#she's older than apollo for gods sake

[clarissaweasley-10]

Unpopular Opinion: Leo should have just stayed single at the end of the series.

Now, I am one of the biggest fangirls of our bad boi, but i am not saying this just so that I can have him- well not entirely. We all know how much Leo struggles with insecurity and an inferiority complex even tho he's SOO AMAZING, and let's be real, the others wouldn't have lasted a week without Leo. But sadly, no one has given him enough credit, and no one includes him as well. One of the things Leo is most insecure about is his looks- since he's the only among the seven who's single, Leo thinks that it's because he's ugly- not to mention the number of rejections he's had. So he has always thought that being single is a bad thing, because it means that no one cares for him enough- he isn't enough. This is a very toxic mentality, wanting this type of validation to know that you're perfect. The interesting thing to note here is that, if Leo were a girl, then everyone would have pointed it out/would have made a huge deal of it, but now?? (*cough double standards *cough.) Anyways, my point is, instead of continuing to rely on that sort of validation, Leo should have realised that he's soo much more than what some girls, or people in general think. He is smart, he is cute the way he is, and if people cannot accept that- well their loss. Just think about it, this could have been an amazing character development, from being a boy who was broken over love to one who knew his worth. BUTTHENRICKMADEMYBOYENDUPWITHSOMEOLDBITCH. Like seriously? Calypso? Calypso?? if Rick wanted Leo to end up someone, why not make him/her a person who valued him, and inspired him to love him for who he is. Heck l would have loved it soo much if Leo came out as bi canonically (VALGRACE NATION!!!) but no Calypso. Calypso. She is adding fuel to his insecurity. I mean honestly, idc what Rick wants us to think- Caleo is toxic af and messed up, i dont think they'll last. We can clearly see in toa how Calypso constantly degrades Leo in front of others and doesn't appreciate anything he does. AND SERIOUSLY?? THIS IS GIVING ME THE ICK. So my only sort of consolation is coming on Tumblr and reading Valgrace fanfics. Thank you valgrace writers, you are saving me sanity. Peace.

[birdiewriteslit]

omg omg i would LOVVVEEE if like [reader] and luke were dating behind percy’s back cuz of how sassy he would be n stuff but after like a date or kiss from luke the reader would gush about it to either annabeth, grover, or clarisse and one of them tells percy by accident during a convo and then percy like goes up to reader and confronts the reader about it and like scolds the reader and give them a whole lecture about how luke isn’t the right guy then luke overhears and like joins in <333

i love this idea!!

luke castellan x daughter of poseidon!reader

warnings: persassy (once again), fluff, mention of kissing, ignorance of the plot of the show for the sake of my happiness

nobody: me gaslighting myself into thinking i could fix luke:

You and your boyfriend had an agreement. Your relationship was private. It wasn’t necessarily a secret, but it was private.

This was a conclusion you came to before Percy arrived at camp, before you knew you had a brother. At first, you didn’t care much if he figured it out.

That was until you realized what a sassafras he was.

Percy was always sassing you about chores, about activities, and especially about camp boys.

You thought it was cute in the beginning, your little brother being protective over you, but then it became a real nuisance.

“Y/n, stay away from the Ares boys, I don’t like them.”

“Y/n, don’t date an Apollo guy, he’d write you some crappy poetry.”

“Y/n, for the love of gods, stay away from the Dionysus twins, I never want to have Mr. D as a relative.”

These were the types of things you would hear throughout the day as Percy got to know the other campers better.

You thought it better if you kept a low profile when you were around Luke, at least until Percy calmed down a little.

Most of the older campers knew about your relationship, but they were used to it and rarely talked about it.

“Having marriage problems?” Annabeth asked you one day during arts and crafts, where you were both about to give up on your ugly collaborative birdhouse.

“What? I’m not married,” you said, trying to fix a particularly garish looking bird.

She set her paintbrush down, officially proving she was over it. “Obviously. I mean Luke. I noticed you haven’t been around each other as much.”

You could tell she was a little worried. She wouldn’t be asking if she wasn’t. Annabeth had known you and Luke longer than any other campers, and she looked up to both of you. Plus, she always wanted to know about your experience with romance.

“It’s not what you think, Annabeth. We’re really fine,” you said. “In fact, just last night, he took me out on the dock.”

Your nightly meetups with Luke had always been a thing, but had become more frequent as of late.

“And?” Annabeth prompted.

“And, we hung out.” You were now furiously painting over the entire bird you failed to fix.

“You mean you made out,” she said, giving you a knowing look.

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think you were interested in that part,” you said. “Now pick up that paintbrush, missy. I’m not doing this whole thing myself.”

Annabeth reluctantly dipped the brush in some blue paint, looking like she wanted more details about your date.

Private means private, you thought dismissively.

At campfire, you discovered that private didn’t mean private. You were sitting alone when Percy plopped down next to you. You frowned because you were saving that spot for Luke.

“Annabeth has just told me something very interesting,” he said, glaring at the spot where Luke stood, talking to one of his brothers.

“What would that be, Perce?” you said absentmindedly.

“Apparently Luke was macking on you last night.” He made a sound to imitate vomiting.

You grimaced. “Please never say that word again.”

“So? Is it true or not true?”

You sighed. No point in denying it now. “It’s true.”

Percy somehow managed to look even more disgusted. “Ew, why him?”

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, gee, I don’t know, maybe because I’ve known him for years, he’s kind, strong, and handsome. Wouldn’t you think that had something to do with it?”

“Oh, gods, forget I even asked,” Percy said, retching. “I just think you could do better. Look at all of these lovely candidates. Apollo guys are poets.”

“I thought that was too cringe for you.”

He ignored you and went on, “A Hephaestus guy could forge you some nice jewelry, and Athena guys are smart. You deserve a smart guy. Not Luke, no, he doesn’t have any good qualities like that.”

You noticed a figure approaching you over Percy’s shoulder, and you tried your best to hide the amused smile threatening to break across your face as Luke came to a stop behind him, waiting for the right moment to interrupt.

“All in all, Y/n, I think Luke’s a pretty bad guy for you. You should really reconsider.”

“Oh, I’m a bad guy, am I?” Luke finally spoke up, smirking as Percy slowly turned around to see him peering down at him.

“Not like a bad guy- just, you know, not right for my sister,” Percy said, his confidence leaving him.

“What makes me not right for her?” Luke asked, clearly loving the reaction he was getting.

“I- uh- you know,” Percy stammered.

“Oh, knock it off, Luke. Leave the poor kid alone,” you said, failing to hide your laughter.

“That sound is music to my ears,” Luke said seriously. Jeez, he was really laying it on thick.

Percy’s face returned to the look of disgust. “I’ll be leaving now,” he excused himself, hurrying off to where Grover and Annabeth were sitting on the other side of the fire. You could still see him glaring at Luke as he sat down next to you, wrapping his arm around your shoulders.

You leaned into him, relishing in the combined warmth of the fire and his body heat. “What do you think? Am I getting sassed out tomorrow?” Luke asked, looking down at you.

“No, he looked pretty grossed out. I’m hoping he just avoids the topic altogether,” you said, trailing your fingers over the fabric of his shirt.

“We both know that’s not going to happen,” he concluded, smiling as he pressed a soft kiss to your temple.

[akaikali]

TMAGP EP 27 REACTION (SPOILERS)

Istg my dumbass keeps forgetting when Thursdays are until @notachamealeon reminds me that a tmagp ep dropped

Sam is being bitchy akhskajd literally is this bc he's still feeling good about himself after him and Celia had GASP heterosexual intercourse???

Poor Gwen having to pick up the slack she really is trying her best I love my girl.

"I've got a SPECIAL list for her" hey Gwen that's kind of fucking gay of you-

OH ITS GRANDPA LOOK AT THAT GRANDPA IS BACK

...why is there no explanation? Like why is there nothing about what this is related to, like a prelude or introduction? Augustus just...started talking??

"Than to light within them that muses' fire of inspiration" it might just be a metaphor but whenever the older cases related to the institute or the experiment bring up fire, I become a bit wary

Okay so the institute in the universe seems to be founded for the sake these alchemic experiments as opposed to Jonah Magnus creating it to serve The Eye in TMAverse

Just for anyone that wants to know, Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in the UK during the 1830s to 1850s. That's what the second journal entry is referencing

Okay the single coachman reminds of one of Jonah Magnus's livers in his regency era harem who got fucked over by a Lukas, I think it was something about the coachman entirely turning his head 180 degrees to face backwards the entire drive or something.

Oh okay so coachman is part of the coach. Lovely.

Okay so we're focusing on the growler? And I think it's because the coachman and the coach attachment is probably due to alchemy of some sort?

Oh great. The cab ate the man. Wonderful.

BOYLE???? AS IN ROBERT BOYLE???? Wait no can't be him he died in the 1600s I remember that from AP Chemistry

Oh my god he convinced his own colleague to go into the growler dude this is giving Jonah Magnus it REALLY is

WAIT. SHUT THE FUCK UP. "operated by me status as founder" SHUT THE FUCK UP I JUST SAID ITS GIVING JONAH MAGNUS

APOLLO REALLY FUCKING HOT ME WITH THE GIFT OF PROPHECY WHAT THE FUCK

Alice my wife hating prime ministers is just So Real also with how viciously she hates the prime minister I would have thought my girl was Desi too since I hate India's prime mini-

I'm gonna shut up

TRANS CONFIRMATION I MEAN WE KNEW BUT YESSSS ALICE CANONICALLY TRANS

Dyhard is SO endgame LOOK AT THEM

"Magnus guy" SHUT THE FUCK UP NO WAY OH my GOD

What is happening. Someone please come pick me up I'm scared why are we talking about sex

Oh Sam. I think it's kind of obvious that Celia does find this like a casual relationship. Kind of like "well if it goes well, it goes well. If not, whatever" He's definitely taking it more seriously than her.

I do also think she's kinda lying when she says Jack's her only first priority bc it's very clear the Magnus stuff is very much a priority too

HILLTOP CENTRE???? RIGHT THATS WHERE THE OUTREACH CENTRE WAS

And also oh god Alice being here is gonna make things awkward isn't it.

MORE MAGNUSSING

Celia is really trying to find the Archivist that she knows but I don't think she's going to get that, not in this universe at least.

Alice joining the scooby doo gang! All we need is Gwen and we got the full team!

Edit: HOW DID I MISS THAT TREVOR FUCKING HERBERT IS THE PRIME MINISTER OH MY GOD

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

I made this post and then wrote this little snippet :3

enjoy.

---

Apollo cocked his head like an intrigued wolf. Half his consciousness watched Electra as she hurried her little brother away, anxiously glancing over her shoulder as they ran down the halls.

"How old is he?" He suddenly asked.

Hermes blinked, glancing askance at him. "Who?"

"The boy," Apollo's invisible eye watched as the boy tugged on his sister's hand, mouth moving as if imploring her to come with him. "Orestes."

His brother shrugged.  "Ten? Twelve? I'm not sure."

Older than the war, for sure. Hadn't he been a mere babe when Iphigenia was sacrificed? Ten, at the very least. Most likely eleven.

Apollo turned his whole attention to Orestes as a servant woman gently took his hand, respectfully dipping her head to Electra, and drew him away - away from his home, from his bloodlusted mother.

From his sister.

He continued to watch. Electra retreated back into the palace, sneaking through the servant's quarters. Orestes kept looking back, brows furrowed with confusion and eyes tearing up when the realization she wasn't coming back hit him.

The servant attempted to comfort him, scooping the now-crying boy into her arms and running faster, but he struggled and began screaming for Electra.

Orestes. A young boy forcible exiled from what was rightfully his. Separated from his sister - from his family - because of the actions of a vengeful queen.

The scene echoed one Apollo was intimately familiar with. Though, with a few notable differences.

Still. The similarities were there. Perhaps not a deadringer for his own young life but...it was there.

Apollo crossed his arms and felt the tightly-wound knot in his chest soften - not loosen, or even untie itself, but...soften.

He's always had a soft spot for children. Even if he had killed a few himself.

Orestes, however, would not be one of those unlucky boys. No, Apollo could sense he would play a major role on day - he would be the reckoning of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

And, perhaps, of the House of Atreus's curse.

"You're plotting something," Hermes's voice drew part of his attention away. His brother's lips were quirked and his arms rested on his caduceus. "What're you up to?"

Apollo glanced back at Orestes and the maid as they struggled through the woods.

"Just some spring cleaning," He lightly replied. "Give me...about a decade, and that particular mess," Apollo inclined his head towards the palace of Argos, where Clytemnestra prowled around, looking for her young son now far from her bloody grasp. "Will be gone."

Hermes's eyes widened. "That's a tall order, Apollo," he dubiously said. "No one in the House of Atreus has escaped that curse."

Apollo hummed. "Menelaus did. Why not Orestes?"

His brother's eyes brightened with understanding. "You're going to have Orestes break the curse?" He laughed disbelievingly. "How? He'll still be killing his own mother. The curse will continue."

Apollo merely hummed for an answer.

True, matricide would continue the curse. But he'll find a way to rid the world of it. It had plagued it for far too long, and he would know!

He was the god of plagues, for Fates' sake! If he had to clean up this mess himself, he will.

...And if Cassandra's soul would find peace with the deaths of her murderers...even better.

Still keeping a sliver of his consciousness on Orestes, Apollo sought out the room where the bloody murders had transpired.

It was a ghastly scene. Agamemnon's body was sprawled on the floor, tunic and cloak ripped and dripping with drying blood. His eyes were vacant and unseeing - irrevocably dead.

But Apollo paid him no mind. His eyes were drawn to the second slumped figure, dark red hair spilled over the ground, dark enough to be mistaken for the blood that crested her chest. Her eyes were closed, the deep, mysterious blue that had twinkled with curiosity forever deprived of their spark. Her deep tan was stained with both her own and Agamemnon's blood, as was her purple peplos, torn and dirtied.

He swallowed the lump in his throat.

Cassandra.

[deviantly-inspired]

Cassandra in the Dreaming AU • Dreamling

This is a short Lil intro to an AU I'm working on for an outsider POV on Dreamling. I've always loved the mythos of Cassandra. There isn't much to it yet beyond a very general outline, but I wanted to post this here to start. Mostly because my work break is almost over, and I need to be able to find this later lol

If you like this let me know. It's been am age since I wrote anything but I'm rather liking this so far.

●●●

CASSANDRA STANDS BEFORE GODS, FURIOUS AND SHIVERING. The smiling woman, Cassandra knows, is Death. Not Thanatos or Hades. Something bigger, older than both by far. Unnamable beyond that which she is. The other, male and dour, she feels she can almost recognize. Someone Cassandra perhaps has seen once or maybe often, but never quite took note of.

"Hello Cassandra," Death says. "I'm sure you're quite confused."

Cassandra has known Gods and Kings. Before Death, each of them seems so young. Death's smile is so old it reminds her of the ruins Agamemnon would tell her of, the ancient peoples who fell before Greece. Cassandra nods.

"My brother here wishes to offer you a place in his realm," Death says. "Should you agree, I will allow it."

"Brother?" Cassandra asks, looking once more to the male. "Sleep?"

Death tosses her head back and laughs. She looks every bit of what Cassandra imagined her mother meant when she had said Death was kind.

"Close!" Death congratulates. "Most of your kind know we're siblings of a kind."

"I am Dream. Your people call me Morpheus."

Morpheus. Of course Cassandra recognizes him now, and wonders at how she ever could have forgotten: she has known Morpheus all of her life, after all.

"You would offer I stay with you?" Cassandra asks, slow and cautious. There are no stories on this strange Death, and nearly none on Morpheus: he is not known for kindness nor cruelty, and is barely spoken of at all, except by those most devoted to him. She has never heard of Morpheus offering sanctuary to passing souls. Has she been forsaken even by Hades, for spurning Apollo so?

Morpheus has very sad eyes.

"Your story is a common one," he says. "Apollo is not half as clever as he believes, to curse you so. Across the sea of stars in every direction there are stories like yours. Each shapes there people evermore, and each is welcome here should they wish it."

Her mind feels wild, like a frothing horse. Her heart no longer beats, but Cassandra knows that if it did it would be running wild.

"Why would you offer this? What have you to gain?"

Morpheus has a strange sort of look to him. Cassandra will later decide that what she saw was grief.

"I am all stories, unforgotten. I am all libraries, unburned. I've room in me for yours as well, should you wish it. What have I to gain from not cutting my own throat, or biting my own tongue?"

It makes no sense to Cassandra. Hardly anything has since the moment she learned that Apollo would let her whole world burn for the sake of pride. Death is quiet and non judgemental when Cassandra looks to her. Morpheus seems to almost be painted onto the background of wherever it is they are. This floating nothingness of stars.

"Will you believe me, lord morpheus?" Cassandra asks. She is surprised by her own wavering voice, and the tears that wish to fall from her eyes. She let's them.

"Apollo has no power here," morpheus says. "You shall never speak prophecy again except when you wish it. And while I can't ensure all in my realm will believe you, none will be bound to find you a liar."

"I will stay with you," Cassandra says. Morpheus looks surprised. It firms her resolve. "Lord Morpheus, I will stay with you, please."

"Of course."

Morpheus extends a hand towards her, and Cassandra takes it with only a moment's hesitation. Death's smile bolsters Cassandra's will, and she reaches out, taking lord Morpheus by the hand. It is not prophecy that Cassandra feels as she steps in line with the god of dreams, but something even Apollo could not steal from her.

Cassandra knows: this is where she is meant to be.

[general-radix]

A recent development in my mythology-based musings is where to factor in the Roman pantheon.

