto to interview the dead for academic purposes.

3)

Percy attempts to flatten his hair. He readjusts his shirt. He almost wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, before he realizes what he’s doing, and clenches them instead, nails digging into his palms. He turns to Annabeth. “Do I look okay?”

“Ooh, ‘Mapping Funerary Monuments in the Periphery of Imperial Rome.’”

“Annabeth.”

She looks up from her brochure. “Relax, seaweed brain, you look fine. You look better than most people here.”

“That’s because I bring down the average age of presenters by about thirty years,” he hisses, eyes darting about at the milling mass of attendees, all packed into the hotel ballroom. 

Dr. Bauer had alternately convinced/pressured/guilttripped him into attending this year’s annual conference for the Society of Classical Studies to talk about the research he’d been doing with her. This year, the conference was held in San Francisco, so at the very least Percy didn’t have to spend five hours stressing about his poster presentation while simultaneously up in the air. But now that he’s here, in the ballroom, surrounded by strangers who know way more about this subject than he does, who are actually smart and probably never nearly flunked out of school or got kicked out or--

“Hey.” Annabeth takes his hand. “I know that look. You deserve to be here just as much as any of them.”

“Do I? I feel like any moment someone is going to come over and throw me out for trespassing.” He vaguely recalls something similar happening to him as a kid after he had ducked into the lobby of a semi-nice hotel to dodge what he had thought, at the time, was just a weird stalker, but had later realized had only had one eye. In any case, the hotel security guard had practically picked him up by the scruff of his neck, tossing him back out into the street. 

“That’s just your imposter syndrome talking,” she reassures him. “No one is going to throw you out.”

He sure as shit hopes so. It would be a shame to have done all this work for nothing. 

Glancing back at his poster, Percy can’t help but feel… good. Accomplished. Proud. About a school assignment, of all things. 

His poster traces the development of the prow from the Greek penteconter, to the Roman liburna, and finally to the Byzantine dromon, looking at artistic depictions in history. Percy had picked the topic himself, spending hours in the library reading, writing, and hand-drawing cross-sections of the ships on the poster board when the images he had gotten from the Cambridge University library had been too small. It had been grueling, frustrating work, but fun, too. And not nearly as much reading as he had feared.

Dr. Chase proofread it for him. Dr. Bauer signed off on it. And Annabeth had taken one look at it, smiled, then kissed his cheek.

That was the best compliment he had gotten.

Though now he’s kind of torn between showing it off and hiding it away before one of these attendees figures out that he doesn’t belong.

He rocks back and forth and his feet, pursing his lips, randomly clicking his tongue. Annabeth nudges him. “Your ADHD is showing.”

That’s when, finally, one of the attendees steps up to his poster. He certainly has the look of a professor, in a black cable knit sweater with grey, curly hair and a receding hairline, thin, rimless glasses perched on his nose. He squints at Percy’s poster, rubbing his chin with one hand. “Interesting,” he murmurs, in a thick German accent. “Very interesting. This is yours?”

“Um.” He glances at Annabeth, who is frowning at the brochure, silently sounding out words that she can’t read. “Yep. All mine.”

“Very interesting.” He leans in closer, tilting his head. “So you agree with Pryor and Jeffreys about the skeleton-first construction, then?”

Percy blinks. Pryor and Jeffreys had written The Age of the Dromon, arguing that the ram, which had been a key feature of Roman liburnians, had gone away in ancient ship construction because of developments in how they built the hull. Right. “Yes,” he says. “The skeleton-first construction is a lot stronger than the, um,” shit, what was the name for this, Leo had only told him about a million times--oh! “Mortise-and-tenon!” He nearly shrieks. “The mortise-and-tenon method. It, um, it wears out a lot more quickly than the frame, so… yeah.” He clears his throat.

He nods. “Very interesting.” 

Percy stares. Can this guy say anything else? 

“This is very well done, young man.”

Oh. “Thank you,” he says. 

“Who are you working with?” 

“Um, June Bauer?” He winces at the accidental question. 

He frowns. “I’m not familiar with her work. Where does she teach?” 

What a loaded question. “Uh… New Rome University.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s--she used to teach at Northwestern, if that helps. Um, retired,” Percy says.

The frown stays, but at least he doesn’t ask any more questions. “Hmm. Well, this is excellent research, nonetheless. I look forward to reading your dissertation.” Then, distracted by something else, he wanders off, chin still attached to his hand. 

“Who was that?” Annabeth asks. 

Percy shrugs. “Beats me. Also, what’s a dissertation?”

“It’s like a senior thesis, but, like, five hundred pages long.”

Five hundred?! “Fuck me.” 

“Maybe later,” Annabeth smirks. “It looks like you’ve got company.”

Sure enough, a smallish group of four people are approaching, led by Dr. Chase, making a beeline straight for them. “Here we are,” Dr. Chase says, gesturing. “This is the project I was telling you about. Percy, would you mind going over your poster for us?”

“No problem, Dr. C,” says Percy, smiling his least-grimace-y smile. 

As one, the adults all turn to look at him, faces politely blank, expectant.

Percy swallows. “So,��� he begins, “um, this research is about the development of ship construction in the Roman empire…”

He trips up on some of the words, and at one point, he sees Dr. Chase squint in the way that usually means that Percy is speaking too fast, but all in all, he doesn’t totally fall flat on his face. His audience looks engaged, nodding along as Percy moves from point to point, and no one accuses him of being a giant fraud, which is pretty nice. 

