#he's my favourite trojan dude in the war

[themasterofruins17]

My "Astyanax Lives AU" includes an alive Andromache and Hector by default. In my version of the AU they just kinda settle elsewhere, as Troy/Ilion is thoroughly destroyed. In earlier versions they went with Aeneas, who is one of my favourite heroes so far, but in the current one they end up in what was then Persia. Anyways, that's it so far! :)

Hate how "Astyanax lives AU" on Tumblr means "Odysseus steals Andromache's son and does not intend to give him back at any point and pretends to be his father (and, generally this is presented as cute and fluffy and good)"

instead of any other version of what "Astyanax lives AU" COULD mean.

[mistyjessart]

The Odyssey Modern AU: Christmas edition

For your consideration: the Odyssey but as a Hallmark Christmas movie where Odysseus travels to New York for work and is trying to get home to Hawaii?? (I needed a long domestic flight shhhhh it was either this or Vancouver to Newfoundland) in time for Christmas dinner with Penelope and Telemachus after missing it for the last 20 years straight

The Trojan War is some really big business venture or something that took literally forever for them to sign but they finally did it!!

Polyphemus keeps them after work threatening to get HR involved because they accidentally ate his lunch that he left in the fridge, Polites and some of his other coworkers get stuck there but Ody and the rest manage to escape the office

Athena is Odysseus' boss (and childhood friend) who told him to get everything done more efficiently so he could leave earlier but noooooo he didn't listen and guess who's cutting it close again

The wind bag: Aeolus (from another department, maybe distribution??) sends them home with snacks that they forget to declare and Poseidon the airport security guard sees them after Eurylochus opens the bag in the waiting area and pulls them into the security room until they miss their flight

Circe owns a local motel and wanted to kick them out because she doesn't trust so many dudes around her employees after past incidents, but her and Athena's mutual friend Hermes gives Odysseus some of her favourite tea as a peace offering and he tells her about his wife and kid and she's just like "fineeeeee okay you're a wife guy, I guess I can find you a room"

She calls them a taxi to the airport the next day and the driver Tiresias just keeps giving them ominous life advice and seems to know like... way too much about them and also they're not entirely sure he actually has his license

Odysseus gets a call from his mom like "where are you we're waiting for you" and he's like "I'm on my way home I promiseeeeeeeeee I'll be there this time"

The sirens are various sales reps at the airport

Scylla (baggage check employee) keeps some of them cuz their bags are too heavy so Ody and the rest head to the gate without them

Eurylochus brings snacks again (thinking Chicharron-style snacks, ones you're not supposed to bring on a plane) and Zeus detains them

The suitors are just the neighbourhours who bully Telemachus like "oooOOOOhhhhh ssuuuUUURrreee your dad is tOOOOtally gonna show up to Christmas this year" and making jokes about his mom

Athena (who did leave early and catch the original flight) scares them away and reassures Telemachus that his dad is on his way (while texting Odysseus "see I told you so")

She finds out Zeus is the one detaining them so she calls her dad like "please can you at least send Odysseus on his way, you literally know him, he's just a dumbass sometimes" so Zeus let's Odysseus go catch his flight but keeps the rest of them in security

Calypso is some lady he's seated next to on the plane who hits on him for the entire ten-hour flight

Poseidon, who got transferred to the other airport, recognizes Odysseus from before and pulls him into security again and Odysseus just rips into him until he lets him go

The neighbours are bullying Telemachus while he's out getting last-minute ingredients for dinner when some dude turns up and tells them off and threatens to get their parents so they all run off

Penelope's just like... "who are you and what have you done with my husband, how are you actually on time"

Insert sweet and sappy Christmas dinner with the entire family until Odysseus' sister goes "wait... where's Eurylochus?"

