#this was supposed to be a mene

[a-roses-wondrous-rain]

I Became A Butterfly.

TW - hurt no comfort, unreciprocated feelings.

Extra notes ~ 6.3k characters. A bit canon divergent. Y’know that one part of Mene’s dream where she watched Miya dance with another? This is my original thoughts on it before realizing that it was just her dream. It cuts off at the mirror scene and merges back with canon again.

The sewing machine whirred. Tomorrow is prom, and Mene was crunching on the dress. Tame Mene, the nobody with bad grades, trying to ask Miya Nanamiya, the popular girl who had everyone swooning, to prom on the day of, assuming no one asked her yet. The black lace blended into the silky material as she kept her foot down on the pressure foot, the needle in the machine bobbing up and down as it glided through the fabric with ease. It would be a gorgeous dress, hopefully pretty enough to win Miya’s heart. It started as wanting to be like her, to falling for her, to now working up the courage to ask her out.

Mene was pretty sure she liked girls, right? All she could do was hope it would work out. If it doesn’t, then at least she tried. Mene cut the thread and held up the dress, marveling at her own work. She was never confident in what she did, but this felt good. It felt perfect. Mene put it on the mannequin and grabbed the stretchy black fabric to make gloves. Maybe she could make them elbow length.

She almost overslept her alarm. Thankfully, that three hours of sleep was just enough to get her out of bed and operating for the day. Saturday, seven am was the time. Mene had arranged to meet with Miya, but hadn’t gotten any confirmation over it. No text, no call, no nothing. Mene got dressed in her casual outfit, a deep purple long sleeve shirt and black leggings, and a pair of black shoes with lavender laces. She headed outside, raining again. Mene started walking down the street, her hands over her head to try and prevent the rain from ruining the styling she attempted doing. She wanted this to be special, after all. Walking… walking… walking… finally, Mene reached their spot. She asked Miya to meet her at a nearby park, but she wasn’t there. Five more minutes morphed into ten, and that turned to thirty. Two hours later, Mene finally accepted she wouldn’t show up.

On her way home in the pouring rain, Mene got a notification from Miya. ‘Hey, hanging out with someone to make sure our outfits are ready, sorry :/‘ ah… Mene put her phone back in her pockets, willing the tears to not spill over. Miya, the girl she had finally worked up the courage to ask to prom, already had a date. Why did she even bother. It’s not like someone as pretty and popular as Miya would go with someone as quiet and average as Mene to something like prom. The walk back was quiet, nearly… serene, in a way. Her clothes were soaked, her hair ruined and the little bit of makeup she bothered putting on running down her face, but it was calm. Almost able to let her forget how she had just been stood up like that.

Mene got home and shut the door, heading to her room and locking it. The first thing she saw was the scissors and the very very dark purple gloves she made. It’s not like Miya would’ve like them, she was much more pastel than that. She would’ve hated it. She would’ve hated it. That’s all Mene could think as she disfigured the gloves she worked so hard on. After about ten seconds of cutting up the gloves, Mene finally came to her senses and dropped the gloves. She didn’t know what to feel. Should she cry? Should she feel angry? Should she be indifferent to this all? Should she have known she wasn’t good enough to go to prom? It all felt like too much.

It took some convincing from her parents, but Mene started putting on the dress hours later to go to prom. She was told it’d be a waste of time and money if she didn’t go. So there the purple haired girl was, sliding on the gloves that now only came down to the middle of her forearms with cuts on the sides. It took a lot to not cry at seeing all this hard work that would go unappreciated. Her parents assured her she looked lovely as she headed out of the door, a matching black umbrella to go with her dress. She walked down the street, head hung low like a puppy that just got hit. Finally, she reached the place. Mene’s head was flooded by too much as she walked into the building where it was being held; “What if I see Miya?” “What if she hates my guts?” “What am I even doing here” “Should I just leave?” “There are too many people” “Everyone’s in lighter colors, do I look stupid in this dress?” “I think I’m the only one here without a date…”It all came to a stop when her feet carried her through the crowded event, right to Miya. Mene stared and marveled at her beauty as she watched the blonde dance…

…with someone else. Miya looked like a gorgeous doll as she moved and danced, just so perfect. Too perfect for someone like Mene. As much as she longed and wished, Mene would never be as good as Miya, or as popular, or as pretty, or as perfect, or as straight-A’d, or as hard working, or as lovely, or as playful, or funny, or beautiful, or lovable, or perfect, or-

Mene headed towards the door, biting her cheek to prevent the tears from making themselves known. “I am not good enough,” is what repeated through her head as she walked outside. As soon as Mene was away from the masses, she started running. Running. Running. Running. Running. The rain started even harder, and Mene didn’t have the energy to put up her umbrella. She simply ran through the rain, not caring how ruined her dress was, or how swampy her flats were, or how soaked her hair got. The rain hid the effects of the tears, save for the puffy red eyes and quiet sobs. Running. Running. Running. Running.

She slammed her door shut once she got inside, ignoring her parents asks as to how she got to this state or why she was home so early. She immediately got into her duller clothes and started modifying the dress. If it was too pathetic of a dress for Miya, she could at least make it pretty. She sewed until past midnight. Mene made the dress much more butterfly like and set it down on her bed. Now, she should start cleaning. Especially her bed, and that mirror she could never get the smudges off of.

In a dark room, by myself, before the mirror at one in the morning. “Hey, who could you be?” “Hey, who could I be?” I asked but still received no reply.

[lxvefrxmthextherside]

𝕸𝖚𝖓 & 𝕸𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝕻𝖎𝖈𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖜

𝙼𝚞𝚗, 𝚃𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚘𝚛 𝙻𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚍𝚘𝚗, 𝚇𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚆𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚜

𝚃𝚊𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚢: @heartxshaped-bruises

𝚃𝚊𝚐𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚐:@xxgodismsxx @xxegyptxx @stanfordprepped @irrcdeemable @itmeanspeace @atrickrtreat @jvmiel @demonstigma @ruinedmyself @dxsole

[witless-winion1]

Modeling

inspired by this by @starsintheendlessnight! Specifically the shot at 0:54 :)

“Penelope likes to weave…Odysseus carves like a madman…”

Eurylochus adjusted the fancy robes of silk that Ctimene had laid out for him to put on, listening to her talk from the other room while he dressed. 

“And they’re both brilliant. Their gifts are famous, legendary even. And this piece, I intend to be…our version of the olive tree wedding bed. My brother is a damn overachiever, and I will not be outdone.”

