#like charon on the river styx

[gearsphere]

👁️ 🌟💀🌙 🗡️

[bkyngw]

i've seen people tag this ship as "speedboat" which amuses me

[cadavercowboy]

Need everyone to ride the Walty Goggs train straight into Boyd Crowder-ville, USA

[yungpilk]

Acheron, the river entrance to Hades before it was Styx

[quismihiignem]

Say Charon out loud

Do it just trust me

Ok so now that is over

Charon trying to find hades: where is my manager

[anthonyspage]

🌊💀🚣‍♂️🍸

[sanguinesmi1e]

This whole thing with Deadman giving Nightwing a coin that lets him see dead people has so many fun implications for dpxdc stories. Like, Danny invisibly haunting the batfam and pulling pranks, while Nightwing just stares at him like a cat staring down the invisible eldritch horror in the corner of the room that no one else can see.

For context, Nightwing has an obol coin which was used to pay Charon to cross the river styx. It gives him the ability to see and hear Deadman, and other dead entities. Including the "chatter of broken things" and “plaintive little cries of mass-produced stuff more easily trashed than fixed.” Aka Nightwing can hear inanimate objects. Aka Nightwing is probably being haunted by fast fashion and disposable packaging.

Man I really want him to meet Box Ghost so they can commiserate about the lack of respect paid to disposable products.

[khaire-traveler]

I'm curious because someone recently made the comment that it's only fair for Lord Charon to expect money in return for his services, but this system would actually raise a lot of questions. If you're curious, some questions I thought of are featured below.

(For the record, I still believe Charon deserves recognition for what he does; it's just the coin system doesn't actually make sense when you start examining it closely.)

Please reblog! 🧡 I want to hear everyone's opinions on this.

Not every Underworld god is paid for their labors. Some aren't even given offerings anymore, their names tragically lost to time. So, why is Lord Charon specifically mentioned to require coins for his ferry? Why not Lord Haides, for entry to his domain? Or Lord Thanatos for deliverance of one's soul? Or Lord Hermes for transportation from the mortal realm to that of the dead? Why not Cerberus for letting you through The Gates (he is a sentient being, btw, for those who seem to think he's just a random three-headed dog)?

Does The Underworld have an economy? Why does it need an economy based on coins from the material plane/Earth? How does it even determine currency value?I mean, just imagine how many different people from different countries would have gone to The Underworld and paid with coins over thousands upon thousands of years.

Does payment have to be coins, or is there maybe some other form payment you can provide? Does the value of the item have to be monetary, or can it be something that meant a lot to you in life? More of a metaphorical release of the material plane, in a sense, as you trade off something that ties you to Earth and are officially transported to "The Other Side".

How do you get physical coins onto a spiritual plane?

Why would Charon need coins from the surface world? Does he maybe just have a sick coin collection from over thousands of years of human history?

What about our ancestors who were alive before the invention of monetary coins; were they just expected to stand at the shore for 100 years for not having something that didn't exist yet?

Speaking of the last question, where do animals go? How do they get across the river Styx?

Why would the afterlife require money in order for you to enter it properly? That seems kind of fucked up and more like something a bunch of old men wrote down to declare the wealthy more important than the poor, no?

If this is really just a job for Lord Charon (who is a son of Nyx, mind you), that implies that maybe Lord Haides (or whomever oversees that) could hire others to help him. Is there more than one ferryman on the river Styx? What is their average hourly pay? How can I apply, and does anyone have any interview tips? Seems to me that it'd be based on commission.

Do you think the spirits on the riverbank get bored of waiting? What do you think they do for 100 years to pass all that time? 🤔

[lyrablack1883]

Charon

They said, if you wish to cross the river Styx, you have to pay Charon, the ferryman, a single coin. Severus never actually meet Charon but he meet other ferryman during his lifetime. Men who pushed him gently into the silent of eternal night.

The first ferryman was his father, a muggle who hated magic and himself. To cross over, Severus pay him with his childhood. He remembered the belt, the stings of cold winter, the hunger and the sound of rats running around the alley. But it wasn’t enough. The second ferryman was a beautiful boy with silver eyes. To cross over, Severus continue to pay him throughout his teenage years. He remembered the stings of hexes, the humiliation, and the wetness of his robes clinging to his body as he was drop into the lake. The ferryman then deliver him to the wolf. But it wasn’t enough.