At one point, Percy turns to the poster to indicate a specific point on his ship diagrams. When he turns back, his audience has suddenly multiplied, four people turning into a whole goddamn crowd. Each person gives him their undivided attention almost unblinking.

His mouth goes dry. “Um…” 

Dr. Chase, bless him, saves his ass once again. “Would mind starting again from the beginning, Percy?” he asks, a little bemused himself at the amount of people that had suddenly appeared. 

Silence stretches on for a moment, the muffled noise of the rest of the conference like a dull roar in his ear. 

Annabeth, behind him, coughs. 

“S-sure. No problem.” 

Swallowing, he closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose. Why, oh why did he let Dr. Bauer talk him into doing this again?

He pictures the tides of Long Island Sound, gentle and rocking, unhurried and unbothered, tries to match his breathing to them. When he opens his eyes, unfortunately, the crowd hasn’t disappeared. Everyone is still staring at him. 

But Annabeth stands next to her dad, flashing him a big smile and two huge thumbs up.

Percy relaxes. He’s got this.

“Okay,” he says. “So, about the middle of the first millennium CE, ship construction went through a couple of major developments…”

This time goes much, much more smoothly. He’s not sure what it is--though it’s probably Annabeth, her face fixed in a gentle smile as she watches him speak. Gods, what did he do in a past life to deserve someone as amazing as his girlfriend? 

That’s the only reason he can do this. Hell, that’s the only reason he even thought to do this. If he didn’t have Annabeth there, encouraging him, cheering him on, he never would have had the confidence to put himself out there like this. She’s there to pick him up when he doubts himself, there to listen when he can’t explain himself, there to give him feedback when he needs to practice. 

She makes him feel so strong. She makes him feel like he can take on the world--or at the very least, that he can impress a handful of academics.

And they certainly seem impressed with his talk so far. 

“Excuse me,” says a nasally, pinched looking older British guy, face lined as though he lived his life in a state of perpetual squinting. “I find your conclusions to be suspect--wouldn’t the frame method be more susceptible to breaking than the mortise-and-tenon?”

Well, most of them, anyway.

Percy shakes his head. “You’d think, but no. If you look at the study by Steffy, you’ll see that the three-finned ram from the Athlit wreck was designed specifically to break the mortise-and-tenon hull by causing the planks to flex, so that they’d dislodge the joinerys right next to them. A blow like that can cause the wood to split right down the middle.” A blow like that had sunk Sherman Yang’s ship when they tested it out on the lake at camp last summer, the naiads practically hurling him out of the water so quickly Percy didn’t even have to dive in to save him.

“How were you able to do these strength tests?” asks another listener, an older woman with a thick Hungarian accent.

“Hands-on battle simulations,” Percy replies, easily. “We took our models and tested them in as accurate a simulation as we could make.”

“And how big were these models?” 

Percy holds his hands apart, a vague, entirely inaccurate estimate. “About thirty meters, give or take.”

Her eyes widen. “How on earth did you get your hands on such a large ship?”

Percy freezes. “Uh.”

Oh, shit.

He had forgotten--most people didn’t have dads who could summon shipwrecks from the bottom of the sea, dropping them off at Camp Half-Blood with nothing but a sand dollar and one or two exhausted, pissed off hippocampi who had had to drag them all the way there.

“Um,” he stammers, licking his lips, thinking fast--c’mon, Percy, think! “I…” He swallows, panicking. “I… b… built one.”

In the corner of his eye, Annabeth facepalms.

Simultaneously, every mouth in the crowd drops--in shock, outrage, and even excitement. “You built one?!” the woman yelps. 

Oops. “I had help,” Percy says, quickly. 

Annabeth adds a second hand to her facepalm.

“Where?” The first man asks, his bushy brows flying above the rim of his glasses.

“At my… summer camp…” 

Dr. Chase sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I mean,” Percy chuckles, shrugging his shoulders, trying not to sweat too obviously, “it was either that or lanyards, am I right?”

Dr. Chase, thank Athena, raises his hand, ready to step in. “What Percy means to say, I believe,” he says, attempting to draw their attention, “is that--”

“That’s amazing!” says another woman, probably a grad student attendee based on the fact that she’s wearing jeans. “Do you have pictures?”

Oh this is not good. “Um, not--not on me, but--”

“I do.” Annabeth takes out her phone, holding it up to the person next to her.

Percy blinks. “You do?” He doesn’t remember her taking any pictures.

She shoots him a look, two parts exasperated and one part “shut up and let me handle this,” with just a dash of fondness in the mix. Pointedly, she looks at him, eyebrows raised, indicating that he should continue.

Oh. She’s using Mist. And he needs to keep their attention on him so that they buy it. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Any more questions?” 

His audience placated for now, passing around Annabeth’s phone, he manages to finish up his presentation. After fielding a few more questions, people start to peel off, distracted by other posters and presenters in the ballroom. When everyone has finally wandered away, Dr. Chase comes up and pats Percy’s shoulder awkwardly. “Nice work,” he says, and he seems like he means it. “A little touch-and-go there for a while, hm?”

“A little.”

He chuckles. “Still, you should be proud. I don’t know how many undergraduates would be able to handle that kind of pressure.”