“Mene,” Eurylochus said, emerging from the bedroom. “You don’t need to compete with your brother for grandest, most romantic art piece.” 

His wife turned around, holding little bowls of paint. “Well, what am I supposed to do, just settle for less romantic sibling? Besides-“ she stopped short and gave a little gasp as her eyes locked on Eurylochus. He felt his face grow warm. 

“What? Does it look all right?” Eurylochus spread his arms hesitantly, showing off a little more of his clothing. Ctimene had stolen a bit of Odysseus’ jewelry and fine clothing, and it was mostly small on him- his thighs were almost visible, the normally loose fabric stretched slightly over his chest. “Ctimene?”

Ctimene set the bowls down and hurried over to him, grabbing his hand with a wide smile. “You look amazing, don’t worry about that.” Her eyes traced appreciatively over his exposed skin, before tearing her eyes away to usher him over to the setup she’d created. She sat him down on the stool, adjusted the small wreath in his hair, and stepped back, beaming. 

Eurylochus sat up straight, tilting his chin up and looking at her. “Like this?”

“Mmmm…” Ctimene hummed, touching his jaw and lowering his chin, guiding it away from where she would be painting, towards the corner of the room. “Perfect!” 

She kissed the crown of his head and hurried to sit down and start painting. 

They sat in moderate silence for a while, the only noise being the strokes on the surface, and a few subtle hums. 

Her tongue was poking out, pushing against her upper lip in the way that it did when she was concentrating. 

Eurylochus felt his eyes softening. She really is stubborn…to get so worked up over competing with Odysseus, and to rope me into it as well…

But he couldn’t bring himself to mind it. Gods knew he would do anything for her. Sitting on an uncomfortably small stool for a few hours was nothing. 

“Eury!”

Eurylochus blinked out of his thoughts. “Yes?”

“You’re supposed to be looking over there!” Ctimene pointed over at the corner again with a raised eyebrow and grin. 

“Sorry,” he responded, fighting his twitching lips and he fixed his head angle. “Just…found myself looking at you.” 

Ctimene chuckled. “Why? Can’t keep your eyes off me?”

Apparently not, because merely ten minutes later, she was correcting him for the same mistake. 

“You’re gonna mess me up with the head and neck angle if you keep moving!” She trilled, getting up and tilting his chin to look back towards the corner. Eurylochus’ eyes gazed at the sparkle in her eye as she touched his face, his head following her almost automatically, as she stepped to go back to her setup. “And you’re still doing it!”

“Sorry, Mene,” he chuckled, tilting his head again, though his eyes still seemed to wander, almost straining to look at his lovely wife absorbed in her creation. 

Ctimene painted for a few more moments, and then just paused and sighed. “Would you rather I just paint you staring straight at me?”

“…sure,” Eurylochus responded, the smile on his lips growing again as he rested his gaze on her. 

She just shook her head with a smile, and soon her tongue was pressing against her upper lip once more. 

“…mmm…I dunno.” Odysseus grinned at the displayed portrait, his hand on his chin. “It’s a bit creepy, isn’t it? Feels like he’s staring right at me.” 

Eurylochus snorted, and Ctimene laughed and socked his arm. “But it’s good, isn’t it? And he’s so handsome.” 

“Ow, yes, fine, it’s good! It’s great!”

Penelope laughed, reaching out to touch her sister-in-law’s shoulder. “It’s wonderful, Ctimene. Maybe I should have you do a portrait of me and Odysseus.”

Odysseus chortled. “Yeah, but we won’t be staring at you the entire time. Seriously, what’s with that? A bit of an uncommon choice, isn’t it?”

“Oh, we…just wanted to do that,” Ctimene waved off. Beside her, Eurylochus nodded. 

“Hmm. Artistic preferences, I suppose…hey, are those my clothes?!” 

[lionwitch]

Hey, I was thinking of a fic idea. I don't know if it's been done (please send link if so)

I was thinking that it was a risky move from the syrens to mention a daughter when she perfectly could've not mentioned it. Unlike with the water fear thing, she wasn't prompted. Now syrens are supposed to know every way at sea, so I bet they have a wide net of information. So what if they had information on Ithaca as well? Would make sense, wouldn't it? Maybe not the best info, but info nonetheless.

Now, I don't know about you, but if my husband were to go to war, I'd be real affectionate those last few days iykyk. Also I don't think there was a very effective birth control yet, was there?

So what if Penelope sees them away, everything's normal, Telemachus is a baby, all good. And then as time goes on, she starts feeling symptoms but she's in denial. No, she can't be pregnant when her husband isn't home to know about it. She can't. She must be just anxious, or ill or exhausted. Oh, her belly? Yeah no, it hasn't yet gone back to what it used to after telemachus. Oh it's bigger? Yeah, she ate a lot tonight. Totally normal.

By the time she gets over her denial and realizes that oh shit she's pregnant, Odysseus is on the battlefield, not just on the way. She asks Hermes to deliver the message, but Athena convinces him not to, because he's already eager to go home, and if you add that his wife is pregnant, he'll try to make it home before the birth, but that would only make him reckless. It'd get him killed. No, they'll tell him when the war is over. Except of course it takes longer than expected.

Now meanwhile, Ithaca receives her Princess not even a year after her Prince. They get along great. Telemachus adores his little sister. And Penelope adores both her children. She sees a part of her husband in each of them. But the girl (I'm thinking Alkmene, which I'm aware is already a character of Greek mythology, but roll with it) is Odysseus's spitting image while Telemachus is hers.

All of Ithaca can see that the Princess is the miniature version of their King. She makes the same expressions, snarls the same way when she's pissed off, has the same features, from his hair, eyes, face shape. She's his mini-me. So, Ithaca slowly shifts from calling her Alkmene to Mini (alkmene, mene, mini).

Meanwhile Telemachus is his mother's son through and through. The Prince and Princess look like the King and Queen genderbent. And act like them too. Telemachus learns arts, sits alongside his mother as he learns to play instruments and she even teaches him to weave. And Mini, she tries. She does, truly. But she's just not the most patient. She can't sit still for hours on end handling a thread.

So Penelope sits her down hands her a knife and a piece of wood. She knows Mini is just like her father, and hopes his hobby will be something she finally picks up. So she teaches her woodcarving. And would you look at that, she likes it.

Now, Telemachus as the heir, he is the one most in the public eye. Mini tends to hand back, carving wood and watching her brother with sharp eyes, but doesn't stay seated for long, no, she sticks to the shadows and shifts which pillar she's resting against. Unlike Odysseus' leadership and commanding presence, though, she doesn't like to be perceived. She moves on quiet feet, never stays in one spot for long, and doesn't speak much. It's hard to keep track of her. But she's always watching.

