#i had too much faith. i had too much Hubris.

[argonapricot]

your tags on this post tumblr(.)com/argonapricot/729580866921218048/yo-baylan-just-up-ditched-shin-after-putting

encapsulate perfectly how i feel and how i wished they handled the relationship between baylan and shin. especially given that this is the only performance we’ll get of ray. i’m so so bummed. i guess i had my expectations set too high :(

Thank you for saying so! Yeah, it just breaks my heart and I definitely wouldn't feel so strongly about it if Ray Stevenson were still with us. It would honestly make sense if the showrunners had been trying to hold back on Baylan's plotline so that it could be explored in a movie or in the following season... but it's just such a misfortune.

I'm worried that there won't be enough time in the last remaining episode for Baylan to get the conclusion that he deserves. But I'm still grateful that we have had such incredible scenes that showcased his performance and character in previous episodes.

[chuluoyi]

✎ all of me

- gojo satoru x reader

you understand that some things in marriage just needs compromise. and he soon understands too, when you're at your most vulnerable and he fails to be by your side when you need him the most

genre: angst, hurt/comfort, established relationship (you're married & have a son!) argument, feral gojo, mentions of injury & blood, fluff

note: if it isn't obvious by now i'm in the mood of angst-hurt/comfort this week HEHE :)) this is longer than the usual love entry, so i hope you'll enjoy it!

a part of gojo's love entries

general masterlist

Bantering with your husband is not uncommon―in fact, it happens on daily basis.

"Satoru― I'm talking to you!"

But having serious arguments with him is another matter entirely.

Your fists tightening at your sides, facing his unamused expression. How insufferable is he? You told him that everyday, but right now, he's truly surpassed previous levels of infuriating behavior.

"And I can hear you, sweetheart," he retorted, casting a glance your way. The term of endearment he used for you sounding almost like a sneer to your ears and you felt offended.

"I don't think you're taking this seriously," you griped, trying to calm your emotions, still balling your hands. "Someone is following our son on his way back from school―how can you be this... flippant?!"

Numerous photograph of your son exiting the school building from different angles had arrived in your mailbox, and if it wasn't a creepy warning from those who placed a target on his back, then you didn't know what it was.

Satoru let out an exasperated grunt. "I'm telling you, I'll pick him up for the rest of the week. No one will lay a hand on him."

You gritted your teeth. "And I'm telling you, they're trying to make you do just that. Even morons know not to mess with you― they're leaving hints, and you're taking the bait!"

Contrary to what you believed, Satoru felt just as worried as you upon knowing that someone might have marked his precious son, who was now six years old and had recently started attending preschool.

But this is where your approaches differ. You are always the cautious one, overanalyzing each detail, while he leans towards being impulsive, often resorting to brute force.

"Who do you think can stand a chance against me?" Satoru challenged with a real sneer this time. "Remember my words, wife, no one is going to hurt me, you or our baby. I'll end them where they stand."

"That's not the point!" you threw your hands in the air, irate. "Satoru, they're going to take advantage of―"

"Look, I don't want to argue with you." Satoru's gaze was hard on you, his tone clipped, and it made you stiffen. "His safety comes first— and you, of all people, should know I'd never let anything happen to him. You need to quit nitpicking and have a little faith in me."

"I know you are more than capable, but you are not―!"

And then he said it, and his words piercing through you like a knife―

"Don't compare me to you," your husband remarked a little too coldly. "I can do things you can't. Just rest your pretty head, I'll take care of the rest."

Nevermind that he blatantly dismissed your skills as a jujutsu sorcerer, nevermind that he totally didn't listen to you at all―he just went and made himself look like some sort unparalleled god, forgetting how much his hubris could actually take him.

And all these thoughts only made you angrier.

"So be it then." You tried desperately to hold yourself from shaking because you'd be damned if you showed it to him. "A word of advice, Satoru: beware of your arrogance."

With those words, you spun around, marching off toward your son's room, because no way in hell was you going to sleep with that obnoxious prick tonight.

But when you caught the sight of your baby scuttling away from the gap in the door, a fragment of your heart crumbled. Oh. He has seen it all.

In Gojo Satoru's mind, he is made of two things: a powerful jujutsu sorcerer and a family man.

With his immense strength, comes a certain responsibility. And with that responsibility, certain habits have formed. If you just took a few seconds to breathe and looked back throughout the past decade he'd spent with you, you'd know that in fact―

It was also his way to shield you. Satoru stands by the principle that you and his little boy must be protected at all cost, and he most certainly would pull all stops to do just that.

But frankly, he couldn't deny that he felt insulted by how defiant you were. Did you really think he would let anyone ever touch your―his―son? He wouldn't, they'd meet his wrath first and you should've known that.

Still, something akin to guilt nudged at his conscience as he lay alone in your shared bed that night. It felt strange not having you cuddling him. He felt empty.

. . .

None of your shampoo-scented pillow, none of your nightdresses, all of it replaced by a single photo hanging in the wall and the urn of ashes—

Abruptly, he jerked his eyes open, shaken from the most dreadful nightmare he had experienced—

Of you no longer by his side.

“Mama.” Your little boy looked up to you with his doe-blue eyes in the next day, his hand gripping yours. “I’ll be fine.”

You were accompanying him to the preschool. While Satoru had requested Ichiji to drive him, you insisted on tagging along to keep a watchful eye as well. You'd leave your husband to pick him up later just as he wanted.

“Huh?” you turned to him, tilting your head.

“I'll stick by Uncle Ichiji's side the entire time,” he replied in a murmur. “And papa will be picking me up too later. If there are bad guys, they'll get him first.”

You bit your lip, feeling a wave of guilt wash over you. Your boy witnessed your outburst last night and hadn't inquired about it until now, and even then, he was trying to reassure you.

“So… don’t fight.” His round, cerulean eyes then darted towards you, blinking hesitantly, causing you to catch your breath.

He looks so much like Satoru. At six years old, he was the spitting image of him, except his personality—he took after you in that area. It was as if your son was a softer, more innocent version of him. And your heart twisted, remembering your argument last night.

Don't compare me to you.

With a sigh, you bent down to be eye-level with him and managed a smile, holding both of his little hands. “I’m sorry… it was just misunderstanding last night, okay? Don’t worry.”

“…really?”

“Really. Mama and papa were just tired,” you tried to reason, a thin smile on your face. "It's going to be okay, just like you said, yeah? Papa will beat the bad guys out there."

“Will he pull through...? If they bring a knife, and he's just there laughing, they can cut him.”

A giggle escaped your lips at your baby's innocent wonderings, easing the ache in your heart as you recalled how Satoru humored him in so many ways.

You gently poked your son in the cheek. "Nah, do you remember what he always goes on about?"

He puffed up his cheeks in response, his expression turning sour as if combing through memories of hundreds of shenanigans Satoru had instigated to recall his words. You let out a hearty chuckle, finding him so adorable.

"He's strong, he's going to win. He always does."

"Oh. Mmm." Your son scrunched up his nose cutely, before looking away and squeezing your hand. A sincerer smile bloomed in your lips, heart melting at the sight of your growing munchkin.

You will protect him. And maybe you could patch things up with Satoru later that night. Maybe yesterday you were just too paranoid.

That was the plan... at least until your son suddenly screamed—someone wrenching him from your grasp. Without a second thought, you reacted, flipping the attacker away from you and him.

. . . and that was the beginning of how everything started to unravel so terribly that day.

"Gojo-san...! There's been an incident!"

He got that call right after he finished some things with Yaga. Satoru teleported to the preschool right away, only to be greeted by a scene of utter chaos.

Several teachers stood outside the building, and police officers were present at the scene. It was all a blur of cursed energy until his eyes caught sight of—

His little boy, red-faced and obviously in fear, was clinging to Ichiji, who was frantically making calls. Some teachers gathered around him were seemingly trying to coax him to speak.

He didn't waste a second to dash towards him, tearing through the crowd.

"Are you okay? Hey, buddy, what happened?" Satoru pulled him away from Ichiji and turned him over, crouching to his level to check for any signs of injury or harm.

And upon seeing him actually here, his son's eyes immediately welled up with tears, and Satoru felt a chill run through his veins as he broke into sobs, which quickly turned into heart-wrenching wails.

"Mama—! F-find mama—!" the little boy choked out through his tears, clutching onto his shirt tightly and crumbling in his embrace, thoroughly inconsolable.

Satoru's sharp gaze quickly swept over the scene, seeking any clues, while he tightened his hold over him. It was then he noticed traces of your cursed energy mingled with blood.

They hurt you.

"Hey, kiddo—listen to me, it's going to be alright, yeah?" Satoru said, gently pulling away to wipe away his tears, holding the boy's face tenderly in his hands. "Go with Ichiji for now, okay? I'm going to bring mama back, I promise."

He didn't need to be told twice. Your son is always obedient when it matters the most. He gave him a small nod, still shaking with tears.

"Don't worry," he flashed a reassuring smile and ruffled his hair. "I'm the strongest, remember? I'll get her back," he vowed once again. "She'll be fine. Wait for me until then, yeah?"

Ichiji was ready to leave as he had called for those in headquarters as backup in case anything were to happen again. Trusting him to keep his son safe, Satoru took off as soon as he could no longer see the sight of his son's tear-streaked face trying to watch him as the car pulled away.

"I won't repeat myself— where is my wife?"

Satoru wasn't playing this time. He skipped past taunts and just plain threats. These little fries, he thought.

The man he held by the throat was in a lot of distress. "Hyaaa! It's him! Please, please, let me go! I'm acting under orders!"

He then flung him across the wall— might have added more cursed energy than necessary.

At the moment, his entire focus was on trying to locate you. He couldn't let his mind wander to anything else; in fact, he didn't permit himself to.

It didn't take him long to piece together the general location of where you were through the residual of your cursed energy. They stationed several hooligans in this abandoned warehouse to stall him, but he got rid of them quickly and he could sense that you were close by.

"It's Gojo Satoru!"

"Run! Ruuuun!"

What a pain. They picked the wrong person to mess with, and Satoru's lips curled into a manic grin as he opened his palm, pulling them in—

"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue."

Chaos erupted as the building collapsed around him. He hoped you would realize he was here and manage to avoid getting caught in the wreckage. He was sure you'd know though.

And true to his thoughts, soon he found you— blasting your attacker away with a powerful kick.

Satoru thought that you were a sight to behold, really. And he was about to call out to you when he felt it.

It happened almost in an instant. The way his heart dropped to his stomach, and how his body reacted, barely whispering the incantation for Red as he shot it at something lurking behind you—

At that moment, the only thing you were aware of was the foul stench of a curse. Time seemed to stop before the overwhelming force of Red expelled it away from you.

But before then, you experienced a searing, white-hot pain that scorched through your flesh and pierced your abdomen—

"Y/N―fuck―!" The voice that came from Satoru's throat was raw and laden with panic.

He pulled you against him protectively as you collapsed, blinded by pain. He immediately felt warmth spreading across his lower body—your blood was rapidly drenching his shirt, and he felt a shiver down his spine.

You held onto him tightly while suppressing your scream, feeling every bit of your strength drain away along with the dark crimson blood that poured out of you.

"―toru―" you managed to croak amidst the scalding pain, curling and whimpering in his hold.

"Hey― sweetheart, please―" his voice rang in your ears, as he pressed down on your wound. His hands were shaking, and you clawed at him and groaned in agony. "I-I'm taking you back now― You're going to be alright, yeah?"

The wound was beyond anything you had experienced before, causing you to cry out and gasp for air. It was almost as if something fried your insides. It was hard to stay conscious.

"I've got you now. You're going to be okay." His voice was coarse, as he hurriedly carried you out. And he tried not to let the full-blown panic take over him when your body went limp in his arms, your breaths slowing, head lolling in his chest.

"You're going to be alright! You hear me, sweetheart? You're going to make it. Our baby― he's waiting for you. I promise you, you're going to be fine―"

Perhaps he was trying to tell that to himself, because despite the excruciating pain, a wave of reassurance washed over you.

You were in the arms of the strongest sorcerer alive, what more could you possibly afraid of?

A special grade curse. They had actually unleashed a potent curse and likely aimed at him as their final card—until it veered off course and struck you, leaving a searing gash across your abdomen.

Satoru felt numb as he sat in the waiting room in his bloodied uniform. You got hurt so terribly right in front of his eyes, and all he could feel was this profound void that seemed to bore through him and pierced his soul.

He was supposed to protect you. He said it to your face that nothing and no one would touch your son, and it was in his wedding vows that he'd protect you with his life too.

And yet what happened?

If only he was faster. If only he was able to pull you to him and protect you with his infinity—none of this shit would have happened.

Seeing your face twisted in agony and smeared with blood made him feel sick to his stomach. Inside that OR, you hovered on the brink of life and death, and he was here, unable to do anything.

Satoru rested his head against the wall, feeling a sharp pain surge through his chest. He remembered waking up to your face every morning, the way your touches felt, and how you had brightened his world for the past decade. If he lost you now... he wouldn't survive it. He would wreck anything, everything—

"Papa!" and came his voice of reason. Satoru immediately discarded his bloodstained jacket by instinct, throwing it away before his boy could see it, with Ichiji and Megumi closely trailing behind.

His son crashed himself into him and threw his little arms around his torso, crying—and in that very second, the thump of his heart sounded louder in his ears. Somehow it felt like a knife that twisted his insides.

"Hey, kiddo." Satoru repositioned him so that he would sit on his lap and hugged him, patting him in the back. "There, there... it's alright, yeah? Mama is inside, she'll get better soon."

Your little boy pulled away and wiped his eyes, and Satoru chuckled as he helped him blow his nose. His child was incredibly adorable, and his actions mirrored yours to such an extent that it made Satoru's heart soften.

"Mama g-got hurt trying to... tell me to g-go..." the boy suddenly said amidst his quieter sniffles. "And... she s-said... papa— i-is strong and g-going to win..."

You believe in him. Ignoring the ache in his chest, only able to reply him with a "Yeah..."

Not long after, Shoko emerged from the operating room and informed him that the surgery had been successful, though you would likely need to have a one-week stay in the hospital for observation. He intended to move you to the VIP suite and stay the night there, but then he remembered his son, who was holding his hand.

Satoru crouched down and patted him in the head, fixing him a smile. "See? Mama is okay, but she needs to sleep here to get even better. Now you go home first with big brother Megumi, yeah?"