“I mean,” Percy says, shrugging a shoulder, “it’s about on par with leading an army. Maybe a little less.” Honestly, maybe even a little more stressful. If a monster had decided to attack the convention center and interrupt his presentation, he probably would have been relieved.

He’d been worried for a moment that he’d undone all those years of work in making Annabeth’s dad like him. And that he’d be charged with some sort of academic fraud, for the whole “I have a boat” thing without proof. Thank the gods for Annabeth, as always.

She’s looking at him now through narrowed eyes. She at least can’t be surprised--that was far from the dumbest thing she’s ever seen him do. At least his “I spent most of my time at magic greek mythology summer camp” covers are normally better than hers. As someone who spent his formative years in the real world, he’s usually pretty good at keeping the demigod thing under wraps. 

“Come on,” she says, grabbing his hand. She pulls him off, through the dispersing crowd, lacing their fingers together, sweet and intimate, out of the hall and then down another one, and through a smaller corridor. Bringing them up to a little door, with a shake of her wrist, she pulls out her Estruscan keyring bracelet. About several of the keys have found themselves used in various misadventures, vanishing once their purpose is fulfilled, but her favorite key is still there. And, just like a clever child of Hermes, it can pick just about any lock. 

Inside is just an empty room, a little staging area surrounded by tiered desks going up, no more or less remarkable than any of the other conference rooms they’d visited before. 

“What--?” His question is cut off by Annabeth’s mouth on his. 

Surprising, but definitely not unwelcome.

It's a while before they separate again. “You’re so good at this,” she tells him, unbuttoning his shirt.

He runs his hands along the lines of her flanks. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” he grins. He’d practice kissing her all day long if he could. 

She smiles, shaking her head. “No, not this,” though she does lean in for another kiss, pulling at his lower lip with her teeth. “I know you’re good at this.” They break away, Percy pulling her shirt over her head, Annabeth shucking off his. “But history. Presenting.” She runs a finger over his chest, kissing his cheek, headed towards the sensitive spot on his jaw. “Gods, you’re so smart.” 

Something about the praise vibrates through his chest. She doesn’t sound surprised, or anything, just--turned on.

“You had all those crusty academics eating out of your hand. Just, so impressed by you, knowing you know way more than they do about naval history. When you were explaining the--” Her compliment is cut off with a moan, as he leans down and starts sucking on her throat. Her blouse has a high neck, so he feels no guilt for using his teeth.  

“Watching you today, gods.” Her breath is labored as his fingers play at the waistline of her skirt. “And then thinking of you defending your dissertation.” He bites at her jugular, and she lets out a long, deep moan. 

“I don’t know what that means.” Do academics fight each other? Like, with weapons? He’s pretty sure he can take most of the people he met today. 

“It means you get to show off how smart you are,” Annabeth says, grasping his shoulders, pulling him in for another kiss. “I was born the day my dad defended his. Gods, it's going to be amazing to watch you go.” She yanks his belt out of his pants, tossing it to the floor. 

They miss the panel on recent translation efforts. But Percy can’t say he minds one bit. 

And when Annabeth presents him with a positive pregnancy test two months later, Percy definitely knows he made the right decision. 

4) 

He almost doesn’t realize he’s having a dream-vision at first.

It has been literal years since he’s had a demigod dream. Hell, it’s been a long while since he’s had a dream, period--being a new dad to a one-and-a-half-year-old saps too much of his energy to even think about dreaming. Once Junie is put to bed, when he’s out, he is fucking out, and he does not have the brainpower to spare to manifest any messed up subconscious fears.

Which is why when he blinks open his eyes, taking in the too-bright colors of the Parthenon and the gleaming shine of the bronze statues which are somehow all looking at him--also, you know, how the Parthenon is complete, standing as it did thousands of years ago, and not crumbled into ruins--he knows, immediately, he is being contacted by a god.

And only one god in particular would bring him to Athens.

Without even checking, he heaves himself up off the ground, folding into a kneel. “My lady Athena,” he says, “can I ask for what quest you’ve brought me here?”

“Impertinent as ever, Percy Jackson,” rumbles the goddess, but Percy doesn’t think he can sense any ill will towards him. He hopes, anyway. “Perhaps I have summoned you here for a social visit.”

“Perhaps,” he says, choosing his next words as carefully as possible. “But I assume you have too much to worry about to randomly check up on your daughter’s boyfriend.”

He lifts his head, catching her expression--stoic as always, but maybe with just the barest hint of a smile. “You assume correctly. You have become, contrary to my initial expectations, very wise in the time that I have known you.”

“Thank you.” He knows better than to do anything but accept the compliment for what it is.

“I have observed your work as a scholar in recent years, and I must say that I am surprised, yet pleased, that you have chosen to pursue such a path. I had not thought you to be suited for a world of old men and dusty papers.”

He grits his teeth. Don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait--

“I understand, as well, that though you and my daughter have,” and here her careful composition cracks, just the slightest, the tiny lift of her lips falling, “made a child together.”

Percy swallows. He figured, you know, in the abstract, that Athena would know about Junie, but hearing her say it out loud is… well, he’s just glad that Dr. Chase has always liked him. “Yes, my lady.”

“It is customary in your time to marry prior to childbirth, is it not?”