While a handful do have separate origins from their Greek counterparts, they're so heavily syncretized that they're functionally identical (save for Ares vs. Mars). So, as not to have the Greek gods simply take new names or ignore Roman mythology entirely, I've decided to give the Roman pantheon as depicted in these musings mostly-new vocations and myths. (And also, no double-dipping for Apollo.)

The following are rough notes:

Jupiter: leader of the Deii Consentes alongside his twin sister Juno. (They are not married.) His duties have more to do with law and order than flinging lightning bolts from the sky.

Juno: the other leader. In this scenario, she's the arbiter of justice and vengeance.

Mars: As in actual myth, an older and more mature god of war than Ares who pulls double duty as an agricultural guardian. Unlike actual myth, he's older than the Ju' twins and has served as their mentor ever since Zeus and his siblings were young, being a soldier of the twins' father Saturn.

Janus: Well, being the only Rome-exclusive deity here, he didn't change much aside from getting a permanent spot in the consentes.

Ceres: the goddess of wind and a free spirit. It's said that she's the one calling down storms and the like.

Mercury: tomboy goddess of esoteric magic. Dut to their similar vocations, she has a crush on the Egyptian god Thoth, though it's strictly one-sided and will become platonic in the future. Mercury is the youngest of the Consentes and looks up to Ceres.

Vulcan: the god of fire. His boisterous attitude grinds on Hephaestus's nerves, leading the two to clash every now and then.

Neptune: protector of sailors and god of rivers, springs, and water. There are rumours that, as a way of performing his duties, he moonlights as a pirate.

Minerva: goddess of wisdom, peace, and the arts. She also defends Rome from outside threats with her fists, and is the second-youngest of the Consentes.

Venus: goddess of the stars, what with her namesake planet being the Morning Star and all. She doesn't enjoy being perceived and dresses accordingly. Older sister of Vesta.

Vesta: god of ceremonies; an extrovert who prefers feminine clothing. Younger brother of Venus.

Pluto: the advisor to the Consentes, in theory. They can only seem to get Juno, Mars, and Minerva to listen to them without having to relate a parable first.

Other notes:

Unlike with Zeus and co. with Kronos, the Ju' twins and Saturn are and always have been on good terms. Zeus doesn't know how to feel about that.

Hades was the first of the Olympians to meet the Consentes through his wife Libera.

Minerva has a twin sister, Bellona, who is not allowed into the Consentes on account of making Ares look level-headed. She's the edgy rival to Minerva's shonen protagonist, seeking battle and conflict for its own sake.

I have in mind that Janus's two faces will be represented by him wearing half a mask.

Diana is absent because I wasn't sure how to sufficiently differentiate her from Artemis.

Tangentially:

IF I were to try and connect all this with Heaven Sent: non-Abrahamic pantheons could fall under Gaia, herself a non-Abrahamic concept. So Zeus, Jupiter, et al. would be (mostly) wingless angels who live among and help govern humans, and had no idea that they were connected to the Spirit of the Earth because their capricious mistress never told them shit. (As far as canon HSent goes, this role largely goes to the Nephilim.)

[encrucijada]

hi piedad and adam is one of thee relationships of all time, they're so!!! could you possibly tell me more about them 👀? if you want

i would love to!!! especially because i can tell you just about everything because there aren't any spoilers to keep close to my chest. these are fandom ocs so i can just go crazy go stupid

adam got to chb when he was around 12yo. his mum is an honest to god rockstar so she was always busy and was very excited about basically having a free babysitting service for her kid. adam, for all intents and purposes, grew up in chb where he was Immediately claimed as a son of apollo. though he got his taste of the mortal world going to school in new york. he's one year older than piedad, making him one year younger than luke (for clarity sake). he received the music powers from apollo, so while he has some prowess with first aid and he's a really good archer he can't do stuff like healing magic. his powers all all music related which is why his main weapon is a magic electric guitar he asked the hephaestus cabin to make. i mention this because piedad has music powers as well and it's fun because they can't use their main demigod powers on each other. he's also colombian btw!

piedad got to camp when she was 13yo. she's from an old money family in puerto rico but was sent to boarding school in chicago where she did ballet. it took a while after getting to camp but she was eventually claimed as a daughter of urania, the muse of astrology, which meant she would basically be sticking around cabin 11 for the rest of her years there. as part of her powers she got: music magic as i mentioned (her magic instrument is a violin), navigation using the stars and foresight. if you've seen me mention piedad being the "genre aware character" that's where the foresight comes in. without putting you to sleep with the long explanation she basically knew of luke's tragic fate the whole time but kept it to herself, as he fatal flaw is apathy. adam's fatal flaw is arrogance

all this to say: they're childhood friends. pretty much grew up together. piedad is not a year-rounder like adam, she's a strictly summer camper (sometimes winter break). in my (mine and my friends' this is all from our pjo rp) version of pjo there's a whole generation of campers that are luke's age or even a little older. adam and piedad fit into this "clique" of campers who are all pretty close, most of which switch to kronos' army when luke leaves because they're disillusioned with their role as "pawns of the gods". adam was one of the few who stayed in chb.

piedad making the switch to luke's army was... complicated. her closest friends left but she stayed in chb because she Knew of luke's fate. but by staying at camp she realised there wasn't a place for her there. she was a claimed, almost 20-something low risk demigod taking up space in cabin 11. her status as traitor wasn't revealed until the battle of the labyrinth where she fought on luke's side.

adam and piedad were technically together up until her secret was revealed. i don't think they ever put labels on the relationship but their internal monologue definitely uses boyfriend and girlfriend and they 100% see each other as an ex after breaking up by virtue of... the circumstances.

in our version of pjo piedad goes with luke on his quest for the golden apple along with hudson (a son of hypnos who belings to @chaoticdecember). we changed luke's quest partners dying to getting Seriously Injured. piedad did technically die though lmao, that's when she got the vision of luke's fate. it's also how she got the scars you might have seen mentioned on some excerpts, ladon gave them to her.

details between botl and tlo are a little fuzzy regarding adam/piedad. but during the battle of manhattan they had a 1v1 that had to turn into melee because, as mentioned, their offensive powers (music) don't work on each other. adam's main weapon is the bow (son of apollo) but he's decent enough with a sword for close combat purposes. piedad uses knives almost exclusively. it was during this 1v1 that adam got fatally wounded by piedad, he has a star-shaped scar on his gut where she stabbed him to kill. though not really because she knew his siblings could heal him.

what else is there to say. sun/stars ship. day/night. rockstar bf/dark academia gf. friends to lovers to enemies to lovers.

Oh. of course. piedad technically works with adam's dad lmao??? she becomes a sibyl after the battle of manhattan, as a war criminal, because her premonition powers caught apollo's eye so now she's under his protection (i could also write you an essay about apollo/piedad). the reason adam is at piedad's apartment in those excerpts is have been sending it's cause apollo sent him there because he likes starting situations lmao

[poppitron360]

Ok. Ok. You wanna start a debate? That’s fine.

1. Idc whether Leonidas is Leo’s real name or just a nickname, she’s still calling him a name he asked to not be called, which is incredibly disrespectful and just plain shitty. You, like the narrative, have completely ignored the object of the post, which is to point out the red flags in the relationship.

The reason why it’s called a “red flag” is because it’s big and bright and shouldn’t be ignored. “Red” connotes danger. This behaviour is a sign of something bad. Don’t gloss over it.

2. I know that Leo also doesn’t treat her the best. This is your argument telling me that I should ship them?

Saying “oh but Leo does it too” doesn’t actually excuse the behaviour, and you’ve even admitted that this kind of treatment doesn’t respect boundaries and isn’t okay.

3. I am not “hating on Calypso just because”. I have literally just given you at least two reasons in that post why I “hate on” her. That is far from “just because”.

They’re toxic- bordering on abusive- she treats Leo like dirt, and actively tells him she hates him. I know it’s played as banter but there’s a line and I feel like they crossed it. Not to mention she’s thousands of years older than him (In TOA it talks about it being iffy if Lester dated teenagers, so why is it not the same for Cal, who is old enough to be Apollo’s babysitter?) and in the original myth dated heros much older than Leo or Percy.

They just make me so uncomfortable, so sorry if I don’t wanna root for them as a couple.

4. Do I really need justification to dislike something? I can give you several, and I did in that post- but I shouldn’t actually have to prove to you my reason to hate things. So yes, I can hate on Cal “just because” if I wanted to- even though, as stated above, that is not what I’m doing.

If you don’t like it, just keep on scrolling. Did you really think that saying “stop doing that” would legitimately make me stop doing it? When in the history of the gods’ green earth has THAT ever happened on the Internet?

5. The whole point of my og post was to lay out a concise argument why they’re toxic, using reasoning and evidence from the text. You haven’t actually given me a reason why they’re a good ship, just pointing out that Leo is shitty to her too. Actually give me a reason to like them, with analysis, supported by evidence from the text, and maybe I’ll hear you out. But right now, you haven’t given me a reason to not hate them.

6. My main gripe with Caleo is that, not only are they toxic, but the way the narrative is written doesn’t explicitly paint that as a bad thing. And since this is a series aimed at children, I’m very conscious of the fact that the lesson that kids will take away from this is “Hey you can’t have a “happy ending” unless you find your life partner at sixteen- and it doesn’t matter if they treat you poorly because anything’s better than being single!!” Because that’s a narrative that’s been pushed for centuries by this stupid amatonormative society, and Rick is just part of the problem.

It sounds ludicrous, I know, but that’s what I grew up believing from the books I read and the movies I saw. As a teenager, I tried to push myself into this mould of “happiness” that I thought was right, instead of sitting myself down and trying to realise what would make me actually happy.

Frozen got it right by teaching kids how to spot red flags, instead of telling them to ignore them for the sake of “true love”

And if you didn’t want to start a discussion then why’d you comment?

Thinking about names having power in the Riordanverse- because it’s exactly the kind of literature motif that I LOVE.

Thinking about “Leo” being short for “Leonidas” who was a Spartan King who sacrificed his life fighting to save his people in the Battle of Thermopylae.

Leo, similarly, gave his own life to stop Gaea and save the world.

That comparison has already been made before, but there’s more-

Leo rejects the name “Leonidas” and chooses to go by “Leo”- in a way, rejecting the fate he’s assigned to. And he doesn’t suffer that fate in the end. He lives.

Yeah, names have power. But what you choose to name yourself has even more power. For example, the fact that Thalia rejected the last name “Grace” because it associated her with her mother, but then taking it back up again when she found out Jason was alive. And Leo chose to not go by “Leonidas” and he also chose to take the physician’s cure and come back.

And here we get onto what Calypso’s doing. By calling him something that he asked to not be called, she is taking away that agency of choice. She is taking away that power.

It’s a small moment, but it REALLY bugs me. Because, like Leo, I go by a shortened version of a longer name, and often one of the ways bullies used to hold power over me was by calling me by my full name repeatedly, even after I asked them to stop. It’s also a way a lot of transphobes hold power over trans people- by deadnaming. By taking away the power of their name, their choice, their identity, who they are, who they’ve built themselves to be, and their right to control all of that.

Now, I’m NOT saying Calypso is going as far as deadnaming Leo, but it’s a similar premise. It’s a manipulation tactic used to knock people down.

Now friendly nicknames -e.g. “Seaweed Brain”- are different, because Percy consents to it. It’s a term of affection between them (and notice how it’s different when Thalia used it. It’s a name that symbolises percabeth’s love, and it’s a name only Annabeth can use). But this is a name, while said in a jokey, banter-y manner, that Leo has SPECIFICALLY ASKED to not be called. And she does it anyway, ignoring the boundary he’s set, ignoring his choice to shape his own identity, ignoring everything that symbolised INCLUDING the fact that it’s literally Leo saying “I choose life” by rejecting the name that fated him to death. It’s just a big red flag for me. And if you put that on top of the fact that she also physically hurt him in this (enough to make him say “ow”) then you just get a whole host of Reasons Why This is NOT Leo’s “Happy Ending”- which the narrative paints it out to be.

[theunholygrails]

Foolish Games Part 2

Masterlist

A/N: Introducing new characters and some drama! Percy is still sexy as ever :'(.

Warnings: BJ

I woke up to a door slamming so hard it joined the symphony of my pounding headache. I groaned, hoisting myself over the back of the couch to investigate to intrusion. A brunette head of long sweeping hair rushed through the foyer, barreling towards the kitchen. A familiar mop of black hair hurried after.

Reyna was speaking so fast in Spanish my brain scrambled to keep up. I noted lots of curse words followed by a series of sentences too fast I was surprised she even knew what she was saying. Percy was answering in slow measured words, probably fighting a hangover of equal measure. I ducked behind the back of the couch, reaching for my phone plugged in on the coffee table.

It was noon. 2% battery and a couple messages from friends. Nothing from my ex thank gods. Five from Annabeth being nosey. I opened my uber app, squinting in the sunlight breaking through the cream curtains. I managed to get my driver secured.

A door slammed and I winced, peaking to check that they were in another room. I did not immediately spot my dress in the chaotic. I grimaced remembering the midnight swim. When I sat up I finally noticed the white tshirt I wore and the basketball shorts. And then I went rigid remembering what happened after the swim.

“Motherfucker,” I whispered.

Now I really had to get out of this house. I checked the arrival time of my driver. Three minutes away. Great. I made my way on shaky knees to the large wooden front door. My keys were still in the collection dish. I grabbed them quietly and turned the door handle a fraction of an inch before another door slammed open and Reyna came barreling back into the foyer, brown eyes landing promptly on my guilty ass. Behind her, Percy pursed his lips into a thin line and raised both of his hands to lay on top of his head. His biceps strained nicely against the thin t shirt.

“The fuck is this?” Reyna whispered.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” I babbled.

“It’s just Noa, Rey. Gods,” Percy said.

“I can see that, Percy!” She snapped. I was glad her spear was not strapped across her back this morning. “Why is she sneaking out of my house in your clothes?”

“People were swimming last night. Her clothes got wet.”

“I’m sure the fuck they did.”

“Zeus, Rey! You ended it with me. Why does it even matter?”

“Because I still fucking love you! I’m sorry, okay?” She burst out crying and Percy instantly pulled her against his chest. The memory of being in those arms drove me out the door like a nest of hornets.

~~~~

“I’m just saying. You have nothing to feel sorry for,” Annabeth paused to sip her iced coffee. “Unless they get back together and then you sleep with him. But as of right now, you’re good. Trust me. Been on the Percy train. We’re still friends. You’ll get over it. Just a harmless rebound for both of you.”

I groaned, laying my chin on the cool metal table parked outside our favorite coffee shop positioned between our New York apartments. Just two Manhattan women enjoying their Sunday afternoon. The air was cooling as fall neared. I pulled my baseball cap closer to the top of my sunglasses.

“Should I call him?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Let him deal with his relationship drama. Reyna is a lot to deal with. Still nothing from fuckface?”

“Nope and that’s fine.”

“Good for you. We will hydrate you, get you a good dinner, hit the gym before work in the morning and then get back on our bad bitch mental track. Agreed?”

~~~~

“Good Monday, yogis,” I chirped from my desk at the corner of my studio.

The third class was beginning to trickle in and I was settling into my rhythm. Hot yoga was next and hopefully I would sweat out all the negativity I’d allowed lately. I was in the middle of emailing back a potential client when someone rapped at the wood of my desk. I glanced up to a blonde male who waved gently.

“Heya, sansei Noa,” he said.

“That’s karate. Can I help you?”

“Do you do trial classes?”

I hit send on my email and closed my laptop. The guy was built like a poser with the defined muscles and chiseled jaw but his voice was soft and tempered. He was clean shaven and dressed like a basic gym bro.

“Normally you have to schedule them beforehand because of class size,” I gave my standard answer.

“Right, my bad. Sorry. I was just passing by the front and it looked like the kind of place I needed right now. Can I go ahead and pick a date then?”

I was staring too long into his pale blue eyes, honed in on the polite response. A nice change from the daily demanding consumers. “You know what? Ive got space right now if you like? Have you ever done hot yoga?”

A brilliant white smile showcasing sharp canines. “My favorite.”

“Perfect. I just need a name, number and email to get you a file started.”

He leaned large hands on my desk. “It’s Luke Castellan.”

Before he could give the contact information, I cut him off. “Wait. I know you.” His tanned skin paled significantly.

“I…”

“You’re supposed to be dead!” I blurted out.

His eyes skated around the room and he leaned in closer. “That’s not supposed to be public knowledge. I assume you’re a demigod?”

“Luke, you trained me. We took fucking sculpting together. The Apollo table was right next to the Hermes one for fuck’s sake.”

He winced. I heard a murmuring from the rest of my class I was disturbing with my volume. I collected my shock finally. “Take a seat if you want. We should talk after class. I need to start.”

“Okay. Thank you. I’m sorry Noa.”

I waved him off and walked over to my yoga mat. I sat cross legged and drew in an even breath to smooth out my emotions.

It was a slow 30 minute class. Each pose and movement dragged on. Finally, I dismissed the group and nodded Luke outside. He was waiting on the bench outside of the studio I split renting with a few other instructors. I sat next to him, wiping sweat from my face with the towel slung over my pink sports bra.

“Alright, talk,” I said.

“Not much to say. I was given a second chance at my hearing. Here I am. Starting over.” A shrug of well-defined shoulders. The muscles flexed beneath his gleaming sweat. His red tank top stuck to his chest and stomach. “I wish I remembered you, truly. That time is such a blur in my life.”

“It’s ok. You were a lot older than me and to be honest I had a massive crush on you so I probably hid most of the time.”