The third ferryman was a man with red eyes and charming smiles. The ferryman told him, he understood his suffering, and gently, he marked him as his own. To cross over, Severus pay him the one thing he ever loved. He remembered the anguish, the regret, the stain on his arm, and the never ending crucio. But again, it wasn’t enough. The fourth and final ferryman was a man one step before d3ath itself. To cross over, Severus pay him with the only thing he had left, his soul. He remembered how the ferryman’s body falls, the way his last word was of him begging him to end it. With this final payment, the third ferryman approached him and in turn will deliver him to his final rest. However again, it seems it wasn’t enough. As the boy with silver eyes, took both of his hand, together they ran and the boy rowed them back into the opposite direction.

(I genuinely forgot what I was going for the first time I had the idea, so above is just the general idea of Severus and his connection with men who controlled his whole life, who he paid dearly for every stage of his life, and after, at the end, he was finally rewarded with death, except I don’t want his story to end like that, so Sirius here had the role to bring him back, you can view him here as a ghost or alive [where he didn’t fall into the veil], why him especially? I viewed these two as characters who lived through the same hell, the type that goes “you put me through this hell, so I’ll drag you down here too” but also “you and I went through the same hell, I managed to get out, so I’ll do anything to get you out with me”) [according to the extremely biased characterization in my head ahaha]

The age of these characters portrayal is set during the time Severus felt closer to death because of them. Tom riddle in his 50s when he killed lily, Tobias in his 30-40s when Severus still lived with him, Sirius in his fifth year when he sent Severus to werewolf!remus and dumbledore in his 150s when he asked Severus to end his life. Since this was also done from Sirius pov, Severus here is also portrayed in his fifth year except for the last panel where he is portrayed a moment before his supposed death at 38.

This was loosely inspired by the song ‘Achilles come down’ by gang of youths and this wonderful fic two sides by blue_inking and Zain

[elvensixpm]

Vengeance Saga spoilers!

For Six Hundred Strike, I don't imagine Odysseus using Poseidon's trident against him, actually. Mostly because my idea of Poseidon is that he is much larger than Odysseus— a giant, terrifying vision of the sea, no, he is the sea.

There is no clear differentiation between the sea and Poseidon— the waves his spilling hair, the sea foam his skin, the mist his robes.

Imagine this:

Odysseus using the trident to wash Poseidon and himself to the rocky coast of Ithaca, his homeland, rugged and worn as he himself is. Birthplace to six hundred men gone to Poseidon's cruelty, he doesn't use Poseidon's own weapon against him, no, that would be too simple.

He wants his Ithacan brothers to drink their fill of revenge as well. He raises the trident and commands the water to his will, fighting the brutality of the storm whose winds force against his arm, as if warning him not to do anything rash.

His gaze finds the sharp, jagged edges of shore— large rocks like spikes that jut out of the sand like a palisade of swords.

That will do.

The god of the sea smashes against the rocks as Odysseus strikes the trident down onto the sand. Poseidon ebbs away before forming back, like how broken waves regenerate. Odysseus strikes.

Again. Again. Again.

He watches Poseidon splinter against stone before immortality melts him back together again. The golden blood that sprays in his face as Poseidon smashes against the bank leaves him with a greater satisfaction than any gleam of treasure ever would.

The storm's wind whips and howls in his face like a shrieking banshee— he uses it to pretend not to hear the god.

Odysseus' screams for venegeance, for retribution and for the god to call off the storm, drowns the other's pleas for him to stop. This was payback for his crew; does Charon accept gods' blood as payment? It was gold, after all. As it seeps into the waters, Odysseus hoped that it would reach his crew— so that they could finally cross the river Styx. So that they can finally, finally stop their aimless wandering.

Poseidon gurgles out that Odysseus is a monster. Like Charydbis— Odysseus spews back the gods' teachings in his face: Ruthlessness was mercy, was it not?

Poseidon... relents. The trident slips from Odysseus' hand and clatters on the ground. The storm subsides, and the mist lifts.

Odysseus' eyes set upon rocky Ithaca once again. He doesn't look back at Poseidon— there is no need to turn back to the sea now that he's home again.

The King of Ithaca has returned.

Yes, I replaced treasure Odysseus brought home in the book with Poseidon's blood LMFAO! I really thought the treasure part was important in the book, so I wanted to give Epic!Odysseus something of the sort as well.

I also used Charydbis as a likening of sorts because... well. Wasn't it the book— so I just had to incorporate her somehow! How'd I do?

This is how Ithaca's shore look like in my mind while I was writing. Probably not accurate. I just wanted there to be a connection between the place of birth of the crew VS poseidon being their cause of death.