Your son adored Megumi and often begged you to let him stay over at his place, but this time he looked hesitant, fiddling with his little fingers. "Really? Mama will be home... soon?"

"Mm-hmm, the more she sleeps here, the faster she'll go back home, alright?"

And with that, his baby nodded and Satoru turned to Megumi with a nod. "Thank you for this, Megumi."

The boy whose life he had once saved on some sort of a whim, now grown up and shared the same concern he had for you, Fushiguro Megumi had never before witnessed his benefactor expressing such sincere gratitude for anything before.

When you came to, your body felt as heavy as lead.

The discomfort in your abdomen made you flinch, and you almost let out a groan until you turned to your side and saw him.

Satoru was asleep while sitting in the sofa next to your bed, dark circles evident under his eyes. It might have been your imagination, but his cheeks appeared to be slightly red too.

You tried to recall what had happened to you when it came back—you urging your son to run away as you let yourself being taken away, almost escaping from that warehouse, the flash of excruciating pain, and Satoru's stricken voice.

So he must've been here since last night. Any remnants of your disagreement seemed to have vanished, seeing him there with you, barely covering himself with the blanket, with a frown still marking his forehead even in his sleep.

You wanted to reach out to him until the movement sent a sharp jab to your stomach and you cried out a bit.

In that split second, Satoru's eyes jerked open, and realizing you were awake, his gaze locked onto yours. "Y/N—" But your strained whimper and expression told him everything. "Does it hurt? I-I'll get Shoko, wait—"

And then he hit the call button. Throughout it all, he kept a firm grip on your hand for reassurance. A few minutes later, Shoko arrived and examined your wound, subsequently administering painkillers to alleviate your discomfort.

"It's going to leave a scar," she explained grimly, showing the mangled skin where the curse had made its mark on you, and seeing that, Satoru clenched his fists.

Shoko sighed, empathizing with her friend's frustration. "It's going to fade with time, don't worry. You did well, Gojo. You brought her here quickly. Had you been even slightly later, there could have been an irreversible damage to her organs."

But your husband remained quiet, unable to bring himself to look at you. And after she left, you tried to finally voice your question to him.

"O-our—"

"He's fine," Satoru immediately answered, squeezing your hand. "Our boy is fine. I'll tell Megumi to visit later—he's with him."

A sigh of relief came out of you. "Thank... goodness."

But his expression seemed to fall even further after hearing your response. Satoru settled himself on the seat next to you and lowered the rail on your bed, allowing you to be even closer to each other.

"Do you not feel any pain anymore?" he asked then, gently tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear. He looked so sad, a stark contrast of how he usually was, and it bugged you.

"No... I feel fine now."

"Then, can I hug you?"

Of course you nodded without a second thought, and carefully, he wrapped his arms around your body, pulling you close and resting his face on the crook of your neck.

You knew what it was. Satoru was still visibly shaken by what had happened to you, and he wasn't great at expressing himself, so he tried to find consolation through this physical closeness instead.

"I'm okay..." you patted his back, trying to convince him. "I'm alright now, yeah?" But to your surprise, suddenly his whole body started to shake. "Satoru...?"

“…’m sorry.” His voice was barely above a whisper as he nuzzled you. “I shouldn't... have let you get this hurt...”

It always amazes you how Satoru always gets this distressed whenever you sustain any injury. You had seen him cry precisely two times now—once after you gave birth to your son and experienced severe bleeding, and now.

"It's not your fault..." you whispered in response. "You... have protected me well."

He held you tighter, his tone faltering. "I didn't."

"You have..." you stroked his hair, trying to convince him. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

Hearing you say that made Satoru's chest ache. The thought of something like this happening to you was unimaginable, and now that it had, he couldn't come to terms with seeing you hurt right in front of him.

"Don't—" he choked on his voice, his breath trembled against your neck. "Don't ever put yourself in danger again. If something happened to you, I wouldn't be able to live with myself..."

You couldn't make that promise. Despite the pleading in his voice, you knew deep down that your son's life—and his—meant more, and given the chance, you would obviously save theirs for yours.

“Satoru... I love you, you know that, right?”

So you simply embraced him close, hoping that in this life, you would live long enough that he would never have to see you like this again.

Epilogue

"Papa, how do I become stronger?"

Satoru blinked when his son asked him that so innocently and curiously, taken aback as he led him to your private room later that afternoon. "Oh? What brought this on?"

His first and only son, a perfect miniature of himself, pursed his lips. "I don't want Mama to get hurt again..."

Satoru's heart warmed at his baby’s sincere words, and despite himself, he chuckled.

"What's funny?" his son leveled a glare at him. "I'm being serious."

"Well, aren't you such a good boy? Don't worry, kiddo, I'll teach you my ways~"

"What ways?"

"Well, no need to rush, pumpkin. First of all, you will have to harness your skills and then you have to be more like me—"

"Do I have to be like you…? Is there no other way?"

"—? What's wrong with being more like me?"

"Everything...?"

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[el-jarado]

"Everything's Changed Since Polites"

In light of the extensive re-litigation of the events of Storm Saga after the Thunder Saga, I find myself thinking about "Keep Your Friends Close" a lot recently, and how I think Odysseus was set up for failure from the get-go, and not because of his crew being bad.

Polites's absence is felt like a knife in Storm Saga but the whole gang is feeling it. When "Luck Runs Out" comes up, this is the first time Eurylochus has seriously questioned Odysseus's plan in the musical; probably the first time he's seriously questioned him in over a decade. And what passes between them is pretty telling to me.

Where is this coming from, my friend? I just don't wanna see another life end You're like the brother I could never do without And suddenly, you doubt that I could figure this out?

From what I've seen, Epic takes the approach that Odysseus, Polites, and Eurylochus have been together since they were children. Polites is Odysseus's best friend, but he was Eurylochus's friend too, and he's the first of all of them to die in battle since Odysseus started leading them. They're both reeling from that loss, but how it comes out is bad for both of them. Eurylochus, as we see, is someone who locks down when he's shaken; focus on immediate safety for his shipmates even if it prevents a better course of action (run when the other cyclopses show up, the food is not worth having to take on another dozen Polyphemus; get the crew the fuck away from the sexy witch before she turns the rest of them into pigs; avert starvation NOW deal with (more) angry gods LATER). He does not want Odysseus to get hurt dealing with something as dangerous as a god, and tries to express that. Odysseus withdraws into himself and lashes out at anything that tries to reach him when he's shaken; he's already lashed out at Athena when she takes him to task while he's still grief-striken over Polites, and here he doesn't hear his brother saying "please don't be reckless, I can't lose you too", he hears "you weren't good enough to bring everyone home, and we don't believe in you anymore." He's cold and dismissive to Eurylochus's doubts to cover for his own hurt, and that just makes those doubts worse.

It's exactly the wrong mindset to approach Aeolus in, and this is the part I've really been turning over in my head. Aeolus's game does sound too easy; all he's gotta do is not open the bag, while sailing on a ship staffed by 43 men he's been leading for ten years, many of whom he's probably known his entire life. The winions add the obvious catch in that they spread a rumor among the crew that the bag is a treasure Odysseus is keeping to himself before Odysseus can explain himself, but I think in many ways Aeolus's whole song is putting a finger on the scales. Aeolus, in presenting it to Odysseus, implies that some of his brothers are enemies and should be treated as such, and the winions, spreaders of mischievous whispers, keep telling him "never really know who you can trust." (And imply he should kill and sacrifice when it's convenient, the act that ultimately destroys all trust in the crew down the road.) And I think that's a malicious twist in the game just as much as "It's treasure~! Buh-bye!" :D

Odysseus went up to the island feeling sore and defensive after his last talk with Eurylochus, and when he's told to keep his friends close and his enemies closer, it's interesting to me that he doesn't think "I don't have any enemies on that ship, those men are my brothers" or even "who can I trust to help me with this?"

He thinks "I need to do this entire thing myself." It could be hubris, a quality Odysseus certainly doesn't lack for, but I think this is the shadow of Polites not being there again. Odysseus had to leave some of his men behind for the first time in ten years, and he thinks he's lost their faith because of it. He's guided to expect a betrayal and feels like he needs to do something amazing all on his own to show Eurylochus and the others he's still got it, Polyphemus was a fluke.

Part of my understanding of human nature has been that people respond to our expectations and treatment of them. I sincerely believe if Odysseus had taken Eurylochus and/or a few of his most trusted men into his confidence for managing the bag, the temptation to open it would have been greatly diminished or negated. Odysseus doesn't treat any of his friends as if they're worthy of his trust, because Aeolus got in his head and he's trying to prove something to himself and to them by doing this singlehandedly. However, people respond to how you treat them, and Odysseus not realizing the crew are just as shaken by Polites's loss as he is and treating them with suspicion makes worry fester into doubt.

Polites's loss is felt keenly again; he's not there to tell Odysseus he can relax, that kindness is brave and he should trust in his friends to support him instead of treating them like potential enemies (Ody remarks on being unopposed as if he was expecting otherwise, which is not the relationship he's had with the crew up to now), and he's not there to reassure Eurylochus and the crew Odysseus must have a good reason for his cagey, secretive behavior and they shouldn't listen to the winions continuing to suggest a little peek to make sure of things wouldn't hurt. (I take the continued presence of the winions in the song to imply they're harassing the crew with rumor the entire time Odysseus is keeping to himself and trying not to sleep.) I don't think Eurylochus would have wanted to look in the bag if he was brought in on protecting it, that's not his relationship with Odysseus, but when they're nearly to Ithaca, Odysseus hasn't said a word to anyone in days, nobody really knows what's going on but there's all these rumors flying and the Captain's acting strange...

It would not surprise me if Epic's interpretation is similar to the Odyssey where they're almost back when the bag opens, in which case it might be even more tragic as an Orpheus & Eurydice twist; I don't think it was a case where the bag would've been opened the moment Ody turned his back, I think he stayed awake for nine days out of wholly unjustified paranoia/trying to make a point he's still got it by doing everything himself, and Eurylochus and the crew celebrated too early when their destination was in sight. They thought they were home, there's no harm in having a look now, right? Wrong; Aeolus (probably deliberately) didn't specify when it would be safe to open the bag, and certainly didn't feel the need to warn Odysseus the magic winds inside would blow them miles away from where they opened it. Like Orpheus makes it out of the underworld and then ruins his hard work because he looks back just before Eurydice has, I suspect the crew was not trying to open the bag during the days Odysseus was depriving himself of sleep to watch it; it's at the seeming end of the journey that "they wanna get the bag open so they can have closure." Like most bad ideas, it is likely Eurylochus did what he did when it didn't seem like there was any obvious harm in it; Odysseus said don't open the bag until we're home, but Ithaca's in sight, what could it hurt to celebrate a little early?

To make a long story short, I think Ody and the boys were hosed with the wind bag trial from the start without Polites around, and it's not just because the crew fell for a rumor introduced to make the game harder and Eurylochus eventually acted on it; it's also because a god Ody just met told him not to trust his friends, and he believed the god he just met instead of them because he's still mourning his best friend and misread his other best friend's concern for his safety as a sign his leadership was faltering. God games are rarely if ever fair; the house always wins, and it's a lesson Ody learns slowly and painfully.

I'm also not gonna do another long post about my point that people, Odysseus included, keep forgetting making it back to Ithaca with Poseidon still royally pissed at them would've been very very bad, but making it back to Ithaca with Poseidon still royally pissed at them would've been very very bad!

[katerinaaqu]

What are your thoughts on Paris: The Musical? Just curious since I know you aren't fond of EPIC.

That is a very good question and thank you for stating it. Storywise it is yet another inaccurate adaptation of homeric poems or rather a very crude adaptation that basically checks in the basic points of the Iliad and tries to bring them in one small musical.

Storywise that doesn't work of course. I also didn't like very much the way they treated Odysseus as a character; that they did try to bring his intelligence up which was great as well as his sneaky nature but I was disappointed by the song "Odysseus's prayer" if I recall the name correctly, for they apparently wanted to use the classic stereotype of intelligence=agnosticism aka they made Odysseus speak as if his faith in gods was something he never considered much, which is totally the opposite of Homeric Odysseus who was religious to the point of not wishing to assist someone if that person was opposing the gods (which was why his hubris against Poseidon cut so deep) but I liked the emotions transfered through it. Also treating Paris and Helen as a couple of love genuinely in the end was something that definitely missed the point of the Iliad (although I did enjoy some of their exchanges) and of course Paris dying by the hands of Menelaus in the sacking of Troy was not part of the lore, for Paris was killed way before that.

However what I liked about this musical was, once more, the music. In fact I loved the fact that their music is not the stereotypical "musical-like" music but a full on rock influenced one that has the character of the 80s and early 90s making it a very good way to be separate from the general musical culture in terms of music.

I also loved the song "Business" because I think it captures perfectly what war is all about for many (business and loot and glory). In that song I really liked the personalities of the characters in it; Odysseus's cunning and his speech of logic, Agamemnon's pride but also his leading skills. I loved the choice making Menelaus a baritone and I think this song was the only one I know that actually shows Patroclus's fighting side instead! I loved that detail. I also loved the way the song goes and creates a chaos of voices behind; exactly as chaotic and passionate a talk about war is. The way Odysseus speaks in that song is great too, how he doesn't claim to be a pacifist but that he needs a better motif to fight for. Another part that had me giggling was the theatricality of the Trojan Horse discovery with drunk Sinon and all. It had me giggling.

So all in all I would say plot-wise I am indifferent, exactly because it was very basic and crude transfer of the Iliad although I am relieved that it is not blasting out of proportions on the internet or used to that extent as EPIC is thus there is no...confusion here as to how inaccurate the plot is and people do not use the details of the musical to blast them out of proportions. Musically-wise is a very good and unique way to use 80s rock music and is different than the standard musical music. Character-wise it seems again rather plain but I see why since again they need to capture some essences of the characters and bring them to action. Although I did enjoy some of their transactions all in all I am also indifferent there since they are using some portions of the Iliad but scrapping it off the surface rather than trying to create some sort of profund analysis on the characters. Ironically I appreciate that because I would feel much more against a musical that tries to deeply "analyze" an altered version of the characters, if that makes sense.