A surprised smile slipped across his lips. “I’m assuming the betrayal helped you get over that?”

I laughed outloud, slapping his knee. “No shit! So where are you staying these days?”

“Just around the corner actually. Got a job at the local gym.”

“Yeah I bet the fuck you did.” I squeezed his forearm between both of my hands. I wanted to roll my eyes at me falling back into my school girl giddy at him. Betrayal of the gods aside. He was even more gorgeous than ever. The scar down his face gave him a dark sexy vibe. Like a bad boy even though he claimed he was rehabbing himself now.

“So how, did you feel about the class?”

“I mean, I’d like to sign up for it a couple times a week, that’s for sure. And I’d like to take you out to dinner to make up for not remembering a beauty like you.”

I almost bit my cheek biting out the response of “Yes!”

“You’ve got my number,” he said, chuckling quietly. “I’ve got to get to work.” He shouldered his gym bag and excused himself.

The bike back to my apartment was spent reliving my tween fantasies about bad boy Luke. I opened my apartment door and screeched seeing a man sitting at my kitchen counter. Percy turned to face me.

“You know you live in New York? You should really lock that.”

“It was!” I snapped.

A quick grin. “Yeah. But it was easy to break into.”

I dropped my bag onto the floor and brushed past him to get a protein shake from the fridge. “I have to shower and get prepared for my night classes.” I told him.

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t either.”

He paused, studying my face in the shitty lighting of the single bulb hanging between us over the counter. “Are we good, Noa?”

“Of course. What’s a little head between friends?”

“Okay…I can’t read you. Can you not play tough just for a minute?”

I chugged the shake and set the bottle down between us. I leaned my arms on the chilled counter, bun knocking against the light. “Honestly, Percy. I’m fine. We are good.”

“Reyna moved back in.”

“You’re engaged again?”

I drank from the empty bottle to give myself something to do. He watched me with those green eyes. He’d known me for far too long. He was nearly impossible to deceive, but I was determined today. The fact that I had dreamt of fucking him two consecutive nights was irrelevant if he was off the table. Even if his lips did look incredibly juicy tonight. Even if they had done near illicit things to me just nights ago.

“I don’t know. She said she wanted to work on things. And it’s her dad’s house, so I can’t ask her to go and I don’t want to go to my mom’s and admit defeat.”

“You know you could stay here, Perc.”

He worked his jaw silently, then rubbed his hands over his face. “Thanks. I do know. Even if we aren’t officially back together, I think we should work on it…” he trailed off.

“And not tell her about you eating me out?” I leaned closer because I was mean to both him and myself. Because I knew this top combined with this angle gave him a simple opportunity. And he took it.

His tongue slid out between his lips as his eyes flicked down, stayed, then dragged deliberately back up. “Probably not,” he agreed.

For a long moment neither of us said anything. He had more to lose now than me. We were no longer on equal playing fields. So, I left the ball in his court. “I’m going to go shower.”

I was done washing in the first ten minutes. The second ten was giving him a little wiggle room to decide. I had my hand on the faucet to cut off the water that was beginning to go cold when I heard the door creak open. I watched through the fogged glass, catching a hold of my breath. I watched as he tugged his shirt off. My stomach flipped over itself when he reached for his jeans. What had I done?

The opening door let in a rush of cool air, perking my skin to attention. My eyes raked unapologetically over his naked, aroused body. His dark hair quickly slicked against his stubble covered jaw. His eyes were no longer the sea green but murky like the deep water of the ocean.

“Hey,” he said quietly, cautiously.

“Hey,” I giggled, reaching out to touch his rough jaw. He winced, catching my hand with his. “We probably shouldn’t kiss again.”

“Sure, whatever you want, Percy. What can I do to you?”

He groaned, turning his mouth into my palm, scraping teeth against the vulnerable skin. “Touch me,” he said.

My free hand instantly planted against his chest, scraping at the muscle. His eyes fluttered closed, head tilting back to expose his throat. I slid my other hand into his thick hair, tugging it tightly between my fingers and pulling to grant myself more access to the strong column of his neck. I bit it first, backing him into the tiled wall when he shuddered. I kissed over the reddening skin and moved my hands to his flat stomach, feeling the shuddered breaths beneath my touch.

“Like this?” I asked.

His reply was unintelligible. I kissed down his chest, moving my hand lower still as I went. When my fingers brushed over the v-line of his hips, I shifted my route away from the center and to his thighs. An annoyed grunt escaped his lips. “Hush,” I scolded, getting my knees under me. The now cold water was hitting the back of my neck and flowing down my body. I placed my hands on the inside of both his thighs, trailing them upwards and upwards until he nearly contorted when I gripped him. He let out a scandalous string of curses that quickly turned to moaning silence when I took him into my mouth.

He unraveled in minutes and I let him cum all over the breasts I had teased him with earlier. I rose in front of him, my own rosy cheeks mirroring his. “Now we’re even.”

[hieromonkcharbel]

The Holy Martyr Platon, brother of the holy Martyr Antiochus the Physician (July 16), was born at the city of Ancyra in Galatia. While still a youth he left home and went through the cities, preaching the Word of God to pagans, amazing his audience with the persuasiveness and beauty of his speech, and his profound knowledge of Greek learning.

Because of his preaching he was arrested and brought for trial to the temple of Zeus before the governor Agrippinus. At first, the judge attempted to persuade the saint to turn away from Christ by flattery. He assured the youth that he might be on a par of intellect with the greatest of the philosophers Plato, if only he worshipped also the pagan gods. To this St Platon answered, that the wisdom of the philosopher, although great, was but ephemeral and limited, whereas the true, eternal and unbounded wisdom comprised the Gospel teachings. Then the judge promised to give him his beautiful niece for his wife if he would deny Christ. He also threatened him with torture and death if he refused. St Platon replied that he chose a temporal death for the sake of eternal life. The patience of the governor was exhausted, and he gave orders to mercilessly beat the martyr, and then send him off to prison.

When they led St Platon off to prison, he turned to the people gathered about the temple, and he called on them not to forsake the Christian Faith. Seven days later they again led the Martyr Platon for trial before Agrippinus in the temple of Zeus, where they had the implements of torture already prepared: boiling cauldrons, red-hot iron and sharp hooks. The judge offered the martyr a choice: either to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, or to feel the effects of these implements of torture on his body. Again the saint steadfastly refused to worship idols, and after his tortures they threw him in prison for eighteen more days without bread or water. But seeing that this did not shake the martyr, they offered him his life and freedom if he would only say, “Great is the god Apollo.” The martyr refused to deny Chirst or to sacrifice to the idols. Therefore, Agrippinus ordered the holy Martyr Platon to be beheaded.

The Holy Martyr Roman was deacon at a church in Palestinian Caesarea. During one of the persecutions against Christians he moved to Antioch, where he encouraged Christians in the faith by his example and fervent preaching.

When the Antiochian governor Asklepiades was considering the destruction of the Christian temple, St Roman called on the believers to stand up for their sanctuary. He persuaded them that if they managed to protect the church, then there would be rejoicing on earth in the Church Militant, and if they should perish in defense of the church, there would still be rejoicing in the heavenly Church Triumphant. Seeing such a firm resolve among the people, the governor did not dare to carry out his plans.

Some time afterwards, there was a pagan celebration in the city and many people came to Antioch from the surrounding area. St Roman began denouncing the idol-worship and called on all to follow Christ. They arrested him and subjected him to torture. During his torments the martyr saw a boy, a Christian named Barulas in the crowd. He directed the governor’s attention to him saying, “This young man is wiser than you, though you are older than he, because he knows the True God. You, however, worship lifeless idols.”

The governor Asklepiades gave orders to bring the boy to him. To all the questions of the governor, Barulas firmly and without fear confessed his faith in Christ, the True God. Asklepiades in a rage gave orders to whip Barulas, and then behead him. Before his death the holy child asked his mother, who was present at the execution, to give him something to drink. The mother called out to him to endure bravely to the end. She herself carried her son to the place of execution, and later buried him.

St Roman was sentenced to burned alive, but a heavy rain extinguished the fire. The saint began glorifying Christ and insulting the pagan gods. The governor commanded that his tongue be cut out, but even deprived of his tongue, St Roman loudly continued to glorify the Lord. Then the torturers placed a noose around his neck and choked him to death.

[bellamyroselia]

So heya, nice to see you here. I hope you’re prepared to face quite wall of text, because this ended up being 2k+… I think you can see why I didn’t put this at the end of the fic. Turned out that I had way too much to say! And it was too much for even this reblog, so there will be part two.

I got the idea for Sky Blue Eyes while I was listening TSFH’s album Live, and then thought why not write something other than analytical stuff for once, like maybe a drabble… Well, needless to say, it didn't stay as a drabble. 😂 Damn you Muses! But I guess it’s still relatively easy to see that this was originally meant to be an drabble, because nothing of value really happens here. But anyway, I hope you enjoy this! Fair warning however - since I’m going to talk of the mythological and historical inspirations of Sky Blue Eyes, there will be mentions of things such as war (both real and fictional), death and violence. I’m not going into details when it comes to those, you can look more into them yourself if you want to, but know that topics related to them will be discussed here so be warned if those topics squick you.

Despite me not naming anyone, I think it’s still relatively easy to understand who’s supposed to be who. Though for the sake of transparency, the dad’s supposed be Ares/Mars, the twins are Phobos/Pavor and Deimos/Formido, their sister is Harmonia/Concordia, the Queen Mother is Hera/Juno and her two daughters are Eileithyia/Lucina and Hebe/Juventus. I originally also thought of adding Nike here as well since she’s sometimes referred as Ares’ daughter, but decided against it in the last minute. Three’s already a lot, four would just make it a woozy.

I went with assumption that Palutena was born the same way Athena was, as an adult. So what this means is that Ares is technically older than her, but he appears younger at the beginning because he was born the regular way and aged like an actual person.

As for Ares’ looks, he’s blonde in reference to one of Pit’s SSBU-skins. I mean, if one of his Brawl-skins was good enough to inspire Dark Pit, I don’t see any reason for why I can’t do the same. That and “Gold as ichor” is too good of an phrase to not use, ichor being the blood of gods. It’s practically identical to the saying “Red as blood” but it sounds much cooler. He’s ridiculously tall because I’m projecting hard into Palutena; if I’m as tall as her yet never felt tall in my life because everyone around me is even taller, it’s only fair that Palutena feels the same. 😂 He’s also not the only character I’ve made a design in my mind - I have pretty concrete ideas of what everyone who appears here could look like, Nike and certain another guy included!

So, the war is obviously the Trojan war. That needs no explanation - what may need an explanation is that the guy Palutena was said to accelerate further to monsterhood is Achilles. The Greeks in general were portrayed to be extremely morally bankrupt during the war, and let’s just say that Achilles stands very high on that totem pole if not at the top of it. He’s also guilty of killing Ares’ daughter and Apollo’s son, Penthesilea and Troilus, in very cruel ways - Hector’s death could also count if one believes him to be Apollo’s kid with Hecuba instead of Priam’s. As for what’s Athena’s role in these, it was said that she drove Penthesilea to face Achilles, in art she’s often shown as the one who’s telling him to kill Troilus and she masqueraded as his brother Deiphobus to lure Hector in a false sense of security so that Achilles could kill him. Your child dying in the ways they did would likely discourage anyone from having another one.

The city Ares quickly mentions that was founded by a son of a werewolf and where Palutena supposedly has boy priests? That’s a real place! It’s the city of Tegea in Arcadia, and it was named after it’s (mythological) founder, Tegeates. He was one of 50 sons of Lycaon, the same one who invoked the wrath of gods and was turned into a wolf - and he’s not even the only werewolf from Arcadia, because that place has lot of extremely weird yet interesting werewolf lore. But hey, at least this means the world of Kid Icarus could easily have werewolves and no one could stop us from adding them to our fanfics or other works! As for the boy priests, that’s connected to Aleus who was a descendant of Lycaon through his daughter Callisto (yes, as in Ursa Major). He founded the cult of Athena Alea, named after himself of course, and for some reason the cult used boy priests who abdicated when they reached puberty. Why? Historians would like to know that as well.

Also the war Ares talks of is inspired by an actual war that happened between Tegea and Sparta. Spartan king Charilaus had beef with Tegea which would continue on for generations, though his luck with this conquest wasn’t so great - when he first invaded, he was captured by the Tegeans. It’s told that what turned the tides in favor of the Tegeans was an ambush by Tegean women, which made the Spartan soldiers flee; once the battle was won the women offered Ares a sacrifice and celebrated the victory alone, which earned Ares the epithet Gynaecothoenas (it means either Feasted by women or He who entertains women, depending on who you ask). Pausanias even mentions one these women by name, Marpessa; he tells that her shield was put on display in the same temple that supposedly housed the hide of the Calydonian boar. And this is why I recommend to look not just mythology but also history when seeking out inspiration! Where else could we learn things such as this?

Pit’s mum is also inspired by a mythological figure, although a very obscure one. Her name was Aerope and she was a princess of Tegea, and the already mentioned Aleus was her paternal grandfather. Not much is said of her except that her father was one of the Argonauts and participated in the Calydonian boar hunt, along with that Ares loved her and she died while giving birth to their son - making her one of the only if not the only woman in the mythos who died of childbirth. Their son did end up living though, as in Ares’ wishes he was still able to suckle from his mother. Because of this Ares was worshiped under the epithet Aphneius (Abundant), as a giver of food and plenty.

How come Palutena and Hera have such a good relationship? Because Hera and Athena have one in the mythos, it’s simple as that. They even went as far as to plan to overthrow Zeus together with the help of Poseidon and Apollo, though that plan failed - Hera and Athena got away with no big consequences, but Poseidon and Apollo were made to build the walls of Troy. That leads into more shenanigans that explain some things that would happen later on, but long story short Priam’s father was a jackass, so Apollo and Poseidon gave him appropriate payback.

Why doesn’t Ares want to tell Hera about Pit? Because she has shown that she’s willing to sacrifice her grandchildren to get what she wants, that’s why. For example, in Heracles’ ninth labor Hippolyta quite willingly hopped out of her clothes for Heracles… Then Hera came down, disguised as an Amazon and came up with a rumor that he was going to kidnap Hippolyta. A fight happened, Hippolyta died, Antiope was abducted and Heracles got away with Hippolyta’s girdle anyway, so she achieved nothing except killing one of her granddaughters and putting another one down to a miserable path (Antiope ends up becoming Theseus’ wife and she’s either killed during the Attic war or Theseus abandons her in favor of Ariadne’s younger sister while she’s pregnant with Hippolytus). I’d say that’s good enough reason to not tell her anything.

So, about why Pit’s eye color is made out to be a big deal - I think you all know how most kids are born with light-colored eyes, blue being the most common. Their eye color starts to change into their actual one when they’re about half a year old, so around the age Pit is when Palutena meets him the first time. So Ares expected Pit’s eye color to change into his mother’s green one, and is surprised when Palutena points it out that those blue eyes are there to stay. And yes, when referring to a color honeydew is in fact a very light green

About wings and how common they are - the answer is very common, even if you focus only those who have bird-like wings. The Erotes and Nike are the obvious ones, but the likes of Eos, Iris, Thanatos, Hypnos, Hebe, Typhon, Echidna, Nemesis, Sphinx and even the Gorgons have been portrayed with bird-like wings from time to time. Heck, Medusa originally having wings is in fact the reason why Pegasus has wings (he’s a horse because Poseidon’s the god of horses)! Ares having wings here is my own artistic liberty, though I suppose it’s not too far off since he has fathered many winged children.

Pit’s name is honestly pretty funny when you think of it. It’s shortening of Cupid, as in “Desire”. By that logic, he might as well be named “Ire”. Compare that to the likes of Oeagrus (Of the wild sorb-apple), Heracles (Honor of Hera), Autolycus (The wolf itself), Bellerophon (Wielder of missiles) or Penthesilea (Mourned by the people), it sure stands out.

So, I wrote a thing. Probably not the best thing I’ve ever written, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have fun while making it, so I thought why not share it here. Palutena and Pit are possibly OOC though, but I hope it’s not too noticeable.

I’m also likely going to share the overly long author’s notes here in a reblog once I get them on a presentable state, because I want to share that 2k+ wall of text somewhere. Turned out that I had way too much things to say than any end note section should allow 😂

[nyxshadowhawk]

The Lady of the Labyrinth

My entry for @dionysia-ta-astika's City Dionysia contest! I'm very proud of myself for having finished it in a week, and I thought I'd share it here on my own blog.

Hail Dionysus!

*** Everything was lost. My brother was dead. My love was gone.

I was also stranded on a deserted island. I stared out at the vast, empty expanse of the sea. The sunlight on the waves winked at me with a thousand eyes, as though diamonds had been scattered across the surface of the water. Anyone would find this beach tranquil, I suppose, if they were here under different circumstances than mine.

My brother’s name was Asterion.

Most people didn’t know his name, or even that he had one. To most people, he was the Minotaur, a horrible monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull that eats people. Asterion was a monster, and he did eat people.

Beneath my father’s shining palace, he prowled the twists and turns of the Labyrinth that my father’s genius architect built. The Labyrinth was mine, once. Daedalus made it for me as a dancing path, when I was a little girl. But now it is a dark, disorienting maze of seemingly endless passageways, and I was still the only person who knew how to navigate it. When I could have time alone, I would go to the Labyrinth. I felt my way through its pitch-black corridors, memorizing the nicks and cracks in the rough stone, trying to calm my thoughts. I spoke to Asterion through the walls: “You have never seen the sun,” I said to him. “Do you ever wonder what it’s like in the outside world? Or do you like it down here?” I received no answer from the surrounding darkness. If I did hear something — a snort, or hooves on stone, I would have to run as fast as I could away from the sound. Even I couldn’t go too near Asterion — I wouldn’t want to run the risk that he might attack me.

