#i would eventually like to write a headcanon about how mortals perceive meg while she's on the surface

[skullearring]

not really a headcanon, but i decided to browse the perseus digital library ( because i’m a Fun Person ) and compile all of my favorite mentions of the furies i could find :

❝ in black garments, like the assistants at a funeral ❞ ( cic. vat. 13 )

❝ but the impure are not permitted to approach the pure or each other, but are bound by the furies in bonds unbreakable ❞ ( dio. liv. 8.1 )

❝ furies’ hairs / uncoil their serpents at the sound ? ❞ ( hor. od. 2.13 )

❝ night - begot, implacable, / terrific furies. they did sit before / the prison portals, adamant confined, / combing black vipers from their horrid hair ❞ ( ov. met. 4.416 )

❝ persecuted with the whips and burning torches of the furies ❞ ( suet. nero 34 )

❝ do not shake at me those maidens with their bloodshot eyes and snaky hair ❞ ( eur. orest. 256 )

❝ they will kill me, the hounds of hell, death's priestesses with glaring eyes, the dreadful goddesses ❞ ( eur. orest. 256 )

one day i’ll have the energy to write a coherent headcanon incorporating all of these details into how i consider my portrayal of meg, but today is not that day.

UPDATE BASED ON THE TAGS : i literally forgot the orphic hymns exist wtf !! the furies even get two !!

LXVIII. TO THE FURIES ( ERINYES )

❝ revenge and sorrows dire to you belong, hid in a savage veil, severe and strong, / terrific virgins, who forever dwell endu’d with various forms, in deepest hell ; / aerial, and unseen by human kind, and swiftly coursing, rapid as the mind. ❞

LXIX. TO THE FURIES ( EUMENIDES )

❝ illustrious furies, mighty nam’d, terrific pow’rs, for prudent counsel fam’d ; ❞

❝ whose piercing sight, with vision unconfin'd, surveys the deeds of all the impious kind : / on fate attendant, punishing the race ( with wrath severe ) of deeds unjust and base. / dark - colour’d queens, whose glittering eyes, are bright with dreadful, radiant, life - destroying, light : / eternal rulers, terrible and strong, to whom revenge, and tortures dire belong ; / fatal and horrid to the human sight, with snaky tresses wand’ring in the night ; ❞

[toushindai]

I originally drafted a post about how "reach out and grasp" came to be, but then went "no, this is far too self-indulgent" and resolved not to make such a post

but then I remembered that this is my blog and self-indulgence is literally the entire point

so!

Where did the idea come from?

Depends on which part of the idea you're talking about!

On December 24, 2018, 18 days after EA began, I first encountered the "Fury" remembrance screen ("One thing the mortals have on us is how quickly they become men. This is the Fury Megaera. She will accelerate the process in your case.") Within twenty-four hours I had committed myself to an "arranged marriage" interpretation of this line. I have not significantly wavered since. (When I have wavered, I have remembered that Zagreus claims he originally tried not to get emotionally attached to Megaera, which fortifies my certainty that Hades did indeed intend a relationship between the two rather than Megaera just being another tutor.)

Eventually, sometime after Thanatos existed and it was clear he was also a love interest, I concluded that at some point during the engagement, he and Megaera got in an argument about...... uh...... "which one of them is a better influence on the incorrigible Zagreus." Definitely not "which one of them better deserves to spend time with Zagreus and be romantically associated with him." No way, definitely not. And then didn't speak until after the MegZag breakup. After the MegZag breakup, their friendship "returned to normal." Of course it returned to normal, why would either of them resent each other over a thing like Zagreus? Now that's just ridiculous. (If you've read "reach out and grasp," you have seen that I do not think their friendship entirely repairs at this point.)

In February 2020, I decided to investigate the game files for funsies. There, I discovered several very interesting things about what jealousy-flavored lines become available and unavailable when. You can see some of my analysis of those discoveries here, but it was at this point that I really became interested in writing how Megaera and Thanatos worked out their jealousy, because I was still frustrated that they were obviously jealous early on in the romance progressions but blow Zagreus off if he asks about it once he's dating them. Relying on the conclusions from various line requirements, and working exclusively in a "Thanatos first, Megaera second" version of things (thanks to the blurse of my own RNG), I settled on a headcanon that at some point, around the eighth gift to Megaera, she and Thanatos had a conversation that resolved the lion's share of the awkward resentment they'd been feeling since the above bullet point, which resolved Thanatos's jealousy (hence locking his "you sure have been seeing a lot of Megaera lately" line) but did not fully make up Megaera's mind (which is why her "I'm sure Death will welcome you with open arms" line stays open a little longer). Therefore I envisioned a second conversation after the completion of both romance arcs where they actually got on the same page about things. (Again, if you've read ROAG, this should be sounding intensely familiar.)