Eurylochus turns up at the door the next morning like "ODYSSEUS YOU MF I HAD TO CATCH ANOTHER FLIGHT-"

[copper-dragon-in-disguise]

just checked your art fight characters and YOU PLAY CITY OF MIST???

tell me all about your game omg it's my favourite ttrpg ever

YES WAIT DO YOU ALSO PLAY CITY OF MIST THATS FUCKING AWESOME TELL ME ABOUT YOUR GAME

all of our party is greek myths, except for this one dude who I'm not really sure what's up with, he has flying carnivorous bunnies and it's cool though

my character is lexi/lex, who you probably saw on arfight cause I submitted her there and I assume that's how you know I play city of mist, but she's the rift of Atalanta, which is uh. hold on a sec I dunno how to summarize that myth

Atalanta is a huntress who got left out in the woods by her father (a king) as a baby because he wanted a boy. She was raised by bears, devoted herself to Artemis, and swore never to marry, etc. the more famous stories she's involved in are the argonauts & the hunt for the caledonian boar, but there's also a story where she gets into a footrace because of some whole mess with her father where she agreed to marry only if her prospective husband could beat her in a footrace (which she was super naturally good at). she beat all of them, until this one dude thought she was extremely pretty and went to Aphrodite, who was mad about the whole not marrying thing, and she gave him 3 irresistible golden apples that he used to distract Atalanta during the race, and by such beat her.

Because of this, one of Lexi's fatal flaws/whatever they're called for her run really fast ability is apples. All apples in general. She's super allergic to them or something, but she really very much cannot be around apples.

Her logos is that she's a fisherman and lives in main. literally everyone else in the party lives either in the city or in rapid city south dakota, except for her, she lives in maine. She also has a snake named Percy, he's a western hognose snake and he lives in her pocket and I love him.

The way atalanta's myth transferred into Lexi's life is that she was, for a couple years, raised by actual bears (they're called the lesbian bear moms). she also did varsity track, which goes with the whole running thing atalanta's got, and has an extremely crappy relationship with her parents but she has the bears so it's okay! (it's not really okay but she has bigger problems. so many bigger problems the trojan war has decided to restart itself)

She gets shot. so fucking much. like in pretty much every direct fight we've had she's gotten shot, I think, except maybe the last one which I'm still kinda shocked by (everyone else got shot, though)

Uhhhh as for the rest of the party: there's the rift of orion, her name is antigone and she's awesome (she was linked in the art fight thing for lexi so you might've seen her, she's played by @zinabug); the rift of hector, his name is cole; the aforementioned mysterious bunny man, his name is kitch; and the rift of odysseus, olly. he kidnaps people! they're all SUPER COOL

[little-smartass]

Achilles!

First impression: uhhh I would have first heard of him when I was a kid reading about greek myths so honestly I don’t remember... probably I thought he was a Cool Hero Dude but he didn’t leave a lasting impression on me

Impression now: he is a terrible murderous mummy’s boy idiot and I Love Him

Favourite moment: [staring at the ceiling, flustered, face bright red, avoiding looking at Patroclus] mY mOtHeR cAn’T sEe Us HeRe

Idea for a story: I’d love to write my modern AU trojan war one day

Unpopular opinion: boy is a bottom ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Favourite relationship: DO YOU EVEN HAVE TO ASK.

Favourite headcanon: modern AU achilles is a twunky himbo jock who talks like a 90s surfer and sings like an angel

[awed-frog]

The frustrating thing for me, when people use Dean's issues to point out WHY he handles emotional situations badly is that the sympathy isn't with the people that suffers because of it (like Cas). It's with Dean. An explanation for Dean's behaviour shouldn't become a justification. If Dean loves Cas but treats Cas badly, why should we root for this relationship? Him almost killing Cas is about CAS' suffering, not his. But his reaction is not about what Cas deserves, but about his wants. IMO etc.

I’ve been trying to come up with something clever about this ask for a few days, but I got nothing, so I’m just going to tell you what’s going through my mind in the clearest possible way.