Telemachus and her have different ways to feel close to their father. He steals his accessories and clothes (I read a headcannon and a fic and loved this), and she usually sits by her father's bow and talks to it, as if it were her father. Eventually, just before the war ends, she takes a regular bow and teaches herself to use it. She sucks at it at first. She struggles to even string it. Just like Telemachus struggles with fighting.

She does this on secret. She sees the way her mother stares at the bow. Her brother isn't all that interested in learning that yet. So she sneaks out and practices. She sucks. Truly she does. The amount of times she's hit herself on the face just trying to pull the string back, or later cut her cheek with the string as it shoots, the amount of times her arrows were pathetically weak.

Meanwhile, the war ends, and instead of telling him, by now Hermes isn't paying much attention and Athena wants to, really, but can't find the way to tell him "oh by the way, you also have a nine-year-old daughter and I knew all along but didn't tell you", and then you know, they argue and such. She never actually tells him.

And when Hermes makes his appearance during Wouldn't You Like, he also doesn't tell him because there are more pressing issues. But after the Syren thing, on the way to Scylla, he comes down again like

"uhm, actually... You do have a daughter. Your wife was pregnant when you left."

"What?"

"Yeah. Your spitting image, that one. So much so, they call her Mini. Mini of Ithaca, has a ring to it, doesn't it? Mkay, I'll take my leave, have fun~"

"Wait no, you can't just— Hermes, come back!"

And then everything goes as it does. His seven years on Calypso's Island are torture, not only because he has to wonder how his wife is doing and how his boy grew up, but also because he spends them thinking of the daughter he didn't know he had. Was she his spitting image physically or personality wise? What traits of his did she get? What's her real name? Because okay, they call her Mini, but what's her name? Ctemene, like his sister? Something else?

And as the years pass, his anxiety rises when he thinks of home. Because by now, she must be grown up. By now, both his wife and his daughter must have suitors, and he's not there to scare them off.

And meanwhile, during those ten years after she first took the bow, she spends most of her time hidden, trying to learn. The first thing she tries to learn is to hunt, she's not great at it, but she tries. Not for sport either but because as the suitors start to arrive, boy can they eat, and she doesn't want them in her space. This gets Artemis's attention.

Artemis sees this young woman, trying to hide from suitors (some of them also try to get her, because hey, Queen or Princess, same thing right?), trying to learn to hunt but not doing so unnecessary or out of malice. This girl tries to befriend as many animals as she can, but still does hunt. And she takes her under her wing. Now I know Artemis was on the Trojan's side, but come on, it's been almost twenty years.

Under her tutelage, Mini becomes a great archer, just like Telemachus becomes a warrior under Athena's. Unlike Telemachus, she's not too interested in fighting. She does archery because she feels it brings her closer to her father, not because she wants to be a warrior.

And so she becomes an archer as good as, if not better than, Odysseus (Because come on, while Athena is the Goddess of war, Artemis' weapon is a bow) And people know this. She's scary good.

Much like Telemachus with Athena, Mini befriends Artemis.

So during God Games, Apollo is actually firmly on the Releasing Odysseus side, much to Athena's surprise. After all, hey, his sister likes his kid, might as well help her get her dad back. With this change, Athena doesn't get beat up as badly, because that's three gods (Apollo was like "lol isn't that your protégé's dad? Yeah, you should watch this") standing up to Zeus instead of one. They each receive a beating, but not as bad.

Also imagine like:

"Hey, Apollo—"

"It's Odysseus of Ithaca, right? That Odysseus?"

"Yes? I know he killed your Syrens, but listen—"

"Yeah, so mean of him. Anyway, release him."

"... What?"

"My sister is friends with his daughter."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks."

"Mmhmm. Bye now, you have others to convince."

Now, during The Challenge, the suitors are like "No, this is impossible, it's literally not possible, you're trying to trick us"

And the nineteen year old princess snorts, stands up, strings her father's bow and shoots through the axes cleanly. Then unstrings (?) the bow and puts it where it was.

"Dunno, seems very possible for me."

Later, during Hold Them Down, these bastards also plan to take her the same way they will her mother. Break her pride, they say. Put her in her place. A girl can't be better than them.

Odysseus is filled with pride for his daughter at the thought that she's so much better than them that it broke their egos. He's also filled with anger, logically.

Now, it is 108 men. What if they did manage to get Telemachus just a little before (not that he lasted less, just that it happened a little earlier), and Odysseus is in check, because fuck if he attacks they'll hurt his boy. He's seething with rage and trying to formulate a plan. He could take them, he absolutely could, but how will he do it without harming his son? Their eyes are all on him, he doesn't have the element of surprise anymore, he can't move quickly or they'll kill his son.

And then an arrow flies. And it's not his.

The arrow pierces the head of the man holding Telemachus, at the perfect angle that it doesn't harm the boy, and it comes from behind and slightly above.

Odysseus looks up, and he sees his own eye staring back at him, but she is much younger. And yes, I said eye, because she's wearing an eye patch. He doesn't think much of it because she's an archer, and some archers use an eye patch. Also, it's cool as heck, looks more like half a mask than an eye patch, with intricate designs and expanding over more than just her eye to her temple.

"Shit it's Mini!" "Where is she?"

Between the three of them, a close-range warrior, an archer, and a versatile, experienced warrior, the fight is over soon. You can't not turn your back on at least one of them, especially when Mini, just like her father moments before, hides in the darkness and shoots.

After they're all dead, she steps out of the shadows. And damn, she is his carbon copy.

Then you know, I Can't Help But Wonder is kinda different because it's not one child but two. Also, he finally gets to learn her name. And listen, Odysseus is fascinated by his children, because Telemachus is Penelope's copy and Mini is his. Down to the height, Telemachus is taller than Odysseus and Mini is almost his height.

After the reunions and all, family bonding is hard. He feels like Mini stares into his soul and it unnerves him, a little because he's used to being on the giving end of that look, and a little because she doesn't take off her eye patch. She changes it up, has many designs, some more like masks than patches, but is still always wearing one, and always has her bow and quiver on her person or next to her, which makes him feel like she's always on guard, which puts him on edge.

"Does she ever take the patch off?" he whispers to Telemachus

"No, hasn't for years."