“Why do you go down there?” My sister, Phaedra, asked me. “What could possibly be appealing about that dark, dismal place?”

“I like it down there,” I said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as I could. “It is peaceful. And I don’t mind the dark.”

She looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted bull’s horns myself. “You know you risk your life every time you enter the Labyrinth, right?”

“He’s our brother,” I said. I don’t know what I intended to explain by saying that. I felt like I had a responsibility to him that extended beyond simply being his sister. I tried to see a man in him, although he sniffed and bellowed and charged like a bull. He could gore me to death like a bull, but I did not fear him. “I can’t say I love him, but I feel something.”

“You shouldn’t feel any sympathy for him. He’s a freak of nature. The gods cursed us with him for our father’s arrogance. He is a shame upon our kingdom.”

She was right, of course. The gods gifted us a beautiful white bull that we were meant to sacrifice to Poseidon, but my father decided to keep it instead. And Poseidon cursed us… Asterion is the unholy offspring of my mother and the bull. And it gets worse. Every seven years, seven young men and seven young women from the city of Athens were brought to the Labyrinth to be fed to my brother. This was because my other brother, whom I was too young to remember, died while in Athens. Athens pays for this slight with the lives of other young people.

I suppose it’s no different than war, or at least, that’s what my father says. All cities send their youths to die for the polis. How was this any different? I could hardly bear the prisoners’ wails of desperation or their pleas for me to help them. When I heard they were coming, I begged my father to set them free, asserting that it was wrong to sacrifice humans to anything. If the gods had cast Tantalus into Tartarus for feeding them his son, then why should we knowingly feed humans to a monster? He laughed at me and asked why I had no pride in my family.

I hated the thought of the fourteen young people being fed to him, but I also couldn’t imagine killing my own brother, even if he was a monster.

I was too young to remember the last time the prisoners came to the Labyrinth. They had come, and my brother had gorged himself on their flesh, and I was none the wiser. This time, I knew, and the horror of it struck me silent as the tributes were paraded through the city like animal sacrifices to the gods, so that we could all see those who were doomed to die. I could hardly bear to look at them. Some of those girls were barely older than me. It felt wrong to sit by and watch as they were brought to the Labyrinth. But what could I do to save their lives? Supplicating my father would not work, and the only other option was helping them to escape, somehow. How could I do that?

In spite of myself, I caught sight of one of the young men. He was handsome, and he had a defiant, blazing look in his eye. He looked straight at my father on his throne. “I am Theseus of Athens!” he declared. “I have come to slay your monstrous son!”

My father had laughed at him, but he consumed my thoughts. That may be because he was absolutely gorgeous, but it was also because if he succeeded at killing Asterion, he would solve all my problems. I wouldn’t have to take my own brother’s life, but he would devour no more innocent lives. And, if this youth survived, he might take me away with him. I knew the Labyrinth better than anyone. Even if he did survive, he could never make it in and out without my help.

Forgive me, Asterion.

The prisoners were held in two dank cells near the entrance to the Labyrinth. The women were kept in one, and the men were kept in the other. Many of the prisoners were crying — not just the women, but the men, too. In my familiarity with the Labyrinth and its inhabitant, I had forgotten just how terrifying both would be to anyone else. The Labyrinth’s darkness and maddening complexity would intimidate anyone, and the prospect of being eaten by a monster within its depths was horrific.

Only Theseus seemed calm. His boldness in front of my father hadn’t been an act. His jaw was set, and he still had raw determination in his steely eyes. He was really going to do it, wasn’t he? He actually meant to kill Asterion. He shone like gold in the gloom of the dungeon — he could have been Apollo. If our circumstances were different, I might have wanted to stroke his chest. “Who are you?” he demanded when I approached the cell, as though I were the one behind bars, and had requested an audience with him.

“I am Ariadne,” I said, “daughter of Minos, princess of Crete.”

“I am Theseus, son of Aegeus, prince of Athens,” he returned.

Prince of Athens. That explained his noble bearing and proud mien, not to mention his handsome features… and yet… “There is no way the King of Athens would have sent his own son to be fed to the Minotaur,” I said. “Why are you really here?”

“I said, didn’t I? I’m here to slay the Minotaur. I volunteered as tribute.” He smirked. “I promised my father that I would return alive. No more of our people will be sacrificed to the monster!”

“You speak with a lot of confidence for someone who is currently in a prison cell,” I said. “What are you going to do, Theseus? Do you have a plan?”

“Of course I have a plan!” he said, a little defensively. “I am going to break out of this cell. And then I will conquer the Labyrinth—”

“How? You’ll be dead of starvation before you even reach the Minotaur, assuming he doesn’t find you first.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you taunting me?”

I leaned forward, looking directly into his eyes. “No. I was actually going to offer to help you. I know the Labyrinth. I go into it all the time.”

“No, you don’t. You’re trying to get me to sleep with you. Or trying to deceive me on behalf of Minos.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t find anything to say in response to that. For a moment I just stared at him. Was he always this self-assured, even in the worst of circumstances? If he wanted to sleep with me, I certainly wouldn’t complain, but why would he assume that I would deceive him? Well, perhaps it was his right to be suspicious, in a strange land where he was kept as a prisoner. “I… no,” I finally replied. “I’m being serious. I’m here to help you.”

“Why, then?”

“I think it is very noble of you to want to save the other Athenians, and I agree that no more innocent lives should be lost.”

He smiled slightly, but still looked suspicious. “You have no loyalty to your father?”

“My father is cruel and selfish. Why else do you think my mother gave birth to a monster, anyway?”

“The monster is your brother? What was his father, a bull?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to have stunned him into silence. I felt some satisfaction at that. “Listen to me. Without my help, you will not get through the Labyrinth. If you want to kill the Minotaur, you need me.”

“What’s the catch?” he asked. “You’re going to want something in return, aren’t you? What?”

“Take me off this accursed rock,” I said. “I am sick of Crete, I’m sick of my father, and I don’t want to have to put up with whatever punishment he might give me for helping you.”

“Well, you are a princess, and I suppose you would make a fine bride for me.”

My heart leapt at those words, and I felt myself blushing. Perhaps I should have known better. “Really? You would marry me?”

“If you help me to slay the Minotaur, then yes, I will marry you.”

“Deal.”

Theseus remained in my thoughts from that point onward. When I closed my eyes, I saw his face, and I imagined the feel of his skin. I’d never seen a man like him before, and oh, if I married him… would I be happy? Happier than I was here, at least? He seemed like the kind of man that Phaedra and I dreamed we would marry as young girls — strong, brave, handsome, and willing to put himself on the line for the sake of his people. All such admirable qualities.

I returned to Theseus when the prisoners were locked into the Labyrinth’s abyssal maw. “Everyone else, stay back!” he ordered, as though he were directing troops. “I will go into the Labyrinth and kill the Minotaur. Stay here, and you will be safe.” He suddenly turned to me. “What have you brought to help me?”

I held out a humble ball of yarn. “This.”

He took it from my hand and raised an eyebrow at it, looking as though he might throw it into the dark. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Daedalus gave it to me when I first started exploring the Labyrinth.”

“Daedalus? I’ve heard of Daedalus. He is supposed to be the most brilliant architect in the world, right?”

“He built this Labyrinth, and he gave me the yarn. All you have to do is tie the end here and carry it through the maze. Then you can follow it back out.”

Theseus looked impressed. “He must be a genius to have thought of something like that!”

He may have been a genius, but I was still intelligent enough to figure it out on my own. All Daedalus had done was hand me the ball of yarn, and I immediately understood what I was meant to do with it. But I didn’t bother correcting Theseus. “Do you have a weapon?”

“No,” said Theseus. “I’m not worried. I’ll kill the beast with my bare hands.”

I blinked at him, dumbfounded. I suppose if anyone could do it, he could; he was almost as musclebound as the bull-man. But still. Only an extremely impressive hero with divine lineage could hope to kill a monster bare-handed, that or a total idiot. “You are going to die.”

“Nonsense!” He smiled. “Haven’t died yet! And I have faced many deadly trials before.”

I smiled back. “I’m sure you have, but, well, it’s your funeral.”

“Do you want this monster dead, or not?” he demanded.

“Woah, I wasn’t being serious, I…” To be asked that question point-blank was unsettling. It threw my whole dilemma into focus. But seeing the terrified faces of the other tributes huddled naked in the entrance to the Labyrinth gave me my answer. “Yes.”

“I shall go then.” He tied the yarn to the gate and strode with it into the dark. I admired his confidence, even if the odds were against him. He turned the first corner, and was gone. I stared into the darkness for a moment.

One of the girls gripped the hem of my dress. “Please,” she whispered. “Please help us, my lady. We did nothing to be here. If he dies, will you help us escape?”

I didn’t look at her. I kept staring into the Labyrinth’s depths. “I will do what I can,” I said slowly. Then I followed Theseus. I heard her gasp behind me, as if her last hope had just walked away.

I overtook Theseus quickly. He was moving slowly, blindly hitting walls and getting disoriented by the serpentine turns. He jumped when he heard me behind him, turned on his heel and braced for attack, staring me down with the intensity of a bull about to charge. Then he softened. “Oh. It’s you. What are you doing here? I don’t need your help.”

“I know this place better than you do,” I said matter-of-factly.

He huffed in response. “Get back to the entrance. The Minotaur could arrive at any moment.”

I walked ahead of him. “I know. Every time I explore the Labyrinth, I risk death.”

“Why would you explore this place?” he asked, following me. “What could it possibly offer a girl like you?”

“Peace. Solitude. Time away from my father.”

“This Labyrinth is maddening!” His growing frustration echoed off the walls. “How are you not mad? Perhaps you are mad, with the things you say.”

“I’ve never considered that I might be mad.”

“Only if you were mad would you willingly choose to be in this dark prison.”

“You willingly chose to be here.”

He had no response. We walked in silence for a while, dragging the thread behind us. It was almost impossible to see the thread in the dark. I could tell that Theseus was starting to get agitated. The twining paths of the Labyrinth must be making him feel like we were making no progress. The grim silence and high stone walls made us feel completely cut off from the outside world, like there was no world at all beyond the Labyrinth. “Do you think this is what Hades is like?” he asked. “A deep cavern, under the earth, where there is nothing to do but walk endlessly?”

I couldn’t tell whether that was a sincere philosophical question, or whether he was asking indignantly. “I don’t know. The Fields of Asphodel are supposed to be open, and full of the white flowers… Not quite like this.”

“It makes no difference to me anyway. I will assuredly go to Elysium when I die, and it is the most agreeable part of Hades.”

If Hades is exactly like this, I thought, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. There are worse things than this.

Eventually, we passed the point where I usually turned back. I had never gotten this close to the center before. And then we heard it — the unmistakable sound of hooves. Cold terror gripped me. I did not expect to feel this afraid, especially not of my own brother, but the reality of the situation sank in. We were in a Labyrinth with a flesh-eating monster, and the exit was too far away for any chance of escape. Why did I follow him? Why did I think that was a good idea?

“Our quarry is upon us! You should leave,” said Theseus sternly. “The monster eats the maidens first, so I hear.”

The instinct to run left me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Suit yourself, but you will not be able to fight against the Minotaur.”

“You will protect me, will you?” Being with him felt safe, like he was a bodyguard.

“I will.” As soon as he said that, my fear was banished, and my confidence restored.

A few more turns, and we reached the center of the Labyrinth, a place I figured I’d never enter. In the gloom, I couldn’t actually see much, but I was able to see the hulking shape of my brother with his huge bull’s head and wicked-looking horns.

“There is the beast!” A light suddenly blazed to life beside me, and I cringed away from its brightness. It was a torch.

“Did you have that the whole time?”

“I was saving it!” He handed me the torch and the end of the yarn, and I took them, nonplussed. I saw the floor of the Labyrinth’s center, full of human bones. “Wait there, I will make swift work of this!” Theseus took a fighting stance, muscles tensed.

Asterion looked at me. I felt blind panic grip me, but he did not attack me. Perhaps he recognized me. He must have been familiar with my presence and voice by now, enough to know I wasn’t a threat. I stared into his black bull eyes. They were soft, not fiery and enraged. This was my brother. “Asterion… I’m so sorry, Asterion.”

“What are you doing? Get back!”

Theseus’ yell attracted Asterion’s attention. He roared and rushed forward with his powerful legs, horns lowered and ready to gore him to death. Theseus grabbed Asterion’s horns and hurled himself up onto the Minotaur’s back, holding him in a chokehold with both arms. “I shall send you to the pit of Tartarus, fiend!” Asterion thrashed and bucked and slammed Theseus against the wall, but soon enough, it was over. Theseus had strangled the Minotaur. Asterion lay dead.

Theseus picked himself up, looking exhausted but triumphant. “Victory! No Athenians will die today, or ever! This monster will never claim another human life!” He grinned at me. “See, I told you I could do it with my bare hands!”

I stared at the mass of Asterion’s body. “I killed my brother…”

“Nonsense!” Theseus took the torch back from me. The bones crunched under his feet as he walked. “It is hardly your fault that you are the sister of a beast. We have done a good and heroic thing today. Look, look at the bones! Why are you crying, Ariadne?”

I suddenly looked at him instead of the Minotaur’s corpse. I don’t think he’d said my name before. Even in the dim torchlight, he still looked bright, with clear eyes and golden hair and bronze skin slick with sweat. “I couldn’t have done this without you, Ariadne.” He smiled at me. “Thank you. Together we have saved many lives.”

He kissed me, and the torch went out.

The following events were a blur. After we had successfully followed the thread out of the Labyrinth, Theseus triumphantly announced to my father that the Minotaur was dead, and demanded me and my sister as prizes. My father was furious — of course he was. He had essentially just lost all of his children, and all because one had died in Athens before I was old enough to remember. I, however, was elated, and so was Phaedra. Phaedra was as eager to leave Crete as I was, and she seemed just as taken with Theseus’ handsomeness. She didn’t seem distressed that Asterion was dead, and why would she? The grateful Athenians went back to their ship, many of them sobbing with relief. I didn’t look at my father as I followed Theseus to the ship. I never wanted to look at him again. We passed by Talos, and I left Knossos and the Labyrinth behind me.

Crete faded into the horizon, and before me was sunshine and new possibilities. Theseus glowed with triumph and pride, smiling at me and kissing me when he announced to the other Athenians that he would marry me, and that I would become their queen. They fell to their knees and showered me and Theseus with gratitude for having saved their lives. I felt almost as if I were a goddess. Wine flowed freely in celebration, and I took more joy in it than I had in a long time.

It did not last long. Soon after the first few hours I was, if possible, even more miserable on Theseus’ ship than I had been in Knossos. I quickly became tired of his boasts about how he had strangled the beast, without crediting me at all, or so much as mentioning the ball of yarn, even though the other Athenians had seen me give it to him and seen me follow him into the Labyrinth. Every time he told the story, it got further from the truth, and emphasized his own heroism over mine. Is this how it would be when I was queen? No matter what I did, I’d be shunted to the side? Then, Theseus seemed to be doting on Phaedra. She usually attracted more attention. She was prettier than me. She had blond hair that shined in the sunlight and the bright eyes of our mother Pasiphae, the daughter of Helios. My hair and eyes were dark, like the Labyrinth.

I left the celebration, finding a quiet spot on deck. I sat by the edge of the ship, staring out into the open waves and trying not to think about Asterion, but the image of him lying dead in the torchlight haunted me. “Are you okay, Ariadne?” Phaedra asked me. “What is wrong? We are finally out of there, all thanks to you! No more Minotaur, no more tributes having to die, no more Father… We will have a new life in Athens.” I stayed silent. “You look despondent. Something’s wrong.”

I looked up into her eyes. “It’s like you said, Phaedra. Asterion is dead.”

“Do you… mourn him?”

“He was our brother, and I killed him!”

“Theseus killed him! You did nothing!” I knew that she meant to reassure me, but it touched a raw nerve.

“He would not have if I hadn’t led him straight to the center of the Labyrinth!”

“Ariadne…” Phaedra put her hand on my shoulder. “You… you’re… you’ll be okay. You are just a little bit disoriented.” She left me alone.

I looked at the Athenians, who laughed and danced and celebrated their lives. I didn’t feel like dancing. I already missed the Labyrinth. My guilt drew my thoughts back to Knossos. I wanted to hide in the Labyrinth forever, like Asterion had, or else throw myself into the sea for my guilt. The brightness of the waves was glaring compared to the soothing darkness of the Labyrinth.

Theseus approached me from behind. He had been ignoring me until now, maybe because I was so sorrowful. I could feel that he was angry at me, and my skin crawled, but I didn’t turn. “What cause do you have to weep, Ariadne? You should be happy!” he said.

“I am sorry, Theseus. Part of me still mourns for my brother.”

“What is the matter with you? All you have done is sit and stare at the water! If you loved that Labyrinth so much, perhaps you should have stayed there! Now please, put this sorrow behind you. You have no cause for it.” He sighed, softening. “When we arrive in Athens, we shall marry, and there will be much rejoicing.”

“Leave me alone.” The bitterness in my voice rang louder than I’d intended.

He scowled at me.“You are joyless, passionless, and thankless,” he spat, and stalked off. The word useless went unsaid; I could tell he was reconsidering making me his wife.

“Theseus, wait!” I yelled, suddenly sounding desperate.