“It is.” Oh, fuck, is she going to smite him for that? “I--that is to say, we, Annabeth and I, we, um, we definitely want to get married, but, Annabeth kind of…” 

He trails off. He can’t tell Athena, goddess of war, that his daughter pissed off the queen of heaven! And if he does, he definitely can’t imply that it was because she was being too stubborn!

“I know well of my daughter’s history with my father’s wife,” Athena says, smoothly. “I come to you now with an offer of peace.”

Percy straightens his back. Peace?

Raising one graceful arm, Athena turns, indicating the structure behind her. “Look upon my temple,” she intones. The white marble shines even more powerfully against the blue and red paint, intricate scenes and figures ringing the top of the columns. “In the time of Pericles, it was built to commemorate the victory of Hellas over the armies of Xerxes the Great. It was to be the shining beacon of our world, a triumph of our power and influence over the race of men.”

The race of men might have had something to say about that, he thinks to himself.

“But it was not to be,” Athena says, mournfully. “As our influence waned, so too did our temple, until its might was all but forgotten.” 

Before his eyes, the paint fades away, ceilings and columns collapsing, the destruction of the Parthenon playing out in front of him. 

“Some two hundred years ago,” she says, her voice taking on a darker, more dangerous tone, “a grave insult was paid to the ruins of my ancient sanctuary.” Like curtains falling on a stage, darkness swallowed up the structure, swift and impenetrable. “Many treasures were taken from my temple, stolen, by foolish, greedy men, spirited away far to the north, where they have languished in unworthy hands.”

He narrows his eyes. She can’t possibly be talking about--

Athena turns back to him, her eyes blazing, somehow twice as tall. “Retrieve my treasures,” she commands, war personified, “return the prizes of Athens to their rightful place, and I shall give you my support against my father’s wife.”

“You…” Percy leans back on his haunches, staring dumbfounded up at the goddess. “You don’t happen to mean the Parthenon Marbles, do you?”

“Yes.”

“The ones in the British Museum.”

“The same,” she says, imperious as ever.

Fantastic. “Welp,” Percy says, slapping his thighs, scrambling up. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline. Nice seeing you, by the way. I’ll tell Annabeth you stopped by.”

Her sharp gazes pierces him, full of fury. “You dare to refuse my support?”

He snorts. “When it means trying to get the UK to give the marbles back, absolutely. Do you know how stubborn they are about this?”

Lightning flashes behind her, nearly blinding him. “You will regret this,” Athena says, dark and foreboding. “You may have your father’s goodwill, but the queen of Olympus is clever and cunning, her displeasure swift and merciless.”

But Percy still shakes his head. “When Annabeth and I get married,” and it’s definitely a ‘when,’ it’s just a matter of when precisely, like after Junie can sleep through the night maybe, “I’d rather take my chances with Hera than try and untangle that particular can of olives.”

A growl, and a snap of her fingers, and Athena disappears.

With a start, Percy wakes up. Junie had gotten her chubby little hands around his nose, and had decided to pull.

“Ow, ow, Junie, hey,” he squawks, attempting to dislodge her grip from his face. “Hey, I’m awake, it’s okay.”

She laughs, illegally adorable, her grey eyes sparkling, squeezing harder. 

“Okay, okay,” he laughs along with her. “You got my nose, you win.”

As if she were waiting for him to admit defeat, she lets go, clapping her pudgy toddler hands together. 

“That’s right,” he picks her up, raising her above his head. “Barely sixteen months old and you already know how to take me down, don’t you? Just like your mommy.”

She smiles, waving her little fists.

Gods he loves this little monster.

Junie really is the best parts of both of them. She’s got her daddy’s hair but her mommy’s brain, quick and sharp and painfully adorable. She’s already learning to read Greek, Annabeth sitting her in her lap and sounding out vowels together, Annabeth taking her finger and tracing it over the letter shapes. This kid absorbs information like a sponge, which Percy can only assume is the natural conclusion of taking a son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena and mixing their DNA together. 

Thinking about his dream, he frowns. “What do you think, Junie,” he asks his toddler. “Should I take her up on her offer?”

The baby says nothing.

“I mean,” he tilts his head, “Greece has been trying to get the marbles back for two hundred years. UNESCO has top lawyers on this. What does Athena think I can do?”

Junie blinks at him.

“On the other hand, I do really love your mom,” he admits, “and I really want to marry her. You’d like that, right? To have your parents be married?”

There’s no way she can understand what he’s saying, but she moves her head like she’s nodding. Or maybe she does understand. She is Annabeth’s daughter after all. 

Percy sighs. Dammit.

Time for a new project, he guesses.

***

Several months, a college graduation, and one relocation to Boston later, Percy growls, hurling his pencil at the wall. Mother fucker. Fuck the British Museum, fuck his tiny laptop screen, and fuck the Italian prick who decided to have the least ADHD-friendly handwriting of all time. 

Why the hell is he doing this again? Like, seriously. Why in all of Hades is he, an inexperienced, snot-nosed, first year master’s student deciding to tackle the return of the fucking Parthenon marbles of all things. Like, what is wrong with him? 

Roughly scrubbing his fingers through his hair, Percy stands up. He has to go for a walk, clear his head, or he might actually explode. 

Then he catches a glimpse of the photo pinned to the fridge.