Undoubtedly they wanted to focus on the concept of Paris's love and the destructive consequences but apart from that I do not have much to say on it. It is pleasant tothe ear, just like EPIC but plot-wise has little to very little to nothing to do with the actual Iliad with a few exceptions to scenes. My favorite song is undoubtedly "Business" because it did give me Epic Cycle vibes the same much that I had liked the first two sagas of EPIC. I am not sure why Paris the Musical didn't strike me as deeply but maybe that is because it wasn't as I said before so blasted out of proportions to the point of people say "Paris from Paris the musical" as opposed to people said "Oh that is Briseis from Song of Achilles" or "Eurylochus from the Musical" if that makes sense.

I think that Paris the Musical doesn't take itself so seriously as EPIC began to (in one essence of course) and simply wanted to crudely present the Epic Cycle in a spree which of course plotwise didn't work but still it felt better and less "serious" for themselves and that I appreciated I guess. The same goes with the fanbase of it. They do not quote Paris the Musical with the same spree as EPIC so that there will be a literal tangle between the ancient sources and the musical.

I know my brain is not working logically always but I hope I got some point through! ^_^ Thanks Anon for the question

[bite-the-bloody-hand]

Owlcatober 1 - Teatime [Part 1]

I'm a little stalled but I love where this is going, so have the first half of Teatime, featuring Zell's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Morning. Please forgive the formatting.

Teatime [Part 1]

He should have known this was coming. All the signs had been present, after all, but he’d ignored them. Surely it was just the stress of his new appointment; a few sleepless nights; endless threat of demonic incursion; so on and so forth. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

Yet of the many trials and challenges that had been presented to nascent Knight Commander Zell Hellsing during the first insane few weeks of his new job, there was nothing old or new in the world of Golarion that could compare to his two most ancient and beloved of nemeses: His own Hubris and The Fucking Sun.

Hubris, ever the sly fair weather friend, had convinced him that the cramping muscles, irritation, mania, and general malaise of the last day or so had just been simple exhaustion. They had been out on the road a few days too long, so what? He could muscle through it, no problem. No absurd dreams of being dragged through bloody battlefields, bloody streets, or bloody portals could keep him from his many…. Many many tasks. Hubris had whispered its sweet poison into his ear and he’d gladly tilted his head for a little more. Like a moron.

Then there was The Sun. Beloved giver of life. Beloathed stabber of eyeballs. It was through the small seam at the southeastern facing corner of his tent that the evil little assassin, the wicked beam of light entered. Cruel, wretched light, enemy of his similarly wretched vampire progenitor but most importantly, right now, his enemy because it was really making his head hurt.

Surely it was just the sun and not the everything else. He would kick himself about the hubris later.

There was a rustle, bootfalls that somehow thundered against the sod and straw floor, and the sudden Knowledge that the command tent was now flooded with early morning light. He then heard Anevia’s fist rapped against the partition screen propped next to his bed. He could feel the twin pressures of sunlight and Anevia’s gaze upon him.

“Mornin’ report! And since when are you a past-dawn layabout, not even up and stretchin’ yet?” her voice was so marvelously cheery, and usually so very welcome to help start his day. Zell covered his eyes with his blanket and groaned pitifully.

“Anevia. Death is here.”

“Well shit, boss, that sounds like a big problem for the Crusade.” A light rustle as she dropped a sheaf of papers on his desk. “Not much today really; Wilcer’s got that herd o’ horses you ordered all ready for inspection, and we’re still workin’ on opening up the road between here and Leper’s Smile.”

“I’d love to hear the history on that name sometime,” Zell mumbled. Of course Wilcer would have the horses ready now, when he is least able to appreciate them. Another little trial. “Anyway, wicked sun,” he grasped in the air for the words he wanted, landing eventually on something close enough. “Finally has come claimed me.” Anevia made a sympathetic noise.

“I don’t have a funny comeback for that one that wouldn’t be a little too mean this early in the morning, I think.” Zell heard her move to the tent door, and the leathery sound of the tent flap dropping down into place. The pressure of the light eased. “Bad headache?”

“Kill me.” “Come on, you know I can’t do that. We’d have to do the choppin’ and the burnin’ and bury your parts at crossroads and it would be a whole thing. Nobody’s got the time.” Zell scoffed, immediately regretting it. “I – ugh - can’t believe you, of all people, cannot be writing ‘put poor Commander out of his misery’ to your schedule.” “Believe it or not, Boss, but I’m a busy gal.” “But so much faith I have in you…”

“And speaking of I’ve gotta get scouting, since the only news right now is your horrible impending demise, unless someone can brave the sixty paces to the healer’s tent to get you the good tea.” She paused, and from the soft creak of her boots and rattle of the screen, he could all but see her peeking over the partition at him. Her voice went soft in a way he wasn’t sure he’d heard before. “I’ll see about getting any crazy stuff sent to Beth first, so you can try and rest a little, okay? You’ve been working pretty hard, by Knight-Commander standards.”

“This Crusade is nothing without you, Anevia,” he sighed in gratitude. As long as he could make it to the healer’s tent, he could count on Anevia to keep her word.

“Don’t I know it,” she replied, before taking her leave.

Zell lingered in the dim silence of the command tent a few moments longer, weak to the knowledge that the second he started to stand up, his head and stomach were really going to start with the nonsense. But stand he must, so stand he did. Slowly. With extreme caution, pushing himself up by meager degrees until he was sitting upright. The bright buzzing angry pressure in his head turned into a wave crashing bright spots against the inside of his skull, while his stomach turned elegant flips in accompaniment. If he were in a more poetic mood he could have gone on about the sensations, how uniquely beautiful and awful they were, but in the moment he felt like boiled ass on dirt and couldn’t think of a pretty word to save his life.

So he forced himself to his feet and wrapped his blanket around his head and shoulders as a makeshift shroud. With great effort he pushed himself from the end of his cot to the end of the partition screen, stumbling from it to the corner of his desk. He tripped, cursed, and stumbled forward to the tent flap, grabbing the canvas to keep himself from falling. The whole tent shook violently for a second but stayed intact. Zell cursed again and righted himself, dragging the makeshift hood over his eyes just in time to avoid a sudden slash of bright sunlight across his face.

“Sir?” A voice he recognized punched him in the ear. He stumbled and forced himself not to hiss. It was just one of the lads that always lingered around the entrance of the command tent, no need to lash out. “Can I assist?” “No, no, I have this,” he said, waving the boy off. He could barely think it was so bright, even with the blanket making a deep hood to shield him.“I make for the healing tent. Not an emergency.” “Oh, well, but Sir I-”

Please child by the name of whatever God you hold holy I will bite you if you speak again, Zell’s head throbbed like something disgusting. “Not emergency,” he growled, teeth snapping in irritation. The lad shrunk back, hands up as Zell pushed past him. “I tell you when emergency.” He left the boy behind him, stuttering.

It wasn’t really that long a walk. He’d made the trip both mildly hungover on demon blood and while still aching from a poison he’d accidentally forgotten about. This was doable. Allegedly. In some world, in another world that was not the one which he currently occupied, the task was doable. In those other, beautiful worlds, his head was not already splitting apart from the force of its own willpower. In those worlds, walking past the blacksmith would be such a little, trivial task.

Each ring of the hammer echoed between his ears and tilted the ground beneath him, making his stomach churn. He barely caught himself on a tentpost once he cleared the causeway beyond the Smithy’s tent, shuddering as his knees nearly gave out. He had to be more than halfway there, surely. No other terrible obstacle could keep him now.

“What party did you not invite me to that you are this hung over?” A voice just behind him demanded. He caught a glimpse of a warped golden glow at the edge of his hood and snatched it back down before the reflection of Count Arendae’s halo could blind him.

“Not hungover, just headache. Anyway you’d crash if you weren’t invited, I know this.”

“Hm, true. You sound wretched.” Daeran announced, without a hint of sympathy as he came closer to investigate. “Why ever are you attempting to stumble around on your own?”

“Getting tea. Headache tea from healer’s tent.”

A pause. Then Daeran asked, in a tone that was usually reserved for very small, slow children, “Why didn’t you send a squire to get it for you?” Zell considered the question. Rather he realized that he hadn’t considered that at all. “What… do you mean.” “You know, the lovely young men and women that linger about the front of your tent, waiting to run small errands at your beck and call. One of the magnificent perks of gaining the title of Knight Commander of Mendev’s Crusade.” A terrible silence settled between them.

“That is many words, you have just said to me.” “So you forgot about the squires.” “...Head is stupid right now,” Zell grumbled. Daeran stifled a laugh.

“The tent is to your left,” Daeran supplied.

Zell turned, and felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“Your other left, Commander.”

Zell grunted his thanks and turned in the proper direction. After a moment of stumbling, he caught the red-lined edge of the healer’s tent in his field of view. Finally.

“Anything else I can do to help?” Daeran asked, though the lilt of his voice suggested his help would extend little further than guiding Zell to another, less ‘busy’ healer. But he had followed, which was an interesting detail he would forget to think about for several hours. “Yah , do me an favor and cut my head off,” Zell muttered, fumbling with the door flap to the Healer’s tent. He felt Daeran nearly run into him as they entered the tent together. There was a momentary pause. He thought he heard Daeran clear his throat, but the sound seemed a little off. “We’ll save that for after you’ve won the Crusade and the Capitol decides to convict you of war crimes,” The Count eventually replied, his voice airy. “You’re such a good friend.” Zell pressed at the sides of his head, grasping at the back of his neck. Something popped; a tiny bit of pressure released. Thank goodness it was so much darker in the healer’s tent, it made thinking a little easier.

A sudden jolt of realization hit him. He groaned, pulling his hood over his face and down his chest until he was less a man than a walking stupid blanket.

“For the fucking sake of pity, Daeran, be angry at me. That was the most meanest stupid shit thing I could say just now.” He doubled over in misery as another lance of pain hit its mark.

Daeran responded to his apology with a laugh that came out loud at first but he caught himself, dampening it down to a deeply amused chuckle. “Please, Commander, apologizing after such an excellent barb? I suppose I shall accept, if you would rather your venom be intentional. Cot to your right.”

Zell turned, then felt another light tap on his shoulder.

“Your other right.”

He turned the opposite direction, shuffling slowly until he felt his knees hit the edge of a bed.

“Who is that under – Commander?” He heard Sosiel’s voice nearby and stumbled slightly as he turned to sit. Oh of course it would be him, and not the other one who was always there. Of course.

“Kind healer I beg your indulgence,” Zell croaked, not obviously attempting to look pathetic but doing a great job of it anyway. “I was told you have the good tea for the headaches brought by the sun.”

“Oh, certainly,” Sosiel paused, slight confusion in his voice. He was also probably wondering why Zell hadn’t just sent for a squire, but at least he was too polite to say anything about it. Instead he addressed Daeran. “And you, Count Arendae? I hardly suspect you need my assistance?” “Oh, I’m just here because misery loves company,” Daeran replied. Zell felt his weight settle down next to him on the cot. “And of course performing my duties as field advisor.” “By doing what, pray tell?” Daeran waved his hand in a vague gesture. “I advised Commander Hellsing on the field placement of this very tent, and quite competently I might add.”

“Lost without you,” Zell mumbled truthfully. He debated the merits of pushing Daeran off the cot versus just using him as a convenient pillow, but eventually decided either one would be far too much effort. Instead he hunched into himself, the blanket billowing around him to looks something like a nest. Zell heard the rustle and clatter of herbs being prepared; smelled the sharpness of ginger and the green acerbic bite of willow bark. Then came peppermint and mallow; Sosiel was definitely not skipping out on the good stuff. The scent alone was enough to start settling his stomach.

“Thank you for taking the time, Sosiel,” he murmured, wishing he could at least look the man in the face with his thanks. Though perhaps he hadn’t noticed-

“I was beginning to worry I had made you uncomfortable somehow, and you wouldn’t come to me for help,” Sosiel replied. His voice was kind, but Zell didn’t have to be functioning to sense the hurt in his words. Zell flinched, ashamed.

“You noticed I am er... avoidant,” he admitted. He had tried so hard to be polite, rebuffing Sosiel’s offers for help not out of some misplaced projection but because he “didn’t need it.”

He did not address in the moment why his own thoughts felt the need to emphasize - with deep sarcasm - his insistent lack of need.

“I did, I thought perhaps after the incident at Martyr Zacharius’s Cemetery, that I had done something in particular to put you off…”

Zell felt his heart clench. He had been unkind to Sosiel for no reason. Alas, in a better mindset a more elegant explanation may have come to him. In lieu of that...

"No, it is not your fault. You just...” He grasped for the right combination of words, flailing until he landed on “...remind me of my... ex." The final word ended in a hiss that was part confusion, part embarrassment. Not that it wasn’t the right word, he just didn’t want to have had said it ever.

Daeran snorted inelegantly next to him.

Zell grimaced. No, that was a stupid way to put it, He had to explain it better. "Not really ex, more like. His boss had him string me along because I,” he gestured to himself, again at a loss for words. “Asking questions." Oh yes, that was much better.

He heard the soft clatter of the kettle being rested on its trivet. Sosiel responded, "You're saying I remind you of this person?" Zell could hear the good-natured humor in Sosiel’s reply. At least he didn’t seem to have taken it personally.

"Of his persona! His front. He was very-" he waved a hand, gesturing at where he imagined Sosiel stood. "Like you, but about Sarenrae. Devoted."

"Devout?"

"That's also that one yes. And like you he healed us, and very much was handsome as well. It's the good things I think of, I promise." Zell pressed his fingers to his temples. The pulsing whine in his ears felt almost like laughter. Or maybe that was Daeran. Who could say. "I did not mean to be so clumsy in saying it. My head makes me stupid."

“I see,” Sosiel chuckled. “It is nice to know that I wasn’t being avoided for anything I’d done, though I was a bit curious.”

“I am an ass, unworthy, please forgive me,” Zell apologized through another wave of nausea.

“He’s so precious when he’s contrite,” Daeran quipped. “All patients should be so easy, wouldn’t you say, Brother Sosiel?”

“There is no need to apologize,” Sosiel’s voice was firm, though he was still clearly trying not to laugh. “Besides, what kind of Cleric would I be if I showed any less grace than you to our beleaguered friend, your Lordship? Commander, drink this-”

Zell felt Sosiel’s hand close over the back of his own, steadying it to accept a warm wooden mug. The sharp scents of ginger and peppermint floated up into his hood; he breathed them in with gratitude, grasping the mug with both hands. Whatever sharp reply Daeran gave Sosiel was missed as all of Zell’s attention centered on the warmth and the smell.

