#let’s go full greek tragedy

[gay-dorito-dust]

Would you be willing to write a Miguel x Spider!Reader oneshot where they’re arguing over something the reader did on a mission. And in the heat of an argument, Miguel yells “Because I love you!” at the perfectly wrong time, revealing why he cares about the reader’s safety.

‘What the hell was that back there. You could’ve jeopardised the whole mission with that reckless stunt you pulled back there!’ Miguel barked, ripping off mask the first moment moment he could; Hellfire were setting ablaze to his beautiful scarlet eyes that were zeroed in on you as the anger, the frustration upon his face became prominent the more he closed the distance between you.

‘When will you let this go, Miguel. When we became Spider-Man we knew the risks that we were running with-‘ ‘so you thought it’d be better to take a running head start by taking the leap and then diving headfirst into them?!’ Miguel cuts you off and with an indignant huff he adds, ‘you don’t get extra points for being reckless, this isn’t some little game that you can just come back to when you feel like it. No, what we do is a full time commitment with no room for last minute deviations just because you were feeling more heroic.’

You grit your teeth. You respected Miguel, you truly did and at one point in time you wanted to do right by his little rule book of how to be a great hero. However you soon learned that it’s better to play by your own rules rather then it was to play by those made by others and slowly but surly found a method that worked for you. For no two methods were the same when it came to protecting and saving people but if they both end in the same conclusion, then no one should be able to raise an issue with it. At the end of the day you and Miguel saved people from a much bigger problem if left unchecked; so why was it that all of a sudden he had an issue with your methods?

It never upset him this much before, so why now. Did he think you as incapable? As unreliable? As untrustworthy to fully let you handle a situation on your own? Whatever it was it only proved in pissing you off despite your semi-injured state; you didn’t care that you’ve gotten hurt, you’ve gotten hurt plenty of times before and he never once batted an eye or exemplified his emotions as he did as of right now. You could barely get a read on the guy as he stood mere feet away, chest heaving even though he wasn’t out of breath, eyes wide and his hair slightly disheveled from the way he had torn off his mask earlier.

And yet you couldn’t help but find him beautiful in his anger, for it was like witnessing the makings of a Greek tragedy; beautifully written, yet so heartbreakingly tragic.

‘Why does it matter?’ You spat, getting up, despite your injured leg’s desire to buckle beneath the weight of not only you but the situation at hand. You saw the briefest movements of Miguel’s arms almost stretch out to instinctively catch you but stopping midway through the motion before going slack at his sides once more; as though remembering why he was mad at you in the first place. ‘It never mattered before, so why does it matter now? You don’t hound the others for doing it so why is it me that’s getting shit on for doing the same when I ain’t the first to do so!’

‘Because I love you!’ Miguel exclaimed.

The silence afterwards was almost deafening. Miguel’s outburst quieted you quickly as a thousand and one thoughts raced in your head; how long? why now? Was this merely a ruse to silence you so he could badger on at you for your supposed mistake? You didn’t know what to make of anything anymore now that he said that. You didn’t want to believe it for starters on the basis that not once had he ever shown interest in you, if anything he made it apparent to push you away or avoid you entirely from any and all interaction, and even when he did it was comprised of short responses that left the attempts at conversation to die as an overwhelming awkwardness forced you into leaving him be.

‘What?’

‘I love you.’ Miguel repeated, softer this time.

‘I get that but why-‘ ‘haven’t I shown it until now? As stupid as it sounds but I didn’t want you to get hurt because of me and look where you are,’ he gestured to your injured state, ‘hurt because of me.’ He adds defeatedly. You were about to open your mouth when Miguel raised a hand, indicating that he wasn’t finished, ‘I know I haven’t given you any reason to believe me when I say that I love you. I avoid you like the plague and I push you away whenever I see you starting to get too close and respond in a clipped tone of voice so that you’d loose interest and move on to talk to someone else.’

He stopped talking to move in closer to you, grasping you by arms with a firm grip as all the anger in his face seemingly having been melted away. The raging hellfire that once consumed his scarlet eyes in their entirety had been diminished to that of dying ambers, unveiling his admiration, his worry, his guilt and most importantly, his love; the sneer now long gone was replaced by a softer more tender expression that didn’t hide away the worry lines that were deeply etched into his skin. ‘I don’t deserve you, I’m not worth having you because sooner or later you’ll see me the way I’ve always seen myself and I’d rather you be as far away as possible when that happens.’ Miguel said, making sure he was maintaining eye contact with you the entire time to prove that he was being wholeheartedly genuine, not wanting to lie to you about something as personal as his feelings; He’s done that for long enough, Miguel knew his breaking point was upon the incline and seeing you act the way you did during the mission only fast forward it.

‘Yet for some inexplicable reason I can’t stop myself for wanting to protect you, to make sure you’re safe, to make sure that you never come to harm. At first I thought it was because I was looking out for a teammate, making sure you didn’t slip up and cause more potential problems for the rest of us, making sure that you didn’t let a single perpetrator slip but soon I learnt it was far more then just simply looking after a teammate...’ Miguel paused to blink away the images regarding of the nightmares he’d get concerning you, which were few and far between but those times were enough to suffocate him with fear. ‘It was something more and I grew scared, I grew scared because I know what it’s like to loose it all but for some reason I also knew that loosing you would just be the nail in the coffin for me.’

Miguel admits as he presses his forehead against your own, his hands trailing from up your arms until they’re caressing the skin of either side of your neck between calloused thumbs. He closing his eyes and allows himself to breath you in, reminding himself that you were here and that he managed to get to you before anything else could, that he kept you safe, not from all harm but at least from some of it and that was good enough but he knew deep down that he needed the do better. ‘Don’t make me imagine a life without you,’ he whispers, pressing his forehead against yours just that tiny bit harder as his fingertips found their home where your pulse points were to remind him that you weren’t gone completely from his grasp, ‘for I don’t think I’m strong enough to withstand that reality.’

‘You don’t have to.’ You told him softly, lifting your hands to caresses the skin of his cheeks and feeling him effectively melt within your hold. ‘Not anymore.’

[eelhound]

"I think Homer outwits most writers who have written on the War [fantasy archetype], by not taking sides.

The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowelment. Homer was a Greek and might have been partial to the Greek side, but he had a sense of justice or balance that seems characteristically Greek — maybe his people learned a good deal of it from him? His impartiality is far from dispassionate; the story is a torrent of passionate actions, generous, despicable, magnificent, trivial. But it is unprejudiced. It isn’t Satan vs. Angels. It isn’t Holy Warriors vs. Infidels. It isn’t hobbits vs. orcs. It’s just people vs. people.

Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody does. I try not to, but it’s no use; I just like the Trojans better than the Greeks. But Homer truly doesn’t take sides, and so he permits the story to be tragic. By tragedy, mind and soul are grieved, enlarged, and exalted.

Whether war itself can rise to tragedy, can enlarge and exalt the soul, I leave to those who have been more immediately part of a war than I have. I think some believe that it can, and might say that the opportunity for heroism and tragedy justifies war. I don’t know; all I know is what a poem about a war can do. In any case, war is something human beings do and show no signs of stopping doing, and so it may be less important to condemn it or to justify it than to be able to perceive it as tragic.

But once you take sides, you have lost that ability.

Is it our dominant religion that makes us want war to be between the good guys and the bad guys?

In the War of Good vs. Evil there can be divine or supernal justice but not human tragedy. It is by definition, technically, comic (as in The Divine Comedy): the good guys win. It has a happy ending. If the bad guys beat the good guys, unhappy ending, that’s mere reversal, flip side of the same coin. The author is not impartial. Dystopia is not tragedy.

Milton, a Christian, had to take sides, and couldn’t avoid comedy. He could approach tragedy only by making Evil, in the person of Lucifer, grand, heroic, and even sympathetic — which is faking it. He faked it very well.

Maybe it’s not only Christian habits of thought but the difficulty we all have in growing up that makes us insist justice must favor the good.

After all, 'Let the best man win' doesn’t mean the good man will win. It means, 'This will be a fair fight, no prejudice, no interference — so the best fighter will win it.' If the treacherous bully fairly defeats the nice guy, the treacherous bully is declared champion. This is justice. But it’s the kind of justice that children can’t bear. They rage against it. It’s not fair!

But if children never learn to bear it, they can’t go on to learn that a victory or a defeat in battle, or in any competition other than a purely moral one (whatever that might be), has nothing to do with who is morally better.

Might does not make right — right?

Therefore right does not make might. Right?

But we want it to. 'My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.'

If we insist that in the real world the ultimate victor must be the good guy, we’ve sacrificed right to might. (That’s what History does after most wars, when it applauds the victors for their superior virtue as well as their superior firepower.) If we falsify the terms of the competition, handicapping it, so that the good guys may lose the battle but always win the war, we’ve left the real world, we’re in fantasy land — wishful thinking country.

Homer didn’t do wishful thinking.

Homer’s Achilles is a disobedient officer, a sulky, self-pitying teenager who gets his nose out of joint and won’t fight for his own side. A sign that Achilles might grow up someday, if given time, is his love for his friend Patroclus. But his big snit is over a girl he was given to rape but has to give back to his superior officer, which to me rather dims the love story. To me Achilles is not a good guy. But he is a good warrior, a great fighter — even better than the Trojan prime warrior, Hector. Hector is a good guy on any terms — kind husband, kind father, responsible on all counts — a mensch. But right does not make might. Achilles kills him.

The famous Helen plays a quite small part in The Iliad. Because I know that she’ll come through the whole war with not a hair in her blond blow-dry out of place, I see her as opportunistic, immoral, emotionally about as deep as a cookie sheet. But if I believed that the good guys win, that the reward goes to the virtuous, I’d have to see her as an innocent beauty wronged by Fate and saved by the Greeks.

And people do see her that way. Homer lets us each make our own Helen; and so she is immortal.

I don’t know if such nobility of mind (in the sense of the impartial 'noble' gases) is possible to a modern writer of fantasy. Since we have worked so hard to separate History from Fiction, our fantasies are dire warnings, or mere nightmares, or else they are wish fulfillments."

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from No Time to Spare, 2013.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

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Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

[lilislegacy]

Percy doing a little bit (or a lot) of everything

i know everyone won’t agree with this future for him, but humor me

percy in college figuring out that he doesn’t want to be stuck in a lab, but he wants to make a difference. he can talk to animals. he wants to use that ability for good. he wants to help animals in some way

percy wanting to become a veterinarian for aquatic animals. he doubts himself, becasue it takes someone smart and hard-working, but annabeth has full faith in him. and he finds he actually really likes learning about how sea animals function, and how to help them. once he’s a vet, he knows he made the right choice. he loves going to work every day, wherever that is. an aquarium, a marine clinic, the ocean, it doesn’t matter. he listens to the animals and helps them in a way that no other vet on earth can. his co-workers call him the animal whisperer. (which he finds funny, because he’s not whispering, just having a normal semi-telepathic conversation)

while he’s preparing for vet school, percy has an experience that makes him begin to take notice of people and animals dying in fires. he figures “i’m fire resistant. i can control water. im strong. i think quick on my feet… i can help.” so throughout vet school, he’s a firefighter. he loves it. he gets to save people every day. he gets action. he thrives. he saves so many lives. he even takes ownership of the fire house’s new dog - a dalmatian-shepherd mix. he says it’s just for a bit, but the dog ends up as his and annabeth’s family pet (which annabeth totally knew would happen). but he loves being a firefighter. it makes him feel like he’s using his abilities to help people, not just kill endless amounts of monsters. he actually feels like a real hero this way.

percy becoming certified as a professional diver so he can do deep sea rescues, for animals mainly, but he ends up doing human rescues too. in tragedies like the thai cave rescue, he’s there. he’s the pro diver on call for an emergency - human or animal related. he’ll dive any depth to save a life. he’ll even just do it to help researchers, or historians, or anyone, really. and he never charges much, if anything at all.

percy volunteering as a marine wildlife rescuer. he’ll answer a call, day or night. he’ll help get a shark off the beach, cut rope off of a whale, save sea turtles caught in a net. it doesn’t matter, he’s there. and it’s nothing new for him.

percy maybe even writhing a book or two over the course of his life.

percy going on some boat expeditions, which he always leads.

percy maybe even one day teaching, when he’s older and his kids are grown. whether it’s 12 year olds with dyslexia or whether he’s teaching a college class on aquatic animals or greek history. he’d be good at it. he’s patient.

percy doing multiple great things throughout his life. percy using his experiences and abilities for good. percy not letting his past - being kicked out of every school, making bad grades, being thought of as stupid - define him. not letting his past stop him.

percy doing a little bit (or a lot) of everything. becasue he can. becasue he’s alive. becasue he’s talented. becasue he’s intelligent. and because he has a huge heart.

and he has the most supportive partner in the whole world.

percy thriving in life.