Percy’s mom had taken it, a candid of Percy and Annabeth and Junie on a sunny day in Central Park. There, in perfect 1080p, Junie is laughing, at what he can’t even remember, her pudgy fists yanking on Percy’s hair, while her mother and the love of his life does nothing to extricate Percy from her grip, her face screwed up so hard she had tears in her eyes. 

Percy had talked a lot of shit to the goddess of war’s face, but truth be told… Hera still terrifies him a little. Which, he assumes, was her goal all along, but it would be nice to marry Annabeth without fear of something going terribly wrong--or, gods forbid, something happening to Junie. That simply was not a risk he was willing to take. Percy is content to spend the rest of his days as Annabeth’s life-partner and roommate, if it means that the queen of the heavens won’t have a reason to take out her issues on his children.

Even if the engagement ring in the back of the pantry is gathering dust. 

Sunlight, wan but warm, falls in from the window, landing perfectly on his pile of open books. “I know, I know,” he growls, speaking to the air, rubbing his face so it doesn’t get stuck in a permanent glare. “I just--I just need a few minutes, okay? Let me go down the block and get a coffee or something. Two minutes, Lady Athena.”

The light fades. Percy takes that as an acquiescence, angrily scribbling a note. He’s not sure when Annabeth and Junie will be back, but even angry as he is, he doesn’t want to worry them.

Snatching up his jacket, he slams the door shut, stomping out of his apartment building and down the streets of Boston. He must be accidentally doing his wolf stare, because people are practically flinging themselves out of his path as he hurtles down the sidewalk. Literally--some girl is walking her husky, and the poor dog actually whimpers, cowering as Percy rounds the corner. 

Coming to a stop, Percy slaps his hands over his face, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. 

He might be in over his head a little.

Sighing, he looks to his right. He’s standing outside of a Starbucks. 

Percy doesn’t drink coffee, Annabeth does. And he knows exactly how much of a coffee snob his girlfriend is. Starbucks? Overpriced, overrated, over-sweetened garbage.

He pushes the door open, sliding up to the counter. “I’ll take a… iced mocha, I guess,” he says. “Large.”

“No problem,” chirps the barista. “I’ll have that out for you in a minute.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

One thing Starbucks does have going for it, though, are really good napkins for doodling.

Slumping down in his uncomfortable metal chair, elbows resting on the hard, faux-wood table, Percy takes out his pen, and doodles aimlessly on the brown napkins. No, not that pen. Just because it can write doesn’t mean that Percy wants to risk slicing his face open every time he has a stray idea. Completely out of the blue, Annabeth had gotten him a nice set of pens, and ever since then, Percy always keeps one on him. Now, if he could just remember to use the little notebook she had gotten him, too.

Percy is not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t have an image in mind, just lets his pen move, drawing endless chains of triangles and stars, nebulous shapes which form themselves into Greek letters. After he catches himself writing γλαυκῶπις for the eighth time in a row, he sighs, dropping his pen, and picks up the cup, taking a sip.

Yuck. At least the chocolate outweighs the coffee taste a little.

Gods, and their cups are always, like, drenched from condensation--not that Percy can feel it, but there’s practically a whole other drink on the outside of the plastic, dripping all over Percy’s pile of doodle napkins. That must be why they give out so many.

Grumbling, he mops up the mess, ink smudged into a blue-brown slurry.

He stops. 

He squints at one of his doodles. 

Not that anyone else could tell, but Percy had apparently been trying to recreate the signature of Ottoman sultan Selim III, the guy who had supposedly authorized the Earl of Elgin to take the Parthenon Marbles. Percy had been staring at copies of his signature all damn day, trying to tell if it had been forged or copied, but classical Arabic was just so far beyond anything he could even begin to wrap his head around. It was gorgeous work, but even looking at it made Percy’s eyes swim.

This particular doodle is not his best attempt. It looks nothing like the signature. It’s smudged, blotchy, but in a way that’s… weirdly familiar. 

Snatching the napkin up, Percy bolts from the Starbucks, leaving his mocha behind.

Taking the steps of his apartment building two at a time, he bursts into his kitchen. His set up is exactly how he left it, books spread out all over the table, laptop shut and laid askew, the dry, half-eaten remains of his morning muffin on a plate on top of his encyclopedia of illuminated manuscripts--except for one book, the one on Ottoman history of the nineteenth century. It’s been opened, its pages facing the door, in the exact opposite direction of all the other books. 

“Hello?” he calls into the apartment. “Anyone home?”

No response. 

Percy approaches the table. 

From the pages, Selim III stares at him, his portrait rendered in black and white, sitting just above a figure of his signature, his tughra. 

Percy picks up the book, squinting. 

The signature is crisp, clean, a work of art all by itself. 

He looks at his napkin drawing. Blurry and smudged.

Opening his laptop, he pulls up the scans of the documents in the British museum, zooms in on the letter’s seal.

Blurry and smudged.

Percy stares. 

It… can’t be that simple, can it?

In a daze, he fires an email off to his new grad advisor. Hopefully he won’t mind Percy sticking his nose in where he doesn’t belong. Hey Dr. T--was looking at the Parthenon marbles docs in the BM (don’t ask) and I noticed this weird smudge on the tughra. Lazy scribe, maybe?

And he closes his computer.

Later that night, while he puts Junie to bed, he gets a response. not sure. sent it to a colleague for a closer look. 