1) The viewers will often have a favourite and defend them to the death, and if you find it frustrating, there’s not much you can do other than unfollow people or blacklist some tags. I understand where you come from - I also get annoyed when people justify everything’s a character’s ever done, even the most twisted and problematic things, just because they like him or her. To be honest, I think I stopped caring when I saw a discussion about how Tate Langdon was the perfect boyfriend - some part of my soul just shrivelled and died and I decided that yep, some people are batshit insane and most people get unreasonable around stuff they love, and what can you do about it? 

2) If you’re talking about the writers/creators of a show, on the other hand, I think it’s important to remember where is our POV and what kind of story those people are telling. Like, Supernatural is not House of Cards: whatever he does, Dean will be written as sympathetic, and since we see this world (mostly) from his POV, everything is reflected back on him. I know some people get angry about this - characters getting killed to make the Winchesters feel bad, or simply to advance the plot - but that’s how you tell a story (everybody does the same thing, and if you don’t see it, it means they’re doing their job right). Your main characters are the ones who matter, and the ones whose emotions we care about. So, even when it comes to someone as important to the story as Cas is, Dean will get most of the plot, and this is just how things work.

The next point might upset some people, so I’ll place it under a cut. Stay safe.

3) On placing sympathy on the abuser, rather than the victim - I think there are several reasons for this. One is that, traditionally, our stories in the West are about the conquerors and the victors, not those who have been defeated (when Euripides wrote a tragedy about the Trojan noblewomen being sold off as slaves after the war, people were not happy, and that play is still controversial today). At the same time, we all realize, because we’re not psychopaths, that violence is not nice, and that’s how you end up with this compromise narrative best summarized by Frankie Boyle.

Another aspect of this is that many victims are women (or people ‘outside’ a community, such as queer people or POC), and many abusers are men, and, again, traditionally we give less weight and importance to the feelings and wellbeing of women than we do to those of men. Combine that with the fact many storytellers (I use the term loosely) are men, and you get where we are today: a story about a woman being beaten by her husband is ‘boring’ and not something the audience will want to watch, but the story of a tortured man who can’t help but beat his wife because demons is ‘interesting’ and worth everyone’s attention.

Finally, I think there’s a combination of these two factors in play as well - we mostly want to see stories about people acting, not reacting; about people being brave and fighting and winning, because we generally identify with the main character and we want some sort of happy ending for them. And the problem is - a victim of violence who overcomes this violence - that can still be perceived as a bleak story, right, because abusers are often a solid part of the community (husbands and fathers in family dramas, soldiers and commanders in war movies), which means that this kind of stories are, in their very nature, unsettling and revolutionary, because what they’re telling you is that the community was wrong in trusting those people. It’s no wonder, really, that Francesco Rosi’s Uomini contro was threatened, sued, and had great trouble to find distribution in Italian cinemas: despite being a movie about a century old war, it sided - very clearly - with the soldiers who’d been brutalized by their own commanders, and while the situation was well-known and mostly accurate from a historical point of view, the backlash was still enormous. And this is the same reaction you get, not only towards fictional stories, but about real ones too. All those murder-suicides - ‘normal’ men killing their wives and children before shooting themselves - both the media and the public’s reaction is inevitably incredulity and a refusal to dig deeper. We want to believe our societies are healthy and we want to believe that men (unlike women, those fickle and untrustworthy creatures) are mostly right about everything, and this is what we get as a result. We’re so good at ignoring violence it sometimes comes back to haunt us (is it just me or all the latest US shooters had priors of domestic violence?). So, you see - a man coming to terms with his own anger and becoming a better person, that’s an inspiring story we’re all okay with; but a woman standing up to her husband, that’s a bit different. There’s a seed of revolt there, a sort of If she did it, why can’t I? that we really don’t want people to see.

(In case it’s not clear, I’m violently against all of this. I’m sick of this kind of stories, and I do think that we need some waking up and some revolution in our communities.)