[sunlighthroughthe-ashes]

this episode was slightly clunky in places, but let me tell you what i loved.

i ADORED the scenes of them alone in baek inhyuk's house — one of the best qualities of a well-made k-drama is how beautifully it can capture the holiness of commonplace events — the "precious intimacy of ordinary things." sunjae drying sol's hair for her is an excellent example — so much love in such a small gesture.

sunjae's ridiculous attempts to get into the guest-room with sol were BEYOND adorable — it's also such a nice touch by the writers to show that despite the otherworldliness and rarity of his love for sol, sunjae is still a 20-year old boy at heart. he does stupid (albeit unbelievably cute) things. and that's okay. that makes him even more endearing.

the entire segment when they're talking in the guest-room while cuddling was heart-touching. sunjae wishing that she never has to go back, that tomorrow never arrives, sol committing his sleeping face to memory because she knows she's going to pretend to leave the next morning. she's going to have to let him go. there's this japanese phrase that's very popular: "mono no aware —" that describes these scenes perfectly. it means the bittersweet beauty of transience.

the moment is full of it — the lovely ache of passing time — because of course tomorrow arrives. it has to. but that doesn't make the memories matter any less, or hold less weight.

it's like the cherry blossoms sunjae sees wilting earlier in the episode — they may bloom only for a moment, but the petals pinken in the mind for months after; still fresh.

that's the melancholy charm of their love.

my heart went out to sol during this episode. she looked happiness in the face and decided to give up even the little time she had left with it, just to save sunjae. she's risking life and limb to protect him, (again), only to have her actions further compound their fate.

greek tragedies (and shakespearean plays) operate on the same principle — it is often the core aspect of your personality, and the best of your intentions; that leads you down the dark road of your destiny. (eg: oedipus, hamlet, etc). in sol's case, this is the selflessness of her love for sunjae, and vice versa. they both spent this episode trying their level best to protect each other. it's not going to end well. (but since this was marketed as a rom-com, i'm hoping the actual ending of the show will be happy.)

also, the way byeon woo-seok's face just crumples when sol runs off the train? the mute agony in his eyes — how his expression just splinters into pieces? it's a masterclass in acting. he genuinely deserves an award for this role.

i am not going to talk about the promo because i have been traumatized enough. i will see you all next monday.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

What made you fall in love with Copollo and how can we angst this with Hypollo?

I had to marinate this in my head for a bit haha

First - What Made Me Love Copollo?

I don't know if I have the words for it, but I shall try! XD

First of all, I do love me some of that simple, satisfying ships that make you smile - ie, Percabeth - but -

But. But.

There's something about those toxic relationships that are so interesting.

And Copollo has an especially interesting dynamic - Commodus is the more toxic one, but Apollo's the one with all the power. Usually it's only one person with both those things but it's split between them (and note: I said Commodus was the more toxic one - Apollo was also toxic. he was enabling Commodus.)

So the dynamic is one reason. But I also just...love their story.

They relate to each other on a level rarely reached. They had a genuine relationship that was more than carnal, or even just affectionate. They loved each other, and I do think Commodus had just as much of an effect on Apollo as Daphne and Hyacinthus did.

I mean come on.

Apollo gets nervous around trees because of Daphne = Apollo doesn't like water because of Commodus.

Apollo describes Hyacinthus as perfect = Apollo has thought of Commodus as perfect.

It's all right there^^^^

And with Apollo, it's like he's caught in this "I can fix him" / "he can make me worse" mindset.

With Commodus, he's been seeking validation his whole life and clings to Apollo's when it's given to him - and his sanity spirals when he looses it.

They're that perfect mix of "match made in heaven" and "match made in hell". They would have worked but they also could not.

It's just. such a tragedy. which FITS because ya know, Greek Tragedy TM ;)

AND OF COURSE THEIR INTERACTIONS ARNUMNUMNUM!!!!!

How they're so very casual with each other in that flashback. Apollo's bouncing grapes off Commodus's nose for crying out loud THEY'RE IN LOVE YOUR HONOR-!

And then. In ToA. urhhhhhh it's so good. Commodus is That Ex with a picture of his ex on a dartboard. SERIOUSLY. and he THROWS KNIVES AT IT.

LIKE COME ON HOW MUCH MORE JILTED EX CAN YOU GET?

"dear heart", anybody? DEAR HEART? REMEMBER THAT?! I DO!!! LIVES RENT-FREE IN MY HEAD!!!!!

also the two innuendos in TDP and TTT are so good like come on Rick you know what you did there

and then. their final scene together. it's just. ARGHURHMMRM

Apollo reminisces on how he used to hold Commodus's hands with love. Commodus is so fucking eager to take a shot at him. Apollo screams him to death like omfg and the last thing - the last thing - Commodus hears is Apollo's pent-up heartbreak.

May I emphasize Apollo's pent-up heartbreak. HIS HEARTBREAK OVER THE LAST FEW MONTHS YES BUT ALSO HIS LIFETIME. WHICH MEANS COMMODUS IS LITERALLY GIVEN A FACE-FULL OF PROOF THAT APOLLO STILL CARED FOR HIM.

Two people in love, and their love going so wrong when one betrays the other - killing them! - and the other is suddenly hellbent on revenge?

It's all about that lovers to enemies, everybody. Enemies to lovers is good and all but what about loves to enemies.

It's so good armnumnum.

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I LOVE THEM OKAY I LOVE THESE BISEXUAL BITCHES MJHYJUFGH

inhale

exhale

i'm good now. ahem inspects ask angst it with Hyapollo now, eh?

Let's see here...

Well for one Commodus is 100% jealous of Hyacinthus. Like sorry I'm not moving from this hill I will die on this hill you will have to climb up this hill and drag me off it kicking and crying and screaming and clawing you. I'm not moving. crosses arms and sits down pouting

Meanwhile, in the Hyacinthus department, I think Hya would just...not really care? Or well, he'd care about how Apollo took the whole arc but he wouldn't be like "oh no he moved on :(" about it (Poly Apollo is canon y'all i don't make the rules!). more like "bitch you think I give a shit about you?" at Commodus. "YOU'RE NOT WORTH MY TIME!"

I also find it funny if it's this:

this hasn't really turned out as angst but the comedic potential is too good lmao XD

[depressionheiress]

I have been listening to Epic the musical for about a year or so, it's an absolute gem, and I recommend it to everyone who loves poetry, Greek mythology, Greek tragedy or musicals.

I've listened to "the Horse and the Infant" for a millionth time and thought: but what if Odysseus actually didn't listen to Zeus. What if despite all odds, despite it being the Greek tragedy, he saved Astyanax. We all know that in trying to escape fate you only entangle yourself in it worse, Oedipus tried that already, but that's just the thing - Odysseus sheltered Astyanax not because he tried to escape fate, but for the love of his own son, waiting for him home, he hid this orphaned baby as a means to say "I'm sorry". Parents dead, home destroyed... Zeus threatened the same happening to Ithaca through Astyanax, and Odysseus thought "if this happens, I'd want someone to save my boy too. If that is to be my fate, if the gods do not wish to save my innocent people any more than they wished to help the Trojans, if our suffering is no more than your fun pastime, then I'll do one thing that defies you the most - a good thing".