He can’t even be bothered to really think about it though, not with Junie looking up at him with Annabeth’s eyes, and asking for another book. “Alright, kiddo,” he acquiesces, settling in beside her. All her story books are in ancient Greek, and at age two, she’s starting to recognize the letters. “Which one are you thinking?” 

“Daw-fins, daddy,” she says, smiling.

“Dolphins, eh? Getting Mr. D on your side early, I see. As smart as mommy.” He leans down and kisses her forehead before he starts to read her the story of the sailors and their sudden dolphin madness. 

***

“Huh,” Percy says to himself a few weeks later, as he and Annabeth are chilling on the couch, watching some Netflix.

His advisor has forwarded him an article from the BBC (New evidence suggests Elgin documents to be forgeries) with an accompanying note: Amazing catch! 

“What is it?” Annabeth asks, nudging him with her elbow--a feat, since she also has an armful of a squirmy Junie to deal with.

“Update in the Parthenon marbles thing.”

That gets her attention. Anything Parthenon-related does. “Really?”

He shows her his phone.

Her eyes go wide as saucers. “Damn.”

“Yep.” He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until he feels his lips pulling at the sides of his mouth. 

“My mom is probably your biggest fan right now.”

He starts. “What did you say?”

Turning back to the TV, she still manages to cast him a weird look. “I said, my mom will probably love you for this.”

A beat, then Percy practically somersaults over the couch, darting into the kitchen. Wrenching open the pantry door, he shoves his hand behind their collection of flours, fingers grasping for--

“If you’re looking for any more sacrificial cookies,” Annabeth calls after him, “we burned them all when Junie got a cold.”

“Remind me to make some more,” says Percy, pulling out his prize. It’s a little dusty, streaks of flour clinging to the blue velvet. “I have a feeling we’ll need them.”

“Oh yeah?” She chuckles. “What, did Olympus put in a special order?” 

Percy slides back down next to her, ring hidden in his closed fist. “Can I have the baby for a sec?”

Eyes fixed to the screen, Annabeth passes her over. Junie’s hands automatically reach for his nose, ready to grab, but Percy places the ring in her grasp instead, kissing her forehead. “Hey, babe?” he asks Annabeth, handing her back. “I think our daughter has something for you.”

Annabeth takes her without a second glance. 

Then she does take a second glance.

Ring closed in her pudgy toddler fist, Junie holds it out to her.

Annabeth gapes. 

“So,” Percy says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “quick confession: I wasn’t just working on the marbles for fun.”

Annabeth just stares. Junie babbles.

“Your mom told me that if I helped get the marbles back, she’d back us against Hera if we ever got married. So…” He trails off, waiting for her response. As close as he is, he can see the tears start to well up in her eyes--a good sign. “Shall we?” he prompts.

“Oh thank all the gods.” Annabeth is crying, because she's Annabeth. And because she's Annabeth, she also wastes no time in transferring Junie to her other side, and holding out her hand so Percy can slide the ring on her finger. “I was so worried I'd have to have Chase on my Masters’ diploma, too.”

5)

Percy is making sauce when his phone lights up. He hits speaker. “Hey.”

“Hey man,” comes the tinny voice of Magnus. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Percy says, “I figured you were dying or something.”

Magnus’ eye roll is almost palpable. “Very funny. What’s up?”

Bringing the spoon to his lips, he blows on it, taking a taste, before reaching for the salt. Needs way more. “Do you happen to have any Varangian guards in Hotel Valhalla?”

“Varangian guards? Uh, maybe. Probably. Why?”

“I’m doing a thing on the attempted reconquest of Sicily,” he says, lowering the heat a little to a simmer, “and I’m having some trouble piecing together the Battle of Montemaggiore. Know anyone who was in it?” 

Magnus hums. “I’ll ask around. Anyone in particular you’re looking for?”

Rifling through their little spice cabinet, he makes a mental note to get a new thing of hot sauce, tipping the rest of it into the pot. “If you have anyone who fought under Harald Hardrada, that would be great.”

“Hardrada? I’m pretty sure he lives on the fifth floor.”

Percy nearly drops the bottle. “No shit?”

“Big dude, long mustache, writes poetry?”

“Yes!” He picks up the phone, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you think I could come up and talk to him sometime?”

“Sure, but I thought you were doing something on Homer’s identity?”

He groans. “Backburnered for now until she stops driving me crazy.” No matter how many times Percy tells her, he can’t just drop the “Homer was actually an Egyptian woman” bomb without some serious evidence backing that up. And forgery is not one of his strong suits. Hence the need for a different topic for the time being.

“Has everyone ever told you your life is weird?”

“No, why do you ask?”

His phone suddenly vibrates, shocking him so badly he nearly drops it into the saucepan. Almost home, texts the love of his life, a shot of serotonin directly into his bloodstream. V hungry

“Sorry, Magnus, but I gotta run. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. Say hi to my cousin for me.”

“Can do.”

“And make sure you pick a date soon! Sam needs to know so she can schedule her flight home.”

“Soon as I can.” You know, when his brain isn’t melting from grading undergrad papers. And making sure Annabeth and Junie are fed. And that Annabeth doesn’t lose herself in graduate school. And finding Junie a new preschool after she destroyed a classroom last month because of a monster. His toddler is a badass. But he’s a little worried she’s gonna follow Mommy and Daddy’s example as far as school goes. 