I stood up, and he turned back to look at me, and I felt as if I were naked under his gaze and that of the others on the ship, which had all quieted and turned in my direction. His eyes were cold, and his nostrils flared just as Asterion’s had. “What, Ariadne? You have shown me neither gratitude nor pleasure, you have not acted like a princess. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Shamed, I said nothing. I sat back down. Then, as he was about to turn away again, I suddenly found my voice. “Why are you being cruel?”

“I am not being cruel. You are being difficult.”

By the time we reached Naxos, I was feeling heartbroken as well as grief-stricken. Theseus was giving me the silent treatment. I think he expected me to come running to him begging for forgiveness. We stopped on the island to rest, primarily because Theseus had dreamt that he would stop here during his homecoming.

I took off my sandals and walked along the edge of the surf to clear my thoughts. The beach was bright and wide and open, the exact opposite of the Labyrinth. Even in the sand, I felt his heavy footsteps approaching behind me. “Ariadne, we need to talk.”

I continued to face away from him. “What?”

“Ariadne, I find your attitude disagreeable.”

I turned on my heel to face him, planting myself in the sand. “I’ve found your attitude disagreeable! All you have done since we left Crete is boast about your heroics, and you’ve barely given me any credit—”

“Credit! You want credit for having slain it, when all you have done is cry over the hideous thing?”

The disdain in his voice stung me like arrows. “You don’t care at all for me or my feelings, do you?”

“If you were to become my queen, I would expect better behavior from you.” He sounded like he was lecturing a child.

“Well… I don’t want to be your queen! You are almost as bad as my father!”

“Good. I have already decided to take your sister Phaedra as my bride instead.” I didn’t reply. “You may still return with us to Athens, but we will have to make other arrangements for you.”

Forget Athens. I didn’t want Theseus to do anything for me. “Oh, forgive me for having been such a disappointment to you! Go ahead, go back to Athens and marry my sister! By Zeus! I’ve had enough of you!”

And I ran. I turned away from Theseus and ran down the beach until my legs gave out, falling in the sand to sulk and wonder where it all went wrong. I regretted having ever met Theseus, or helped him to kill my brother. If I could undo it all, I would. No. Then innocent people would have died. Oh, gods, why am I so wretched?

And then, as I was just beginning to calm down, I saw that the ship was sailing away over the waves. I was stranded on the island. Despair and panic crashed down upon me. Oh gods, gods, why? Had I somehow been forgotten about, or left behind on purpose? Had Theseus doomed me to die? “CURSE you, Theseus!” I screamed at the distant ship. I watched it go until it disappeared over the horizon. I could do nothing but hopelessly stare at the wine-dark sea as the sun set.

“Excuse me, why are you crying?”

I had been sitting with my head in my arms, weeping despondently, and I was startled by the sudden voice, soft though it was. I was certain the island was deserted, but now, a young man stood before me. He was silhouetted against the sky, the sun shining behind his head like a halo. Where had he come from? I hadn’t heard him come. It was though he’d simply stepped out of the sea.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice sounded cracked from crying. “I thought I was alone.”

“May I sit with you?” the man asked. “You look like you could use a drink, something to soothe you, hm?”

“Yes… yes, thank you.”

He sat down in the sand next to me, languidly stretching his legs out in front of him like he was sitting on the plushest couch. With the sunlight on him, I could see him properly — he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life. He easily put Theseus to shame. His eyes were leafy green, warm and kind. He was lithe, and his skin looked as pale and smooth as a girl’s, and his lips looked so soft. I couldn’t place the color of his hair — it seemed to be dark brown, but it could have been as dark as the Styx, and when the sun caught it, it looked honey-gold. It fell over his shoulders in loose curls. He wore nothing but a fine purple cloak draped over one shoulder, a golden leopard skin around his waist, and a wreath of ivy on his head. His cheeks were flushed, and he had a bright, easy smile. He was so lovely, so breathtaking, it almost hurt to look at him. With delicate hands, he offered me a kylix brimming with wine. “Please, tell me what has made you so upset.”

I blinked at the kylix, and the leopard skin, and the ivy in his hair. “Are you… a Bacchant?” I’d heard of them. They worshipped a mad and savage god with drunken orgies in the woods, and were said to be able to rip animals or even people limb-from-limb in their frenzy. Not unlike Asterion, I suppose.

He flashed a devious smile. “Maaaaybe.”

I took the kylix and drank deeply. The wine was sweet, and somehow, I felt immediately calmer. Slowly, amid my lingering sobs, I told the story — about Asterion, and my father, and the tributes, how I’d decided to help Theseus, how we’d found our way through the Labyrinth, how Theseus had killed Asterion, how Theseus had been so heartless, and how he had apparently left me to die on a deserted island. By the time I finished talking, the kylix was empty.

“How do you feel now?” he asked me.

“Better… I think. But I’m still devastated, and… guilty. My brother’s death… it was really my fault, and I don’t know if I did the right thing or not. Do you think it’s wrong for me to grieve for my brother? I mean… he was a monster…”

“No. I don’t think it’s wrong. It is perfectly understandable that you would mourn your brother.”

“If I had let the Athenians die, I would have mourned for them, too.” I sighed.

“Yes. There must be blood; one sacrifice was traded for another, Asterion, the worthy bull. It is okay to grieve, for as long as you need to, but do not wallow in despair.”

“I tend to do that. I don’t remember the last time I was completely happy. I thought Theseus would make me happy, but… then… I wish I had my Labyrinth back! It was at least soothing down there.”

“It pains me to see people sad,” he said. He handed me the kylix again, and it was once again full of wine. I hadn’t seen him fill it. “Pleasure is a state of mind. The best way to rid yourself of sadness is to focus on things that make you happy. There is always something to take pleasure in! Like the beauty of the sunset, or the sound of the lapping waves. Or wine!”

“Not when you are abandoned to die, with no way off the island,” I said. “How did you get here, anyway? I don’t see a boat.”

“I have my ways,” he said cryptically, with that same mischievous smile. That smile and the teasing sparkle in his eyes were so adorable. His beauty is something to take pleasure in, I suddenly thought, and his company, and kindness…

I took another draught of the wine. “Why are the gods so cruel to me?” I murmured, more to myself than to him.

“The gods are not cruel to you.” He stated it with complete confidence, as though it were an undeniable fact, not as though he were trying to convince me.

“It certainly seems that way,” I replied.

“Life can often seem that way, but then, it gets better, and you will find that the gods favor you,” he said.

“Well… I suppose that must be true, if handsome strangers pop out of nowhere to comfort women.”

He beamed. “Exactly!” He took the kylix back from me, threw his head back, and drained about half of it in one gulp. “You know, I was stranded on a desert island like this one once.”

“Wait, what? You were?”

“Yes! It was a long time ago now, but I was just as pretty back then, and just as fond of wearing purple. Purple is the best color, you know.” He winked. “Anyway, so I was lying asleep on a beach and—” he took another swig of the wine, “a pirate ship rows by…”

“Are you drunk?”

“Always, darling!” That roguish grin of his was really starting to win me over. “Anyway, the pirates saw me sleeping on the beach, saw how pretty I was and saw my fine purple robes, and thought I was a prince. Well. They weren’t wrong… I technically am a prince of Thebes, on my mother’s side.” He laughed like he had just told the most hilarious joke and had another sip of the wine. The amount of wine in the kylix never seemed to get any lower.

“Does that mean… you’re a bastard?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yes, yes it does! I’m such a bastard. I mean… I was born out of wedlock. And my father’s wife, oooh, she hates me.” Another sip of the wine. “Never get on her bad side if you can help it.” He pointed at me as if this was the most important information I could ever learn, and I laughed. “She can’t touch me now, but she drove me mad when I was younger. Literally. Anyway, so these pirates kidnapped me. Thought I’d make a damn cute catamite, and I certainly would, but that’s beside the point. You don’t and kidnap boys no matter how pretty they are. I tried to tell my dad that, but it didn’t go over well.” Another sip of the wine.

“You are slender, but I bet you could take Theseus in a drinking contest.”

“Oh, I could take aaaaaanyone in a drinking contest! Never lost one yet!” His face was glowing, not just with blush from the wine but also with infectious joy. I slowly forgot about my misfortunes as I listened to his story. “So they tried to tie me to the ship’s mast, but found they couldn’t do it. I only tolerate bondage on my own terms. And then…” There was suddenly a mad gleam in his green eyes. “I covered their ship in grapevines, and ivy, and flowers, and the delicious smell of wine. I can’t imagine why such delightful things frightened them so. But I thought I’d scare them more, see, because it was funny. So I turned into a lion! And they flung themselves overboard in fear!” He laughed, and his laugh sounded as musical as flutes on a clear morning, but it had a maddened edge to it. “But I pitied them, y’know?” he continued. “Just as you pity your brother. So I changed them into dolphins. So they wouldn’t drown.”

“You changed… you turned into… did… did your god give you those powers? Or… are you just… really… drunk?” But I knew. I think that intuitively, I knew the whole time.

“Easy,” he said, once again raising the bottomless kylix to his lips with that knowing smile. “I’m really drunk.”

At this, I burst out laughing, and my laugh sounded almost unfamiliar to my own ears. I felt light, carefree, replenished. And then it sank in, that I was speaking to a god. I hastily knelt, and dropped my head before him, although he was still sitting next to me. “Lord Dionysus! Son of Zeus! Lord, lord, thank you for coming to me, for talking to me, for relieving me of my pain, for freeing me from my suffering…”

“You’re welcome, Ariadne.” He lifted my face, so that I was staring up into his eyes, which were now vivid reddish-purple, the color of ripe grapes. A richly purple aura surrounded him, proclaiming his divinity. In his hand was his staff, a fennel stalk topped with a pinecone that dripped with honey, twined with ivy and purple ribbons. And he had horns, bull’s horns just like my brother’s, magnificent and deadly sharp. They curved up above his brow, as much his crown as the wreath of ivy in his hair. The imposing horns created a striking contrast with his delicate features, but they looked right, somehow. Like this was how he was supposed to look.

I didn’t know what to say. My mind had gone suddenly blank. “I’ve never known great Dionysus to have horns,” I blurted.

“Not many get to see them,” he said, his voice suddenly slow and solemn. “Ariadne, will you dance with me?”

Whatever I had expected him to say, it was not that. “Wh—what?”

“Dance with me!” He stood up and twirled off across the beach. His hair floated around his shoulders, the ribbons on his thyrsus arced through the air like the rainbow, and his expression was one of elation. He screamed in ecstasy, and it was an inhuman sound, like the crowing of some unearthly bird. At that, the air filled with cacophonous music — flutes, drums, cymbals, rattles, castanets.

A command echoed inside my head. No, not a command — a compulsion: DANCE! DANCE!

So I danced with the bull-horned god. “Dancing” barely even begins to describe what I was doing. I was filled with an overwhelming, indescribable feeling, like I didn’t fit in my own skin. Like I was about to be lifted out of my own shoulders! I moved like my body was doing everything it could to express this ineffable thing inside me that was so much bigger than me. I spun, I leapt, I ran, I stamped my feet in the sand, I moved wherever the feeling took me. It burned like fire. And Dionysus was all I could perceive. I screamed with both intense rapture and pure, genuine worship: “EUOI! EUOI! EUOI!”

I met his eyes, and there I saw all the raw ferocity of a bull or a great cat, as well as chaos and lust and debauchery and pure mania. All the forces strong enough to tear a person apart! I desperately thirsted for something I could not name. It was more than wine, more than flesh, more than blood. Dionysus took me in his arms, and kissed me on the lips. Passion overtook me.

Maybe I fainted in exhilaration, or maybe I was simply too drunk to remember. All I know was that I was eventually awakened by the sunrise and the sound of lapping waves. And Dionysus… was still there. He hadn’t disappeared into the night, he was still sleeping there in the sand, looking blissful and alluring in his sleep. His tousled curls tumbled over the sand, his soft hand was upturned beside his head, and his lips were parted invitingly. He lay on his purple cloak, and was using the leopard pelt like a blanket, though it was only carelessly draped over his waist.

“Lord… thank you for not leaving me,” I whispered.

His long eyelashes fluttered, and then his eyes opened, once again appearing vine-green. “Mmmm… sleep well?”

“Yes.” I desperately wanted to kiss him, and the seductive look in his eyes tempted me. “May I… touch you?”

“Darling, you may touch me anywhere you like,” he purred. Ravenously, I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressed my chest to his, and our lips met. He still tasted like wine, and I drank him in the way I would wine. We lay there for a moment, entangled in each other’s arms like grape and ivy vines, idly caressing each other’s skin and hair.

“M’lord…” I whispered, “perhaps it might be impertinent to ask, but… what am I going to do now? I can’t go home. I don’t really want to go to Athens. And I still have no way off this island.”

“Why, Ariadne,” he gave me a teasing smile. “If I may be so bold, I hoped you would join me! In fact… I hope you might marry me.”

I was so taken aback by this that I immediately sat up. “You… you’re serious? Marry you?” I knew that gods frequently took mortal lovers, but this was unimaginable. “Actually marry you?”

“Yes, Ariadne. I love you.” He said it with the same sweetness and sincerity that he initially approached me with. Theseus had said no such thing. “You are not destined to become queen of Athens, but perhaps you might be my queen, if you are willing.”

I burst into tears, but they weren’t tears of sadness this time. They were tears of overwhelm, the same kind of overflowing sensation that I’d felt while dancing. “You love me?”

“I am absolutely besotted, my darling! I have had many lovers, but I had not fallen so madly in love since Ampelos, my first love, my darling vine.” A grapevine appeared between his fingers and twined up his arm. “Perhaps something in me is inclined towards mortals over gods, which is understandable, given my parentage. But, that should be no problem. I will bring you to Olympus, and love you for all of time.”

“How… why me?” I sputtered. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“Ariadne, you are letting your human mind interfere, and convince you that you are not worthy to be in my presence. Did you feel unworthy last night, while we were dancing?”

“No… I felt… there was no such thing.”

“Ariadne, do you love me?”

I struggled to find any word that could properly describe how I felt about him. “You are… utterly intoxicating.”

He giggled like a shy maiden. “I get that a lot. And, if you could be worthy of having me as a husband, would you have me?”

Yes. My body and soul ached and burned with wanting. And he made me extraordinarily happy! I’d never dared to believe a god would love me enough to marry me, but that disbelief was only getting in my way.

He looked me dead in the eyes. I nearly flinched away from the intensity of his gaze, and the shimmering madness behind it. “You are more than you realize, Ariadne, guide in the dark, guardian of the gates of initiation. You are intelligent and witty and brave, and you fear no darkness or madness or savagery, do you? You faced them all in the Labyrinth. You would make an excellent addition to my thiasus, even if you decide not to marry me. Ariadne, the most holy and pure, Lady of the Labyrinth.” His words reverberated deep in the labyrinthine pathways of my own mind and soul, like he had revealed an ancient truth that I had known once, but forgotten.

“The Labyrinth is a holy place, of contemplation and transformation. Isn’t it? Not of death.”

He smiled that gorgeous, winning smile again. “Yes! You understand! And even where there is death, it is not absolute.” His eyes shone with feverish excitement. “Oh, I have so much to teach you!”

“Lord Dionysus, I would be honored beyond imagining if I were to become your wife.”

“So is that a yes? You will marry me?”

Something about him felt right in a way that I could not put words to, like the Fates had done all they could to bring me to this moment. This god loved me, more than the other gods love their conquests, more than I could comprehend. “Yes! I will marry you!”

At that, a cool wind blew across the island, swirling his dark hair around his face and making all the vegetation appear to shimmer. It was like the island itself was affirming my decision. “Then, Ariadne, we shall rule the revel together! In honor of our engagement…” A magnificent diadem appeared in his hands, sparkling with seven gemstones like stars. He placed it on my head, and gave me a warm kiss on my lips. “Ariadne, my bride, may you never thirst. May your lusts never go unsatisfied. May your heart always be light and joyful.”

“Thank you. Thank you, m’lord!”

“You can stop calling me that. If we are to be married, you can simply call me by my name. Or, call me what pleases you. Now, come with me!” He stood, offering me his hand. “Unless you would rather spend some more alone time together, I should finally take you off this island! I will take you home to Nysa, or perhaps to Arcadia, and we will have to throw the most spectacular bacchanal in celebration of our marriage!”

“How will we travel?”

He led me down the beach like a child eager to show something to their parent, and gestured toward a golden chariot drawn by two gigantic panthers. The chariot itself was decorated in images of swirling grapevines and serpents and satyrs making love, and the cats’ pelts gleamed. “Oh, gods… I mean… wow. Does it move over water?”

“It flies, silly!” He stood inside it and beckoned to me. “These cats can run on the wind. Hermes gave them to me.”

I climbed into the chariot and held on for dear life as the panthers bounded into the air with great strides. Soon the chariot was blazing through the bright air, and Naxos was far behind us. Dionysus laughed into the wind, which blew his long hair back from his face. As radiant as he was, I was more than a little terrified of speeding through the air high above the sea in a chariot, and felt like I would fall off at any second, although not even my diadem was dislodged from my head.

“You look terror-stricken, Ariadne. Would you like me to tell you another amusing story? That seems to have cheered you up the last time!”

“That depends on whether you can drive a chariot and get incredibly drunk at the same time.”

He laughed uproariously. “Oh, I love you so much! I can do anything and get incredibly drunk, if you were wondering. So, anyway, the story… Mortals have mixed opinions of me. Most love my parties and stories and love my wine, but they seem a bit put off by the madness and violence and lust it brings out in them… Not sure why, it’s not as though all of that wasn’t there to begin with… Mortal kings do not like this, and some of them can be quite unkind to my worshippers, testing the limits of my mercy… but one of them allowed my mentor, Silenus, to sleep in his garden. So kind of him! So of course I offered him any reward he might wish for, and… he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold.”