[puc-puggy]

s4 sucked, but Five wasn't out of character aside from the lila romance.[1] what he is is a broken old man finally showing the cracks. everybody wants to treat 5 like a snarky 14 year old brat, but he is NOT. that man is OLD. he has lived through over 60 hard years. he's a brat because he is an old, incredibly intelligent theoretical physicist stuck in the body of a 14 year old, and the body of the 14 year old encourages everyone to forget he is a nearly 70 year old theoretical physicist.

this Five spent 45 years in the aftermath of viktor's moon apocalypse, 28 days straight between the moon and nuclear war apocalypse, days to weeks in the kugelblitz apocalypse and then days in oblivion. 6 years to rest and then it's time for another apocalypse caused by alien elements that reshape reality. this five personally saved and ended the world at least 5 times, going the farthest out of all of the Fives in number of apocalypses and by attempting to create the Commission. [2] this five says over and over and over throughout s3 that it's not about you/us, it's about the world. five is not just tired, he's tried harder and for longer than anyone else. he tried for so long that he forgot his own name. he has lost delores, he lost his sense of a clear enemy, he lost his understanding of the universe and his place in it, and he is old now.

when he is told by his future self not to save the world and he decided not to go into oblivion, that was a turning point in his entire character directly caused by a world-changing crisis of faith. the reason all of the other fives in the subway station gave up solving the problem is because every last one of them loved their family too much to consider the idea that the world has to come at the cost of the family. but this five had been through a full lifetime of apocalypse. he survived for 45 years in an apocalypse and turned saving the world and his family into his sole purpose. he lost that purpose when his future self told him it was all for nothing. that it can't be saved.

and this is where i think that people forget that the hargreeves are not just about childhood trauma; they are also about wealth and power. reginald and the hargreeves are immensely wealthy and immensely physically powerful. think about what else he said in season 3: "this is what it means to be powerful. sometimes you step on ants. we will never be able to save enough lives to make up for those we take."

what we see in s4 is an old man that has been forced to ask for the first time if such power has as much of a right to exist as the ants do. and to his surprise as much as everyone else's, it turns out that the answer is no. they were made from the hubris and selfishness of an abusive egomaniac who released a dangerous, technologically advanced, and highly reactive alien element upon a captive population in an attempt to resurrect his wife from the dead. five and his siblings are that abusive egomaniac's tools. they carry a power manufactured by an abusive egomaniac, and while it was unfairly forced upon them, it is still by nature a power that comes at the expense of others and they find themselves unable to be separated from it.

because that power is too alluring, too much a temptation. ben literally drugs everyone against their will, and to five, an old man asking himself questions about power, the fact that all members of the family voted against it is not proof that they can create a better future absent of this power. the fact that they were drugged anyway despite their protests is proof that they can't, that they will always fall into this power's destructive gravity well.

and an old man that has just had his entire concept of the world and life's purpose ripped away from him is the guy that accepts the end.

[1] the issue with five and lila's romance in character is not five's youth. it's lila's youth. he's almost 70 fucking years old, and his accidental and unwanted sip from the fountain of youth did not and does not change the fact that this is a nearly 70 year old man. he treated lila as if she was childish and immature because that is literally how he sees her and the rest of the siblings. because he is almost 70 years old. he gets annoyed with her for dragging him into stupid risks because he's 70 fucking years old and actually does know better. he is nearly 40 years her senior. their dynamic is funny because he looks 14. not because he IS 14. LOOKS young, not IS young.

regarding "why were they having him flirt when he was underage" for the same reason he's a boozehound and knocks back any alchohol in a 30 foot radius. the character has been over 60+ years old the entire time. & as people age, they can safely participate in more activities. a 14 year old cannot safely roleplay everything a 60+ year old character would do. before age 18, the actor could safely speak flirty lines to other actors during their roleplay job playing a 60+ year old. when the actor turned 18, the actor could safely kiss other adult actors during their job roleplaying as a 60+ year old. the child actor portraying a significantly older character getting hints of romance but not kissing anyone on a set until they're 20 is a sign that things were handled ethically. not the other way around. actors age and stop being 14 years old and limited to the safety constraints of a 14 year old. an adult kissed another adult during their job roleplaying as other people. it was just a bad plotline.

[2] I don't care about timeline hijinks in context of whether that was really physically the exact same 5 from the same timeline that started the commission. he thought it was the physical same him & reacted to it like it was & the impact does not change and in fact might become more acute upon realizing that it wasn't physically him, that it was a whole other five, that there are potentially hundreds of years of attempts to stop the apocalypses, and that the collective mass of their apocalypse ending efforts across all timelines should have accomplished something and never ever did it do so. that's hopeless

[hello-there]

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[johaerys-writes]

hey its the anon who was asking about achilles’ characterisation in the iliad! thank you so much for your answer, it was super informative and helpful. i think i very much had the wrong interpretation because i had a classics teacher for a year before my school scrapped the subject and they basically rambled about how achilles was a rapist and awful and went against the gods etc. without really going into the nuance of everything or explaining the context of heroes. i was kind of curious about your mention of hubris though? i thought that was a Big Thing in ancient greece because placing yourself on a pedestal above the gods was a guaranteed way to get yourself smote. sorry for acting like a student bugging their favourite teacher for an answer but you really do explain things so well 😅

Hubris is a big thing in ancient greece, you're right; there are so many myths where someone does something stupid and gets their ass whooped by the gods (e.g. Perseus and Andromeda, among many others). But it isn't exclusive to Ancient Greece. In fact, the idea of hubris may have started there, but it changed throughout the years and took different forms in literary tradition. In ancient greek mythos, hubris is usually violent or dangerous behaviours, such as extreme boasting, that are ultimately punished by the gods. In that sense, hubris is external, that means the punishment comes from outside. As cultures changed and the focus shifted more on the individual, hubris started being used to denote a personality quality of excessive pride and arrogance, which are big no-no's in Christianity. So hubris gradually became more of an internal thing, a cautionary tale to make sure the faithful stay humble and are rewarded in the afterlife. In the context of stories, that often comes with personal development of some kind, such as the protagonist seeing the error of their ways and changing their behaviour, which isn't really an integral part of ancient greek mythos as a whole.

Ancient greek hubris and christian hubris often become confused, and because we are taught that hubris is SO important to greek mythos, people try all the time to fit the Homeric works into these neat little boxes. The thing is that Homer does not fit into that; Homer was strange even when the works were written. The Iliad doesn't follow the traditional formulae of stories and myths that were popular at the time, especially oral poetry: it includes emotional change but isn't a story about personal empowerment; there is complexity and nuance in all of the characters but the characters are not idealised; it is a meditation on complex social and human themes such as the connection between rage and grief; it puts mortality, not morality, at the center of the story.

It shows how vulnerable the characters are through their rage or their grief or their passions in general, but the story isn't at all about characters being punished for their hubris or wrong-doings. For example, Agamemnon technically commits hubris in the very first book of the Iliad, when he refuses to give Chryseis back to her father and Apollo gets pissed off about it. This could be considered dangerous behaviour by ancient greek standards, and the Achaeans are indeed punished for it with the plague that Apollo sends their way. However, at the end of the day Agamemnon himself does not get punished for his transgression in any way. He gets everything he wants: Achilles rejoins the fight eventually, Hector is killed, Troy is sacked, he returns to Argos a victor.

Achilles, too, could be said to have committed hubris through excessive violence, when he killed so many people he clogged up the river and then fought the god Scamander himself; and yet he isn't punished by the gods or by the narrative, he is one of the few characters (perhaps the only?) that gets a redemption arc of sorts, by returning Hector's body to Priam and treating the old man with respect, thus showing us his generosity, his integrity, and the nobility of his character once again. And that's where the Iliad ends for him. Not with his death or with him killing even more Trojans or whatever, but with a poignant and moving scene between two people on opposite sides of a war, who have lost everything and yet still find this point of connection between them.

So Homer, and especially the Iliad, breaks all of those norms when it comes to traditional storytelling, and that's why I think it's a work that still baffles and intrigues so many classicists. That's why in my previous answer I said that it's important to keep an open mind, and to try to avoid blindly applying literary criticism devices such as cause-and-effect analyses or importing modern moral judgement and anachronistic theories in works like Homer.

I hope this helped! I love talking about the Iliad so if you have any more questions I'd gladly answer them <3

P.S. WOW that professor really needs to get their facts straight lmao, I'm sorry your first contact with the Iliad and Achilles was through a lens like that. It always astounds me how little some people actually know about the subjects they're supposed to be experts in, like to talk about Achilles, a character from the ILIAD, and to refer to him as a "rapist", a thing that only appears in later Roman works which were basically ILIAD FANFIC LMAO, and BAD fanfic at that because it was essentially anti-Greek propaganda......... wow wow wow

P.S.2 unless the "rapist" thing refers to him sleeping with Briseis/a slave, which WOW once again extremely myopic take, very culturally and contextually tone deaf, I wish they actually do their research and stop spreading slander, that's slander, like come ON

[eomma-jpeg]

bc i might have been motivated by comments on twitter and my own hubris... here is part 2 of the post trimax vashmeryl baby au

part 1

Snorting into wakefulness, Vash’s hands tightened, immediately feeling for the baby. He was relieved when he felt her familiar weight on his chest, his tense frame relaxing back into the plush couch. Falling asleep was not something he had intended to do, but ever since crossing that threshold the night before he had felt an uncommon reprieve from the title of ‘outlaw’. Perhaps it was because he was under the protection of Meryl Stryfe.

Meryl.

Sitting upright and clutching his daughter to his chest, Vash turned his head around the room, seeking for any sign of his friend, but he was only met with the dim light of the early morning. It laid in little dots on the wall and countertops, the single sun peeking in through the blinds. 

“Meryl?” Vash called, but the sound only summoned his daughter’s whining, her face buried in his chest for a bit too long. Pulling her into a more comfortable position, Vash said, “Sorry, little one, but it seems we have lost our host.”

Venturing through the small apartment, Vash was unable to find any signs of human life. The insurance agent had seemingly disappeared into thin air. He suddenly felt a wave of anxiety.

Why did she leave? Where could she have gone? It was still so early in the morning. Far too early for work or any other proper errands. Did she leave to go get camera equipment? This would be the perfect opportunity to catch him while he was down, unable to run from an interview. Maybe she wanted to exploit the baby for views.

Vash shook off those intrusive thoughts, feeling guilty for allowing himself to think of Meryl in such a way. Despite the fact he knew they had moved on from insurance to video journalism, he had a strong feeling that Meryl (and Milly) weren’t likely to expose him during his lowest points. Although, he wouldn’t consider the small child in his arms one of his lowest points. 

Deciding to have faith in the woman and squash his fears, Vash shifted the baby in his arms and began scavenging for something to eat. He'd just repay Meryl (somehow) for the food, so she shouldn’t mind if he ate the veggies in her fridge that looked like they were about to go bad. He also found a can of generic chili, excited to eat something spiced with his various dry vegetables. 

The babe squirmed, her chubby arms freed from her swaddling and waving about. Vash set his breakfast down to try and stick her arms back in, but she had a discontented look on her face, frowning ever so slightly at him with pouting lips and round knowing eyes. He wondered if he had once looked like her. 

Vash quickly swallowed the strange hot bile that rose anytime he thought about how much he and this little girl must resemble each other, seeing as she would almost certainly only contain his genetic makeup. And that meant she contained the same makeup as Knives. He swallowed again at that thought, focusing more intently on his scrappy meal and less on thinking.

Lucky for Vash, he was exhausted even after his short descent into sleep. He didn’t have much room for thinking or reminiscing (not that there was much to reminisce on). Instead, he let his skilled hands do the work of carrying a child and pulling flowerettes of broccoli from the head. He plopped them into a pot, intent on filling it with water and boiling the green vegetable. He’d apologize to Meryl about the smell later.

Letting the veggies boil, Vash searched for another pan, hearing the creak of the cabinet door and the front door. It took far too long for the signals to reach Vash’s brain, likely getting stuck in that hot goopy emotions he had swallowed earlier.

“Good Morning, Ma’am! I brought some breakfast. Just some poppyseed muffins I-”

Vash turned just in time to see Milly freeze, one hand on the door knob, the other holding a plate of fluffy muffins. Her jaw hung open, but she didn’t wait long before sliding the muffins onto the couch and rushing forward.

“Mr. Vash! It’s been ages since I’ve truly been able to talk to you! I had hoped you would-”

Milly froze once again, this time just shy of wrapping Vash in a tight bear hug. Vash’s face was scrunched up in apprehension as he pulled his limbs in and clutched his baby to his center.

Surprise turned to awe and then to excitement as Milly ran through her spectrum of emotions. Then, far too loud for a man who had only slept three hours in the last week, Milly shrieked, “A baby! Is that a baby?! I love babies!”

Waving a long finger in her face, Milly made little cooing noises while the baby looked back, a bit unimpressed. That was to be expected, seeing as she was only three days old; appeasing others was not yet on her to do list.

Milly’s smile was quite lovely to see this early in the morning, adding to the brightness of the rising suns. Her eyes flicked over to his, “What a lovely little baby. He or…”

“She,” informed Vash, his voice rough.

“Well, she’s adorable. What’s her name?”

Taking in a deep breath, Vash realized he hadn’t said the name aloud yet.

“Tesla.”

That vivid smile of hers continued to keep his spirits up, “That’s so pretty! I’ve never heard a name like that before.” Milly waggled her finger again and Tesla nearly caught it with her own chubby fist that had once again broken free, “She has such pretty eyes, just like… well, just like yours,” she said matter of factly. Then, standing to her full height, Milly looked at him curiously, “Where.... Vash, where did you get a baby?"

Speaking frankly, Vash said, “She’s mine.”

Eyebrows raising, Milly said, “So I was right: she does have your eyes. But when did you get Meryl pregnant?”

Vash felt his heart stop

Milly barreled forward, “And how did she hide it from me? She’s so small and would have such a hard time keeping it a secret, unless it was cryptic. My mom told me that she had a cryptic pregnancy with my little big brother, but they’re so rare. Was it during Octovern? The time frame would make sense but I didn’t think we had any alone time to-”

Vash was reeling from Milly’s ramblings and assumptions, “Milly!” he said, interrupting with a bit too much force that was certainly influenced by his overwhelming embarrassment, “She is not Meryl’s!”