4) You say an explanation shouldn’t mean a justification, and I totally agree, but I also think it’s hard to do this right, both IRL and in fiction, because the more you know about someone, the more you empathize with them, which means any villain can become redeemable with the right background story - just ask Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. As for Dean and Cas, I don’t think Dean ever justified his own behaviour; in fact, he even atoned for it, in his own Dean way, when he allowed a crazed Cas to beat him up and insisted in keeping the bruises. It wasn’t perfect, but, then again, neither is Dean.

5) Why should we root for this relationship if Dean treats Cas badly - does Dean really treat Cas badly? I don’t think so. Dean is a MESS, all capitals. He tries his best, and I really feel for him, but the truth is, he doesn’t know how to do this. As far as we know, he didn’t have any friends or significant relationships growing up, and by the beginning of the series, the only person he seems to connect to in any healthy way is Bobby. Honestly - it takes years for Dean, who grew up as a soldier and a conman and a loner and never had a right to his own childhood and a life that wasn’t taking care of his brother and helping out his father, to get better at this. And, sure, the relationship with Cas is no different - at the beginning, Dean is confrontational, a sarcastic little shit, occasionally cons Cas into having his way - but the magic of what happens between them is that pretty soon, all of Dean’s traditional walls and posturing take a step back. What’s really special here is that Dean is honest with Cas in a way he isn’t with anyone else, and despite the fact he loves Cas so fiercely, he mostly tries to respect his decisions, and is never harsh with him if not in very extreme circumstances. Personally, the one moment between them I truly hated was Dean’s Nobody cares that you’re broken, because, OUCH - looking back, I can see that this was Dean channelling John, but still - it was an incredibly dickish thing to say (and it must have haunted Dean in Purgatory, especially since, as far as he knew, Cas had died - because of him). As for the rest of it - I doubt we’ll ever have fluffy lines between them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly soft with each other. I don’t know if you were referring specifically to S12E19, but Dean pushing Cas against a wall in anger - that’s not abuse. He knows he can’t hurt Cas (physically) unless he really tries, so that scene was about Dean needing to put his hands on Cas, to feel him, to make sure he was there and he was okay; and also a harmless way to let his frustration out, to say what he doesn’t know how to put into words (that he cares, that is, and that he doesn’t need Cas to bring him back any win, the dumbass, because that’s not what actually matters). And maybe that reaction doesn’t seem soft to you, but this is Dean Winchester, right, the killer even demons are afraid of and the guy who basically doesn’t trust anyone - Cas just spent weeks MIA, never bothered to call, didn’t tell them he had a line on Kelly, stole the Colt form Dean knowing full well how much that weapon meant to him, collaborated with Heaven without telling him one word about it - and, on the whole, Dean’s not even angry. He’s worried, and he’s frustrated (with Cas; with himself), but he understands why Cas did what he did, and that makes all the difference. 

“Dude, if anybody else - I mean anybody - pulled that kind of crap, I would stab them in their neck on principle. Why should I give him a free pass?”

“Because it’s Cas.”

You know - I always felt that for Dean, who’s always been coded as the ‘female’ character both with Sam and with Cas, the Mark of Cain was the ultimate undoing precisely because it took from him all those ‘feminine’ traits which are such a profound part of who he is. The fact that it all culminated in him beating the hell out of Cas, in a reversal of their traditional ‘fights’ (I’m inverted commaing this because most of those happened under some sort of mind control, so they weren’t really fights), was, in a way, a complete assertion of his new role of Alpha Male - while Cas had stepped back into a more traditional ‘feminine’ role the whole season. In this sense, I understand that the narrative focused way more heavily on Dean, because he was the one acting out of character and doing ‘weird’ things - but ideally, yes, I would have wanted to know what that beating meant for Cas, what he was thinking as he healed himself, and everything else. So, yeah - it’s a mess, and it’s not a traditional love story, perhaps, but I still think they’re right for each other and they do make each other happy, so personally, I’m rooting for them. There are tons of abusive relationships on TV that are passed off as normal, even romantic, but this isn’t one of them.