I always have nightmares of smashing against there, because they look so sharp:

But facing outwards, so it makes more sense, haha. I'm just thinking about how Epic!Odysseus is a certified religion betrayer now. Whoops!

Also I just learned that Palisade is an ancient greek thing? I thought it was a Biology thing LOL. I keep running into these coincidences!

[tylermileslockett]

The Greek underworld, or House of Hades, is generally described in Homer’s Iliad as a gloomy place of “the mists and the darkness” (Lattimore) where the spirits heroes and villains alike come to rest. Hermes as Psychopomp (Spirit guide), would lead the new spirits down into the land of the dead.  Souls would first drink at the River Acheron (river of sorrow) or sometimes mentioned as the River Styx (to specifically forget their past pains), then they would be ferried across by the boatman Charon for a coin placed within their mouths or upon their eyes. Souls would drink from the River Lethe (river of forgetfulness) to forget all memories of their previous lives, then pass through the gates guarded by Cerberus, the hound of Hades before being presented before Hades, and his wife Persephone. The other two  rivers of the underworld are the River Phlegethon (river of fire) and the River Cocytus (river of wailing) both associated with punishment.

         The Souls would then be judged by three demi gods: Minos (son of Zeus and Europa), Rhadamanthus, (son of Zeus and Europa), and Aeacus, (son of Zeus and Aegina.) and would choose a final place for each soul amongst the following locations:

the Asphodal meadows, (asphodal is a white lily associated with death), is where ordinary souls were forgotten, wandering in monotony amongst misty darkness. The Elysian fields, also known as Elysium, is described as a paradise where the honored heroes go to live in white houses amongst fields of gold, ripe fruit, and temperate weather. Tartarus is a realm residing a vast distance below Hades, and is a place of cruel, eternal punishment that, according to Hesiod, even Zeus feared. Here the defeated Titans were held, imprisoned in chains, as well as mortals who committed crimes against the gods, like Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion. In addition, the Erinyes, (or Furies), the three goddess of blood retribution and punishers of criminals were said to inhabit this dreaded realm.  

If you share this image I'll pass you a golden ticket to the Elysian fields! Xoxo

Support my book kickstarter "Lockett Illustrated: Greek Gods and Heroes" coming in early 2024.

[friendship-switchblades]

the flavor text feels like an acknowledgment that they’re puppets on the strings of nostalgia (not in a way that they hate it, obviously, they’re doing the shows lol, but they’ve been summoned by a force they answer to). does a revenant know it’s dead? CAN a revenant know it’s dead?

i’m obsessed with the thematic possibilities i see here. it reminds me of how fans play with literal interpretations of “killjoys never die”

the parade as an unceasing spectre, an eternal unlife and undeath. there’s no psychopomp for the psychopomps themselves. charon cannot leave the river styx and rest. they march forever, the shadow self of “we’ll carry on”

[phospadparadscha]

I love how zagreus can get absolutely fucking slaughtered by Charon for “borrowing” his obols and after dying he can ask everyone & Charon “are you mad at me 🥺 I’m sorry forgive me” like my friend you Died to the boatman of the river Styx

[maybeyoullfindthissomeday]

Serrated

Although they sparkle like celestial specks against an inky sky, your dagger eyes epitomize the saying “if looks could kill.” Because if they did, Charon the ferryman would've escorted me across the river Styx to Hades’ underworld a hundred times over. And yet, I’d still feel inexplicably content if it meant I was given the propitious chance of the rarified comfort of your electric gaze. Even with two left feet, it’s a desired dance between love, awe, and quiet dread, between panic and pure reverence.

[xjulixred45x]

OKAY, I know I should work on the requests but I recently discovered the story of the game HADES and as a Greek mythology nerd that I am, I became obsessed, so I ask you to imagine this scenario that unfortunately I have not seen anywhere:

Platonic Yandere Zagreus+ Reader x son! reader

let me explain myself.

Imagine that we are between Hades 1 and Hades 2, where everything seems to be going well for Zagreus and his partner, both living in the Underworld and occasionally visiting the surface, but paying attention to their duties in general.

then they have a son! reader. Their pride and joy.

Zagreus probably thought that it would be difficult to have children without any kind of divine intervention, so seeing that his son was born alive by himself was a great relief and even pride, because it meant that he probably wouldn't have the same problem as his father, he would be freer than him.

son!reader ends up being a child who is super spoiled by his parents thanks to this, filled with affection not only from them, but from the vast majority of the beings in the Underworld, Achilles being a kind of Fun Uncle, Meg a cool teacher, Thanatos and Hypnos second father figures, etc.

even HADES loved this child.

the only problem that son! reader has is that, like his father and mother, he was very curious and stubborn. which led to the incident before he reached puberty.

