#muse; helen

[innocencel0st]

Helen and Willa for the incorrect quote generator

Onlythatwhichtheydefend

@onlythatwhichtheydefend

[cfgcdsandmcnsters]

@lettherebemonsters sent: " I put eight bullets into Ben Willis, and he's still alive? Next time, I'm blowing his brains out." (Julie to Helen)

"That's crazy! How does somebody survive that?" It didn't make any sense to her. None of it really did if she was being quite honest. Ray had been driving so fast that night, they were so certain he was dead...yet he wasn't. He didn't drown. Gunshots didn't take him out. He was out there, still walking around, mourning his kids. Helen still had a lot of pent up anxiety about it all, never really certain if or when he'd finally try to kill her again. She really wasn't sure if he'd accepted her apology.

[aparticularbandit]

when andi said her life was taken away from her by someone, everyone in that room - and then emphasized it - my life! do you even know what that means? - and you come back and realize it’s helen saying that and she means it literally because andi is dead.

[thescarehoe]

Compilation of Helen Jordan being cute in The Spectre 2001

[quecksilvereyes]

It isn't that Lucy doesn't know Helen is her mother. She remembers, in hazy, smudged colours, the shape of those lips upon her forehead. The feeling of those soft fingers in her hair, knotted at the back, greasy in the front. Dark eyes, in dots, as a painting that makes no sense at all when viewed up close.

Helen Pevensie is thick layers of paint, not yet dry. Not yet framed. Not yet hung, with instructions on where to stand. So when Lucy, with child-eyes and child-lungs, looks at her, she sees:

Susan's smile lines. Peter's nose. The blush of Edmund's lips. Her own freckles, faded and powdered. Smudged. When she smiles and cradles little eight year old Lucy in her arms, the paint flakes from her hair.

Greys and browns. Blues.

Susan's skin is smooth. There is a gap between her teeth, and her hair is too short by half. Lucy skims her knees running on a straight alley, and it's Susan who holds her in her lap, humming songs of home. Susan's small hands on her neck, Susan's eyes, no longer golden as the mid-day sun in a cloudless sky.

Peter's nose is missing the hump that came from breaking it when he was ten-and-seven. His cheeks are bare. His hands are steady when she presses against him, fevered and coughing and greying at the edges. His voice is too high when he reads to her, and his skin is too soft.

His eyes are just blue, now, nevermind the storm outside.

It isn't that Lucy doesn't know Helen is her mother. It is just that her lap isn't the one she folds herself into. It's just that it isn't her blouse she presses her tears into.

"Lucy, darling", says Helen Pevensie. Her eyes are grey. Her mouth is grey. Her hands are grey. "Come sit with your mother, hm?" Lucy turns her face into the crook of Susan's neck.

Helen Pevensie sighs.

[ruinpowder]

reading about the tcg on bulbapedia and this card is SO cool but it hasnt been in circulation since 2010 😔

[peepawstims]

Dionysus Stimboard

Requests are open

1 | 2 | 3

4 | X | 5

6 | 7 | 8

[rainintheevening]

She expects them to feel different, after three months, but it's a different 'different' from what she was expecting, though if she were honest, she wouldn't be able to say exactly what she was expecting.

She enjoys the train ride through the country, through the bare trees and dark cold earth, and she can relax a little against the carriage window, close her weary eyes and rest. Then the train spits her out into the cold air onto a tiny country platform, and there are her children! Rushing at her, Lucy in the lead as she would have expected, and she drops to her knees to take the full force of Lucy's onslaught in her heart and her arms.

"Mummy!" Lucy cries into her collar, and Helen's vision blurs. She blinks it back, looks up at Susan and Edmund standing over her, both smiling, Susan on the verge of tears.

When she stands, Lucy still clinging to her side like a limpet, there is more hugging and kissing, and she is surprised, but far more grateful, for Ed’s tight squeeze and kiss to her cheek. Susan clutches her tightly, and there are a few tears on her part as well.

"Where’s Peter?" Helen asks at last, turning this way and that to search for her eldest, notes both Edmund and her luggage have also disappeared.

"Oh, he's with Fee and the carriage," Lucy says, pulling out a handkerchief to dry her face, and smiling brightly.

And when they step down to the roadway there is a two-wheeled cart and a grey horse, and Peter holding its head, half-turned to speak with Edmund who stands close beside, and then Peter looks up and meets her gaze, and he smiles so bright it's as if the sun has come out. She doesn't miss how he pushes the reins into Edmund's hands before he steps forward to hug her, and he is... taller? Straighter, she can feel strength and muscle in the arms that wrap tight around her, and she lays her head on his shoulder, just for a moment, closes her eyes.

"Alright, Mother?" Peter says, soft, exactly the way Richard always did, and she smiles into his collar.

"Quite," she says, pulling back to kiss his cold-pinked cheek, and she finds she means it.

"Perhaps we should be off?" Edmund suggests. "Don't need Mum getting off on the wrong foot with the MacCready by letting her tea get cold," he adds as they all look at him.