He made sure Astyanax lived. While the city burned around him, Odysseus sang to him about comets and meteors, about men and monsters, about a kind, beautiful woman and a baby boy far away. And Astyanax stopped crying.

He thought one of his father's generals came to visit.

Odysseus wasn't going to take Astyanax to Ithaca. He wanted to find him a good home and never ever let him know he's from Troy. In the meantime Polites became the nanny, because of course who else. Due to this, Polites never went to Polyphemus' cave, he stayed to watch the baby. Euroclus went instead, and Odysseus lost a friend still, but Polites, who trusted Odysseus the most, lived. And that changed everything.

Many, many years later Astyanax still found out. He still was full of heartbreaking rage. He still raised his sword.

But he was raised not by the monster Odysseus had become at the end of the Underworld saga, but by Polites, who hadn't let even the bloodiest war in ancient history harden him.

And Astyanax thought about the gods too - about Apollo, who was Troy's patron god and still couldn't be arsed to answer his mother's prayers. About Athena and Ares both turning away from his father's corpse at Achilles' feet. About so many futile prayers fallen on deaf ears.

And Astyanax lowered his sword wet with tears, not blood.

[divinationsanctuary19]

9 Metageitniōn| Μεταγειτνιών (Attic Calendar) - 14th of August/ 20th-24th of August

Helios (Ἡλιος), The Muses (Μουσαι) and Rhea (Ρεια, Μητηρ Θεων)

The Muses are: Melpomene the Muse of tragedy held a tragic mask, Thaleia Muse of comedy a comedy mask, Terpiskhore Muse of dance a lyre, Kalliope the Muse of epic poetry a lyre, Kleio the Muse of history a stylus and scroll, Polymnia the Muse of hymns a veil and pensive pose, Ourania the Muse of astronomy a globe, Erato the Muse of erotic poetry a lyre, and Euterpe the Muse of lyric poetry a flute.

Hesiod, Theogony 1 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or 7th B.C.) :

"Of the Mousai Helikoniades (of Helikon) let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helikon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty Kronion [Zeus], and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessos [stream of Helikon] or in the Hippokrene (Horse's Spring) or Olmeios [stream of Helikon], make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helikon and move with vigorous feet"

Rhea, Mater Megala

Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 19 (trans. Celoria) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :

"In Krete there is said to be a sacred cave full of bees. In it, as storytellers say, Rhea gave birth to Zeus; it is a sacred place an no one is to go near it, whether god or mortal. At the appointed time each year a great blaze is seen to come out of the cave. Their story goes on to say that this happens whenever the blood from the birth of Zeus begins to boil up. The sacred bees that were the nurses of Zeus occupy this cave."

Ἡλιος

HELIOS (Helius) was the Titan god of the sun, a guardian of oaths, and the god of sight. He dwelt in a golden palace in the River Okeanos (Oceanus) at the far ends of the earth from which he emerged each dawn, crowned with the aureole of the sun, driving a chariot drawn by four winged steeds. When he reached the the land of the Hesperides in the far West he descended into a golden cup which bore him through the northern streams of Okeanos back to his rising place in the East.

Homeric Hymn 31 to Helius (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.) :

"Glowing Helios (Sun) whom mild-eyed Euryphaessa (Wide Shining), the far-shining one, bare to [Hyperion] the son of Gaia (Gaea, Earth) and starry Ouranos (Uranus, Heaven). For Hyperion wedded glorious Euryphaessa, his own sister, who bare him lovely children, rosy-armed Eos (the Dawn) and rich-tressed Selene (the Moon) and tireless Helios (Helius, the Sun) who is like the deathless gods."

[edutainer2022]

It's a little two-part glimpse into Dad Jeff going away into the sky. And Scotty being not happy about it. Baby Virgil features briefly too. Jeff Tracy tells himself things that tide him over more difficult times (but are not necessarily true).

SEPARATION ANXIETY

It was unbearable. The little face of the boy in his arms was wrought with boundless grief. Bright blue eyes full of tears and fear.

"Daddy, no gooooo! No gooooo!"

Tiny hands were clutching the collar of his uniform. The boy's voice was choking on sobs and Jeff felt his heart being ripped out. He was due at the base for a pick up and relocation for training before the Moon mission. He was a breath away from calling in his resignation right then and there and never leaving his son ever again. He forced himself to exhale and hoisted the child higher, bringing their forheads together. That gave Jeff a chance to blink away tears of his own:

"It's okay, Scotty. It's okay. Daddy will be back soon. I have a very important job for you, Bluejay. Look after Mommy and Virgie, when I'm gone, okay? Can you do that for me?"

The child's sobs halted for a moment it took him to nod very earnestly. Jeff leaned in to kiss the boy's forehead and then kiss away the tears from the blotchy little face as best he could. He turned to his wife with an apologetic smile.

Lucy was hovering in the doorway all this time, ready to intervene. Dad's departure for the Moon was a matter of wide-eyed wonder and endless enthusiasm till it was actually time for Jeff to leave. Then it quickly dissolved into a Greek tragedy. Her own hands were full with the baby. Little Virgie didn't yet understand what was happening, but he developed an uncanny ability to pick up his brother's moods. So to echo Scotty's desperate pleas, the baby's tears were now inconsolable.

Scotty settled to hug Dad's neck, so Jeff beaconed his wife with Virgie to step into the embrace. She leaned her head on his shoulder as he reached to kiss the baby.

"Are you really gonna be okay?"

She smiled up at him. So beautiful.

"We'll miss you like crazy, Flyboy. But we'll be alright. We're in good hands."

She lifted a hand to rub soothing circles on Scotty's back. The baby calmed down too and looked ready for a nap. Jeff gave himself extra minutes to just hold them all together. He didn't know yet he was already holding three sons in that embrace. Baby Johnny was to arrive while he was still thousands of miles away on the Moon. But in that moment he needed to capture the perfect memory of balance and fulfillment that would tide him over a long night in space. They were going to be alright.

***

It was unthinkable. The whole situation was his worst nightmare come true. The hijacked Zero-X was obviously speeding up and overheating. He ran a quick math and the fallout would quite easily cause an extinction of life on the planet. Unacceptable - his sons lived on that planet. His mother and friends. What made matters worse was giving in to Scott's big blue pleading eyes to let him come with him in One and watch the T-drive launch. Little Allie definitely learned to step up his puppy eyes game from the best. So Jeff was now stuck with the impossible variables of his son in the blast zone and One's still untested autopilot.

"Scott, I need you to take over the controls for me!"