Also, Argos is an old doggo but he's alive because I say so. Still, Mini has two Hunting Dogs because again, Artemis's protégé. Argos sticks by Telemachus and Odysseus, and her dogs are loyal only to her. They don't leave her side. They are big, like wolves. Artemis herself picked them for her. One black, one white. And they flank her at all times, it's certainly unnerving. They're not playful puppies, at least not to anyone but her and her Goddess.

"Did I... Do something? You're staring at me, Mini."

"Nah, she does that." her brother replies instead "Nothing personal. She doesn't like to talk much."

And yeah, she doesn't. But things are still a bit awkward between them, and he's not sure how to fix it. She seems to judge him. Sometimes she outright snarls at him if he suggests she lower her guard a little and take off her eyepatch/mask. They're no longer at war, the suitors are not a threat anymore, they're all safe. He made sure of it. And yet, the worst thing he could've done was try to take her mask off.

He got close to her, gave her a side hug, tried to be a dad. And everything was fine. And then he tilted her face up and she looked at him. She seemed relatively relaxed, but not fully.

"Kid, you can relax. I promise you're safe. You don't need to be battle ready all the time here, take it from me."

And he reached out to take off her mask. It was meant as an act of comfort, like Polities prying his sword off his hand when he was tired during the war. A sign that he'd take care of her and she could relax.

But she smacked his hand and pushed him away. She glared at him, one eye portraying the message just as well as two would. She took her bow and quiver and left without a word. She only came back before dinner (she left after breakfast), with fresh meat for their meal.

Her one visible eye (the left btw) glared at him the whole dinner, and, he felt damn uneasy, and she snarled at him when he tried to talk to her. Which wouldn't be all that intimidating if her dogs didn't snarl every time she did, baring their teeth and growling. Penelope and Telemachus, bless their hearts, tried to de-escalate the situation. Telemachus started talking about absolutely anything that came to mind and his sister's attention snapped to him and she relaxed slowly. She loved listening to her brother rant and be happy.

It went on for days. Eventually, she stopped glaring at him, didn't snarl at him anymore. But damn her dogs did. They didn't seem to like him, and he really didn't want to get into a fight with them, because either they'd rip off his arm or he'd kill them, and neither was a good option. She had them well trained, though, so as they growled at him, she only clicked her tongue and they quieted down.

With time and effort, he got her to relax a little more. Still, she never took off her mask/eyepatch. It still got on his nerves.

And then one night, as Telemachus was talking about his day, she relaxed so much she fell asleep.

Odysseus lifted his daughter in his arms, her dogs flanking him but not growling at him, just seemingly protecting her, as they always did.

He took her to her room and tucked her in. Now, he's a man who learns from his mistakes. He knew he shouldn't take her mask off, she wouldn't want him too. But today's mask was rather extravagant, and it probably would be quite uncomfortable to sleep with. So he took it off her face.

And he stumbled back, his breath knocked out of his lungs. Because his daughter had a trident scarred across her eye, starting at the bridge of her nose and diagonally across her eye. Her eyelid had been torn and sewn back together, but there was no question of it it had harmed her eye. It was purposeful, careful, designed. It was a mark. It was Poseidon's.

That bastard had blinded his daughter for blinding his son. An eye for an eye. It was a damn miracle he didn't take both her eyes, and that was probably because of Artemis. However, it did look a bit older than just his last confrontation. It must've been while he was in Calypso's island.

No wonder she was wary around him. She must know it was his fault that Poseidon partially blinded her.

Odysseus knelt beside her and took her hand. "Forgive me" he whispered. She didn't stir, but one of her dogs huffed at him, the other growled. And for once, he didn't try to calm it down. If it tore him up, he'd deserve it. He wouldn't fight it.

He fell asleep at the foot of his daughter's bed, her mask set beside him and her hand between his.

He woke up as she stirred. He was the lightest of sleepers after twenty years in danger. He thought Mini was just waking up, but she wasn't. She whimpered and thrashed. He didn't know what to do, should he comfort her? Wake her up?

Alkmene curled on her side and clawed at her scarred eye. One of her dogs got in between her arms and her face, preventing any more damage. Not for lack of trying, the girl whined and growled in pain, trying to claw at it, but the dog kept interfering. Her growls and whimpers turned into desperate gasps and growing screams of pain. A wound inflicted by a god likely hurt like new every once in a while. What could he do, if it wasn't even a nightmare. It wasn't that she was scared and he could comfort her, she was in pain so excruciating she wanted to claw it out. Her dogs protected her face, they didn't mind that it meant she clawed at them instead. He didn't know what to do.

The black dog locked its jaw around his wrist, firm but careful, it didn't even hurt, And it pulled his hand toward his daughter's face. Odysseus carefully pressed his palm against her eye, cringing at the texture of the scar. The pressure seemed to relieve the pain, however slightly. She still gasped for breath, but no longer screamed. She still tried to claw at her eye, but she only managed to scratch his hand and wrist, clawing so desperately that it broke his skin.

He welcomed the pain. A fraction of what he put her through, a fraction of the pain he's to blame for. A part of him hoped she tore his skin. A part of him hoped her dog would lock its jaw and puncture his arm, so he'd have the scars to remind him of his daughter's. So she wouldn't be alone in her pain tonight.

He stayed steady there for hours, pressing gently on her face. He memorized the feeling of her scar on his palm, jagged and rough, imperfect and cruel. He wished he could take it from her, he wished Poseidon had taken his eye instead.

Little after dawn, her eyes fluttered and he took away his hand. He had dried blood all over his wrist and hand, and she had it under he fingernails. He was nervous, terrified she'd hate him, terrified she already did.

Her eyes opened, and once again it knocked him off balance, seeing her right eye open but discolored. Broken. She stared at him for a minute and he bowed his head in shame.

"Telemachus can't know. He'll blame himself, think it should've been him." is the first thing she said, instead of the insults or reprimand he expected.

"Alkmene…"

"It's Mini. Listen, it's your fault. None of this would've happened if it weren't for you. So I was told. But I know you did your best with what you had. And you didn't know Poseidon would take my eye as revenge."

"He told me. When I came back, he said he'd take my son and take his eyes. I didn't think he already had."

"Yeah, couple years ago. I was alone in the coast, an easy target I suppose. It was meant to be my brother, but he settled for me. And hey, at least it works. I'm an archer. He did take my dominant eye, but I adapted. Archers don't need both eyes anyway."

"Damn you are too calm about this."

"Well, I mean, it's been years. I don't hate you for this. It's hard to hate someone who I only heard the best of stories about, and by the time you arrived, I'd come to terms with it. I was tense around you because you kept insisting I took my mask off, and I couldn't exactly tell you off without making it obvious that I was hiding something. So quit that and we're good."