It was an occasion where Zagreus and Reader were away due to a hasty visit to the surface, so son! Reader, like every child, did what he was told not to do:

get off the safe path.

From then on son! reader can die however you prefer, perhaps by the Hydra, by one of the enemies on the upper levels, by the river Styx, but my favorite excuse is that he found where the titans were and fell from the shock, dying instantly ( drawing a parallel with mythological Zagreus).

And when Zagreus and his partner find out? God, to say that they are devastated would be an understatement for their pain.

Everyone is hurt and sad about what happened, everything feels so silent now, heavy, empty...

to the point that the prayers of the beings of the Underworld reach the ears of Zeus, who in a certain way feels sorry for his brother for having lost a grandson and Zagreus for his son, who decides to apply Dionysus's typenof move, that is, leave the heart of the child in the womb of a human woman.

Zagreus is difficult to convince, he wants Zeus to do this directly with the reader, but if this is the only alternative, he will accept it. More when the mental health of both has also been seriously affected by this(Zagreus having mutilation and Self harm tendencies bc of grief and incapility of die? yep, although he'll probably be very worried if reader starts to seem like them too.)

And so the agonizing wait begins, the weeks go by, the months go by, and Zagreus and the reader are increasingly anxious and impatient. more distressed with a new day of silence at home, with each day of inactivity, with each hour that their child's room is empty...

But the wait pays off, when Zeus gives them the news that the time has finally come for them to go look for their son.

Zagreus takes off at full speed, with various bonuses given by people like Thanatos, Charon, some Olympians, hell, even his father goes easy on him.

and he begins to search quickly with the little time he has on the surface for his son, being guided by Zeus to where his son was.

When Zagreus was beginning to weaken and felt that he had come in vain, he heard it. a laugh, a small voice that he hadn't heard in a long time.

His son...alive again...

Here things are separated a little. two different scenarios.

1: SON! READER REMEMBER HIS LIFE LIKE GOD

This case is the fluffiest of all and definitely the least yandere.

when son!reader sees Zagreus he's running out to meet him, melting the godling's heart, relieved that his son is not only back in body, but in spirit.

They both return to the Underworld and receive them all with great joy, they ruffle the child's hair, give him gifts, Dionysius may even throw a party in honor of his return.

but it doesn't mean there isn't Yandere stuff.

Zagreus becomes incredibly overprotective of son! reader, to a disturbing degree, now practically does not leave him alone. the same with reader. If he is not with one, he is with another.

they make son! reader accompanies them everywhere and can only play with their supervision, only them, not anyone else. because the previous one was very effective last time.

I think the reader would use the death of son! reader like an auk to keep him fearful and thus avoid another incident. in general both being very obsessive with this new opportunity to have their son back.

Although it's not so bad, Zagreus and the reader continue to bombard him with love and affection, bringing him gifts, reading to him or telling him legends, even now they take him to the surface with them! It is within the scope of a happy ending, they could overcome their unhealthy tendencies over time...I hope.

The only way in this scenario for both of them to become yandere as is is if some person on the surface is "badly influencing" son! reader to be more independent or worse, go to the battlefield.

There Zagreus will directly get rid of said influence with the help of Thanatos.

Now, the most intense and interesting scenario.

2: SON! READER DOES NOT REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT HIS LIFE AS ZAGREUS'S AND READER'S SON

Imagine that you are an apparently normal child with some strange characteristics (like maybe red feet or heterochromia), living peacefully with your parents that you have known all your life as a mortal... and FROM NOWHERE the fucking GOD OF THE UNDERWORLD comes to tell you who you are HIS child and not of your PARENTS....

practically this reader.

Zagreus would believe that after having spent so much time among mortals his son has forgotten his true lineage and even finds his innocence cute with the whole thing, but they must return to their TRUE home as soon as possible.

Since he is a god, A SON OF HADES, even if the reader's parents love him, they cannot fight for him, so they give him to Zagreus.

Zagreus is overjoyed with this, reader is so confused.

because after all he does NOT know these people, he does not know this supposed father who ripped him away from his birth family, he does not know his supposed mother who greets him with tears in her eyes when they arrive at the damn Underworld.

He doesn't know any of the gods who welcome him warmly, who ruffle his hair, who call him cute nicknames, who seem to have known him all his life when they don't.

reader is feeling like some kind of glorified pet. an empty replacement. This is not his house, his HOME.

while Zagreus and reader think that their son must be feeling very shocked by all the information and come home that they simply shower him with more love. much to the child's displeasure.