He was halfway out of the pilot seat, leaving One on hover. Bright blue eyes, flooded with horror, shot up at him from where Scott was adjusting the harness by the cargo doors (oh, goodness, the boy was actually prepping to board Zero-X himself!)

"Dad! You can't go down alone!"

There it was. Daddy, no gooo! Jeff had to brace himself to enter full Commander mode.

"I need you to follow Zero-X flight path, align in formation. Once I board the hull, you will bank and scout the possible fallout zone perimeter in a thousand miles radius. I need you to shoo, tow or scare away anything that will be flying or floating there, understood?"

Jeff was sorely tempted to set the milage at a farther distance (as far and as fast away as possible, just fly away, Bluejay!), but he couldn't risk Scott questioning his intent in the moment. Blue eyes were still flooded with disbelief, pleading and barely concealed tears.

"Dad, please! Let me come with you! You'll need help!"

Daddy, no goooo!

"That's an order, Thunderbird!"

When he'd come to in the Zero-X wreck, in the middle of the galactic nowhere, and for endless years to come, he'd try and soothe himself with the knowledge Scott obeyed the order and got safely away from the blast. From that point on Jeff would try to convince himself he was not worried. Scotty knew what his job was. He'd look after his brothers and Grandma. They would be alright.

[fbfh]

Francis Wilkerson crushing on (obsessing over) you hcs

wc: 1k

pairing: francis wilkerson x gn!babysitter!reader

warnings: (canon) obsessive behavior from francis but reader is into it (against their better judgement /hj), pinning against wall, begging, francis being pathetic for you /pos, reader is trying to be professional lol

summary: Francis knew his mom hired a new babysitter to look after his brothers, but he didn't expect you to be so... perfect. now he has an impossible to manage crush on you.

song rec: obsessed with you - the orion experience

a/n: oh look another obscure heartthrob there are no fics for!! literally how did we get the scene of hal telling the boys what their relationships will be like and that Francis canonically has that gene and have no one simp loudly for him. yes I know this show went off the air years ago and I don't care. also full disclosure, I haven't watched much malcolm in the middle but I think I have a pretty good grasp on the characters let me know if anyone's ooc lmao

@yesv01

Okay starting off strong 

The scene

The Scene?????

Are you fucking kidding me???

So we know he's a bit of a trouble maker 

That's putting it lightly 

But the fact is Francis is not afraid to get his hands dirty 

He is not at all afraid to get fucking messy

And you know having Lois as his mom is more than enough reason for him to be straight up feral

As Hal said, the men in their family have a habit that makes them a little unstable (and very desperate) in relationships 

It's giving greek tragedy curse 

So if you've ever wanted a hot slightly unhinged obsessive pathetic hot mess boyfriend 

Francis is the one for you 

Okay maybe boyfriend isn't quite the right word 

He’s not “technically” your boyfriend yet

But he’s hellbent on getting there eventually

He just has to warm you up a little first

Prove that he would be such a good boyfriend that you couldn’t say no

He just has to really plead his case, tell you how he feels

He figures if he’s up front and honest, lays his cards on the table

If he tells you he’s fallen for you, all the amazing traits he admires about you and that he thinks you could have some great chemistry

That he’d really love to get to know you better 

That he has a good shot at you agreeing to go on a date with him

It’s a solid plan

So he’s not sure how he ends up literally begging you on his knees, arms around your waist and kissing your stomach after getting rejected a dozen times in like two days

He thinks of something smart but every time he opens his mouth something erratic (and probably a red flag) comes out

He didn’t see this coming

No one did except Hal and Lois

Hal should start offering relationship tarot readings because in that minute and a half speech to his kids, he not only predicted Malcolm's first relationship 

But Francis's too

He's hooked up before, had flings here and there 

But he's never really liked anyone 

Until he sees you, the new babysitter Lois hired 

You're so sweet 

You're responsible, make good grades, and actually have a modicum of common sense 

Lois is hoping you're just what her boys need

Francis is often out of the house doing god knows what 

One of the reasons Lois hired you to begin with 

So it's a little while before Francis actually meets you 

But when he does?? 

Holy hell brace yourself 

When Francis sees you it changes his fucking brain chemistry 

He grabs his brothers and is like "That's the babysitter???"

"Yeah??"

"So you just forgot to mention how hot they are???" 

They did not expect this kind of reaction from him

He pays Dewey five bucks to sneak into your bag and see he can find out what body spray or lip gloss or cologne you use 

Dewey somehow manages to get in and out of your bag without you noticing

“What’s it called?” Francis asks, needing to satisfy the burning urge to know what you smell like up close

“Twilight… twilight something.” Dewey says, trying to remember. “I think it was… twilight sedation. Yeah, that’s it.” 

Francis looks over at you

“Twilight sedation…” he says dreamily

It’s twilight forest, but who’s counting

Francis needs to be around you as much as possible

Being home more than usual won’t be a problem, he thinks

He’s not responsible enough for Lois to let him watch his brothers unsupervised without utter chaos anyway, so it’s not like you’ll stop coming over

So now when you’re babysitting his brothers

When you’re making mac and cheese or helping them with their homework

He’ll find little moments to steal you away

Every time he fully intends to have a conversation with you 

Banter, build a rapport, get to know you better

And every time he ends up shamelessly coming onto you

And usually ends with him pinning you to a wall begging you to let him kiss you

Just once

Please, just once, just one time

And every time you manage to slip away and go back to what you were doing

Helping his brothers with video game levels and homework 

And every time, it leaves him wanting you more and more and more

You think he’s just messing with you at first

But you can’t deny the sincerity of his face and voice and body language

He’s burning for you

Aching for you

And it’s a little overwhelming to say the least

Especially with how out of the blue it is

You want to just have a normal conversation but always end up with him much closer to you than you expect

So you panic and slip away

And so begins the enticing game of cat and mouse between you that drives Francis even crazier for you than he thought was possible

Every time he promises himself he’ll play it cool, just be normal around you

And every time he ends up pinning you against the kitchen counter telling you what a good boyfriend he’ll be

Please just let him prove it

The logical part of your brain knows these should probably be red flags 

But a smaller part of you wants to see

The logical part of your brain also knows that you absolutely should not date the son of the woman you’re babysitting for 

Especially since (aside from Francis) this is the chillest cushiest babysitting job you’ve ever had

Lois was right, you’re exactly what her boys need

And since it’s impossible to get a babysitter, much less keep one, she’s paying you really well for this

So yeah

Dating her son would be a huge conflict of interest

You can’t

You absolutely cannot

But the one thing you failed to take into consideration is that you lowkey have horrible taste in men

So this thing building between you and Francis is really just a matter of time 

Then things are really going to get crazy

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

What do you think of the season 2 trailers that we've seen thus far?How do you feel about the show's emphasis on the team concept as a whole?