"I'll never pressure you about it again."

"Good. I'm so glad we see eye to eye" she grinned

"Yeah, I didn't like coming in blind about you" he joked back despite himself. He didn't know if he had the right to. But she snorted, surprised by the pun.

"So I got my humor from you. I should've seen that one coming."

"we probably shouldn't joke about this, but I suppose I can turn a blind eye to it"

"come on, don't be blinded by your righteousness, this is fun."

"Yes, I suppose I shouldn't lose sight of fun"

All day, father and daughter exchanged bad blind puns, much to the confusion of Penelope and Telemachus. But hey, at least the tension between them had dissipated.

Odysseus saw his daughter in a new light. He caught all the small gestures she had that hinted at her partial blindness. He understood now the way she struggled with depth, often trying twice to reach something, and struggling to catch. He noticed her relationship with her dogs. They were more than just her pets and companions, they were her eyes, always alert and flanking her so she wouldn't need to be on guard, especially the one on her blind side. They prevented her from bumping into walls and furniture, even if it meant she bumped into them instead. He saw the way she startled slightly when Telemachus touched her unexpectedly or moved too fast.

Bonding with her became easier as the tension dissipated with bad jokes that had Telemachus smacking his head on the table, yet smiling.

And then he figured they could bond over archery, all of them. Penelope was good, a Spartan through and through. Telemachus was getting the hang of it, but he was better at close-range fighting. Odysseus enjoyed helping him out, fixing his form and aim.

He knew his daughter was a good archer, but he thought surely there would be some tips he could give her, with twice her experience. Or hey, at least he could show off a little. He took his bow and aimed. As his arrow flew, it was knocked off course and split by another. He looked up to see Mini hanging from a tree branch, a shit-eating grin on her face.

"What's the matter, old man? Can't land a shot?"

Odysseus huffed and fired again. Once again it was intercepted by another arrow.

"I thought you were an archer, My King." she mocked.

"I am, you little Winion!"

And for hours, they tried to one-up each other while Telemachus and Penelope watched fondly. They did all sorts of trickshots and they were generally pretty evenly matched, though their techniques were different. She was more fluid, she could aim while hanging upside down or while running, while he slowed down and had a more traditional technique.

Hunting was still very much her thing, though. When Odysseus and his children went to hunt, he and Telemachus went all Warrior Of The Mind, thinking of traps and strategies. While Mini just set her dogs free and her and her canines moved like a unit, rounding up prey. They were stealthy and the prey did not see it coming.

However, she was respectful. She didn't hunt more than necessary. It was a quick death and after reaching the prey she thanked it for the sacrifice. There was not a moment of fear or pain for the prey. It was the way of Artemis, the way of nature.

He had thought himself a great hunter, but of course the protégé of the Goddess of Hunting would put him to shame.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Insurance companies are making climate risk worse

Tomorrow (November 29), I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

Conservatives may deride the "reality-based community" as a drag on progress and commercial expansion, but even the most noxious pump-and-dump capitalism is supposed to remain tethered to reality by two unbreakable fetters: auditing and insurance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

No matter how much you value profit over ethics or human thriving, you still need honest books – even if you never show those books to the taxman or the marks. Even an outright scammer needs to know what's coming in and what's going out so they don't get caught in a liquidity trap (that is, "broke"), or overleveraged ("broke," again) exposed to market changes (you guessed it: "broke").

Unfortunately for capitalism, auditing is on its deathbed. The market is sewn up by the wildly corrupt and conflicted Big Four accounting firms that are the very definition of too big to fail/too big to jail. They keep cooking books on behalf of management to the detriment of investors. These double-entry fabrications conceal rot in giant, structurally important firms until they implode spectacularly and suddenly, leaving workers, suppliers, customers and investors in a state of utter higgeldy-piggeldy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/29/great-andersens-ghost/#mene-mene-bezzle

In helping corporations defraud institutional investors, auditors are facilitating mass scale millionaire-on-billionaire violence, and while that may seem like the kind of fight where you're happy to see either party lose, there are inevitably a lot of noncombatants in the blast radius. Since the Enron collapse, the entire accounting sector has turned to quicksand, which is a big deal, given that it's what industrial capitalism's foundations are anchored to. There's a reason my last novel was a thriller about forensic accounting and Big Tech:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

But accounting isn't the only bedrock that's been reduced to slurry here in capitalism's end-times. The insurance sector is meant to be an unshakably rational enterprise, imposing discipline on the rest of the economy. Sure, your company can do something stupid and reckless, but the insurance bill will be stonking, sufficient to consume the expected additional profits.

But the crash of 2008 made it clear that the largest insurance companies in the world were capable of the same wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, and short-termism that they were supposed to prevent in every other business. Without AIG – one of the largest insurers in the world – there would have been no Great Financial Crisis. The company knowingly underwrote hundreds of billions of dollars in junk bonds dressed up as AAA debt, and required a $180b bailout.

Still, many of us have nursed an ember of hope that the insurance sector would spur Big Finance and its pocket governments into taking the climate emergency seriously. When rising seas and wildfires and zoonotic plagues and famines and rolling refugee crises make cities, businesses, and homes uninsurable risks, then insurers will stop writing policies and the doom will become undeniable. Money talks, bullshit walks.

But while insurers have begun to withdraw from the most climate-endangered places (or crank up premiums), the net effect is to decrease climate resilience and increase risk, creating a "climate risk doom loop" that Advait Arun lays out brilliantly for Phenomenal World:

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-doom-loop/

Part of the problem is political: as people move into high-risk areas (flood-prone coastal cities, fire-threatened urban-wildlife interfaces), politicians are pulling out all the stops to keep insurers from disinvesting in these high-risk zones. They're loosening insurance regs, subsidizing policies, and imposing "disaster risk fees" on everyone in the region.

But the insurance companies themselves are simply not responding aggressively enough to the rising risk. Climate risk is correlated, after all: when everyone in a region is at flood risk, then everyone will be making a claim on the insurance company when the waters come. The insurance trick of spreading risk only works if the risks to everyone in that spread aren't correlated.

Perversely, insurance companies are heavily invested in fossil fuel companies, these being reliable money-spinners where an insurer can park and grow your premiums, on the assumption that most of the people in the risk pool won't file claims at the same time. But those same fossil-fuel assets produce the very correlated risk that could bring down the whole system.