Sometimes, he thinks that their wedding just won’t ever happen. With Athena on board, he figured it would happen sooner or later, but time just… keeps getting away from them. Which isn’t the end of the world. A lifetime at Annabeth’s side is all he really needs, Mrs. Jackson or no. But he’s seen the silver fabric she weaved for her wedding dress. It would be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste.

And, yeah, he wants to see his little Junie dancing down the aisle flinging seaweed before her mother. He wants his mom to cry a little and he wants all his friends to be there to celebrate with them. Is that so much to ask? 

Speaking of his two favorite girls--”We’re home!” Annabeth calls from the hallway. “Junie, go say hi to daddy!”

Her bare feet slapping against the floor, his daughter comes toddling in, making a beeline for him. “Hey, kiddo,” Percy says, scooping her up. “How’s my best girl?”

“She’s just fine, thanks,” Annabeth says, setting her work bag down on the table. “Tell me I don’t have to wait for dinner--Margie kept me for the entirety of my lunch break, and I am starving.” 

“Just gotta make a salad and we should be good to go.” But he makes no move to finish chopping vegetables, entirely too enraptured with the way Junie smiles when Percy sticks his tongue out at her. “Let me guess,” he says. “Does my best girl want some olives?”

“Peas,” Junie says. 

“Oh, you want peas instead?”

She giggles, waving her arms. “Elaia, daddy!”

“Fine,” and he kisses her nose. “Extra olives for you.”

“Chip off the old block,” Annabeth says.

Handing her back to her mother, Percy sighs. “When am I going to get a kid who likes anchovies?”

“I’m doing my best here, okay?”

***

Hardrada is… not what he expected.

“Reputation isn’t that bad.” Hardrada is saying. “The production isn’t what it should be, but lots of her lyrics are still on point.” 

“The production ruins it,” Percy insists. “And as a follow up to 1989? It's just bad.” 

“And what about Lover?”

“What about Lover?”

“You can’t argue with the genius of that one.”

“It is terribly inconsistent,” Percy shoots back. “Yeah, ‘The Archer’ and ‘Daylight’ and ‘Miss Americana’ are sublime, but ‘ME!’? Come on!”

“Are you one of those people who thinks she peaked at Red?”

“Red is a bop from start to finish,” Percy fires back. “But she definitely peaked at folklore.”

“Thinking she peaked at folklore is just pedestrian when ‘tis the damn season’ exists!” Hardrada yells, drawing his axe, which is then promptly flung over Percy’s head. 

As the only mortal in a room full of armed, excitable, undead Taylor Swift stans, Percy beats a hasty exit, Magnus and Jason covering him as he flees, because they’re just so thoughtful like that. Percy’s pretty sure he saw Magnus take an arrow to the knee, going down in a heap, before he shuts the door to the hotel, finding himself in a Forever 21. 

Looking over his notes later as he gets back to his apartment in the North End, he frowns. They had spent… approximately twenty minutes talking about Sicily before getting solidly off track. Who knew an eleventh century viking would have such intense feelings about pop music? 

And now he’s singing “seven” to himself as he unlocks the apartment door, because it's a good song, and because it made him think of Annabeth. And he always wants to think of Annabeth. 

“Hey, babe,” he calls into the apartment, toeing off his shoes. “I’m back!”

He gets no response.

Percy looks up, confused. “Annabeth?”

“In the bathroom,” he hears, faintly. 

“Everything okay?”

“Yep! Totally fine!” she says, unconvincingly. 

“Alright,” he calls back. “Let me know if you need something.”

Moving Junie’s toys out of the way, he drops down onto the couch, grabbing his laptop. Hopefully he can make some sort of sense of the… notes… that he got from Hardrada. Though he’s probably going to have to trek out to Beacon Hill again, which, while not really out of his way, does mean he has to hike a bit from the Park Street station through the Commons, which makes him super sweaty and out of breath. It’s just embarrassing, walking into a hotel full of the greatest warriors of Valhalla, and Percy can barely handle a hill. 

However, he’s not so out of practice that he can’t sense Annabeth coming up behind him. “You good?”

“What do you think about getting married by the end of the month?”

“Sure,” he says, pecking at his computer. Damn autocorrect ruining all the Norse names. He keeps forgetting to download the right language package he needs. “But I thought you wanted to wait until after you turned in your portfolio?”

“Well… I might not be able to fit in my dress if we wait much longer.”

That gets his attention.

Percy turns around, slowly. Annabeth is grinning, holding a thin little piece of plastic with a circle on the end. She wiggles it. 

“Is that…?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.”

Her smile falls. “Are you mad?”

“What? No!” Percy slides his computer off his lap, twisting around to face her, up on his knees. “No, no, not at all. I’m not mad.” She slings her arms around his neck, pregnancy test warm against his skin. “I just…” 

Eyes warm, she looks into his, unafraid. “What is it?”

“It’s…” It’s silly, is what it is. But this is Annabeth. If he can’t tell her, who can he tell? “I just feel bad that I’ve gotten you pregnant twice before getting married.”

“Well, at least I’m not nineteen this time,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if you weren’t such a horndog.”

Percy snorts. “Me? What about you, Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before my first lecture’ Chase.”

“Jackson,” she corrects.

“Huh?”