Peter laughs. "Always thinking with your stomach, Ed," and Helen braces herself for the snap, for the offense and the glares and the barbed exchange.

"Well, someone's got to," Ed grins back, and briefly something glows in the chill air between them, something bright and warm, and Helen does not quite dare to relax, but she thinks she might be able to. "If we left everything to you lot," Edmund goes on, "it would nothing but swords and arrows and..."—a glance at Lucy, who is being swung up into the cart in one smooth motion by Peter—"flowers."

"What about hunting?" Susan says, climbing up quite gracefully with Peter's assistance. "Good shooting can make for a good meal."

"And swords can be useful to cut things up," Lucy pipes up, grinning down at Helen, who... does not quite understand.

"Yes, like the bread and butter," Peter says, laughing a little, as he turns to offer his mother a gloved hand. "Hush now, you lot, and we'll get Mother and Ed home for tea before one freezes and the other gets sulky."

"Hey!" Ed yelps, but again he is grinning, and as Helen settles herself in the back of the cart, Lucy squeezing in tight against her side, Susan smiling across at her, the joy and happiness in the air is thicker than the clouds their breath makes, and she sighs, from somewhere deep, and something done up very, very tightly inside her loosens.

She misses whatever else Peter has been saying as he climbs up onto the seat, blurting out, "Oh, Peter. You're driving?"

He smiles over his shoulder, pleased and soft into the face of her embarrassment over stating the obvious. "I've been doing a lot of it lately."

"He does almost all the shopping in the village now," Susan says proudly.

"Got on the good side of the MacCready, so he wouldn't race those farm boys in Kitchers Lane like I suggested," Ed grumbles.

"This isn't a chariot in Rome," Peter says, shaking his head, all exasperated affection. He clicks his tongue. "Chirrup, Fee."

Peter's comment sparks a lively retelling of Ben-Hur, which the children have apparently been reading with Professor Kirke as part of their lessons, peppered with many other comments about the mansion, the Professor, and its other inhabitants. Edmund settles in beside Susan, who wraps an arm around his shoulders, and Helen's stare lingers on them, on their new-found closeness.

Lucy is talking fast, and Helen strokes a hand over her youngest daughter's bare head, finally noticing— "Oh Lucy, your hair has gotten so long!"

Lucy blushes, reaches up to her half-crown of braids, an intricate thing which Helen has never seen before. "I like it long. Not too long of course, never as long as Susan had–"

"Look, I know it's not the most practical," Susan interrupts, "but it can be very pretty. Perhaps someday I'll grow mine as long as my waist."

"Why are girls always thinking about their hair?" Edmund rolls his eyes.

"Why are boys always thinking about their stomachs?"

"Well, an army marches on its stomach, not its head."

"Stop it you two," Peter says over his shoulder, calm, firm, and they leave off their argument at once. "Mum's here, and we want to give her the nicest Christmas she's ever had."

"Ooh, yes!" Lucy bounces suddenly, face lighting up. "Professor Kirke says we can go out into the woods to pick an enormous Christmas tree, and we'll all decorate it–"

"And Ivy told me the MacCready has been saving on sugar," Edmund chimes in, "so we'll have sugar biscuits and plum pudding and even a chocolate cake, she thinks."

"And the Professor said we'll have goose from the farmer Adams," Peter says over his shoulder.

"It‐ it all sounds absolutely delightful." Helen tries to keep the tremble out of her voice, but doesn't quite succeed, judging by the way Susan's smile goes soft, and Lucy squeezes her hand.

The air is crisp and cold, smelling of damp earth and leaf mould, and her children are all smiling, and the pale grey sky is quiet, there are birds chattering in the trees they pass, horses graze in a field, there are no explosions, no planes, no ground shaking under her as she huddles in the dark, and she has to swallow very hard, she would much rather not cry in front of her children...

In the moment of quiet as she bows her head, and grips Lucy's hand very tight, she hears Peter stop humming, and begin to sing.

Venite adoremus, he sings.

Venite adoremus... Susan joins in at once, and then they are all singing around her, voices rising in the December air, joyful and trumphant.

Venite adoremus

Dominum

Helen closes her eyes as her children sing on into the next verse, keeping time with the horse's trot, and the tears that slide down her cheeks are warm.

Lucy stops singing just long enough to press a handkerchief into her mother's hand, smiling up with a whispered, "You need it more than I do."

Magic, she thinks in a bewildered way, it's like magic, all this. Or perhaps even something holy, whatever it is that hangs in the air with their breath, and brightens the browns and dark greens and greys of the countryside, when she looks up from wiping her eyes.

She joins in at last, a little tremulous, but by the fourth verse, she is adding harmonies over Susan's, and they finish 'Adeste Fideles' wish something akin to a shout, a cry of hope and determination that rings through the woods they're passing, and makes the animals lift their heads.