Over the course of several months, several attempts were made to write either of the conversations described in the above bullet point. All ended in failure and frustration.

Additionally, I spent much of early quarantine settling on a headcanon in which Meg and Than have never been romantically/sexually interested in each other, but have often been perceived as such throughout the Underworld, to some degree of discomfort. Then Blood Price (June 2020) swoops in with some Official info about how Than and Meg became close (over Sisyphus) and also adding the the canon threesome scene, which I am on the record as not being terribly fond of for various reasons. That I had just spent three IRL-unusually-miserable months deciding that Meg and Than are slightly repulsed by being thought of as romantically attached is a significant part of this as well. Blood Price was a time!

Anyway. Shortly before 1.0 I stumbled across a list of ship domesticity questions, which got me thinking about marriage between the MZT trio. This was when I decided "well, I don't think MegZag want to get married after what they've already been through with each other, but what about ThanZag? Oh for sure. And what does that feel like for Meg when they do, then?" Again this should be sounding familiar...

A fic?

As I was thinking about that last bullet point above, I began to push a series of several headcanons together: I envisioned a series of events in which Megaera, half-sarcastically, asks Thanatos where her congratulations for being engaged to Zagreus are; in which Meg apologizes for not congratulating Than on getting together with Zag a bit quicker due to being slower to resolve her own jealousy; in which Meg sincerely and easily congratulates Than at his wedding to Zagreus.

Parallelism being an irresistible catnip to me, thus was born the first inklings of what I for a very long time called "hinge" or "hinge fic." A fic focusing on how Zagreus, placed at the "hinge" between Megaera and Thanatos, allowed them to become closer friends. The original idea, which I did attempt to start writing before 1.0, was going to be formatted as a series of narrative passages covering a wide period of time alternating with three specific tension-filled, or tension-relieving, conversations between Meg and Than. "Isn't that just ROAG" you may ask, if you don't understand just how brief I meant to be with the narrative passages. I will allow you to look at the first one (the only one I really wound up writing) here but you're not allowed to judge me for it because I'm already telling you it's not very good. This was meant to be followed by another paragraph or two about "OK actually Meg and Zag kind of like each other" before leaping right into the Meg-Than argument about which one of them should get to marry Zag would be a better influence on the irresponsible prince.

Then 1.0 happened and not only was I consumed with actually playing the game a whole lot and writing fic responding to the game's ending, but then I hurt my hand and couldn't write at all for a month and was miserable etc etc etc

Then I started seeing the Big Bang advertised and thought that an external commitment and a deadline might be just the things I needed to get these damn headcanons into a fic already.

So how was the writing process?

It was absolute hell! Thank you for asking.

I mean, when I started writing while considering the Big Bang, back in December, I hadn't even 100% made up my mind that it was a Meg character study. I did decide on that much pretty quickly, but where should it start? I wavered on including the Sisyphus chapter and originally thought I was starting with "Hey Meg you're engaged now :)". But I wanted to have a bit about Meg and Than's friendship so as to make it more emotionally charged when that friendship starts deteriorating, which meant I had to write the Sisyphus chapter, and my first several attempts at the Sisyphus chapter (December-February) had no sense of emotional uniting theme. Oh my god they were so bad. Oh my god chapter 1 was so hard. I suffered. The turning point was when I stuck a bunch of post-it notes on a wall to track the emotional arc of the entire fic and wound up concluding that I needed to start with Meg and Than meeting over their Chthonic Companions--thereby pretty much tossing every word of chapter 1 I'd written so far in the garbage can. I could immediately, within seconds, tell that this was going to be much better, and I swore copiously about it.

Even after that, it took me several drafts of the entire fic to figure out what the emotional theme was, to figure out what specific story I was telling about Meg. And with each theme I tried on, I had to rewrite entire conversations so that they were on that theme. Several times over. The conversation between Meg and Than just before Zag escapes for the first time--which, you remember, I had wanted to write since February 2020--took much wrangling.

But how satisfying when it actually started to come together!

The thing is I have never before written something that the first draft was so bad and had to rewrite it over and over and eventually turn it into something that was actually good. Something I felt proud of! I've never had this happen before. If I hadn't committed to the Big Bang, I would have given up. And ROAG wouldn't exist. I am considering this experience with great seriousness and trying to learn from it.