The system is in trouble. US claims from "natural disasters" are topping $100b/year – up from $4.6b in 2000. Home insurance premiums are up (21%!), but it's not enough, especially in drowning Florida and Texas (which is also both roasting and freezing):

https://grist.org/economics/as-climate-risks-mount-the-insurance-safety-net-is-collapsing/

Insurers who put premiums up to cover this new risk run into a paradox: the higher premiums get, the more risk-tolerant customers get. When flood insurance is cheap, lots of homeowners will stump up for it and create a big, uncorrelated risk-pool. When premiums skyrocket, the only people who buy flood policies are homeowners who are dead certain their house is gonna get flooded out and soon. Now you have a risk pool consisting solely of highly correlated, high risk homes. The technical term for this in the insurance trade is: "bad."

But it gets worse: people who decide not to buy policies as prices go up may be doing their own "motivated reasoning" and "mispricing their risk." That is, they may decide, "If I can't afford to move, and I can't afford to sell my house because it's in a flood-zone, and I can't afford insurance, I guess that means I'm going to live here and be uninsured and hope for the best."

This is also bad. The amount of uninsured losses from US climate disaster "dwarfs" insured losses:

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/hurricanes-floods-bring-120-billion-insurance-losses-2022-2023-01-09/

Here's the doom-loop in a nutshell:

As carbon emissions continue to accumulate, more people are put at risk of climate disaster, while the damages from those disasters intensifies. Vulnerability will drive disinvestment, which in turn exacerbates vulnerability.

Also: the browner and poorer you are, the worse you have it: you are impacted "first and worst":

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/frontline-fenceline-communities

As Arun writes, "Tinkering with insurance markets will not solve their real issues—we must patch the gaping holes in the financial system itself." We have to end the loop that sees the poorest places least insured, and the loss of insurance leading to abandonment by people with money and agency, which zeroes out the budget for climate remediation and resiliency where it is most needed.

The insurance sector is part of the finance industry, and it is disinvesting in climate-endagered places and instead doubling down on its bets on fossil fuels. We can't rely on the insurance sector to discipline other industries by generating "price signals" about the true underlying climate risk. And insurance doesn't just invest in fossil fuels – they're also a major buyer of municipal and state bonds, which means they're part of the "bond vigilante" investors whose decisions constrain the ability of cities to raise and spend money for climate remediation.

When American cities, territories and regions can't float bonds, they historically get taken over and handed to an unelected "control board" who represents distant creditors, not citizens. This is especially true when the people who live in those places are Black or brown – think Puerto Rico or Detroit or Flint. These control board administrators make creditors whole by tearing the people apart.

This is the real doom loop: insurers pull out of poor places threatened by climate disasters. They invest in the fossil fuels that worsen those disasters. They join with bond vigilantes to force disinvestment from infrastructure maintenance and resiliency in those places. Then, the next climate disaster creates more uninsured losses. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Finance and insurance are betting heavily on climate risk modeling – not to avert this crisis, but to ensure that their finances remain intact though it. What's more, it won't work. As climate effects get bigger, they get less predictable – and harder to avoid. The point of insurance is spreading risk, not reducing it. We shouldn't and can't rely on insurance creating price-signals to reduce our climate risk.

But the climate doom-loop can be put in reverse – not by market spending, but by public spending. As Arun writes, we need to create "a global investment architecture that is safe for spending":

https://tanjasail.wordpress.com/2023/10/06/a-world-safe-for-spending/

Public investment in emissions reduction and resiliency can offset climate risk, by reducing future global warming and by making places better prepared to endure the weather and other events that are locked in by past emissions. A just transition will "loosen liquidity constraints on investment in communities made vulnerable by the financial system."

Austerity is a bad investment strategy. Failure to maintain and improve infrastructure doesn't just shift costs into the future, it increases those costs far in excess of any rational discount based on the time value of money. Public institutions should discipline markets, not the other way around. Don't give Wall Street a veto over our climate spending. A National Investment Authority could subordinate markets to human thriving:

https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/industrial-policy-requires-public-not-just-private-equity/

Insurance need not be pitted against human survival. Saving the cities and regions whose bonds are held by insurance companies is good for those companies: "Breaking the climate risk doom loop is the best disaster insurance policy money can buy."

I found Arun's work to be especially bracing because of the book I'm touring now, The Lost Cause, a solarpunk novel set in a world in which vast public investment is being made to address the climate emergency that is everywhere and all at once:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

There is something profoundly hopeful about the belief that we can do something about these foreseeable disasters – rather than remaining frozen in place until the disaster is upon us and it's too late. As Rebecca Solnit says, inhabiting this place in your imagination is "Completely delightful. Neither utopian nor dystopian, it portrays life in SoCal in a future woven from our successes (Green New Deal!), failures (climate chaos anyway), and unresolved conflicts (old MAGA dudes). I loved it."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/28/re-re-reinsurance/#useless-price-signals

[brw]

It baffles the mind to me how people will insist Ben Percy's Beast is right and correct and is the natural end version of Hank and that since day one he was always going to end up like that, not just because it implies absolutely nobody has actually read Hank in any pre-Bendis comic ever, but also because Evil Hank as Percy writes him makes everyone look massively incompetent, and I'm not even talking about just X-Force, I mean the entire larger X-Men community.

Emma Frost. World class telepath. Repeatedly is shown to not have that many qualms about digging into people's minds if they're hiding something from her. Confronts Hank at least once directly, and yet did not actually care enough to do anything other than act huffy when confronted with his actions. At most, she was pissed at him ruining her party. You can torture whoever you want, old buddy, but causing an inconvenience at my party? Now I'm mad.

Jean Grey. Even greater telepath. Was on X-Force herself, even, and also does not have many holdups about tearing down people's walls if the needs be. We even see her do just that, but her problem is him keeping things from her, and not the actual content of most of his actions. And after she leaves, she just seems to plug her fingers in her ears and go lalalala? The stuff at the Hellfire Gala, keeping Wolverine as clones, she doesn't care, she's too busy X-Mening.

Wolverine. Epic cool warrior guy who is supposed to be the best there is, whose talents Hank clearly admires enough to clone repeatedly to do his bidding, who is simultaneously a lone wolf and also the guy everyone wants to have on their team, who is the only guy who can see through Hank or whatever. Not competent enough to kill one big blue furry man who has spent the last 5 years at a desk job. That completely alludes him.

Domino has luck based powers that are supposed to help her in any situation, but I guess getting rid of evil blue man is too much to ask. Couldn't even get a bucket propped up under an open door. "He was always like this, he was always evil" she insists, but after learning he's controlling a small nation with plant people at the Hellfire Gala she still busts out the Cha Cha Slide with him on the dance floor.