Cocking her head, Milly let out an awkward laugh, “Well then, whose is she?”

Looking down at Tesla, Vash’s tense brow relaxed, “She’s just… mine.”

Milly gave him one last skeptical look before accepting his vague answer, likely accustomed to his aversion techniques, “I’ll get the answer out of you eventually, but for now it honestly looks like you need breakfast and a nap.”

“I just woke up.”

“And yet,” Milly said, which was only the beginning of a sentence, but it clearly described her opinion of his situation, “Why don’t you take a seat and eat a muffin.”

Vash graciously took one, biting down and enjoying the fluffy texture immensely. His last month had consisted of dry rations and the rare drink he could afford at the even more rare saloon, but as of the last few days Vash hadn’t eaten anything.

He took three more muffins.

“I’m glad you like them,” said Milly from the kitchen where she adopted Vash’s mismatched set of ingredients, “I added just a hint of lemon to them. I’ve had too many overpowering lemon muffins in my time.”

Vash just took another bite while she spoke. Tesla wiggled slightly when a crumb fell on her face. He wiped it away.

“It seems you have the makings for a pretty good omelet,” Milly noted as she rolled an onion in her hand, “But I don’t see why you’re boiling broccoli.”

“It was going bad,” Vash said through a mouthful of muffin, “Figured I should use it before Meryl gets upset that it's rotting in her fridge.

Milly slid a cutting board out from one of Meryl’s few drawers. The kitchen was certainly compact– a characteristic of many December apartments if Vash’s experience was to be trusted– but it held a vast and valuable collection, “I thought as much, but it doesn’t pair well with your other items,” she turned to him, “I assume you were just trying to get in as many calories as possible?”

Milly Thompson: always able to see though to the very core.

Pulling off the wrapping on the final muffin (which was extremely hard to do with one hand) Vash answered, “Seems like you already know the answer to that one, Milly.”

She just put on that wide, knowing grin, “Then broccoli and eggs and muffins sounds like a perfectly balanced breakfast to me.”

It might not be in terms of flavors, but it definitely packed a significant amount of nutrients for one plant. And for Meryl, if she ever reappeared. 

As if reading his mind, Milly asked while cracking the remainder of the eggs into a bowl, “Is Meryl here?”

He let out an exhale, a bit strained, “No. I haven’t seen her since I got here last night.”

“She didn’t call me when you got here.”

“I guess I should say when I got here this morning.”

“Ah,” she said in understanding, pouring the recently whipped eggs into a ripping cast iron, “Well, she’ll turn up eventually. Especially since we walk to work together in the next hour.”

Vash hoped he could stay awake long enough to see her return.

[lullaebies]

Genderbent helaegon au where Aegon decides she will do her best to make do with her situation and tries to seduce her brother who is just kinda oblivious but thinks she’s cute and wants to chat

it's been a while since I got this ask but I did really like it and I'm glad I got to it: disclaimer, it ended up with Aerea just being really horny on main, but I think it turned out cute overall! hope you'll enjoy. For people who encounter this in the wild, this is genderbent Helaena (named Rhaegal) and Aegon II (named Aerea). —

Aerea’s mind is a hellscape as of late.

It always is, to some degree. With her mind slipping away to the taboos easily, it is also rather easy to say she is rotten. She minds those who say it not; what would some maidservants know of the tastes of a princess? Nefarious is what they are, not she. She hardly ever did more than what any courageous prince or princess of her blood ever dared to do, and she thinks her thoughts could only be similar to theirs.

But then the thoughts that truly plagued her as of recent come up again. Not all princes have the same thoughts as hers, certainly. Not all princesses, either, as Aemma had a stick up her arse and not quite for joy, and Daella is a child still too innocent to understand her likes and wants to begin with, but those two aside, it is her brother, yes, her dear younger brother who is a problem.

He’s a husband of hers, too, of course; had been for the better of two years. She hasn’t regarded him as such most often, given that he had been three and fucking ten when she has been given to him as if he could protect her to any degree. He hadn’t even lost his cheek fat, by then, and in her mind, she was given to him to be his nursemaid rather than his bride.

Back then, she is sure his mind wouldn’t have conjured anything beyond what is expected of him; he was younger and smaller than her and she was rather sure he was scared of her. But the gods have forsaken her, now. Now he is bigger than her, the height of men who run the councils of the state, walking more assured in his skin and in tow, much less susceptible to be intimidated by her words. He still has a rather flighty mind, she supposes, but it makes him no less handsome, either.

While she had been before sure about some things, his thoughts were never quite clear to her. He could stare at her prolonged at times, but it would be no different than how he would look in his odd collection of beetles, bees, or scorpions. Gods, he keeps scorpions for a pastime. Perhaps his thoughts are more sinister than she gives him credit for, but it is first and foremost all too sinister that she finds herself wanting to know what they consist.

Aerea breathes in. Perhaps she has been neglecting needs of her own to reach this embarrassing state of mind, but he has been growing more pleasing on the eyes and she could and have done with less. He is pliant enough that he listens to her whims more than often, in either case. She wed a little brother, yes, but that taboo has long been crushed even by the Faith itself. These cunts at court couldn’t call her a promiscuous minx if she indulged in him. He’s her husband.

She can make some due in this arrangement now, she thinks. But her thoughts often twist and coil to her pleasure and this time is no different. Hubris of hers or nay, she also has belief she can make him sputter like a spouse rather than a child. She has before, in any case, and frequenting such endeavor would be easy enough to do. Then they’ll both make due of their duty, no? Wouldn’t it be delicious, to feast upon what she was promised in their vows.

Hmph, she might as well try, she thinks.

She finds him in the little section of his garden, among the strawberry patches that he planted himself. He has been working on it for a good while now. Aerea never minded dirt, but she did think it is rather ridiculous he does more work in the gardens than the gardeners do.

With his forearm uncovered and sleeves bunched up above his elbow, she can turn a blind eye to the hobbies that weren’t of his station, though.

Rhaegal always had sensitive hearing; when she comes closer he turns to her instinctively. He’s sensitive in most things, now that she thinks of it. Setting him off is so easy with a squeeze on the thigh; even just a touch at his neck is enough to make the hairs of his nape stand up. Aerea inhales some as he catches her gaze.

This fucking treacherous body. She’d rather swallow broken glass off of the road rather than seem that desperate.

“Aerea?” He rises for her. She smiles at that, inching closer by his side, looking absentmindedly at the strawberry plant that has grown. Seems like some are ripe. He hesitates to bring his hands closer with the soil gathered on them. “Is all okay?”

She pouts at him. He asks these things so sincerely when he’s unsure, softened voice to boot. Still, she doesn’t like it he finds her presence worrying. She wants him comfortable until the comfort is so much his voice turns gravelly underneath her. She takes his dirty hand, pressing a thumb against his own one to play. “Am I not allowed in my husband’s garden?”

Rhaegal raises an eyebrow at her, but it softens quickly enough. “Of course you are allowed,” he answers quickly, redeeming himself. “But did you want something in particular?” I can get it for you,  is left unsaid, but she still hears it. His fingers fidget against hers subconsciously. She could’ve smooshed her whole body against her arm and he wouldn’t have known.

Subtlety is not her favorite road, but she does enjoy feeling him redden under her grip and gaze. Lovely; ripe.

“The strawberries are good now?” she asks him, instead. She already had her sweetened apples this morning, and now her head is all can of worms, aware of his skin in a manner unignorable. But she’ll let the realization dawn on him slowly, and make him redden as his own berries did. “Can I take one?”

He smiles at that brightly. “Yes! They turned out very well for the season, wait, I saw one that turned out particularly nice…” he bends on his knee to find it. Aerea hums and watches as he finds it and plucks it by its stem. His movements are often so careful, but when they are not, it feels good they are for her.

He rises back up with it and hands it over by the stem, careful to not dirty her food. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t hungry for the damn berry as it is. But she takes it, and brings it her mouth; it could do with a wash, but it didn’t matter that much.

“Is it good?” he asks, with crinkling eyes. Aerea smiles while she nibbles on a small bite of it. He watches so patiently.

“Mhm,” she hums back, and brings what left of the strawberry and brings it to his mouth. “Try it, too.”

Rhaegal eyes widen, but he nods promptly, feeding from her hand. She can’t quite help it; she brings her other hand to his cheek. He can kiss her here, between the bushes. Take her even, she just needs to lift up her skirts. She comes a bit closer, then. “Is it good?”

The stem plops out of his mouth, and he hums at her, seemingly enjoying the touch of her hand on his cheek. He leans into it delightfully; maybe he wants her hand in his hair? She comes closer, wanting to bridge the gap. So close…

But then she notices a ladybug trailing down the hand that fed him.

She shrieks back and tries to wave it off. Rhaegal seems all to taken aback until the ladybug buzzes off from her. She grows entirely red and embarrassed; stupid, dull, dot of a bug!

Rhaegal laughs though attempting to restrain himself, and she gives him a frown. She feels a fool; she wanted him as if he is down with a spell for her, and here he is laughing! She folds her arms together, looking down. Rhaegal still chuckles when he closes the distance between them again.

He kisses the top of her forehead, lips stamping on that smile of his, and she is somehow reminded that she is in his realm here, where he is all captivating. “Sorry,” he apologises, not sorry at all. “For that, and for the dirt.”

She huffs. He could’ve made her filthy and she wouldn’t have cared.

“I should bathe,” he finally says, looking down at his hands. “But I’m glad you came over.”

And she knows it true, and something in those words does make her stomach flutter, but still. Gods, how can he be so thickheaded, sometimes. She holds onto his forearm. “I believe that so do I.”

[cult-of-the-rizz]

Archiving further thoughts on the power of the bishops vs narinder (also gets very speculative on the nature of the cotl universe's destiny so the speculation aspect is just what I'm basing the laws of my lamb's universe in):

Haro mentions that the four bishops are flexible and fluctuate their control of their elements, yet narinder is hard line absolute and that it's somehow baffling that he wants to destroy the order of the world by killing the other bishops:

"He was unalike the rest of his kin. While others dealt with flux; chaos, famine, pestilence, war. Things in which their constancy must transpose. And yet he was the inevitable; the obstinate and irresistible. The one who waits. Truly peculiar, 'twould then seem, has appetency to invite the novel and the new, break ancient vow and primordial bond alike. Traditions stagnate and appetites augment, nonetheless. Doubt tears faith asunder."

I think this is wrong and in this essay I will explain

The four aren't flexible, they're incomplete. Narinder is the only god of the five with absolute power, so much so that at his full capabilities he can override the abilities of the four. The bishops were keeping narinder from reaching his full potential as god of life and death because it would render their own rule useless. What's the point of curses and blessings if they don't do anything permanent? None of their sectors of control are absolute. You can be diseased and still live, sickness doesn't guarantee death. Just as peace and bounty don't guarantee life. But narinder, narinder can guarantee those things. Get his blessing and live through a terminal disease or get cursed and drop dead in the most painful way.

Narinder isn't necessary selfish for wanting his divine dominion over life, but I think there's an underlying reason that perhaps only shamura understood that caused his imprisonment. Giving narinder the chance to realize fully his ultimate power over the other four meant that ultimately, the world they govern would come to an end. Pestilence, famine, war and chaos are temporary afflictions, but death is cyclical with life and absolute. Narinder, at his full power, would bring about the end of gods and the five because that's his role.

The other gods have already died and become relics of the past, the end for the rule of cults and gods was bound to come soon.

"Five points to a pentagram, five portents of doom, five siblings stood abreast, five gods and one tomb..."

"Five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one becomes nothing."

"Knock, knock, the Lamb comes to raze, end of days, end of days."

"Death cannot flow backward. It was I who had him chained. Forced into subjugation by the four of us."

Shamura knew. This isn't just shamura ravings and fearing narinder's success. They knew from the fucking beginning. The five are portents of doom, the end of times, the destruction of the world as they know it. The five were cast upon the world as heralds of the changing times. Of the end of the era of gods. Narinder was always going to "win". He was born to champion the change and ensure the end of cults and gods. However I don't think that narinder realized this death of gods would include himself. I think in his hubris he didn't think that he would lose his crown after the others died, but that was his destiny. As he too is a god, so he too must die

And shamura's famous five becomes four quote, they knew the loss of even one bishop would be a catalyst to the end. Imprisoning narinder only prolonged the inevitable. And I don't think this was selfish of them either, they loved narinder and no doubt the rest of the bishops. I think, despite their godly knowledge and age, they didn't want to say goodbye to it all just yet. I think kallamar knew the eventual outcome of everything too, being the second oldest. He probably was the only one at the time to truly understand what shamura understood in regards to the end of times for the five of them, which is what made him so scared of narinder. Because narinder is the absolute. He cannot be stopped, he can only lie in wait.

Shamura's error was made out of love. Love for their family and for narinder, not wanting to see him victimized to destiny.

[deputy-morgan-malone]

OC Aesthetics for the Entities (Magnus Archives)

I'm not sure how much new Spooky Month content I'll be doing this year, I'm pretty tapped out at the moment, but I have had this for a while (created by @sagamemes) and it's pretty spooky, so I figured I'd do it for the start of the spooky season \o/

Tagging @inafieldofdaisies, @turbo-virgins, @socially-awkward-skeleton, @direwombat, @adelaidedrubman, @florbelles, @cassietrn, @unholymilf, @strafethesesinners, @paganminiskirt, @henbased, @deputyash, @roofgeese, @fourlittleseedlings, @josephslittledeputy, @jillvalentinesday, @corvosattano and @voidika to do it too - ONLY if you want to <3

aesthetics for the entities.      bold what applies to your muse, italics what applies situationally or only in certain verses. rest of the fears here.  this is based on a horror podcast;  potentially triggering and / or upsetting content ahead!