I think the "Everyone Must Choose" team thing is a marketing gimmick more than anything. They saw how much engagement the team wars get online and decided to roll with it. And like, they're not wrong, it does drive engagement.

That said, the writers and cast don't seem to take the teams thing very seriously, so I'm assuming it was cooked up in a boardroom and is not a reflection of the creative direction of the show. TGC looked like he would rather be anywhere else, doing anything else besides making that TikTok promo and Emma took the piss with a #teamedward on their Instagram. They seem aware that it's a bit goofy. Condal, in the EW article that went along with the trailer drop said it's not a story of "goodies and baddies," and called it a Greek tragedy. Like, whether they're pulling that off or not kind of remains to be seen, but the cast and writers have always at least given lip service to the idea that this is a story that is more nuanced than the marketing lets on.

There are things I liked about the trailers! I was pleasantly surprised that the show seems to be putting Aegon front and center alongside Alicent on the team green trailer, and of course TGC is acting his ass off as usual. They've given him a lot to chew on this season, and I'm glad we're going to see his sorrow and his rage. The team black trailer also did not seem give Rhaenyra quite the level of narrative halo I was expecting? Instead the black trailer was full of a lot of ominous, "you sure you want to do this?" and "there's no going back now" type warnings. There are some book changes, like Baela potentially participating in Rook's Rest, that I don't necessarily hate, although it will depend upon the execution.

There are things that I'm more wary about. The whole entire North storyline, Helaena remaining the perfect victim without having a personality of her own (doomed autistic bug girl is not a personality!), some of the rumors about Alicent's arc, the fact that she is clinging to that "Viserys chose him on his deathbed" thing when it doesn't actually matter.

So, overall? It could have been worse. I'll watch in good faith but like everyone else who is first a book fan, I have my preferred interpretation of F&B, but there are also interpretations I disagree with but accept, and interpretations I think are just outright wrong, and the show so far has hewed too close to the latter. I am not yet convinced that is going to change!

[delightfulkingtyphoon]

Hi 😀

I'm going to share with you guys some headcanons I have of my dear, beautiful and wonderful princess Daniel Robitaille :3 (aka. Candyman)

❗Remembering❗

Everything I say here is my interpretations of the character and >>my<< headcanons about him. If you have another interpretation, agree or disagree, you are free to share your opinion in the comments 👍

Let's start

✿~Favorite hobbies, skills and talents

• Daniel Robitaille is a talented and very detailed artist. He always seeks to do the best in his paintings. He likes to put passion into everything he does.

He has loved painting since he was young, which is why he studied at the best schools of his time to create magnificent works. He enjoys learning and applying new techniques to his arts.

• In addition of learning the best painting techniques, he also learned to behave like a polite gentleman in the society, learning to dance, speak several languages and play an instrument.

Not that he needed to prove something to someone, but to challenge himself. He likes to learn new things.

• He knows how to lead a waltz like no one else. He is a gentleman from the 19th century, and at that time, if you wanted to conquer and impress the most beautiful women in the ballroom, you needed to know how to dance. And Daniel is the best in terms of charm and elegance when dancing.

• He is bilingual, knowing how to speak French perfectly and a little bit of German. He knows how to speak other languages such as Greek and Spanish, but due to lack of practice, he remembers very little of the lessons from his time.

• One of his favorite hobbies, besides painting, is literature. He loves romance and poetry books. His favorite type of romance is those that end in tragedy. For him, there is something poetic about death and love. If you mix the two in the right amount, it's a perfect dramatic love story.

• He was taught to play instruments such as piano and violin, but he was not very interested in learning that. He is more of a listener than a musician.

• He loved going to concerts and theaters when he was alive, his favorite type of music is serene, sweet as honey. And his favorite type of theater plays are mainly dramas. But he loves a good comedy.

✿~Favorite foods and colors

• Daniel Robitaille loves good food (and who doesn't, right?) He loves roast meats, savory pies, cakes and any type of sweet.

• He loves shortbread cookies accompanied by good coffee sweetened with honey. After all, he loves sweets and sugary things.

• His favorite type of sweet pie is lemon or cherry. He loves chocolate and strawberry cakes.

• He is also a fan of good wine. He likes the ones that don't have a very strong flavor more.

• He loves colors like yellow or red (he looks good in red.)

✿~Love, sexuality and relationships (and a little of lore)

• Daniel Robitaille was and IS a very charming, seductive and charismatic man. So much charm that he could have the most beautiful girls he wanted... And the most beautiful men too.

Daniel has been interested in many women of his time, even men, but he can never date or seem interested in any man, oh no. Never!

It was a difficult time for a black person, imagine a black and queer person. Bisexuality was something abominable in those times. Many desires were repressed, forcing him to hide in the shadows. But he found safety in the lips of his beautiful muse and beloved Caroline.

• Daniel loved Caroline like he never had before. His passionate young heart was emotional, and full of affection. The two loved each other very much and swore their love every day and night. For him and Caroline, their love was strong and not even that prejudiced society could separate them. Even after their deaths.

• Daniel after spending years wandering throughout the afterlife like a ghost, waiting for someone to summon him again, he found a shelter in the underworld so he could rest while waiting to be called again. There, he sympathized with a hideous demonic creature not receptive or pleasing to people's eyes, but to his, he was the most beautiful in all of hell. The Hell Priest Pinhead

• It took a while for the cenobite's heart to soften, but he was unable to resist Daniel's charms. The two fell in love and live off the pleasure of each other's love, the comfort in each other's arms. Daniel loves his beloved Pinhead intensely, just as he loves him just as much. Intense, pleasurable.

• Daniel can finally explore his sexuality, discovering new things about his own body and mind. Feeling and satiating every bit of what Pinhead had to offer him. Intensifying the love he felt for Pinhead and his pleasures. He loved him. He loved him so much that he chose to remain in hell with his beloved for all eternity. Even if someone summoned him again, and he went to the world of the living, he would always return to his beloved.

Bonus:

✿~Other things he likes

• Daniel loves cats. He always wanted to have cats when he was alive, that's his favorite type of animal. He acts tame when around kittens, always wanting to pet them and play with them.

• He also really likes birds, he likes to hear their serene singing when he is in the world of the living.

• He also likes butterflies, they are his favorite insect. He likes how their wings are colorful and have different patterns. It gives him a lot of inspiration to paint when he see one flying.

• He doesn't get along very well with dogs, they are too noisy and agitated for him, so he avoids them.

• He loves flowers, all kinds of flowers. He likes their colors, their smells. They are all beautiful to him. Red roses, lilies, hyacinths and chrysanthemums are his favorites.