“Ooh. Let me guess, it backfired?”

“Oh, did it backfire! His food turned to gold and he nearly starved, and even his daughter turned to gold! Hardly my fault, of course. I promised to give him what he asked for, and I did, he just happened to be an idiot. He had the chance to wish for anything in the world, and he chose something as shallow and pointless as gold. Not to mention, he clearly had never heard of inflation, which makes me worry about his kingdom’s economy. Oh, well. He learned, and I changed everything back. I always let humans indulge themselves, but I am not a god of excess. Either they are satisfied by their pleasures, or they learn their lesson fast. The moral of the story: Know your tolerance. Also, if you want to turn things to gold, you have to do it the hard way. Hermes and I were just discussing how to turn lead to gold, in fact…”

His soothing voice and hilarious tales put me at ease, until we were traveling over beautiful mountains and verdant valleys. I had never seen mainland Greece, but the view of it from the flying chariot was incredible. I was no longer afraid of falling. As we flew, I felt as if the wind stripped me of the cares and sorrows of my former life. Dionysus had set me free. I smiled at him, and he smiled at me as the chariot descended into the lush, hidden valley where a throng of Maenads and satyrs waited to welcome home their lord and his queen.

Dionysus helped me out of the chariot, and I stood before the thiasus, their maddened eyes all turned upon me. “I am the bride of Dionysus,” I proclaimed. “I am Ariadne of the Labyrinth.”

[threeeyesslitthroat]

Nico Di Angelo will be the best “Disney’s first Gay Character” that Disney will ever own.

For context, when Diseny bought Fox, they bought the rights to adapt Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief YA novel and subsequent sequels, now known as the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, a story featuring Greek mythology in the modern day. A TV adaptation of the first book, to be featured on Disney+ had been announced last year, with the series author, Rick Riordan himself working on it. Most likely The first season that is meant to be based on the first book, will do well enough that Disney will greenlight the whole series being adapted.

Now, getting to what I’m saying, The series has quite a lot of characters, with Percy Jackson as the protagonist, but with his best friends Grover Underwood and Annabeth Chase(his other best friend and subsequent love interest) accompanying him on every adventure across the series. Plenty of side characters, but the one I want to focus on is Nico di Angelo.

(fanart done by Viria)

Nico di Angelo is introduced in the third book of the series, The Titan’s Curse, and has major appearances and storylines in the final two books and the sequel series, The Heroes of Olympus series (appearing in four out of the five books and having his own pov chapters in the final book) he also appears in The Trials of Apollo, a later series and the author has announced that he will have his own book featuring himself and his boyfriend.

That’s right. Boyfriend. 

he’s gay. He is a major character that’s gay.

So now that all the context has been explained. let me break it down as to why i believe Nico di Angelo will be the greatest first gay character Disney will ever have in their catalogue.

In PJO(percy jackson and the olympians) Nico is introduced as a twelve year old orphan with his older sister in the third book of the series. For the most part, he doesn’t do much in the story, but he is essentially, the ending. His sister dies on the quest she went on with the protagonist Percy Jackson and he reveals his parentage and runs away, disappearing for close to a year, where the next novel Battle of the Labyrinth picks up.

In this, he is revealed to be growing into his powers(he is the son of hades, god of the underworlds, and thus has powers over the dead and darkness) and has become rather sketchy, raging and wanting revenge against Percy Jackson for failing to protect his older sister. In fact, it is a bit of a concern that he may be on the dark side, so to speak. However, he is nowhere near that far gone, it turns out that he isn’t the evil part of the prophecy, and becomes Percy Jackson’s ally by the end of the novel, working to prepare him for the final battle in the next and final novel of the series, The Battle of Olympus.

In this, he fights on the side of the good guys throughout the novel, but initially uses Percy Jackson and betrays him (only a little bit)for the sake of getting some information about his past. Other than that, he arrives and fights the forces of evil to help save the day. At fourteen, he is declared a hero along with the other characters.

important fact: throughout this whole synopsis, Nico di Angelo is never once revealed to be gay. Looking back and rereading reveals some subtext of Nico’s initial crush for Percy. but its on the downlow, to be honest)  It is only in the sequel series, Heroes of Olympus, that Nico is revealed to be gay at all, specifically in the fourth novel and this is expanded on in the fifth, and then has his happy ending  with his boyfriend later.

So what I’m getting at here, is that Disney is going to adapt the the PJO series, most likely in its entirety, and Nico will be a major character in it. And they would definitely market the shit out of the fact that Nico is gay, even if they never depict him as such. in fact, they don’t even have to. The subtext of Nico’s crush of Percy can be removed or altered enough to not even suggest it, and his future boyfriend is only revealed very briefly in the final book in a separate scene where they don’t even meet, so they don’t even have the chance of getting accused of baiting.

Frankly, Disney would totally take advantage of having a canonically gay character and not having to depict him as gay at all. That’s why i say Nico di Angelo will be the greatest First gay character Disney will ever own

[dionysia-ta-astika]

The Lady of the Labyrinth

For Dionysus.

Everything was lost. My brother was dead. My love was gone.

I was also stranded on a deserted island. I stared out at the vast, empty expanse of the sea. The sunlight on the waves winked at me with a thousand eyes, as though diamonds had been scattered across the surface of the water. Anyone would find this beach tranquil, I suppose, if they were here under different circumstances than mine.

My brother’s name was Asterion.

Most people didn’t know his name, or even that he had one. To most people, he was the Minotaur, a horrible monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull that eats people. Asterion was a monster, and he did eat people.

Beneath my father’s shining palace, he prowled the twists and turns of the Labyrinth that my father’s genius architect built. The Labyrinth was mine, once. Daedalus made it for me as a dancing path, when I was a little girl. But now it is a dark, disorienting maze of seemingly endless passageways, and I was still the only person who knew how to navigate it. When I could have time alone, I would go to the Labyrinth. I felt my way through its pitch-black corridors, memorizing the nicks and cracks in the rough stone, trying to calm my thoughts. I spoke to Asterion through the walls: “You have never seen the sun,” I said to him. “Do you ever wonder what it’s like in the outside world? Or do you like it down here?” I received no answer from the surrounding darkness. If I did hear something — a snort, or hooves on stone, I would have to run as fast as I could away from the sound. Even I couldn’t go too near Asterion — I wouldn’t want to run the risk that he might attack me.

 “Why do you go down there?” My sister, Phaedra, asked me. “What could possibly be appealing about that dark, dismal place?”

“I like it down there,” I said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as I could. “It is peaceful. And I don’t mind the dark.”

She looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted bull’s horns myself. “You know you risk your life every time you enter the Labyrinth, right?”

“He’s our brother,” I said. I don’t know what I intended to explain by saying that. I felt like I had a responsibility to him that extended beyond simply being his sister. I tried to see a man in him, although he sniffed and bellowed and charged like a bull. He could gore me to death like a bull, but I did not fear him. “I can’t say I love him, but I feel something.”

“You shouldn’t feel any sympathy for him. He’s a freak of nature. The gods cursed us with him for our father’s arrogance. He is a shame upon our kingdom.”

She was right, of course. The gods gifted us a beautiful white bull that we were meant to sacrifice to Poseidon, but my father decided to keep it instead. And Poseidon cursed us… Asterion is the unholy offspring of my mother and the bull. And it gets worse. Every seven years, seven young men and seven young women from the city of Athens were brought to the Labyrinth to be fed to my brother. This was because my other brother, whom I was too young to remember, died while in Athens. Athens pays for this slight with the lives of other young people.

I suppose it’s no different than war, or at least, that’s what my father says. All cities send their youths to die for the polis. How was this any different? I could hardly bear the prisoners’ wails of desperation or their pleas for me to help them. When I heard they were coming, I begged my father to set them free, asserting that it was wrong to sacrifice humans to anything. If the gods had cast Tantalus into Tartarus for feeding them his son, then why should we knowingly feed humans to a monster? He laughed at me and asked why I had no pride in my family.  

I hated the thought of the fourteen young people being fed to him, but I also couldn’t imagine killing my own brother, even if he was a monster.

I was too young to remember the last time the prisoners came to the Labyrinth. They had come, and my brother had gorged himself on their flesh, and I was none the wiser. This time, I knew, and the horror of it struck me silent as the tributes were paraded through the city like animal sacrifices to the gods, so that we could all see those who were doomed to die. I could hardly bear to look at them. Some of those girls were barely older than me. It felt wrong to sit by and watch as they were brought to the Labyrinth. But what could I do to save their lives? Supplicating my father would not work, and the only other option was helping them to escape, somehow. How could I do that?

In spite of myself, I caught sight of one of the young men. He was handsome, and he had a defiant, blazing look in his eye. He looked straight at my father on his throne. “I am Theseus of Athens!” he declared. “I have come to slay your monstrous son!”

My father had laughed at him, but he consumed my thoughts. That may be because he was absolutely gorgeous, but it was also because if he succeeded at killing Asterion, he would solve all my problems. I wouldn’t have to take my own brother’s life, but he would devour no more innocent lives. And, if this youth survived, he might take me away with him. I knew the Labyrinth better than anyone. Even if he did survive, he could never make it in and out without my help.

Forgive me, Asterion.

The prisoners were held in two dank cells near the entrance to the Labyrinth.  The women were kept in one, and the men were kept in the other. Many of the prisoners were crying — not just the women, but the men, too. In my familiarity with the Labyrinth and its inhabitant, I had forgotten just how terrifying both would be to anyone else. The Labyrinth’s darkness and maddening complexity would intimidate anyone, and the prospect of being eaten by a monster within its depths was horrific.

Only Theseus seemed calm. His boldness in front of my father hadn’t been an act. His jaw was set, and he still had raw determination in his steely eyes. He was really going to do it, wasn’t he? He actually meant to kill Asterion. He shone like gold in the gloom of the dungeon — he could have been Apollo. If our circumstances were different, I might have wanted to stroke his chest. “Who are you?” he demanded when I approached the cell, as though I were the one behind bars, and had requested an audience with him.

“I am Ariadne,” I said, “daughter of Minos, princess of Crete.”

“I am Theseus, son of Aegeus, prince of Athens,” he returned.

Prince of Athens. That explained his noble bearing and proud mien, not to mention his handsome features… and yet… “There is no way the King of Athens would have sent his own son to be fed to the Minotaur,” I said. “Why are you really here?”

“I said, didn’t I? I’m here to slay the Minotaur. I volunteered as tribute.” He smirked. “I promised my father that I would return alive. No more of our people will be sacrificed to the monster!”

“You speak with a lot of confidence for someone who is currently in a prison cell,” I said. “What are you going to do, Theseus? Do you have a plan?”

“Of course I have a plan!” he said, a little defensively. “I am going to break out of this cell. And then I will conquer the Labyrinth—”

“How? You’ll be dead of starvation before you even reach the Minotaur, assuming he doesn’t find you first.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you taunting me?”

I leaned forward, looking directly into his eyes. “No. I was actually going to offer to help you. I know the Labyrinth. I go into it all the time.”

“No, you don’t. You’re trying to get me to sleep with you. Or trying to deceive me on behalf of Minos.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t find anything to say in response to that. For a moment I just stared at him. Was he always this self-assured, even in the worst of circumstances? If he wanted to sleep with me, I certainly wouldn’t complain, but why would he assume that I would deceive him? Well, perhaps it was his right to be suspicious, in a strange land where he was kept as a prisoner. “I… no,” I finally replied. “I’m being serious. I’m here to help you.”

“Why, then?”

“I think it is very noble of you to want to save the other Athenians, and I agree that no more innocent lives should be lost.”

He smiled slightly, but still looked suspicious. “You have no loyalty to your father?”

“My father is cruel and selfish. Why else do you think my mother gave birth to a monster, anyway?”

“The monster is your brother? What was his father, a bull?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to have stunned him into silence. I felt some satisfaction at that. “Listen to me. Without my help, you will not get through the Labyrinth. If you want to kill the Minotaur, you need me.”

“What’s the catch?” he asked. “You’re going to want something in return, aren’t you? What?”

“Take me off this accursed rock,” I said. “I am sick of Crete, I’m sick of my father, and I don’t want to have to put up with whatever punishment he might give me for helping you.”

“Well, you are a princess, and I suppose you would make a fine bride for me.”

My heart leapt at those words, and I felt myself blushing. Perhaps I should have known better. “Really? You would marry me?”

“If you help me to slay the Minotaur, then yes, I will marry you.”

“Deal.”

Theseus remained in my thoughts from that point onward. When I closed my eyes, I saw his face, and I imagined the feel of his skin. I’d never seen a man like him before, and oh, if I married him… would I be happy? Happier than I was here, at least? He seemed like the kind of man that Phaedra and I dreamed we would marry as young girls — strong, brave, handsome, and willing to put himself on the line for the sake of his people. All such admirable qualities.

I returned to Theseus when the prisoners were locked into the Labyrinth’s abyssal maw. “Everyone else, stay back!” he ordered, as though he were directing troops. “I will go into the Labyrinth and kill the Minotaur. Stay here, and you will be safe.” He suddenly turned to me. “What have you brought to help me?”

I held out a humble ball of yarn. “This.”

He took it from my hand and raised an eyebrow at it, looking as though he might throw it into the dark. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Daedalus gave it to me when I first started exploring the Labyrinth.”

“Daedalus? I’ve heard of Daedalus. He is supposed to be the most brilliant architect in the world, right?”

“He built this Labyrinth, and he gave me the yarn. All you have to do is tie the end here and carry it through the maze. Then you can follow it back out.”

Theseus looked impressed. “He must be a genius to have thought of something like that!”

He may have been a genius, but I was still intelligent enough to figure it out on my own. All Daedalus had done was hand me the ball of yarn, and I immediately understood what I was meant to do with it. But I didn’t bother correcting Theseus. “Do you have a weapon?”

“No,” said Theseus. “I’m not worried. I’ll kill the beast with my bare hands.”

I blinked at him, dumbfounded. I suppose if anyone could do it, he could; he was almost as musclebound as the bull-man. But still. Only an extremely impressive hero with divine lineage could hope to kill a monster bare-handed, that or a total idiot. “You are going to die.”

“Nonsense!” He smiled. “Haven’t died yet! And I have faced many deadly trials before.”

I smiled back. “I’m sure you have, but, well, it’s your funeral.”

“Do you want this monster dead, or not?” he demanded.

“Woah, I wasn’t being serious, I…” To be asked that question point-blank was unsettling. It threw my whole dilemma into focus. But seeing the terrified faces of the other tributes huddled naked in the entrance to the Labyrinth gave me my answer. “Yes.”

“I shall go then.” He tied the yarn to the gate and strode with it into the dark. I admired his confidence, even if the odds were against him. He turned the first corner, and was gone. I stared into the darkness for a moment.

One of the girls gripped the hem of my dress. “Please,” she whispered. “Please help us, my lady. We did nothing to be here. If he dies, will you help us escape?”

 I didn’t look at her. I kept staring into the Labyrinth’s depths. “I will do what I can,” I said slowly. Then I followed Theseus. I heard her gasp behind me, as if her last hope had just walked away.

I overtook Theseus quickly. He was moving slowly, blindly hitting walls and getting disoriented by the serpentine turns. He jumped when he heard me behind him, turned on his heel and braced for attack, staring me down with the intensity of a bull about to charge. Then he softened. “Oh. It’s you. What are you doing here? I don’t need your help.”

“I know this place better than you do,” I said matter-of-factly.

He huffed in response. “Get back to the entrance. The Minotaur could arrive at any moment.”

I walked ahead of him. “I know. Every time I explore the Labyrinth, I risk death.”

“Why would you explore this place?��� he asked, following me. “What could it possibly offer a girl like you?”

“Peace. Solitude. Time away from my father.”

“This Labyrinth is maddening!” His growing frustration echoed off the walls. “How are you not mad? Perhaps you are mad, with the things you say.”

“I’ve never considered that I might be mad.”

“Only if you were mad would you willingly choose to be in this dark prison.”

“You willingly chose to be here.”

He had no response. We walked in silence for a while, dragging the thread behind us. It was almost impossible to see the thread in the dark. I could tell that Theseus was starting to get agitated. The twining paths of the Labyrinth must be making him feel like we were making no progress. The grim silence and high stone walls made us feel completely cut off from the outside world, like there was no world at all beyond the Labyrinth. “Do you think this is what Hades is like?” he asked. “A deep cavern, under the earth, where there is nothing to do but walk endlessly?”

I couldn’t tell whether that was a sincere philosophical question, or whether he was asking indignantly. “I don’t know. The Fields of Asphodel are supposed to be open, and full of the white flowers… Not quite like this.”

“It makes no difference to me anyway. I will assuredly go to Elysium when I die, and it is the most agreeable part of Hades.”

If Hades is exactly like this, I thought, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. There are worse things than this.

Eventually, we passed the point where I usually turned back. I had never gotten this close to the center before. And then we heard it — the unmistakable sound of hooves. Cold terror gripped me. I did not expect to feel this afraid, especially not of my own brother, but the reality of the situation sank in. We were  in a Labyrinth with a flesh-eating monster, and the exit was too far away for any chance of escape.  Why did I follow him? Why did I think that was a good idea?

“Our quarry is upon us! You should leave,” said Theseus sternly. “The monster eats the maidens first, so I hear.”

The instinct to run left me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Suit yourself, but you will not be able to fight against the Minotaur.”