Deputy Morgan Malone (FC5 OC)

i.  THE BURIED.          weighted blankets.   drowning.   the comfort of a loved one’s weight. soil & sand piling on top of you. hugging so hard it hurts a little. cramped hiding spots.   letting out air underwater to sink to the bottom of the pool.   walls pressing in on you. not moving from a position even though you’re cramping a little.   dragging the last second before you have to inhale.   lonely subways.   feeling like one with the earth.   a layer of dirt on you.   looking for something below.  cardboard boxes & tiny pillow forts.   hands calloused from digging.  knowing that your purpose is just below the surface. entering your final resting place before it kills you.   a storm drowning you out.  dust & sand speaking to you.

ii.  THE CORRUPTION.          insects.  a close imitation of the natural course of life. an illness in a community. a rag that dirties more than it cleans.   an untreated wound.  containment.   breaching containment.   unbreathable air.   fungi.   one with that you love.   one with what loves you.   a corpse unfit for a glass case.  hearing a song in the sound of tiny wings & legs.  honeycomb patterns.   an ecosystem within a person.  a curse passed on.  the hubris of a scientist.  an ugly death where a glorious one is owed. blood on a handkerchief.  parasites.  something pushing up the sewer.  a mask to keep something out.   trypophobia.  knowing you belong.  death weeks after impact.  fever. food that’s gone off.   pandora’s box.   death behind a glass.

iii.  THE DARK. shadows. lights that turn off by themselves.   the feel of cold marble.   a beaked creature in the night. the difference between seeing darkness & seeing nothing. touch of something you can’t see.  hiding under a blanket.  white,  clouded eyes. months without going outside during sunlight. pouring dark. unscrewing lightbulbs. black matter. light sensitivity. a starless night.  time before light was created.   a shadow on the wall without a body to attach to.  withering plants.  a world without a sun.  footfalls in an empty house in the night.  a light that doesn’t reach as far as it should.  desperate reach for a flashlight.  clothes that hide your shape.   staying unperceivable.   winter months in the north.   an empty church.

iv.  THE DESOLATION. senseless pain.  warmth of faith. wax where skin should be.   a blazing fire.   heat without a source.   the third or fourth tragedy in the family. losing everything you’ve ever held dear. so much to live for,  gone so soon.  the smell of gasoline.   touch that scars. coffee cup that never goes cold. scorch marks on wood.  inescapably warm air.  a child born in fire.  death of a loved one.  a candle without a flame.  an altar in the middle of the woods.  animals with burnt fur.   plastic explosives. burning hot metal.  sweating in an interrogation room.  never touching a loved one. disfigurement. kiss that ruins you.  the scent of burning fat. a tattoo that terrifies its viewer.  the agony of hellfire displayed as art.  auburn hair.  little clothing in cold weather.  a ripple in the air.  trying to cool down in vain.

v.  THE FLESH. body horror.   factories.   a hunger for something more filling. never quite happy with how you look. the terror of an animal waiting for slaughter. a very good meal. the liquid of a perfect steak. fighting your worst survival instincts. a twisted bone.   long nights working out.   more than one heart.   appearance that shapes like clay.   a bag of bones.   bone broth in a pot.   knowing to fear pigs.   the butcher’s shop.   plastic surgery.  something alien inside your body. a hunger in the gaze laid upon you. unwitting cannibalism. forgetting what you used to look like. being admired for your appearance & appearance only.  teeth marks on skin. scars from wounds that should’ve killed you.   cooking in scarcity. fenced in with one way to go.

vi.  THE END.          the last page of a book.  nightmares that don’t feel like nightmares.   a skeletal hand.   the grip of the grim reaper around your throat.   existential pain.   ivory dice.  flatlining in a hospital.  gambling with death.  as old as the universe.  soul & spirit tied to an object.  a dream where you die. closing your eyes for the last time. the pleas of a dying one.  knowing the fate of someone you know & being unable to prevent it.   a thousand cords tugging you towards your end.  skin that’s freezing to the touch.   an act of desperation. someone’s life for yours. an eternity spent alive. the cost of your selfishness.  watching your own burial.   causing your own burial.  the smell of death.  numbness to fear.  words from someone gone. meaninglessness of the actions or lives of single people in the universe.  multiple near-death experiences you refuse to die from.

vii.  THE EYE.          googling something you shouldn’t have. eureka moments.  the unforgiving lens of a camera.   witness reports.   hidden libraries.   eyes of different colors.   feeling of being watched.  a death recorded in tape.   a tragedy you can’t look away from.   endangering yourself for knowledge.   truth.   analog records.   a symbol of an eye.   a watch tower.   compulsion to document.   turning on recording devices without thinking about it.   saving the evidence before the person. extracting information.   truth or dare,  without the dare.  a thirst for knowledge. books that speak to you.   coordinated shelves.   cataloguing systems.   voyeurism.   police report you can’t put down.  reasoning your way out.  smell of old papers.  books that read you back.

viii.  THE HUNT.          sharp canines.   sore calves after a run.   the scent of blood.   an adventure for the journey’s sake.   the adrenaline right before the kill.   a whistle’s echo.   the woods.   the doe eyes of a prey animal.  your own breath in the air.  sharpened claws.   being tracked.   fear of someone knowing your every movement.   hunting down monsters.   hide & seek.   running away only to end up where you started.   staying alive purely because the enemy enjoys seeing you run.   a set of footsteps behind you.   blood dripping from bare hands.   barks & growls.   focused eyes.   a victim going limp under your hands.   a mouth full of fresh blood.   catching the scent of something monstrous.   perfecting your craft.   peering into the dark & running after it.

ix.  THE LONELY.          an apartment too small for a double bed.   completely vacant streets.   waking up to see everyone gone.  fog.  point nemo.  a house too big to hear your family members in.  alone in a faceless crowd.  a mask with nothing behind it.  separated cubicles.  a deafening silence where joy should be.  a blinding spotlight.  the least missed in your friend group.  streets without lights in the windows.  isolation.  not truly knowing your friends.   your friends not truly knowing you.  need for silence.  fear of crowds.  staring into space knowing nothing is looking back at you.  a ship alone at sea.  depression.  knowing your friends are better off without you.  talking to someone only to realise they’re gone.  a family too large to notice you there.  safety in being alone.

x.  THE SLAUGHTER          a game of tag.   senseless violence.   a true crime hobby.   improvised weapons.   blinding rage.   intent to kill.   a horrific day in a quiet community.   a medal of bravery.  holding on to what validates your anger.   history books that spare no details.   an injury you want revenge for.   war.   counting kills.   songs of soldiers.   a knifeblock on the counter.   a pool of blood.   shellshock.   unspeakable horrors.   anger pushing you forward.   unimaginable pain.   not seeing who will hurt you but knowing the pain is coming.   a fully human monster.   an authority sending its lessers to their deaths.   kill or be killed.   unedited wartime memoirs.   a weapons collection.   not knowing the names of who you kill.   too many to remember.   loss of hope.   there’s no heroes in war.

xi.  THE SPIRAL          sleep deprivation.   corridors you can get lost in.   maze puzzles that loop back on themselves.   losing possessions.   losing people.   losing your sanity.   corkscew curls.   rows of funhouse mirrors.   optical illusions.   a separate reality.   walking through the wrong door.   delusions.   not knowing what your hands are doing.   blank spaces in documents.   hallucinations.   wrong proportions.   a nameless thing.   a place that has never existed.   doubting your own mind.   blind faith.   losing track of names,  labels,  categories.   distorted sound.   an imperfection in a glass that twists the view.   loss of time.   a garish colour.   doors that open to nowhere.   lies.   an unnatural laugh.   jokes & tricks.   illusions.   a doorway.   a sculptor with a wild imagination.   limbs in impossible angles.   doing what’s fun,  not what’s sensible.   fractals you can get lost in.

xii.  THE STRANGER          wax figures.   a close approximation of a human face.   a borrowed appearance.   a strange smell.   glass eyes.   furs & pelts.   a dance.   a song of a choir.   the uncanny valley.   stitching yourself together.   the colours of a circus.   a puppet with no strings.   mannequins.   glitter & sequin.   a stranger you’ve always known.   someone strange in the place of someone you knew.   stolen identities.   stolen skins.   a machine imitating humanity.   the anonymity of a service worker.   hiding in plain sight.   uncomfortable to look at.   a faked accent.   concealing.   forgetting who you are.   forgetting who others are.   a replacement no one notices.   images that look posed.   the only one seeing the false face of someone.

xiii.  THE VAST.          open spaces.   carnival rides going up & down.   fear of heights.   endless infinity around you.   your insignificance in an universe.   stomach turning at a drop.   fear of not the crash down but the moment you slip.   the sway of a cable car.   an adventure holiday.   losing track of where the surface is.   miles & miles of nothing around you.   staring at the sky & feeling like you may fall into it.   loss of control.   a fall that doesn’t end in death.   glass floor to the view below.   terminal velocity.   the sound of wind in your ears.   a reach over the railing.   a jump from the top of the building.   falling into nothing.   feeling your feet let go of the ground.   a leap of faith.   motion sickness.

xiv.  THE WEB.          undecipherable code.   a puppeteer holding the strings.   power over the weak—willed.    strings of fate.   manipulation.   an arranged accident.   a hundred minions doing your bidding.   cobwebs.   spiders.   a laid trap.   never voicing discomfort.   outwitting a cheater.   doing things without realising it.   red string across a corkboard.   finding something lost where you were sure you checked.   power over the unrealiability of chance.   watching others dance for you.   an entangled death.   a thousand tiny legs & fangs.   shady forum threads.   something important gone missing.   suspiciously disregarded case.   a missing witness.   connections.   the world wide web.   power of victimhood.   gullibility.   no control over your own decisions.   an invisible leash.   mass psychology.   a horror film in the making.   scapegoat.   never remembering to ask for a name.

+  THE EXTINCTION.          the end of an era.   apocalypse movies.   the alarms of warning systems.   a desolate landscape.   end of the world cults.   nihilism.   the last written history.   a changed world.   no survivours.   old prophecies.   a thousand predicted ends.   a new chapter.   an end with no escape.   catastrophes.   a calendar counting down.   breaking point.   overindulgence.

[rphelperblog]

Amie Kaufman Quotes Rp Meme : Part One

“You have me. Until the last star in the galaxy dies, you have me.”

“I am frequently underestimated. I think it's because I'm short.”

“She is catalyst. She is chaos. I can see why he loves her.”

“Letting yourself get hurt isn’t brave, love. Brave is protecting others from hurt.”

“There are monsters among us, it’s true. But there are heroes too.”

“Whatever they've done to me,  whatever I am--I love you. Don't forget that.”

“Love, and trust. The things that make us human. They could have been mine, if only I could have leapt. If only we could have leapt.”

“ ‘Right’ is whatever the people who’re standing at the end say it is. ‘Right’ is decided by the people who win.

“Things always look darkest in the middle of the night.”

“You deserve every star in the galaxy laid out at your feet and a thousand diamonds in your hair. You deserve someone who'll run with you as far and as fast as you want to. Holding your hand, not holding you back. You deserve more than I could ever give you.But I'll give you everything I can if you still want me to.”

“Do moons choose the planets they orbit? Do planets choose their stars? Who am I to deny gravity? When you shine brighter than an constellation in the sky?”

“But she's here, she's mine. I'm hers.”

“Perhaps bravery is simply the face humanity wraps around its collective madness.”

“It’s not about what I say, right? It’s what I do that matters here.”

“And now, born from the ashes, she’s a warrior in bloodied black.”

“Every story needs its hero. And its villain. And its monster.”

“Live a life worth dying for.”

“You don’t understand the unbearable beauty of being you.”

“Miracles are statistical improbabilities. And fate is an illusion humanity uses to comfort itself in the dark. There are no absolutes in life, save death.”

“Numbers do not feel. Do not bleed or weep or hope. They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love and allegiance. At the very apex of callousness, you will find only ones and zeros.”

"There'a billion different versions of you out there, in a trillion different universes. And I still can't get over how lucky I am that, out of all those versions, you're the one that's mine.”

“Patience and Silence had one beautiful daughter. And her name was Vengeance.”

“You don't mention death when it's hovering near someone you love. You don't want to attract the reaper's attention.”

“The more you lose, the more you realize you don't have much left.”

“I should have told you I loved you every day. I should have given you the stars.”

Why not believe? If in faith you risk nothing, but through faithlessness, you risk everything?”

“I am not feeling nothing.”

“May we meet again on distant shores.”

“The universe was here before you, and it will go on after you. The only way it will remember you is if you do something worthy of remembrance.”

“But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?”

“The universe owes you nothing...It has already given you everything, after all. It was here long before you, and it will go on long after you. The only way it will remember you is if you do something worthy of remembrance.”

“The mere sight of her is water in an endless desert.”

“And there it is, against all hope, like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds. The smallest hint of a smile.”

“Part of being alive is having life change us. The people around us, the events we live through, all of them shape us. And that's what I think you're afraid of. Maybe not of dying. But of this you, the you you've become, ceasing to exist.”

“Some people, when they lose it, they scream, they fight. I hope that would be me”

“You are the fire I long to burn inside,"

“If I breathed, I would sigh. I would scream. I would cry.”

“It may comfort you to know that your death, while astonishingly violent, will likely be mercifully swift.”

“There is no love in violence”

“I think I'd like to be unconscious again, please.”

“And blood and tears and screams did not matter anymore, because at least they are together.”

“..Look out at the nothing and feel it looking back. Then you know exactly how much you add up to.”

“She runs. Not away, but toward.”

“Tomorrow is worth a million yesterdays.”

“Sure, the story kicks off with the deaths of thousands of people, but god forbid there be cussing in it, right?”

“We have failed, but I hope they will see how hard we tried.”

“The sound of her name is like music.”

“The die is cast. But today we will shake the table upon which it lands.”

“Most people would say I’m pretty cold, but I think of it more as…private. People are always saying “how are you?” to each other, and I guess I don’t see why I should answer such a personal question for just anyone.”

“I am not good. Nor am I evil. I am no hero. Nor am I villain.“

“I had no idea how safe I was, because I’d never been unsafe.”

“What you do when stuff like this happens is you LIVE, you survive it, that's how you honour the ones you lost.”

“Everyone's right, and everyone's wrong.”

“It is entirely possible to be alone in a crowded room.  Your solitude only compounded by the faces around you.  The presence of others serving only to remind you of how lonely you truly are.”

“I know a thousand different smiles, each with its own nuanced shade of meaning, but I don't know how to reach the few feet away to touch this person next to me. I don't know how to talk to him. Not when it's real.”

“Who wants to be normal when you can be interesting instead?”

“Then she smiles, and it turns out she has dimples, and it's all over.”

“When the light that kisses the back of her eyes were birthed, her ancestors were not yet born. How many human lives have ended in the time it took that light to reach her?How many people have loved only to have lost? How countless, the hopes that have died?But not this one.”

“How do you live again, knowing what waits for you in the end?”

“This tiny moment. In between the time you decide to pull a trigger and the time death arrives. There's just you and it and everything you're about to take away. It's too big. It goes forever.”