.

.

.

End of Headcanons (for now)

[snackleggg]

Icarus and The Sun

A little Thoschei drabble

~~~

The Master prided himself on his knowledge. He needed it any way he could get his hands on. Practical skill, theoretical. In every field, in every galaxy, he needed to hoard it like he could bury the drums beneath it all.

So, of course, after spending so much time on the primitive planet of Earth, he had learned much. One of the few things he actually enjoyed out of all the knowledge Earth had to offer was mythology. Humans, for as dim-witted and pudding brained as they were, were surprisingly good story tellers. It also helped that most mythologies on Earth were entertainingly bleak, like the one about the planet itself being a primordial evil entity that wanted to eat everything. Very entertaining.

One of the mythologies that he appreciated the most was probably the Ancient Greeks. Philosophers, theatrical, and the experts of tragedies, the Master found many of their myths the most entertaining of all.

He also found his mind drifting to their metaphors, their meanings. After all, he was a bit of a poet himself. He loved dramatic irony and theatrics, at least.

One story that intrigued him greatly was the story of Icarus. A story about hubris, as the Greeks were so found of. But stories rarely ever have just one interpretation, and his mind drifted to the other ways someone could see it.

A man, a simple mortal with wax wings, flying up and up despite the warning of those around him, until he was so close to the sun, Apollo, a brilliant and radiant God, that his wings melted and he fell to his demise in the sea.

When trying to picture the God of the Sun in these stories, all he could see was blond curly hair and bright golden eyes, a smiling young man among red grass. He shut the thought away, the face too familiar despite the fact that they hadn't worn it in centuries.

But it was true, wasn't it?

He wasn't a moon or a satellite or whatever other metaphors were used in relation to the sun.

No.

He was Icarus.

And his wax wings had melted long ago. Leaving him to drown in the sea of his own insanity, always too far away from his sun for them to help him.

He didn't care if he was burnt to crisp. If their brilliance and danger ate him up and left him as nothing, he just wanted their warm arms around him, their eyes that always seemed to have a gold tint to them in every body to gaze upon him and him alone. He didn't care if the full force of their affection and focus left him scorched and ash. He already burned brightly with his own anger. What was that in comparison to burning with love?

...

He REALLY needed to distract himself with another diabolical scheme. He was starting to think in poetically tragic metaphors, and the one time he'd let himself go too far down that route, he'd ended up eating ice cream while re-watching Pride and Prejudice for the 300th time.

Ugh, feelings.

[teawiththegods]

Do the gods ever test out how they want to appear to you or run by different appearances with you before sticking to it? Or change it whenever they want.

This happened to me today, in the past week I'm really getting into my deity work when suddenly I got the image of Apollo but with a full beard, for like a good while. He looked amazing like he always does btw

I got really sad bc he looks a lot like his dad, Zeus is amazing too, but it's like giving familial cycles, something I've been looking into a lot in greek tragedies and Apollo knows that, tho I would eat that up

Ultimately I let him know it's fine and it's a good look for him.

I'm sharing this bc I think it's a neat thing that happened today .

Ooooo, Apollo with a beard!? He’s like those cartoon characters who have been the same age for like 5 years and then finally they grow up! 😂

The gods often change their appearance but not like facial features. Just their clothes and hairstyles mainly. And it’s usually going from their ancient looks to more modern interpretations.

I personally like when they show up in modern clothes bc I never really know what to expect. Like Hermes in a business makes sense but it’s also jarring at the same time. Especially bc he looks so damn good! I’m ready to shake his hand and sign anything he puts in front of me! 🤣

Apollo is big with the intricate hairstyles! No matter what he’s wearing his hair always makes him look like a proper Prince! 🥹

And then Artemis…oof! Whatever that girl is wearing she’s ALWAYS covered in dirt and blood. And while Apollo always looks like a proper Prince, Artemis always looks like a proper badass lesbian and I love her for it! 🥰

[pyromaniacbibliophile]

So I read @seagreeneyes's beautiful fic Ten Years (click above) (if you haven't go read it it's incredible) and got inspired by the song snippets included, so I wrote/ am writing a couple out in full and singing them. Here's Toads&Birds!

Lyrics below! (The part/s in red are the bit/s from the fic, the rest is mine)

We create gods as fantasies

And maybe we make them real

We create beings to look on us as lesser

We love, we laugh, we fight, we lie, we die

And you, you are a phoenix, you are the sun

Apollo gazing down on winged Icarus

I, Icarus, the flight of love to reach your glow

Falling, falling, always falling 

Cause mortals can't love gods baby

And humans can't achieve perfection 

So perfection must be divine

I lie next to a god every night 

Am I selfish? Sure

Cause I can't let you go

And baby I'd burn for you

Die for you 

Kill for you 

You are my sun

My god

And if humans can’t love gods, then you know

I’ll just be here with my Greek tragedies, making love out of words

And I’ll watch you make war with your tongue, one more time

Oh baby, I don’t mind.

I don't mind

And the twist of a knife at the turn of my fate

Do you permit it?

Only if, only if

I am nothing without you

And I ask you here, my god

Free as a bird

Am I your cage

Or do you mean what you say

When you look in my eyes

At night, in our bed

Aphrodite blesses us

If you mean it when you say, when you say

When you say 

When I come back home 

I've been gone for a while

Is today the day you come to your senses

But you smile at me and you pull me in

And you say

Three words, three words, three words that change my world

And I say it back from the depth of my heart

And you make me think

You make me think

Maybe the gods don't have to be gods

Maybe they

Maybe you can be human too

Even if only for a while

For a while

For a while

[carmenized-onions]

This is actually my first time ever commenting without being anon …. And I thought I would do that to wish you the HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS!!! I hope you took the time to enjoy the day before your inbox gets flooded from your newest chapter. I’m currently holding off reading it to write you and read the posts from the previous chapter to prepare. When I tell you I have been refreshing your account religiously, awaiting any and all updates….it was looking a little embarrassing for me there. So glad you’re back again so let’s get into it.

-I saw a comment on how your story is better than the show in a sense. 1000% agree. You have a way of writing all the right things to get us attached (and even a little heart broken)to the characters and storyline while giving us hope that good things can and should still be able to happen for them. Regardless of how they see themselves and the situation(we love an unreliable narrator). Idk if this would make sense to anyone but me, but in my mind this story is a Shakespeare sonnet to the show’s Greek tragedy. Sometimes I think about things that I would have liked to see different in stories I read. Didn’t happen once in any of your chapters so far. Everything seems so perfectly balanced.