Peter starts in on another before they've had time to draw breath, 'Hark the Harald Angels Sing', and so they ride singing all the rest of the way to the Professor's house, singing in the light and joy of Christmastide, even as evening shadows fall around them.

They are breathless and laughing as Fee slows to a walk, and they come up to the grand old house, spilling golden light into the night, and Helen Pevensie thinks that perhaps she should have hoped for different, rather than expected it, because different can be good, and this... oh, this is truly good.

[heleniad]

putting my own two cents out there: i feel like part of the reason why hector treated helen kindly was that he was a loyal, loving husband to andromache, and as a consequence, he did not see helen as a sexual object to be possessed but more as a human being. even menelaus had ulterior motives in coming to troy. he didn't come for helen because he loved her; he came at least partially because the loss of helen was an insult to his person and honor. nobody in the trojan war viewed helen purely as a person EXCEPT for hector and hecuba's wife priam. they saw beyond helen's beauty because helen's beauty did not distract them. in their eyes helen was no longer a 2 dimensional character to be demonized as some sort of siren monster but an actual, breathing, living human who did not deserve the hate so ruthlessly piled against her.

helen herself was a cunning woman who tried to keep priam's favor. she found power and agency in traditionally feminine activities; even in observation she tried to garner some agency. when priam questioned helen on the warriors from the battlefield, mentioning their stature and/or regality, helen made sure to echo exactly what he said. for example, when priam mentioned agamemnon's kingly nature helen made sure to confirm priam's assertion about agamemnon being king; when priam mentioned ajax being 'outstanding among the argives in height and broad shoulders', helen made sure to refer to ajax as 'huge ajax'. in priam's company, helen also made sure to deprecate herself to a large extent by calling herself dog-faced and deserving of death. she knew priam was probably her only hope in keeping herself safe within the walls of troy, and she acted upon this knowledge.

then, there were helen's actions in the odyssey. firstly, she drugged her guests with heartsease, which was a very cunning and strategic move by her, considering her reputation as a bitch-whore who contributed to countless deaths in the trojan war. secondly, in her recounts of the trojan war, she made sure to highlight how she had longed to go home and then how she had actively helped out odysseus when he sneaked into troy. ( also note here that she was the only one to uncover odysseus' disguise. ) in contrast, menelaus talked about how helen circled the trojan horse with the voices of the warriors' wives to lure the men out as a move against greece. this was an extremely cunning move and though helen's intent was ambiguous, i suspect it was because deiphobus was there & helen wanted to prove her allegiance to him in order to secure her own safety with the man. this trojan horse move, then, was a way to both make sure she would be safe for the remaining of her days in troy AND it was a move that could be very much countered by the greeks if they so wished. helen did NOT go around telling everyone that the trojan horse was a trap when she very much had the opportunity to, which suggests that this move was probably not because she wanted greece to lose but to secure her own safety with her new husband deiphobus.

this next part is not in the iliad or the odyssey but while we are on the topic of helen's agency, let's talk about how helen dropping her robe from her shoulders made menelaus drop his sword. in my opinion, helen very much knew what she was doing when she did that — it was a survival tactic and she was wielding her own beauty to her advantage. finally.

now despite all this, helen still suffered from the cruelty of the patriarchy. she was not even personally informed that the duel between menelaus and paris would be taking place — the duel that would determine the whole course of HER future. it was the goddess iris who had to convey the message to helen. many such cases of this are present in helen's life. she was as much a victim in the trojan war as she was an instigator. but let's also not forget that she was a woman who, despite everything, actively fought for her own agency.

[innocencel0st]

“Yeah, I’ll run lines with you. Sure thing.”

Wynne to Helen! Beautifulthingsxrefragile

"Really?" Helen asks, a smile forming on her lips. "Thank you, I'd really appreciate it. I have a big audition coming up in a week."

[cfgcdsandmcnsters]

@lettherebemonsters sent: " I should have cut your head off when I had the chance. " (Ben Willis being a salty fish boy at Helen.)

"Seriously? You can't just move on already? Its not like dumping you off the dock was my idea, you know."

[marnigifshistory]

Joanna Vanderham as Pamela Luscomb in Dancing On The Edge

[gotstabbedbyapen]

Do I like this character because they are themselves or do I like them because they're related to Hyacinthus?

No, really. I've been asking myself this question these days because all of my "favorite Greek mythology characters" list consisted of people related to Hyacinthus in way or another. Clio the Muse his mother, Amyclas and Diomede his mortal parents, his many siblings, Helen and Menelaus because Helen is a descendant of Hyacinthus. Apollo and Polyboea are better because I can imagine them separately from Hyacinthus.

I'm kinda feeling guilty because these characters deserved love as their own people, not because they're related to my Favorite GuyTM :'<

[delightfulkingtyphoon]

🐝📷

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Pet names

(Full on my twitter)

[sejanuspiinth]

TROY: FALL OF A CITY (2018)

[joanofarc]

Victor Brauner Hélène Smith, Siren of Knowledge–Locks, 1941, Musée Cantini, Marseilles.