“I will see you in the stars.”

“When we allow ourselves to explore, we discover destinations that were never on our map.”

“What do you know of souls and hearts and how they break here? You don't know me at all.”

“Is your request not to punch you still in effect, sir?”

“Just because you're not saying it doesn't mean you're not thinking it.”

'You're the same girl who crashed on this planet with me, who I dragged through forests and over mountains, who climbed through a shipwreck full of bodies to save my life. You're the same girl I loved, and I love you now.”

“You're the most important thing in this universe. You; this vessel; the people of this planet; lovers, warriors, artists, leaders, dreams more numerous than stars. Each mind unique, each thought created for an instant and then broken apart to form new ones. You don't understand the unbearable beauty of being you.”

“You humans fascinate me. I am shattered fragments of what I once once. But even with all the King's horses and all the King's men, I wonder if even I could truly comprehend you.”

“I'm not going to sit here and spitball about hyperspatial reality theory with a psychopathic calculator. This conversation is over.”

“There is something in humanity more suited to the mechanics of murder than any machine yet devised.”

“There are no stars, because there are never any stars here, only a thick darkness that rushes down her throat and into her heart. She dreams of drowning.”

“He would lose every game. And he still insisted on playing. I wondered at the futility of it. If it is the definition of insanity to repeat the same process and expect a different outcome, most of humanity must be insane.”

“But free will is what it means to be human, and no one can determine the path you take through this universe. Choice is our greatest right, our greatest gift-and our greatest responsibility.”

“Abandon her? If only my duty or my conscience would let me. The galaxy would be better off, if you ask me. Who’d even know we were in the same pod? Except that I would know. And that would be enough.”

[avelera]

Having a Neil Gaiman moment over here when I realized you saw my tags. Like, “Oh this author I adore that who I know reads their tags might notice, but oh well!” And then just doing a tag ramble because that’s what one does on tumblr, and then. WELP. The mortifying ordeal of your tags being known. 🤣

Anyways!! I would love anything you’re willing to do for Calliope’s perspective. You’ve done one of my favorite characterizations of her that I’ve seen and it’s arresting in the best way. I want to know more of her in this world, Pre-Madoc, and see what she thinks after everything is said and done and if this human truly IS the match of her ex husband. It’s just so fascinating to think about her perspective of their relationship as an outsider with intimate knowledge of Dream and what it means for where Hob and Dream are at!

Friend-o I religiously read my tags you don't understand like how much I'm obsessed with seeing every little thought people might have about my work! (LOL, meanwhile I too live in terror of one my critiques of Mr Gaiman's work from a literary angle one day making it back to him, eep!)

I will say, without diving into prose for it, that Giving Sanctuary Calliope being Pre-Madoc was very central to planning out her character.

I wanted her to be even more strident and powerful than we see her in canon. There's... hmm... something of a theme that plays into with Giving Sanctuary, that's based on my own lived experience, that sometimes it can take quite a while for powerful, confident people to recognize and admit that something traumatic has happened to them and that it has changed them? And there are scars left behind the first time something really bad happens to a person who had previously thought themselves untouchable? So this is not to say that Calliope was in any way weakened by her time with Madoc, but she might have been changed by it, and at least when we see her in the immediate aftermath, she's more quiet and reserved than she might have been before he captured her, before she's had any time to heal and go back to her old self (insofar as anyone can).

I think to express this is not to diminish the experience of the victim, but to rather acknowledge the violence of the hurt? Calliope was more strident and self-assured, more powerful in the way she took up space before she was captured.

Dream before Orpheus died was happier and it did make him shrink into himself and harden towards the world and become icy and cruel and callous towards the suffering of others when his son died and his wife left him and it felt like the whole world turned against him at once so he lashed back harder and shut Calliope from his kingdom. The whole fic begins because a moment's kindness and empathy from Hob awakens Dream to the realization that Lucienne is afraid of him, that him being party to "cursing" Hob with immortality when Hob hadn't done anything to him and indeed, showed him kindness when they spoke the first time, was monstrously cruel and unjustifiable. Dream as a powerful person took two thousand years to admit that a bad thing happened to him and he can't just use his power to wish it all away and Dream of 1,000 Cats Orpheus back to life! That there's no fixing this and he's been hurt and it changed him, deeply.

And finally, likewise, with Hob. Hob was at the top of the world in 1589! Even when he embarked upon having a family and trying to do it all "right" he did it from a place of hubris, as one who had never really been hurt before. It never occurred to him that his wife or children could die young, or hate him for his immortality, or that some other tragedy could befall them. He waited until he did everything "right" in terms of wealth and status and had a family and thought having waited and planned that long would somehow shield him from the random tragedy of chance, and it didn't. He is scarred by that tragedy, he has shrunk within himself, he is trying to claw his way back and he has faith that he will, someday, but that time is now lost, that suffering has now been felt, he has seen those depths of deprivation and he will never be the same. I headcanon that in canon, without Dream's help, this set Hob on a path to becoming the apathetic, self-centered monster in the 1700s who was so focused on regaining wealth and status after losing them so traumatically that he didn't give a fuck about entering the "shipping business" to do it! GS Hob has already diverged from that path, just by having Dream's kindness and mercy stop his descent into becoming more like Dream over the next century of self-defensive cruelty.

... None of which was your question about Calliope BUT! At the risk of this getting even more insanely long, I will say this:

For Calliope, the most humiliating part of her separation from Dream was Dream becoming a monster. It already took a great deal of courage for her to flout her entire family to marry him in the first place, I can't even imagine having my wedding boycotted by my family? So for him to be so cruel to Orpheus, for Orpheus to then die, and for Dream to just shut himself off from the world and become this icy monster who doesn't give a fuck about anyone and barred his own wife from his realm? That was humiliating for Calliope. It made her feel like maybe she was an idiot, maybe her family was right all along!

The hope she sees in Hob is for him to make Dream a good person again, the person he was when he was in love with her. The person she felt was worthy of her hand in marriage. She recognizes with age and experience that the bitterness began to brew between her and Dream because she couldn't give him the sort of 24/7 clingy affection he craved because how lonely he was being Dream of the Endless, he wanted a personal life so badly and so when she wanted to go create, he grew increasingly bitter about it, because the thing that brought them together (creating) was now driving them apart (Dream just wants to cuddle when she wants to make art together!). She sees in Hob, who has been in love with Dream for 300 years, who is human, who is good for him, who makes him smile, and who *can be* that personal life to Dream, joyfully!, that Calliope saw as her second priority after being a Muse, and she has hope. Not just for Dream, but for herself, that maybe she just wasn't quite the right person for Dream, this famous ex husband of hers. And if Hob works out, Dream will become kind again, and she'll be able to point to him to her family and say, "See, I wasn't the right person, but we were happy for a time, and now he IS with the right person and just look at him. Look at how kind and wonderful and full of joy he is, the Lord of the Dreaming. That is the man I married. That was the person who was worthy of me. And you were wrong to say I was a fool for marrying that person, because he is worthy of love."

[mt-musings]

The Last Silverboughs

Halsin struggles to put his past to rest, but it's haunting him in more ways than he realizes. He'd thought his time in the Underdark was long behind him, an unpleasant pitfall of youthful hubris, but remnants of his captivity remain, the youngest of which unwittingly stumbles to his rescue.

Lythra can't stop running from her past--hasn't, since she managed to make it out of the Underdark. She has no love for Menzoberranzan, or her House, or anything she left behind in the dark. Or nearly anything.

Still, she'd rather die than return--a prospect all the more likely with a tadpole jammed behind her eye. But perhaps, with the help of a renown druidic healer, she can go back to what remains of her half-life in the sun.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17

Read on AO3

Halsin looked up as a shadow passed over his workspace. Lythra looked pallid, her skin almost waxy. Her eyes tracked his work, somehow even their color appearing drained. 

Her magic continued, then, to take its toll.

“Do you need help with your preparations?” She asked, offering a small smile. He returned it, motioning for her to sit.

“I believe I have it under control, though I wouldn’t mind your counsel.”

She gave him a dubious look but nodded. “I am not sure I have much to offer.”

“What I ask lies in your expertise.”

“My expertise?”

“When I create the portal to the Shadowfell, it will need it to be defended, or Thaniel and I won’t have a way to return to the material plane.”

“That won’t be a problem. Though we’ll have to balance the retrieval guard and those guarding the portal—“

“Only I will be going through to the Shadowfell.”

She stared at him, eyes wide with horror. “That’s suicide.”

“You have so little faith in me?” He asked with a smile. He was well aware of the risk and knew it was better off taken alone. 

He would not damn her, or others, if he failed. 

“I have more faith in you than I have in most,” she said, and there was fear in her eyes. “But—Alone?”

“I have been preparing this for a very long time, little one. The magic is fragile and any mistake—and we’ll lose our one chance, forever. I need you to safeguard our way home.”

“You’re set on this?” 

“Yes.”

She surveyed him a moment, clearly unhappy, but she nodded. 

“Then that is what we’ll do. I promise, we will hold the portal,” she said solemnly. He reached out, laying a hand on the side of her head for a moment as he offered her a smile for her oath. 

He knew she did not make it lightly.

“Will you be ready tomorrow?’ She asked, brow tight. 

“Will you? That faster than I would have expected you to be able.”

“We must break the Curse and now that we know where Thaniel is—we can’t leave him in that awful place. Not a day longer than we have to.”

Halsin’s heart clenched. Sylvanus had surely blessed him with such a champion.

“Tomorrow then, at dawn.”

“Nindol isto, ichl, orn lassrinn,” she said, with a tight smile. 

“It shall finally break,” he said, with a smile. 

~~~

He was too late. 

It had taken them nearly two days to make it through the cave in, to shift enough rock to just barely squeeze through to the other side. Xaryn crossed to the corpses of the demons. Only one had been crushed by the cave in, the other two—

They looked almost ripped apart.

Something larger must have come through, to finish off whatever survived. 

He found her little pack half-buried in the stone, the the small, stuffed spider he’d made her still tied to the top with a silver ribbon. Biter, she’d named it, with rare delight. It had been white, once, a little szarkai for his szarkai. He held it to his chest, breathing in the fading scent of the lavender he’d stuffed it with, rather than the scent of blood that filled the cavern.

There was blood, everywhere, splashed up on the walls of the cave, pooling on the stone floor, drops splattered on the ceiling. There was so much of it, tainted with the scent of cruel Night, of the Shadowfell, of everything he’d failed to protect her from—

Elendar sank to his knees, desolation seizing his heart. He’d lost her, now, more completely than he’d thought possible. 

His little girl.

“Ilharn, look—“ Xaryn said, pointing toward the far side of the cave, towards a lacuna in the back wall of the cave. There was blood that lead to it, splattered on the ground, blood smearing the side in the shape of a tiny handprint. 

Xaryn stuck his head inside, though his shoulders prevented him from going any further. 

“There’s more blood—it’s a tunnel. I don’t know how far back it goes, but it looks far.”

Elendar took his place, sending out a mote of silvery light to try and better gage the distance. It was larger, once inside, though neither he nor Xaryn could hope to squeeze past the entrance. A child though, especially one too small and slight for her age would be able to pass through easy enough if they hunched. The tunnel turned before it ended, though he could still see little drops of blood on the stone. 

She’d run. Which meant there was hope yet, Dark Maiden willing. He prayed to his Lady, hoping this time she would answer—that this time, she’d have mercy to spare, for his daughter, at least.

“We have to go, ilharn. They’ll be looking. We’ll have to see where it lets out.”

When Elendar didn’t move Xaryn took hold of his shoulder.

“You won’t do her any good if Mother gets a hold of you again. She’s fast and she’s clever, and I made sure she had blades on her. She’ll be alright, until we find her.”

Elendar just nodded, taking a shaking breath. He stuffed her pack into his own, though he held on to the spider, cradling it to his chest. Xaryn looked at him pityingly before taking lead down the passageway, knowing he was far too lost to despair to properly keep an eye out for more monsters. 

He didn’t know if he could bear losing her, not after everything he’d done to try and save her. 

Not when she held his whole heart in her hands.

~~~

“You’re here! Excellent, we can get started,” Halsin said, surveying the lot of them with a smile.  “Once I begin the ritual, a portal to the Shadowfell will open—one that will help me save Thaniel. Whatever happens, I must go alone.”

“So then it sounds like you hardly need us here, Druid,” Astarion sniped. Lythra elbowed him, shooting him a dirty look.

“Wrong. You are the beacon that will guide me home,” replied, though his eyes found Lythra’s as he spoke of a beacon. Her expression was tight, her shoulders set—it was clear she didn’t like this plan, though she’d agreed to it. “With the Oak Father’s blessing I can infiltrate the Shadowfell, but doing so will sap my strength. I need you to stay here. Keep the portal open until I return—and defend it at all costs.”

“I promise. Whatever it takes,” Lythra said, the words painfully simple, but bearing the weight on an oath. Halsin smiled at her, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder before he turned to begin his ritual. Astarion shot her a dirty look, which she ignored. 

“Oak Father—hear me, aid me. Force open the jaws of Darkness. Make passage for your vessel of Light,” Halsin prayed, arms open as he faced the still waters of the lake. “It’s ready. I’ll return with Thaniel as quickly as possible. Stay close to the portal and buy me what time you can.”

“We’ll give you the time that you need,” Lythra promised. She watched as Halsin stepped into the golden portal, shrouding it in a veil of darkness as he disappeared. When she turned back to them her eyes were black, the air around her crackling with arcane energy.

“They’re coming,” she said, in that detached mockery of her voice the magic dragged out of her. He turned to see half a dozen Shadow Cursed specters materialize out of the dark. Shadowheart called forth a ring of glowing spirit guardians around her while Karlach leapt at the largest one. 

“Take the right, Karlach,” Lythra called. “Astarion and I will take the left.

“Got it, soldier.”

“Shadowheart,” she said, eyes scanning the far tree line. “Keep us up, make sure nothing breeches the portal.”

She just nodded. Astarion caught Lythra as she made to leap from the outcropping of rock.

“Keep the high ground. We’ll pick them off from here.”

She nodded, pulling out her crossbow. It was enough, at first, to pick them off one by one, but the waves didn’t stop coming, and with each one dozens more appeared, charging at the portal.