“You will protect me, will you?” Being with him felt safe, like he was a bodyguard.

“I will.” As soon as he said that, my fear was banished, and my confidence restored.

A few more turns, and we reached the center of the Labyrinth, a place I figured I’d never enter. In the gloom, I couldn’t actually see much, but I was able to see the hulking shape of my brother with his huge bull’s head and wicked-looking horns.

“There is the beast!” A light suddenly blazed to life beside me, and I cringed away from its brightness. It was a torch.

“Did you have that the whole time?”

“I was saving it!” He handed me the torch and the end of the yarn, and I took them, nonplussed. I saw the floor of the Labyrinth’s center, full of human bones. “Wait there, I will make swift work of this!” Theseus took a fighting stance, muscles tensed.

Asterion looked at me. I felt blind panic grip me, but he did not attack me. Perhaps he recognized me. He must have been familiar with my presence and voice by now, enough to know I wasn’t a threat. I stared into his black bull eyes. They were soft, not fiery and enraged. This was my brother. “Asterion… I’m so sorry, Asterion.”

“What are you doing? Get back!”

Theseus’ yell attracted Asterion’s attention. He roared and rushed forward with his powerful legs, horns lowered and ready to gore him to death. Theseus grabbed Asterion’s horns and hurled himself up onto the Minotaur’s back, holding him in a chokehold with both arms. “I shall send you to the pit of Tartarus, fiend!”  Asterion thrashed and bucked and slammed Theseus against the wall, but soon enough, it was over. Theseus had strangled the Minotaur. Asterion lay dead.

Theseus picked himself up, looking exhausted but triumphant. “Victory! No Athenians will die today, or ever! This monster will never claim another human life!” He grinned at me. “See, I told you I could do it with my bare hands!”

I stared at the mass of Asterion’s body. “I killed my brother…”

“Nonsense!” Theseus took the torch back from me. The bones crunched under his feet as he walked. “It is hardly your fault that you are the sister of a beast. We have done a good and heroic thing today. Look, look at the bones! Why are you crying, Ariadne?”

I suddenly looked at him instead of the Minotaur’s corpse. I don’t think he’d said my name before. Even in the dim torchlight, he still looked bright, with clear eyes and golden hair and bronze skin slick with sweat. “I couldn’t have done this without you, Ariadne.” He smiled at me. “Thank you. Together we have saved many lives.”

He kissed me, and the torch went out.

The following events were a blur. After we had successfully followed the thread out of the Labyrinth, Theseus triumphantly announced to my father that the Minotaur was dead, and demanded me and my sister as prizes. My father was furious — of course he was. He had essentially just lost all of his children, and all because one had died in Athens before I was old enough to remember. I, however, was elated, and so was Phaedra. Phaedra was as eager to leave Crete as I was, and she seemed just as taken with Theseus’ handsomeness. She didn’t seem distressed that Asterion was dead, and why would she? The grateful Athenians went back to their ship, many of them sobbing with relief. I didn’t look at my father as I followed Theseus to the ship. I never wanted to look at him again. We passed by Talos, and I left Knossos and the Labyrinth behind me.

Crete faded into the horizon, and before me was sunshine and new possibilities. Theseus glowed with triumph and pride, smiling at me and kissing me when he announced to the other Athenians that he would marry me, and that I would become their queen. They fell to their knees and showered me and Theseus with gratitude for having saved their lives. I felt almost as if I were a goddess. Wine flowed freely in celebration, and I took more joy in it than I had in a long time.

It did not last long. Soon after the first few hours I was, if possible, even more miserable on Theseus’ ship than I had been in Knossos. I quickly became tired of his boasts about how he had strangled the beast, without crediting me at all, or so much as mentioning the ball of yarn, even though the other Athenians had seen me give it to him and seen me follow him into the Labyrinth. Every time he told the story, it got further from the truth, and emphasized his own heroism over mine. Is this how it would be when I was queen? No matter what I did, I’d be shunted to the side? Then, Theseus seemed to be doting on Phaedra. She usually attracted more attention. She was prettier than me. She had blond hair that shined in the sunlight and the bright eyes of our mother Pasiphae, the daughter of Helios. My hair and eyes were dark, like the Labyrinth.

I left the celebration, finding a quiet spot on deck. I sat by the edge of the ship, staring out into the open waves and trying not to think about Asterion, but the image of him lying dead in the torchlight haunted me. “Are you okay, Ariadne?” Phaedra asked me. “What is wrong? We are finally out of there, all thanks to you! No more Minotaur, no more tributes having to die, no more Father… We will have a new life in Athens.” I stayed silent. “You look despondent. Something’s wrong.”

I looked up into her eyes. “It’s like you said, Phaedra. Asterion is dead.”

“Do you… mourn him?”

“He was our brother, and I killed him!”

“Theseus killed him! You did nothing!” I knew that she meant to reassure me, but it touched a raw nerve.

“He would not have if I hadn’t led him straight to the center of the Labyrinth!”

“Ariadne…” Phaedra put her hand on my shoulder. “You… you’re… you’ll be okay. You are just a little bit disoriented.” She left me alone.

I looked at the Athenians, who laughed and danced and celebrated their lives. I didn’t feel like dancing. I already missed the Labyrinth. My guilt drew my thoughts back to Knossos. I wanted to hide in the Labyrinth forever, like Asterion had, or else throw myself into the sea for my guilt. The brightness of the waves was glaring compared to the soothing darkness of the Labyrinth.

Theseus approached me from behind. He had been ignoring me until now, maybe because I was so sorrowful. I could feel that he was angry at me, and my skin crawled, but I didn’t turn. “What cause do you have to weep, Ariadne? You should be happy!” he said.

“I am sorry, Theseus. Part of me still mourns for my brother.”

“What is the matter with you? All you have done is sit and stare at the water! If you loved that Labyrinth so much, perhaps you should have stayed there! Now please, put this sorrow behind you. You have no cause for it.” He sighed, softening. “When we arrive in Athens, we shall marry, and there will be much rejoicing.”

“Leave me alone.” The bitterness in my voice rang louder than I’d intended.

He scowled at me.“You are joyless, passionless, and thankless,” he spat, and stalked off. The word useless went unsaid; I could tell he was reconsidering making me his wife.

“Theseus, wait!” I yelled, suddenly sounding desperate.

I stood up, and he turned back to look at me, and I felt as if I were naked under his gaze and that of the others on the ship, which had all quieted and turned in my direction. His eyes were cold, and his nostrils flared just as Asterion’s had. “What, Ariadne? You have shown me neither gratitude nor pleasure, you have not acted like a princess. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Shamed, I said nothing. I sat back down. Then, as he was about to turn away again, I suddenly found my voice. “Why are you being cruel?”

“I am not being cruel. You are being difficult.”

By the time we reached Naxos, I was feeling heartbroken as well as grief-stricken. Theseus was giving me the silent treatment. I think he expected me to come running to him begging for forgiveness. We stopped on the island to rest, primarily because Theseus had dreamt that he would stop here during his homecoming.

 I took off my sandals and walked along the edge of the surf to clear my thoughts. The beach was bright and wide and open, the exact opposite of the Labyrinth. Even in the sand, I felt his heavy footsteps approaching behind me. “Ariadne, we need to talk.”

I continued to face away from him. “What?”

“Ariadne, I find your attitude disagreeable.” 

I turned on my heel to face him, planting myself in the sand. “I’ve found your attitude disagreeable! All you have done since we left Crete is boast about your heroics, and you’ve barely given me any credit—”

“Credit! You want credit for having slain it, when all you have done is cry over the hideous thing?”

The disdain in his voice stung me like arrows. “You don’t care at all for me or my feelings, do you?”

“If you were to become my queen, I would expect better behavior from you.” He sounded like he was lecturing a child.

“Well… I don’t want to be your queen! You are almost as bad as my father!”

“Good. I have already decided to take your sister Phaedra as my bride instead.” I didn’t reply. “You may still return with us to Athens, but we will have to make other arrangements for you.”

Forget Athens. I didn’t want Theseus to do anything for me. “Oh, forgive me for having been such a disappointment to you! Go ahead, go back to Athens and marry my sister! By Zeus! I’ve had enough of you!”

And I ran. I turned away from Theseus and ran down the beach until my legs gave out, falling in the sand to sulk and wonder where it all went wrong. I regretted having ever met Theseus, or helped him to kill my brother. If I could undo it all, I would. No. Then innocent people would have died. Oh, gods, why am I so wretched?

And then, as I was just beginning to calm down, I saw that the ship was sailing away over the waves. I was stranded on the island. Despair and panic crashed down upon me. Oh gods, gods, why? Had I somehow been forgotten about, or left behind on purpose? Had Theseus doomed me to die? “CURSE you, Theseus!” I screamed at the distant ship. I watched it go until it disappeared over the horizon. I could do nothing but hopelessly stare at the wine-dark sea as the sun set.

“Excuse me, why are you crying?”

I had been sitting with my head in my arms, weeping despondently, and I was startled by the sudden voice, soft though it was. I was certain the island was deserted, but now, a young man stood before me. He was silhouetted against the sky, the sun shining behind his head like a halo. Where had he come from? I hadn’t heard him come. It was though he’d simply stepped out of the sea.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice sounded cracked from crying. “I thought I was alone.”

“May I sit with you?” the man asked. “You look like you could use a drink, something to soothe you, hm?”

“Yes… yes, thank you.”

He sat down in the sand next to me, languidly stretching his legs out in front of him like he was sitting on the plushest couch. With the sunlight on him, I could see him properly — he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life. He easily put Theseus to shame. His eyes were leafy green, warm and kind. He was lithe, and his skin looked as pale and smooth as a girl’s, and his lips looked so soft. I couldn’t place the color of his hair — it seemed to be dark brown, but it could have been as dark as the Styx, and when the sun caught it, it looked honey-gold. It fell over his shoulders in loose curls. He wore nothing but a fine purple cloak draped over one shoulder, a golden leopard skin around his waist, and a wreath of ivy on his head. His cheeks were flushed, and he had a bright, easy smile. He was so lovely, so breathtaking, it almost hurt to look at him. With delicate hands, he offered me a kylix brimming with wine. “Please, tell me what has made you so upset.”

I blinked at the kylix, and the leopard skin, and the ivy in his hair. “Are you… a Bacchant?” I’d heard of them. They worshipped a mad and savage god with drunken orgies in the woods, and were said to be able to rip animals or even people limb-from-limb in their frenzy. Not unlike Asterion, I suppose.

He flashed a devious smile. “Maaaaybe.”

I took the kylix and drank deeply. The wine was sweet, and somehow, I felt immediately calmer. Slowly, amid my lingering sobs, I told the story — about Asterion, and my father, and the tributes, how I’d decided to help Theseus, how we’d found our way through the Labyrinth, how Theseus had killed Asterion, how Theseus had been so heartless, and how he had apparently left me to die on a deserted island. By the time I finished talking, the kylix was empty.

“How do you feel now?” he asked me.

“Better… I think. But I’m still devastated, and… guilty. My brother’s death… it was really my fault, and I don’t know if I did the right thing or not. Do you think it’s wrong for me to grieve for my brother? I mean… he was a monster…”

“No. I don’t think it’s wrong. It is perfectly understandable that you would mourn your brother.”

“If I had let the Athenians die, I would have mourned for them, too.” I sighed.

“Yes. There must be blood; one sacrifice was traded for another, Asterion, the worthy bull. It is okay to grieve, for as long as you need to, but do not wallow in despair.”

“I tend to do that. I don’t remember the last time I was completely happy. I thought Theseus would make me happy, but… then… I wish I had my Labyrinth back! It was at least soothing down there.”

“It pains me to see people sad,” he said. He handed me the kylix again, and it was once again full of wine. I hadn’t seen him fill it. “Pleasure is a state of mind. The best way to rid yourself of sadness is to focus on things that make you happy. There is always something to take pleasure in! Like the beauty of the sunset, or the sound of the lapping waves. Or wine!”

“Not when you are abandoned to die, with no way off the island,” I said. “How did you get here, anyway? I don’t see a boat.”

“I have my ways,” he said cryptically, with that same mischievous smile. That smile and the teasing sparkle in his eyes were so adorable. His beauty is something to take pleasure in, I suddenly thought, and his company, and kindness…

I took another draught of the wine. “Why are the gods so cruel to me?” I murmured, more to myself than to him.

“The gods are not cruel to you.” He stated it with complete confidence, as though it were an undeniable fact, not as though he were trying to convince me.

“It certainly seems that way,” I replied.

“Life can often seem that way, but then, it gets better, and you will find that the gods favor you,” he said.

“Well… I suppose that must be true, if handsome strangers pop out of nowhere to comfort women.”

He beamed. “Exactly!” He took the kylix back from me, threw his head back, and drained about half of it in one gulp. “You know, I was stranded on a desert island like this one once.”

“Wait, what? You were?”

“Yes! It was a long time ago now, but I was just as pretty back then, and just as fond of wearing purple. Purple is the best color, you know.” He winked. “Anyway, so I was lying asleep on a beach and—” he took another swig of the wine, “a pirate ship rows by…”

“Are you drunk?”

“Always, darling!” That roguish grin of his was really starting to win me over. “Anyway, the pirates saw me sleeping on the beach, saw how pretty I was and saw my fine purple robes, and thought I was a prince. Well. They weren’t wrong… I technically am a prince of Thebes, on my mother’s side.” He laughed like he had just told the most hilarious joke and had another sip of the wine. The amount of wine in the kylix never seemed to get any lower.

“Does that mean… you’re a bastard?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yes, yes it does! I’m such a bastard. I mean… I was born out of wedlock. And my father’s wife, oooh, she hates me.” Another sip of the wine. “Never get on her bad side if you can help it.” He pointed at me as if this was the most important information I could ever learn, and I laughed. “She can’t touch me now, but she drove me mad when I was younger. Literally. Anyway, so these pirates kidnapped me. Thought I’d make a damn cute catamite, and I certainly would, but that’s beside the point. You don’t and kidnap boys no matter how pretty they are. I tried to tell my dad that, but it didn’t go over well.” Another sip of the wine.

“You are slender, but I bet you could take Theseus in a drinking contest.”

“Oh, I could take aaaaaanyone in a drinking contest! Never lost one yet!” His face was glowing, not just with blush from the wine but also with infectious joy. I slowly forgot about my misfortunes as I listened to his story. “So they tried to tie me to the ship’s mast, but found they couldn’t do it. I only tolerate bondage on my own terms. And then…” There was suddenly a mad gleam in his green eyes. “I covered their ship in grapevines, and ivy, and flowers, and the delicious smell of wine. I can’t imagine why such delightful things frightened them so. But I thought I’d scare them more, see, because it was funny. So I turned into a lion! And they flung themselves overboard in fear!” He laughed, and his laugh sounded as musical as flutes on a clear morning, but it had a maddened edge to it. “But I pitied them, y’know?” he continued. “Just as you pity your brother. So I changed them into dolphins. So they wouldn’t drown.”

“You changed… you turned into… did… did your god give you those powers? Or… are you just… really… drunk?” But I knew. I think that intuitively, I knew the whole time.

“Easy,” he said, once again raising the bottomless kylix to his lips with that knowing smile. “I’m really drunk.”

At this, I burst out laughing, and my laugh sounded almost unfamiliar to my own ears. I felt light, carefree, replenished. And then it sank in, that I was speaking to a god. I hastily knelt, and dropped my head before him, although he was still sitting next to me. “Lord Dionysus! Son of Zeus! Lord, lord, thank you for coming to me, for talking to me, for relieving me of my pain, for freeing me from my suffering…”

“You’re welcome, Ariadne.” He lifted my face, so that I was staring up into his eyes, which were now vivid reddish-purple, the color of ripe grapes. A richly purple aura surrounded him, proclaiming his divinity. In his hand was his staff, a fennel stalk topped with a pinecone that dripped with honey, twined with ivy and purple ribbons. And he had horns, bull’s horns just like my brother’s, magnificent and deadly sharp. They curved up above his brow, as much his crown as the wreath of ivy in his hair. The imposing horns created a striking contrast with his delicate features, but they looked right, somehow. Like this was how he was supposed to look.

I didn’t know what to say. My mind had gone suddenly blank. “I’ve never known great Dionysus to have horns,” I blurted.

“Not many get to see them,” he said, his voice suddenly slow and solemn. “Ariadne, will you dance with me?”

Whatever I had expected him to say, it was not that. “Wh—what?”

“Dance with me!” He stood up and twirled off across the beach. His hair floated around his shoulders, the ribbons on his thyrsus arced through the air like the rainbow, and his expression was one of elation. He screamed in ecstasy, and it was an inhuman sound, like the crowing of some unearthly bird. At that, the air filled with cacophonous music — flutes, drums, cymbals, rattles, castanets.

A command echoed inside my head. No, not a command — a compulsion: DANCE! DANCE!

So I danced with the bull-horned god. “Dancing” barely even begins to describe what I was doing. I was filled with an overwhelming, indescribable feeling, like I didn’t fit in my own skin. Like I was about to be lifted out of my own shoulders! I moved like my body was doing everything it could to express this ineffable thing inside me that was so much bigger than me. I spun, I leapt, I ran, I stamped my feet in the sand, I moved wherever the feeling took me. It burned like fire. And Dionysus was all I could perceive. I screamed with both intense rapture and pure, genuine worship: “EUOI! EUOI! EUOI!”

I met his eyes, and there I saw all the raw ferocity of a bull or a great cat, as well as chaos and lust and debauchery and pure mania. All the forces strong enough to tear a person apart! I desperately thirsted for something I could not name. It was more than wine, more than flesh, more than blood. Dionysus took me in his arms, and kissed me on the lips. Passion overtook me.