I guess neither Jean nor Logan bothered to tell Scott his old friend was committing war crimes, because he doesn't seem to know or to give a fuck.

Kitty and Kurt know enough to joke about it, but do they actually confront him? Does anyone care enough to actually try to put a stop to it directly, if they're all seemingly convinced he's beyond help and fundamentally evil? No, they've got other shit going on. No time to care about Hank making a future where he is God-King, we gotta stop Sinister doing that same thing, but I guess when Hank does it, who gives a shit.

Quinten Quire is an omega level telepath who apparently nobody thought to say "hey man, can you use those Phoenix-level abilities to get Beast to stop killing people?". He was too busy giving himself a bigger dick in resurrection protocols, I guess.

I could go on, but point is, I genuinely don't know how you insist that era made so much sense and was the perfect version of Hank and everyone was simply too naive to see that this was who he always was, because it makes everyone look like an incompetent moron! They can't kill one fat blue furry man??? He hasn't done field work in years! And yet that's too much to ask! The only reason he died was because he was in gay love with some fuckass actor from New Jersey. It's deeply embarrassing for everyone involved if that's the reality of things, and I have no idea why you want all of your favourite characters to be incompetent dipshits who think "Wow, isn't Hank evil?" and then refuse to actually do anything about it.

And all this could have been averted if Hank was, you know, Hank. Hank isn't charming and cultured and well-read and funny and polite because he's a good person, those are his innate traits, and as we see with Dark Beast, they can twist in the opposite direction. That would literally be all it would take. I mean a lot of things would still suck, but at the very least, it would make everyone's inability to do anything a little more understandable, and allow things to feel tragic, like that Hank becoming increasingly evil and separated from his ethics is a loss and one we all mourn, instead of the insistence that he was always going to turn out that way.

Emma walks in to try and set things right with Hank, but gets distracted by good conversation and jokes and the same man who treated her as a member of the X-Men when she first joined and not as a heartless monster, who built her piece by piece back together when people were joking that finding out her murderer would be too much work, because everyone wanted her dead. It's hard to connect the evil actions she's heard Hank doing with the kind and charming and personable man in front of her, who matches her intellectually and well and truly respects her, and so she accepts that things are either exaggerated or that Hank will ultimately come back into himself, and that she can trust him not to disrupt her party.

Just a few little moments like that would have gone so far. An evil Hank McCoy is ultimately still Hank, and should still be funny and dropping Aristotle quotes and Shakespeare and being a good friend, because those are not traits exclusively to moral people, and it would make everyone's seeming incompetence a little easier to swallow. It's harder to see the evil actions that Hank is doing for what they are, when he's making you laugh so hard your belly aches or pondering intellectual questions with you, rather than just repeatedly saying "I'M THE BASTARD YOU NEED" before making a torture station in outer space.

There's so many ways this entire arc could have, at the very least, had some intrigue and actual character work to explore, the ways Hank has always used a larger than life persona to deflect and hide, and how that could become increasingly warped if you're dead set on having him be evil, and make the whole thing feel less like a character assassination and more of a tragedy. Hank McCoy becoming evil should hurt. It should feel like a great loss that someone who had been so kind and empathetic and nurturing became increasingly amoral and evil and even sadistic, and all the characters involved should feel that loss, and that even could be why they struggle to actually do anything for so long; they're so loyal to the Hank that once was, they can't see the Hank that is.

But all that is lost when the only character suggesting that something else might be to blame is Colossus, who immediately gets shut down as being ridiculous and silly, and everyone else stands and nods that Hank is really evil now, and isn't that a shame, and maybe he was always like this, but are we actually gonna do anything about it? Nah, we got a party to throw, we gotta get our fancy dresses on.

The entire thing is so unbelievably infuriating, because all it would have taken for someone to actually not even like Hank, but just want to be consistent with prior characterisation and have him be fun. A villainous Hank should ultimately be fun. That's probably the main reason why Dark Beast has endured for so long; he is fun to see and be around. He's a fun character to see on your page. That's what Hank needed. But I guess Sinister was taking that place so instead we got blue Kissinger and it is genuinely such a travesty that this dogshit is celebrated by comic fans who throw up in their mouths if you suggest reading an Avengers comic to broaden their horizons.

[wardarose2004]

WHAT IF

Geisbeich's hatred towards Carla isn't because of the fact he's much stronger ,mature and noble than him but he actually thinks Carla isn't his son.

Let me explain:

[Krone: Carla, you're strikingly similar to Giesbach.

Karlheinz: Oh, what a beautiful face... ...Giesbach, he really does resemble Krone, don’t you think?

Giesbach: Ha...you’re just talking nonsense...]

DF Carla Maniac prologue; Translator: infernal iris

[Zweig: This happened even before your Mother got married to Giesbach...Krone was actually supposed to wed my successor, the Demon Lord Burai.That is why she came here. ]

LE shin Maniac epilogue @dialovers-translations

[Azusa: I think he resembles Eve… ...His face takes after her.

Kou: Well well, Ruki-kun. Don’t feel down.There’s always the possibility that he’ll resemble his father when he grows up. It’s something to look forward to in the future.

Ruki: … ...Boys usually do resemble their mothers.

Ruki: … ...When he grows up, I’m sure anyone would be able to tell who he resembles.]

(DF Brute ending Ruki: translator-@akuichansera)

Here Adam is Shin's son

Translation @dialovers-translations

So Mene was supposed to Marry Geisbeich and Krone was supposed to Marry Burai the demon lord. (DF and LE) Krone often visited the vivora castle, implying that Krone maybe spent time with Burai. (LE) But for some reason marriage between Krone and Burai didn't occur. Probably due to 'blood barrier' among founders and 'healthy' affair between Ebert the wolf king and Krone.(LE Shin) This happened before Carla's birth and Krone and Geisbeich's marriage. Here Karl saying/implying that Carla look like his mother nothing like his father (Karl ! you asshole!)which Geisbeich respond to him that Karl's speaking nonsense (Geis sounded hesitant and irritated as if Geis's doubting the paternity himself.) Meanwhile in Ruki's DF Brute ending we see a similar pattern where Adam looks like yui/MC but nothing like Ruki . In which kou responds that Adam would look like Ruki when he grows up but Adam isn't even Ruki's biological son. Carla has quite amount of supporters , his people admired him(DF) (Founders probably didn't know about Krone and Ebert's affair except felzein,Geis,Viboras.) But for some reason Geis just hated him . He even tried to kill him by sending Carla off to war(DF Carla Maniac epilogue) Geis on other hand loved Shin. That's quite unfair treatment,no?