-I also pretend Tony is just off screen in the show. Don’t worry guys. She’s just on another job. Girls gotta pay rent😭

- I love the relationship between Tony and Syd omg. Peak female friendship between these two, but wouldn’t be mad if it was more than that…we are severely lacking in Syd stories across all platforms. Enough has been said in other comments about Tony’s relationship with Carmy, but this dynamic with Syd really made me think. Do I want to be her or do I want to be with her?? 👀Mhm mhm I’m gonna let that one simmer on the back burner for a bit. Moving on…

- Speaking of relationships. Tony and Richie. Wow. Just wow. I think the scene of him being a bit protective with the gross chef and him thinking Carmy would be all over it if he would just listen to why Richie thought he was a creep, shows how protective he can be. Our boy did not want to let that behavior slide. Then the heart to heart in the parking lot. I was in tears. Full on ugly sobbing. I had to pause and put the phone down….then read it over to really process it. It hit so close to home for me and truly gave me chills. It was such powerful writing in the way it felt so real to both of them and so accurate to how they would feel. If only one relationship can survive, I petition it to be these two. Friends (cousins) for life.

- You’re the closest we’re getting to justice for the Uncle Lee shit and i love you for it. It felt therapeutic 😌

-Also, LOVED the small character of Union Guy who shouted when people got annoyed at the bar staff getting a break. Very much made me think of that Saul Goodman video “Did you know you have rights? Well the constitution says you do.” It truly is the little pieces of comedic writing that make this story incredible.😭

- Obviously, the main event is Tony and Carmy. I love their dynamic and the way they flow so organically with each other in the story. I look forward to these two every week. It truly feels like before when everyone had cable and you waited all week to sit down and watch an episode of your favorite show. Nothing I say can do justice to your writing of these characters. Chefs kiss😘🤌

With all that being said, I’m sorry this was sooo long. I truly could talk about this story for hours. It can be very difficult for me to stay engaged in stories, but you’re easily one of my favorite writers I’ve ever read. I can’t wait to go read the next chapter and see what you do next. And again Happy Birthday!

THAT MEANS THE WORLD THAT YOU’D COME OFF ANON, WHAT A SWEETIE!! My actual birthday was pretty Mid, alas, jobs. But the weekend was delightful, so thank you!! The chapter I dropped on my birthday was Two Steps Back, right? I can’t remember the concept of time anymore. Regardless, I don’t remember seeing you in my inbox about it, I would LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT!! No pressure though, also you fully may well be in my inbox and have already yapped about it— I’m terrible at reading. 

Ah, what a fuckin knife to the heart (in a good way, yknow? Like a sordid French romance knife to the heart). Greek Tragedy v Shakespeare Sonnet— That honestly helps my brain so much, because everytime I think about S3 I go FUCK I DIDN’T PREDICT RIGHT— And that’s just cause they wanted to go down the alley of We’re at Rock Bottom and we’re going to Dig Even Lower and that’s the tragedy— And I went for We’re at Rock Bottom and we’re going to Desperately Try To Claw Out and that’s the tragedy. 

Neither of them are bad ways of writing!!! So thank you for reminding me of that. Do I kinda prefer my way? Yeaahhhh… No one tell Matty!! No one tell, okay!!! Unless it means you can get me a job then yeah tell Matty!! I want an Emmy, baby, get me in that Writer’s Room!! Anyways, thank you for saying so— The balance comes from going to school to write and also from being a freak— Here, let me show you:

Ignore the birthday list i had a picnic and a beyblade tournament it was really fun also i lost neverTHELESS!! My notes app looks like this. There’s more but they’re for Chapter 14/15 so I cannot show, but yeah basically if you think I’m balanced, it’s because I’m. wired in a weird way. constantly re-reading and editing and revising and dying. call me carmen's menu cause baby i'm FUCKIN CHAOS

TONY’S JUST AT THE VIP BAR IN S3 GUYS OKAY SHE’S JUST OFF SCREEEENNN— Sigh, I really do hope Syd gets a good fuckin girlfriend (platonic or romantic) next season she is just,, she needs someone other than this fuckin’ family because they are making my poor baby TWEAK out here. I’m still noodling with how I will do a quick lil SquidInk spinoff. I feel like I can’t just do alternate timeline series, because it would be a lot of the same happening just with Syd and no familial trauma, but like,,, a cute little one off, I do have an idea for. So we shall leave it on the back burner for neeeoww. 

UGLY SOBBING??!?!?! FOR MMEEEE??!?!?!? ooooOOHFDGH— Thank you and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but also thank you— Yknow? 

With all the growth Richie’s had, with his light bit of misogyny from S1, I knew the one thing that he absolutely carried with them from point A to B was be protective, be a gentleman— And so to see Carmen not act like he did— Bro became full girl dad. FULL girl dad moment. 

Can I also take a moment to admit something? I have been waiting a long time to do the parking lot scene, but I had pictured the parking lot scene way long ago, when I was considering writing a Richie fic! I did not think it was going to end up here until like chapter 3? 

The reason Richie and Chip became such close characters was truly born out of me not wanting to write Y/N, and so I wrote in Cousin and gave Richie the history of knowing the nickname Chip— Because originally, I’d thought Chip and Mikey would be very separate from the Beef. But I wanted cousin!! So their closeness was born, and now they’re literally my favourite dynamic in the series. Funny how that works.

I had to beat uncle lee’s ass on camera. I really cannot STAND that motherfucker and it is also SO FUNNY that in the immediate next note to reference Saul Goodman who is Uncle Lee— But yes that is absolutely what i was going for. That union scene in my head was originally going to be so much longer for literally no reason, and because there was no reason for it I cut it down, but it’s those MOMENTS THAT I LOVE TO WRITTEE BABBYYY

THANK YOU FOR SITTIN DOWN AND READING EVERY WEEK AWWEE— I wish The Bear was a weekly release honestly, I feel like it’d be so much fun that way cause what, right now we’d still be yelling about episode seven or eight by now? Ah. Love love love. My hopes are that I can get Ch 14’s draft done today and hopefully have something up in the middle of this week, but we will fucking SEE WON’T WE?

It was SUCH a pleasure to read your thoughts, and it really does mean the world to hear you’re so engaged and fuckin NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR GOING LONG!! It’s MY job to be brief (and I’m bad at it), you yap all you want. As a little gift, here is a tentative meme that I made in advance for the next chapter. The title is still pending changes, but right now Chapter 14 is called The Cat. Will this change? Probably, we’ll see. Everyone tell me if you hate The Cat.

what does it all meaaann?? theorize at your leisure SEE YOU SOME TIME THIS WEEK HOPEFULLY LOVE YOU !! also THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHOS GIVEN ME FUCKING MONEY YOU'RE ALL CRAZY!!!