Maybe I fainted in exhilaration, or maybe I was simply too drunk to remember. All I know was that I was eventually awakened by the sunrise and the sound of lapping waves. And Dionysus… was still there. He hadn’t disappeared into the night, he was still sleeping there in the sand, looking blissful and alluring in his sleep. His tousled curls tumbled over the sand, his soft hand was upturned beside his head, and his lips were parted invitingly. He lay on his purple cloak, and was using the leopard pelt like a blanket, though it was only carelessly draped over his waist.

“Lord… thank you for not leaving me,” I whispered.

His long eyelashes fluttered, and then his eyes opened, once again appearing vine-green. “Mmmm… sleep well?”

“Yes.” I desperately wanted to kiss him, and the seductive look in his eyes tempted me. “May I… touch you?”

“Darling, you may touch me anywhere you like,” he purred. Ravenously, I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressed my chest to his, and our lips met. He still tasted like wine, and I drank him in the way I would wine. We lay there for a moment, entangled in each other’s arms like grape and ivy vines, idly caressing each other’s skin and hair.

“M’lord…” I whispered, “perhaps it might be impertinent to ask, but… what am I going to do now? I can’t go home. I don’t really want to go to Athens. And I still have no way off this island.”

“Why, Ariadne,” he gave me a teasing smile. “If I may be so bold, I hoped you would join me! In fact… I hope you might marry me.”

I was so taken aback by this that I immediately sat up. “You… you’re serious? Marry you?” I knew that gods frequently took mortal lovers, but this was unimaginable. “Actually marry you?”

“Yes, Ariadne. I love you.” He said it with the same sweetness and sincerity that he initially approached me with. Theseus had said no such thing. “You are not destined to become queen of Athens, but perhaps you might be my queen, if you are willing.”

I burst into tears, but they weren’t tears of sadness this time. They were tears of overwhelm, the same kind of overflowing sensation that I’d felt while dancing. “You love me?”

“I am absolutely besotted, my darling! I have had many lovers, but I had not fallen so madly in love since Ampelos, my first love, my darling vine.” A grapevine appeared between his fingers and twined up his arm. “Perhaps something in me is inclined towards mortals over gods, which is understandable, given my parentage. But, that should be no problem. I will bring you to Olympus, and love you for all of time.”

“How… why me?” I sputtered. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“Ariadne, you are letting your human mind interfere, and convince you that you are not worthy to be in my presence. Did you feel unworthy last night, while we were dancing?”

“No… I felt… there was no such thing.”

“Ariadne, do you love me?”

I struggled to find any word that could properly describe how I felt about him. “You are… utterly intoxicating.”

He giggled like a shy maiden. “I get that a lot. And, if you could be worthy of having me as a husband, would you have me?”

Yes. My body and soul ached and burned with wanting. And he made me extraordinarily happy! I’d never dared to believe a god would love me enough to marry me, but that disbelief was only getting in my way.

He looked me dead in the eyes. I nearly flinched away from the intensity of his gaze, and the shimmering madness behind it. “You are more than you realize, Ariadne, guide in the dark, guardian of the gates of initiation. You are intelligent and witty and brave, and you fear no darkness or madness or savagery, do you? You faced them all in the Labyrinth. You would make an excellent addition to my thiasus, even if you decide not to marry me. Ariadne, the most holy and pure, Lady of the Labyrinth.” His words reverberated deep in the labyrinthine pathways of my own mind and soul, like he had revealed an ancient truth that I had known once, but forgotten.

“The Labyrinth is a holy place, of contemplation and transformation. Isn’t it? Not of death.”

He smiled that gorgeous, winning smile again. “Yes! You understand! And even where there is death, it is not absolute.” His eyes shone with feverish excitement. “Oh, I have so much to teach you!”

“Lord Dionysus, I would be honored beyond imagining if I were to become your wife.”

“So is that a yes? You will marry me?”

Something about him felt right in a way that I could not put words to, like the Fates had done all they could to bring me to this moment. This god loved me, more than the other gods love their conquests, more than I could comprehend. “Yes! I will marry you!”

At that, a cool wind blew across the island, swirling his dark hair around his face and making all the vegetation appear to shimmer. It was like the island itself was affirming my decision. “Then, Ariadne, we shall rule the revel together! In honor of our engagement…” A magnificent diadem appeared in his hands, sparkling with seven gemstones like stars. He placed it on my head, and gave me a warm kiss on my lips. “Ariadne, my bride, may you never thirst. May your lusts never go unsatisfied. May your heart always be light and joyful.”

“Thank you. Thank you, m’lord!”

“You can stop calling me that. If we are to be married, you can simply call me by my name. Or, call me what pleases you. Now, come with me!” He stood, offering me his hand. “Unless you would rather spend some more alone time together, I should finally take you off this island! I will take you home to Nysa, or perhaps to Arcadia, and we will have to throw the most spectacular bacchanal in celebration of our marriage!”

“How will we travel?”

He led me down the beach like a child eager to show something to their parent, and gestured toward a golden chariot drawn by two gigantic panthers. The chariot itself was decorated in images of swirling grapevines and serpents and satyrs making love, and the cats’ pelts gleamed. “Oh, gods… I mean… wow. Does it move over water?”

“It flies, silly!” He stood inside it and beckoned to me. “These cats can run on the wind. Hermes gave them to me.”

I climbed into the chariot and held on for dear life as the panthers bounded into the air with great strides. Soon the chariot was blazing through the bright air, and Naxos was far behind us. Dionysus laughed into the wind, which blew his long hair back from his face. As radiant as he was, I was more than a little terrified of speeding through the air high above the sea in a chariot, and felt like I would fall off at any second, although not even my diadem was dislodged from my head.

“You look terror-stricken, Ariadne. Would you like me to tell you another amusing story? That seems to have cheered you up the last time!”

“That depends on whether you can drive a chariot and get incredibly drunk at the same time.”

He laughed uproariously. “Oh, I love you so much! I can do anything and get incredibly drunk, if you were wondering. So, anyway, the story… Mortals have mixed opinions of me. Most love my parties and stories and love my wine, but they seem a bit put off by the madness and violence and lust it brings out in them… Not sure why, it’s not as though all of that wasn’t there to begin with… Mortal kings do not like this, and some of them can be quite unkind to my worshippers, testing the limits of my mercy… but one of them allowed my mentor, Silenus, to sleep in his garden. So kind of him! So of course I offered him any reward he might wish for, and… he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold.”

“Ooh. Let me guess, it backfired?”

“Oh, did it backfire! His food turned to gold and he nearly starved, and even his daughter turned to gold! Hardly my fault, of course. I promised to give him what he asked for, and I did, he just happened to be an idiot. He had the chance to wish for anything in the world, and he chose something as shallow and pointless as gold. Not to mention, he clearly had never heard of inflation, which makes me worry about his kingdom’s economy. Oh, well. He learned, and I changed everything back. I always let humans indulge themselves, but I am not a god of excess. Either they are satisfied by their pleasures, or they learn their lesson fast. The moral of the story: Know your tolerance. Also, if you want to turn things to gold, you have to do it the hard way. Hermes and I were just discussing how to turn lead to gold, in fact…”

His soothing voice and hilarious tales put me at ease, until we were traveling over beautiful mountains and verdant valleys. I had never seen mainland Greece, but the view of it from the flying chariot was incredible. I was no longer afraid of falling. As we flew, I felt as if the wind stripped me of the cares and sorrows of my former life. Dionysus had set me free. I smiled at him, and he smiled at me as the chariot descended into the lush, hidden valley where a throng of Maenads and satyrs waited to welcome home their lord and his queen.

Dionysus helped me out of the chariot, and I stood before the thiasus, their maddened eyes all turned upon me. “I am the bride of Dionysus,” I proclaimed. “I am Ariadne of the Labyrinth.”

[antiloreolympus]

8 Anti LO Asks

1. as a mythology buff, i honestly think it was really weird of rachel smythe to take Hecate, a goddess who helped Demeter search for Persephone after she vanished and heard her screams and shared in Persephone and Demeter's joy after reuniting... and then just make her into Hades's like... total bro who plays aggressive matchmaker to h/p to the point of trying to break up Hades's current relationship. but honsestly i refuse to believe rachel smythe did literally any research before making this comic judging by how she depicts the mythology she's taking inspiration from so honestly im not suprised

2. I don’t know if anyone on here has discussed this, but LO very much plays into the idea of “good victim vs bad victim”.

A “good victim” has suffered many things, but despite it they still remain cheerful and happy and pleasant, they do not put others out or lash out at them even if they are triggered, they do not become petty or angry or hold onto negative emotions. They, in essence, “get over it”. Thus, the narrative rewards them: they get many friends, a love internet they’re happy with, and a happy ending. This is what Persephone is. She’s the “good victim”. Despite her many hardships, we know she will not suffer in the end. She will get everything she wants and more. 

Then there is Minthe, the “bad victim”. They too have gone through many hardships, but they’ve become cold, angry at the world, they lash out and have trouble opening up and connecting to others, they even hurt others, themselves victims to the toxic pain they can’t get rid it. They do not and have not “gotten over it”.  Thus, the narrative punishes them, even when they try to better themselves. It’s never good enough. These characters often are lonely, the cast are large do not like them if not outright hate them, and they more often than not end up dead. This is what Minthe is. She is not a pleasant person, she’s a victim of a manipulative older man and a cruel, unjust society and system, and we know how her story ends. It’s in pain, her maiming/possible death framed as a joke and not even a genuine hint of sympathy towards her fate. She was a “bad victim”, she “deserved” what she got.

Now, you only often see this in fandom, since the actual works that deal with victims of trauma and how they react will often try to give more nuance to every shade of victim they may have on cast, but it’s very disturbing to me that Rachel seems to eagerly play into this idea, like she gets joy out of punishing a victim she created and watching them suffer even more at her hands. It’d be one thing if she kept Minthe a shallow, one dimensional character who was just evil for the sake of it, fine, but her showing us her actual complex nature and the very real struggles, trauma, and manipulation she went through, especially at the hands of our supposed “heroes” of the story, just to have her demise framed as a win for Persephone and a joke for the audience to laugh at? That’s highly disturbing to me. It’s one thing for fans to act that way, but the writer themselves? It’s very dark, to say the least. 

3. "I'm invested in working with fairy tales and folklore for my next project" oh no no no oh god please no. Fairy tales have been through enough hot takes and modern "betterments", they really don't need Rachel "Apollo is bad, actually" Smythe to add to it

4. Quick question

Greek Mythology is mostly incest.

So what if someone who is actually good at writing and storytelling and consistent artwork

Kept it in

For example Zeus and  Hera arguing like the married couple they are

And Hera uses older sibling card

With Zeus dumbfounded face

I don't know why but I want it but would it be weird since it's incest

Most fanfics always keep it out. Just keep it in if you want it to be closer than the actual methods you know

Hera is youngest daughter of Cronus and Rhea and older than her brother Zeus, who was also her husband.

I want to do it but like I have no clue how to start a webtoon so you know💀

5. Oh god, Hades not needing therapy because Persephone's "love" is enough? To quote my lord and savior Kennie JD: "not the p*$$¥ being therapy!"

6. uuuuuh sexual trauma warning.?

So I was writing a comment on the "Re: bpd" ask and i had a realization about persephone

She reminds me of how I was about the idea of sex

I'm demisexual and have sexual trauma and the idea of sex excited me but I wasn't able to like, do it. Me and my partner would mess around but because Mctrauma i couldn't do it cuz I hadn't exactly worked through my trauma and i wanted to get through that because i was finally experiencing sexual attraction.

Kinda reminds me of Persephone. The problem is at that point it had been 6-7 years since my trauma occurred and persephone's happened like last month.

Considering how everyone talks about persephone being a self insert i think Rachel has some things to work through

Also made the realization literally as im typing that Rachel's attitude towards asexuality could be because she's demi and doesn't fully understand what that is or means

becuase if you're ignorant enough you can 100% end up describing demisexuality as "being asexual and then like, slowly turning gay."

this ask weirdly personal so fuck it this is gonna be anonymous feel free to delete if it makes u uncomfy 

7. That’s also a part about Hubris Rachel clearly doesn’t get: it was always committed by rich, often people in high authority, NEVER lowly farmers or the poorest of ancient society. They always knew better. Niobe was a queen! Minos was a king! Arachne was the rich, spoiled daughter of a really successful merchant. Sisyphus was a cunning king. The trojan war was kicked off by royal drama. The list goes on and on. You have to notice these things and genuinely study the myths or you become like Rachel, who seems convinced the poorest people would be stupid enough to not only defy their bosses, but the gods themselves? They would be the last people to do such a thing! They don’t have the ingrained sense of entitlement and arrogance like the rich and powerful to even dare act like that towards the gods, as is the case with hubris. Because of this, Rachel ends up creating a narrative that the rich and powerful (literal GODS) are the real victims to those cruel, uppity poor people, going as far as to say in comic they deserve to be slaves for hades’ benefit and they’re wrong for ever hating Persephone for, you know, murdering them because she had a bad day! They should know their place! It’s absolutely insane that she doesn’t actually seem to realize what she’s writing. Unless she does, which is an even bigger issue, and shows a really dark look into how she views the world and society and how it should be run. It’s all a bad look. 

8. Have you seen the "The demon, is here in the room right now?" meme

Welp, that's literally Persephone and her "feeling"

I legit saw that video about a dude faking a mental illnes (and seeing a demon that made him do bad things) after he commited a crime and that was so cringy and I can't stop thinking about Persephone confessing her AOW like that

[thebigqueer]

speaking of the sadie thing,,,, i think rr focuses too much on romantic relationships?? like, even in the other books, the halfbloods didnt need to all date, i didnt like that literally all of them were dating, you dont need to be in a relationship to be happy, which i think rr doesnt realize. also they were cousins,, the gods not having dna thing was such bs. half the 7 were okay single

hi anon! this has been in my asks for a few days, so i’m sorry for the wait. i’m assuming this is the post you’re referring to. 

also, before i go into this, i just want to say that these are just my opinions. others may have different ones.

anon, i really do agree with you on this. i’ve talked about this on a lot of posts but it makes me a little upset every time i think about the ways rick fucked up relationships. some of them were fine - like percabeth - because they had an actual base and their story made sense. (not that i’m saying they’re the only ship you can ship, though - totally up to who you want to ship percy & annabeth with, i’m just talking about canon context). 

i feel like the place where rick’s idea of “you need a relationship to be happy” is especially prominent with leo’s relationship with calypso. he already had issues (and potential for actual character development) about being the seventh wheel. putting him with calypso honestly ruined both of their arcs. i’m honestly glad they’re taking a “break” in trials of apollo now because their relationship was really unnecessary. leo’s character arc could have surrounded the fact that he needed to love himself for who he was first, or maybe get some clarity on his past, but rick decided that in order to solve leo’s “problem” of not loving himself for being the only single character on the ship (before nico came along), he’d need a girlfriend.

(also, if you’re interested, here is a post that goes into a different way that I wish would have gone with leo and calypso.)

also, frazel? i didn’t like that. hazel is literally 13/14 (fourteen is more likely I think). while people her age do date, i just feel like her relationship with frank wasn’t necessary to the plot? she’s still young - not to invalidate people her age who do date, but i still don’t think that he needed to put her in a relationship. 

a bigger issue of mine is also that he’s putting 13yo girls in a relationship at all? with guys who are a few years older? sadie, walt, and anubis for example - anubis was a literal god, so he’s even centuries old. walt’s age is honestly complicated because the wiki says he’s sixteen, other people say he’s 14, and apparently his age jumped around in one of the books, so i don’t really know what to say about him. if he is 16, though, then yeah that qualifies as i don’t like it. 

i loved that there was poly rep, but he didn’t do a good job of it by pairing sadie with guys who are older than her (and one who’s actually thousands of years old!)

i just overall really don’t like his mentality towards romantic relationships. the biggest problem, i think, is that he put so little emphasis on friendship and promoted romance so much. incorporating the importance of friendship honestly would have been such a great investment to make into his books! can you imagine all the different moments we could have had with all the seven? leo and percy? jason and annabeth? piper and percy? maybe even some more interaction with nico and the others?

there are some arguments where people say that the idea of demigods finding their soulmates at a young age isn’t a terrible idea. i don’t have much of an opinion on that argument, to be honest, but the issue isn’t that demigods have soulmates. it’s that he puts way too much emphasis on their romantic relationships. sure, they can have soulmates! i don’t mind that at all! but it’s the way he paired almost everyone off that annoys me, and the only people who are single are either super important girls (rachel), girls in the hunters, gods (apollo), and 12 year olds (meg). besides that i don’t really remember many single people. 

i think another argument is that, since he was writing heroes of olympus (where these relationship problems are most prevalent) in the early 2010s (which was vastly different compared to later 2010s), he was probably catering to the audience. that may also be true. and i guess if you consider reyna before trials of apollo, she was also one of the only main people to stay single by the end of the series. but i think the point stands that he still does romanticize romantic relationships too much. reyna may be an outlier (and even then, she ends up joining the hunters if you’ve read trials of apollo) but that doesn’t take away from the fact that a lot of the relationships in the riordanverse aren’t even necessary - they’re just ways for rick to give the characters a “happy ending.” (newsflash - relationships don’t solve everyone’s problems.)

demigods can find soulmates. i don’t care about that. i just wish he put more light on the beauty of friendship and stopped pairing almost everyone off. can’t someone be single just for the sake of being single? do they have to be doing something important?