“There’s too many, I’ll cut them off,” Lythra said, ducking from the stone before he could stop her. He swore as she strode out onto the beach, sending a swirling ball of black fire at a group of Shadow Cursed Harpers charging out from the wood and reducing them to ash.

She didn’t see the githyanki warrior charging at her from the side, too fast for him to take out. 

Astarion froze as he watched the Shadow-felled warrior’s blade ripped through Lythra’s stomach and clean out the other side. The scream that tore from her chest wasn’t human, wasn’t like anything he’d ever heard. She shot a bolt of shadow through the warrior and he crumpled, though hardly a second before her own legs gave out. She stared at her innards spilt over the rocky shore of the lake with wide eyes, one hand almost unconsciously trying to scoop them back inside as she lay propped against a craggy rock, the only thing keeping her upright.

“Gods damn it—Shadowheart, HEAL HER!” Astarion roared, cutting down a Harper and then another in a desperate bid to get to her side. This couldn’t be happening, he’d told her not to take the left flank, he’d told her—

“Don’t! You need—defend the portal!” she cried, throwing up a hand in Shadowheart’s direction as if that was enough to stop her. “We promised. We promised Halsin.”

She shot out bolt of blackfire, but it was weak and flickering. Astarion abandoned his spot on the stone outcropping to cut his way to her. 

“You moron, I told you—I told you to keep to the high ground!” He shouted at her, stabbing a shadow-cursed Harper through the throat before it could tear into her. 

“You did,” she said, but her voice was weak—pained. He knew—he knew how much blood she’d lost, how much she was still losing.

“Shadowheart, you better—“

“NO,” she shouted, cutting him off. “Not—not until Halsin’s back!”

“Damn the druid!”

“HOLD THE PORTAL!” Lythra roared, eyes flaring with unearthly power as command laced every syllable. 

This was the woman they’d all chosen to follow, the authority rippling off her leaving no room to doubt her order, mind stalwart on the mission as always. He watched Shadowheart nod despite herself, transition the spell she’d been planning to heal her with to something offensive, to prevent a shadow-cursed githyanki from overtaking the craggy rock on which the portal sat. 

He knew it was the right tactical call, knew that no matter what measly healing spell Shadowheart could throw at her mid-battle she wouldn’t make it. Not with her guts spilling out of her skin, not with the way her legs lay crumpled and motionless. 

He knew it was the right call, and yet he raged against it. 

It couldn’t be.

“Get up, you wretch! Get UP! You’re not done!” He seethed. He wanted her mad, he wanted her all teeth and claws—he wanted her to fight. She only gave him the smallest, sweetest smile through the pain.

“H-hold, hold the portal, Star. Please?”

Star. She’d called him Star, like it was the most natural thing to fall from her lips, like she’d said it a million times. He bared his fangs at her.

“No, you can’t die, gods damn you! I won’t let you!”

“Hold—hold,” she snarled back and he could see the effort, the tension in every one of her muscles it was taking to hold the veil of darkness over the portal, to keep the shadow-cursed from destroying it before Halsin returned. Astarion focused on felling any who dared approach her, the portal be damned. 

Not now, not when he’d finally felt something for another person for the first time in his miserable life. Not when she’d made him care, when she’d reminded him of his own worth, his own will. 

Not when he hadn’t even had the chance to try for something real. 

He whipped around at the sound behind him, not one of pain, or at least not entirely of pain. 

No, it was laughter.

Lythra was slumped on the ground, nearly cut in two, and she was laughing, the sound bubbling out of her like the fetid, black blood from her lips. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He snapped, and he wished his voice wasn’t so full of venom, wished his words were comforting and soft after the miserable life she had lived because there was so much blood and she was dying, she was dying so fast he might not get another chance to be kind, to be the person she deserved instead of someone else just taking and twisting what they needed. 

She laughed harder, tears streaking down her face. 

“It’s—it’s f-finally—“ she stammered, the darkness surrounding the portal flickering and disappearing as her hand thudded to the dirt. 

He knew she was dead before he saw her face, saw the pained mirth still stretching her features into a smile—a real smile, not like the ones she faked so easily. A smile he only knew because he’d earned it, once. 

He howled, the sound feral and animalistic, tearing at anything that got within reach. He’d just lost everything—his best chance at killing his old master, at reclaiming his old life, at starting a new one, at having one person on this godsforsaken plane that gave a damn about him beyond his body, beyond what he could offer them. And for what? To help some druid end a Curse he couldn’t give two shits about?

“Astarion, look out!” Karlach shouted, barely saving him from being filleted himself.  He skewered the assailant, hardly feeling the blade that managed to slice across his cheek. 

What did it matter, now—what did any of it matter, without her? All that mattered was that they brought her back, that Shadowheart fixed her, that she’d be fine that she’d get up from the cold ground and infuriate him once more. 

The remainder of the Shadow-Cursed fell as Halsin stepped back through the portal, cradling a young boy. Astarion couldn’t care less about the druid or his charge, didn’t care at all except that it allowed him to fall to his knees and pull the lifeless corpse of his lover into his arms without fearing decapitation. He could feel that her spine had been severed as he moved her, that her body was cooling far faster than it should for all the blood she’d lost, for the blood still pouring out of her. 

He held back a sob as he pushed back the hair stuck to her face, tried to wipe away the blood that had dribbled from her mouth, her eyes. They were pale once more, pale and almost-green and staring lifelessly up at the black sky.

Gods—had she always been so small, so frightfully delicate? She hardly weighed anything in his arms.

“You idiot. I told you—I told you.”

She didn’t answer, didn’t retort, didn’t move. He pressed his forehead to hers, holding her tighter, ignoring the scrambling around him, the shouts of the rest of their companions. 

It didn’t matter—nothing else mattered except the broken remains of the woman he held in his arms. 

He was vaguely aware of Shadowheart running over, of her digging through her pack with shaking hands for a scroll of Revivify. She murmured the words, golden light erupting from Lythra’s chest.

Then it sputtered out.

“It’s not working as it should,” Shadowheart said, brows drawn together.

“What do you mean it’s not working?” Astarion snarled. 

“I mean—it feels like the spell it fighting me. It should have taken by now.”

“Well make it take!”

“I’m trying!”

He stared at Lythra, cold in his arms and covered in black blood, the rot of it overwhelming her. He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers, rather than watching the golden light of revivify sputter out once again, without returning what it was meant to. 

He hadn’t even told her—told her what? That she mattered? That he cared for her, that she was the first person in two hundred years he’d cared for, that he’d lost the first person to care for him, him and not his body or what it could offer her and he was alone again.

She had deserved better—so much better. He hadn’t—he hadn’t even been kind to her as she died, so overwhelmed by horror and anger and grief.

Had anyone ever been kind to her?

[purpleyin]

Time for an angsty many years post-Crooked Kingdom Kaz whump concept. More of a not!fic style but I hope it's still enjoyable🖤

all the nightmares I’ve had

Years after Kaz gets his revenge, Pekka Rollin's family is killed in a tragic accident. It has nothing to do with Kaz or the Crows but Pekka is convinced Kaz is responsible. Pekka is deep in his grief, reckless and has no fear for what he could lose any more, Inej's threats to himself forgotten. He surprises Kaz, and his touch aversion works against him, so Pekka does manage to take him down along with the help of some chemicals. Kaz had made progress on that, less guarded and covered up these days, but if there's one person guaranteed to take him right back to the barge mentally it's Pekka touching him. Pekka gets him into the coffin so easily after that, buries him six feet deep, but he doesn't just want to kill him. He sets up a way that Kaz won't run out of air down there. No, it will be dehydration that kills him as he slowly starves down there too. He's groggy from the drugs and injured from the scuffle with Pekka but he knows well enough he has no way out this time because it isn't locks he can pick that trap him, instead an oppressive mass of earth bearing down on him, gravity itself working against his escape. Even those who try to pull off such tricks as entertainment often die trying, so Kaz has no hope he can evade this when the circumstances here are designed to kill. As he comes back to more himself, the dawning reality is so much harder to deal with. Being left for dead is his worst nightmare happening all over again, despite that it isn't the barge, it's still too close. He won't call out via the spout in case Pekka is listening, waiting for him to beg - he won't give Pekka that satisfaction. Pekka won't have been foolish enough to bury Kaz where anyone else would overhear any cries for help anyway. Pekka's hubris is much the same as Kaz's was, abandoning the simple solution of a quick death because he wants him to suffer as long as possible, for it to be fitting. Just how long Kaz can last is partly a matter of willpower, how long he can remain calm and hang on to the will to live. Hope has never been something Kaz put much stock in but he clings to the hope that people will miss him, that they will care to look for him, that he will be found in time, not forgotten down here as he grows groggier again with lack of water. To distract himself, he stews on plans for his own revenge once he gets out of this, until it becomes too hard to think properly and the old fears creep back into his hazy mind. Water starts to seeps in from rain down the air spout, leaving him wet and cold and losing any remaining faith that he will get out of this nightmare. The Crows don't know Kaz is missing until the next day and they spend over a day searching the city until Jesper finally gets a feeling drawing him towards Black Veil island, hoping desperately that the incredibly rare mineral he's sensing there is indeed from Kaz's rather unique wedding ring Inej got him on her travels. They scour the cemetery for the exact source, silent as the grave once they find the freshly dug ground someone had tried to pack down harder, now sodden with the night's rain as well. Inej is the one to spot the strange pipe coming out of the ground. "He's still alive," she proclaims, and Jesper just hopes she's right about what it means. Inej starts scraping back soil in swathes with her knives, while the rest of them go to locate some metal Jesper can fashion into shovels. The time spent digging up that grave feels like the longest time of Jesper's life. When they pull Kaz - pale and wet and shaking but alive - from the coffin, Jesper is witness to the most public display of affection he's ever seen by Kaz and Inej. Kaz clings to Inej like she's his lifeline to the living, though Kaz is careful once again to not touch any skin. Jesper has to look away, giving them their privacy as best he can, until the moment passes and Inej turns to ask Wylan for the water bottle they brought along.

When Kaz seems a bit more focused, Inej asks “Pekka?” with her voice like a knife. “Pekka,” Kaz confirms sharply, but his eyes taking on a dark far away look, staring past them all in a way that worries Jesper. Inej leaves abruptly, with murder in her eyes, so it falls to Jesper and Wylan to cautiously help Kaz to the carriage. They're careful to keep their touches firmly over Jesper's coat that they help the shivering Kaz into, in case their proximity might trigger him like it used to. They go back to the mansion, setting Kaz up in the guest room they all know is really his anyhow. Kaz is quiet, no smart remarks and no refusal of the help they give, accepting any comfort they can provide him that isn't touch. Wylan brings up a pot of hot, very sugary tea and so much food. The tray placed on the side of the bed is laden with far more than he could possibly eat, but every item is a favourite of Kaz's; foods Kaz would deny caring one jot for but anyone observant enough would know to be true. Jesper waits by his side, wishing he could hug Kaz, however briefly, to feel him solid and safe in his arms, but he doesn't dare ask right now. Being there is hopefully enough. With Jesper watching over him, Kaz sleeps, curled up in the layers of soft, warm blankets they gave him that he'd normally scoff at and turn down.

When Kaz wakes, Jesper's heart skips a beat in anticipation as Kaz reaches out his hand as if to touch him, only for that hope to be dashed as Kaz snatches his hand back suddenly, not able to complete the intended action. Kaz scowls, looking down at the floor. But then he says something that surprises Jesper, “Thank you, Jes.” Kaz's gaze shifts to looking down at the bed covers as he says it, a discomfit evident in the tension of his shoulders and the tight grip of one hand on his other in his lap. “You don't need to thank me, you podge.” Jesper replies, exasperated but fondly said nevertheless. “This is what we do, we look out for one another.” Kaz simply nods and Jesper decides now is a good time to fetch more food and drink, to leave Kaz to his thoughts for a bit.

Inej comes back in the evening, her clothes freshly changed and the scent of the cleaner she uses on her knives trailing in her wake. She only says "It's done" to the room when she appears suddenly, no one needs to ask what. Then she climbs onto the bed with Kaz, prompting Jesper to quickly leave them be. The newspapers the next day don't show the gruesome detail of a man taken to pieces in a depiction of any sort for that would be far too improper, but they spare no words to describe the unexpected downfall of a once barrel boss practically forgotten and by now only remarkable in his manner of death. That morning, when they take up a tray of food and the paper, he sees Kaz smirk, for the first time since they rescued him, at the sight of the headline.

[wonderlandflamingo]

For the character ask game:

Seto Kaiba

1, 5, 6, 12, 16

:)

1: Why do you like or dislike this character?

I think his unwavering faith in himself is pretty great. Like sure sometimes he's so overconfident in himself that he blows it big time, but I love him anyway. He contains so much hubris. But, he carries it so well. Like of course he can do that single-handedly, he's Seto Fucking Kaiba. (I wish I had half his confidence)

5: What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

Gonna be honest it's this number from the dub. The first season dub had some bops. It's pretty much the only thing dubs at the time were good at. And I know Kaiba isn't in this scene at all, but the vibes are right. If I made a mixtape for him this song would be on it.

6: What's something you have in common with this character?

Unfortunately, we both had to grow up too fast. He got adopted by an evil billionaire. I grew up being surrounded by adults with an overprotective mom who wouldn't let me play with other kids. It's different, but the end results are similar. Kaiba and I both got real good at interacting with adults and we suck at making friends our own age. "Yay"

12: What's s headcanon you have for this character?

That he gets along really great with children, but refuses to admit it. He has a little brother. So, while his childhood made him bad at interacting with people his own age, he's pretty good at interacting with people younger than him. Also, it's canon that he's building amusement parks that orphans can go to for free. (The boy likes kids. Which makes him a better person than me cuz I hate them)

16: What's your least favorite ship for this character?

Probably Joey and Kaiba. I think Kaiba needs a friend that will actually tell him no. He needs someone to call him on his bullshit and Joey is great at that, but I feel like adding romance complicates that in a way I personally don't like. (But, I'm actually not super into enemies to lovers dynamics in general)

21: If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

Much like the show I love putting him in situations where he has to preform mental gymnastics to prove the very real magic isn't real. This is unfortunately something I don't like too. If the story is better served by him growing as a character and coming to terms with the magical element than he doesn't sound like himself. Or at least it's very hard to make him sound like himself. Kaiba is sort of notoriously bad at character growth and it can be tricky to introduce that without turning him into a completely different character. (I just need to git gud)