“It’s Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before your first lecture’ Jackson.”

Grinning, he presses his mouth to hers. After all this time, she still smells like lemons, her lips soft and warm. “Not yet it’s not.”

“Then let’s make it happen.”

And, well, Percy can’t think of a better plan.

+1

Jamie hisses. “Fuuuuuck,” she whispers, the sound dropping like a stone in the dead lecture hall. “Goddamn shit fuck ass.”

And the worst part is, she’d actually spent a lot of time preparing for her Latin midterm. She’d made flashcards, she’d drilled noun endings, she’d even slept with the textbook under her pillow for fuck’s sake. 

Typical--the moment she sits down to take the test, it all goes out the window. 

“Legistne carmen longum de Troiano,” she reads under her breath, as though saying it out loud will unlock some hidden secrets of the cosmos. 

Nope. Nothing. The multiple choices remain as inscrutable as ever.

“Psst.” 

Jamie looks up. 

There’s a four year old staring at her. 

“Hi,” Jamie says. 

“Hi,” says the four year old. Junie, her name is, she thinks. 

Mr. Jackson, Jamie’s Latin TA, will bring his kids to class with him sometimes--his wife works full time, and Jamie guesses that they can’t afford a babysitter. She’s a cute kid, quiet, usually sitting in the corner of the lecture hall, drawing or even knitting, sometimes with her little sister playing with toy ships next to her. 

Now, she’s still staring at her. “What’s up?” Jamie asks.

“Bello,” says Junie.

Jamie blinks. “Sorry?”

“Legistne carmen longum de bello Troiano.” 

She squints down at her test sheet, attempting to visualize her flash cards. That’s… “Bello” is the right answer.

The fuck? The fucking four year old can speak Latin? “Thanks,” she whispers. 

Junie beams at her.

Darting her eyes to the front of the lecture hall, Jamie spies her professor, Buck, completely conked out at his desk, his chest rising and falling with his snores. Percy is nowhere to be seen, his laptop open at his chair. “What’s the next one?” Jamie turns her paper so that Junie can see better.

“Pluto Proserpinam infelicem cepit,” she announces, perfectly accented.

Jamie points to the one after that.

“Rex qui pontem fecit erat Ancus Martius.”

“Awesome.” 

The door to the lecture hall opens. Jamie whips around in her seat, startled, and sees her TA, walking down the steps. From the corner of her eye, Junie disappears, booking it to her dad, who scoops her up without missing a beat. “Hey kiddo,” he murmurs, smiling crookedly. “Were you bothering my students?” Then he glances at Jamie. “Sorry about that--hope she wasn’t too annoying.”

But Jamie shakes her head. “It’s fine.” Dammit. 

Still smiling, Percy makes his way back down to his seat. Junie grins at her over his shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around her dad’s neck.

At the beginning of the semester, Professor Buck had droned on and on about Mr. Jackson, about how he was one of the best up-and-coming classics scholars in the world, how he could have had his pick of PhD programs, and how NYU was lucky to have him. He got first pick of assistantships this semester, apparently, but had volunteered to teach Latin 1001, and they should all be grateful, because he had done some beautiful new translation of Virgil for his Master’s thesis, and they were all going to learn a lot from him. 

Turning back to her exam, Jamie snorts. Of course a guy like that would have a kid who could speak perfect Latin. 

She really should have just stuck with German instead. 

[sneakerdoodle]

September 25th

Protests against mobilization in Russian regions (parts of the federation removed from the capital; often largely populated by underprivileged ethnic minorities)

- a mass protest in Yakutsk (Yakutia); reports say the protesters were chanting "No war", "No genocide". in the first video, the words they're shouting are "Give back our elderly".

In the first days of mobilization, a disproportionate amount of conscripted have been men* from small villages and settlements in regions populated by ethnic minorities; a significant amount were past the official age at which they should have been excluded from the reserve.

the following videos show law enforcement dispersing the protest and detaining people. in the second video, the person filming is yelling "shame".

(local authorities are claiming the demonstration was a cultural ritual to "bless" the mobilized)

- Endirey, Dagestan

protesters are being forced to clear the blocked road; the police are using physical force, swinging rifles and shooting in the air

volume warning, gunshots

Additionally:

on September 22st in another Dagestan town, local people got into a loud public arguement with who I can only guess is a representative for authorities assisting with mobilization.

The representative (referring to WW2): "Your granddad fought so you could eat white bread in peace"

The people: "My granddad fought for his motherland"; "Back then, it was a war, now it's politics"

Please recognize the struggle of non-slavic population in Russia. The Soviet Union and the modern federation inherited their lands from imperial colonial expansion; now, their people are being exploited for Putin's imperialist ambitions and sent to war they recognize as unnecessary and unjust. The conscription is targeting lower-class people from remote settlements and ethnic minorities first and foremost.

UPDATE (25.09):

tw: police brutality

MASS protests are happening in Makhachkala, Dagestan, there is a lot of footage and it's still rolling in. the protestors are clashing with the police, and there is enough of them to fight back. however, people are being harshly detained, beaten and threatened with firearms.

you will hear chants that sound like "Net voyne" ("No (to) war") and "Pozor" ("Shame"). protesters are loudly arguing with law enforcement, saying "I want to live freely" and "Russia crossed another country's borders"

(warning for the last link: guns)