If the reader continues to insist that he doesn't really remember them, Zagreus will probably dismiss it as something temporary, which is simply the adjustment after an event as traumatic as dying (he gets it, seriously! he dies every now and then, but he doesn't want to think about on what it must have been like for his son).

while reader will try with Thanatos to make him remember things from the past, show him family photos and portraits that they made before the tragedy, his room, his old toys and stories behind them. all with so much love that the reader feels uncomfortable, as if he were usurping the place of their true son.

I think the reader would be especially uncomfortable if mom!reader were also a goddess, he feels VERY intimidated by both of them, but when they show this very...vulnerable and loving side...he doesn't know what to think.

In this scenario, both Zagreus and reader are more overtly manipulative and yandere. Zagreus can use his thousands of failed attempts to try to get out of the underworld on his own so that reader doesn't even think about doing so, while reader uses the reader's death as a way to guilt trip him so he doesn't leave them.

The reader feels bad for them and their son, but is very afraid of them. More after seeing Zagreus angry.

At first they would see Reader's attempts to escape as something "cute" thinking that he was "imitating young Zagreus" and was not serious. Of course, if he ran into a shade, Zagreus would appear and take him home. simply a game.

But when they were lost for long periods of time, they had a panic attack thinking that the accident had happened again. and when Zagreus found the reader, on a higher level and with scratches, he was furious, almost killing all the beings on that level.

It was enough to solidify the reader's decision to want to leave. This man was not only terrifying, he was dangerous.

I think that in this case there would be characters like Meg, Patroclus, Odysseus, even Thanatos himself who realize the reader's discomfort around his "parents" and even become his only allies in his escape attempts.

but because they isolate him so much, so much to the point that he can only leave the house of Hades if it is with them, no one else, and they see the desire to RUN in his face. They feel compassion for him.

This is how a new story in Hades begins. As a reader you will have to face many powerful deities, shadows, and more to escape not only from the Underworld, but from your delirious new family.

but Zagreus would not be himself if he were not stubborn and persistent . I wouldn't let him run and escape easily. not this time.

Could reader do it? let the game begin.

Shares, reglogs and comments are very welcome!

What can i Say? I'm obsessed over games i will NEVER get to play :,) but at least i'll try to see gameplays.

[firestorm09890]

Hey what if the flow Vergillius talks about following is the flow of one of the rivers underneath the City or smth

thatd be pretty awesome. also I was a greek mythology kid, I know the other rivers.

Dante (author) has Charon ferry souls across Acheron in Inferno, and Virgil (also author) associates him with both the Acheron and the Styx. Acheron is also a real river, so it would make sense that people would say that it leads to the Underworld's entrance. Eventually, that changed to Styx, for some reason. Various poets say some of the other rivers came from/flow into this one.

Cocytus is the river of wailing- I wonder if that's the one that goes by Wuthering Heights, since Josephine could hear her dead mistress's voice because of the river and Every Catherine is the wailer of all time. Maybe it's not one of the big five at all, who knows. In Inferno, Cocytus is the 9th Circle of hell, treachery, and it's a big frozen lake instead of a river. Lament.

Phlegethon... surprisingly relevant. It is a river of fire, but in Inferno, it's a river of boiling blood in the 7th Circle (HMMM) for violence committed against neighbors, the self, and god/art/nature. Does Vergilius's EGO have anything to do with this one? Idk

Lethe is interesting. It's the river dead souls have to drink from before they can be reincarnated, so they would forget their past lives. You could call it the kindest river of the five, I guess. It's actually not in Inferno, but Purgatorio, and in that, it's within Earthly Paradise, which is a place on top of Mount Purgatory that represents the sort of innocence held by Adam and Eve before their fall. do with that information what you will

We've all heard of Styx, it's the river that people would swear their most grave and unbreakable oaths upon and is commonly known as the river that Charon ferries souls across to the Underworld. In Inferno, it's the 5th Circle, Wrath, where everyone is fighting each other on the water, and it's described as a swamp.

I have less info on which rivers appear in Virgil's Aeneid, though. Pretty sure Aeneas visited all of them, but I don't know if Virgil wrote about that or if it was someone else. He definitely mentions Lethe and Acheron, though.

I wonder which river spawned the abnormalities like the birds...

also fun thing you might want to know! there's a part of The Odyssey that involves Odysseus talking to a bunch of spirits from the Underworld! Scholars disagree on whether he actually went into the Underworld or if he was just on the very edge but :)