There's this headcanon/theory that:

Geis thought Carla was Burai's son and the powers he inherited was possibly from burai that's why Geis was so salty about Carla.

Geis thought Shin was his biological son and wanted to use Carla as a tool and probably get rid of Carla legally cause Carla got quite amount of supporters . Wanted Shin as his heir? But Shin was immature

[docprof]

Mene mene tekel upharsin. … Part 2

Mene mene tekel upharsin. The Belshazzar's feast… Bloodless hand… God has pronounced the judgment … Part 2

The masters of empire laughed him to scorn, and then encouraged their MotherOfAllProxyArmies in Ukraine to concentrate to the Donbass and the Azov pursuant to conquering Novorossiya and Crimea once and for all … then on to Moscow.

This war was anything but “unprovoked Russian aggression”. This war was spawned and nurtured for decades in the secret chambers of the imperial dark lords in London and Washington. It was a war the empire knew Russia would fight. The imperial suzerains simply deceived themselves into believing it was a war Russia could not win.

As was imperative, Russia did choose to fight — notwithstanding there were many reasons to suppose they were insufficiently prepared to win in the event the full weight of the NATO countries were thrown against them.

And Yet NATO lost USA lost is loosing and the more it continues to escalate ... the more it pushes USA to nuclear annihilation.

Empire's beast Israel was brought down on knees recently by Iran. 20 F-35 destroyed by Iranian strike... penetrating all defenses of USA... Israel west combined... Just imagine what will happen if Russia with far advanced nuclear weapons... strikes USA and USA is unable to penetrate Russian defenses.

The Empire is in ruins while it prints billions to pocket in democrats pockets somehow burying itself deep in sand wish thinking good Russians will not strike them with nukes for their insolence and war.

Destroying Americans...not taking care of poor Americans.... not providing them free basic health care... amenities .... or support from natural disasters while burning American Tax payers money for corruption .... money laundering.... destroying freedom of speech and manipulating LGBTQ community... Democrats are pushing US to extinction. The paper tiger can't beat itself out of Nazism.

To be continued.......

[twilights-stuff]

Adding on to this post and on my Celestial au in general, since it might take a while to finish the character refs I've made of both Stan and Ford in this au, I've decided to show y'all some of the early sketches and doodles I made for this au as I have mentioned I've been working on this for quite some time. I can't wait to introduce this au properly. In summary, this is an au where Stan is a sun god by the name of Phoebus and Ford is a moon god by the name of Mene. (Alt text can explain on some drawings that need further context)

The last two were snippets of what I am working on recently but it was nice to see how far I've gone in terms of their designs and their stories. I really do hope to keep adding more to this au and build up to the lore I have created around it.

On the meantime, I suppose I should introduce a little synopsis of its story here because why not?

Au plot summary:

"After being sent to Gravity Falls to live with their great uncle Stanley Pines for the summer along with his twin sister Mabel, Dipper expects another boring three months to unfold in the seemingly normal, yet unusual Oregon town. But things took a turn as he finds himself in an underground, ancient cavern that might have been used for worship to an unknown god with an eeriely familiar face. When he takes the mysterious book kept within the cave, his eyes is laid bare to witness an eons long conflict between beings far greater than himself and a prophecy that might just lead to the end of the world he loves. Side by side with his sister and his new found friends, facing foes and meeting allies both mortal and divine, he slowly uncovers a truth in regards to the man who has been housing them the whole summer and the secrets he has kept so close to his chest. Will Dipper be able to unveil what is hidden from the eyes of men or will the truth should perhaps remain untold from the world before fate and destiny comes for him and his family?"

[gravi0la]

Btw I have a META theory that originally there were supposed to be 2 brazillian eggs.

I say this because we know that there's at least 3 other brazillian streamers that were invited to qsmp (LubaTV, Saiko mene and Viniccius13).

But if they all became Richas father's aswell, then Richas would've had 8 fathers. That's an insane number, he'd probably the most op egg as he would have at least 3 people online at all times to care for him.

So... If they joined, it's likely they would've introduced another egg to make them divide into teams of 4.

It's neat thought. I wonder what the other egg's appearence would've been like? Since Richa got the national soccer shirt. Because it would have to be something recognizably brazillian. Maybe the blue version of the shirt?

[mac33cheese]

Talking about my gacha OCS because no one asked

This is Mene, she is based of the Greek god of the moon

She/her

I might end up drawing her but probably not any time soon

I have so many ocs based on mythological gods, btw she isn't really supposed to BE Selene, just based off of

I might add some more to her design later but I like this for now

She has a younger brother/sister (idk yet) who is going to be based on the god of the sun

A lot of the ocs for this universe are siblings actually

There is yin and yang but the twist is they do NOT get along (twins)

There is also another pair of twins based off lust and love or Eros and Aphrodite

I can go on and on about those 4 but I might just make a second post for them

[noodleddragon]

🎤🎶🎥📺

🎤 - Top 5 favorite bands music artists?

I'm not great at following specific bands or artists, as I just vibe on a song by song basis, but I suppose:

Venjent

Paramore

Odie Leigh

Daft Punk

Deadmau5

🎶 - Top 5 favorite songs?

This is Why - Paramore

My Heart Has Teeth - Deadmau5/Skylar Grey

Who's Ready for Tomorrow - RAT BOY, IBDY

I'm Not Okay (I Promise) - My Chemical Romance

Shelter - Proter Robinson, Madeon

🎥 - Top 5 favorite movies?

The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy - GOAT, I won't even entertain opposing opinions on that

Knives Out - Mene introduced me to it, and honestly I'm obsessed, it's such a fascinating type of film and I'm very much looking forward to the third one.

Underworld - 👀🩸🦇🐺

Spirited Away - If I didn't have one Ghibli film on here I'd be heartless, this is just such fun whimsy

The Matrix - Formative SciFi movie from my childhood, I'm still mulling over what it means to me to this day....

📺 - Top 5 favorite TV shows?

For All Mankind - I'm not knowledgeable enough about the history of America, Soviet Union, and the likes to understand this wild alternate history version of the space race, but it COMPELS ME

Humans (2015) - If its got AI, or anything about trying to understand the human condition from an outside perspective, I'm down, and this one is FASCINATING. One of the few AI TV shows and also being set mostly in the UK helped ground it a bit more for me (honorary mention to Westworld, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Star Trek, Love Death & Robots, Doctor Who, and so many others for any and all AI seeking to be or understand humanity)

Star Trek ************ - All of them except TOS have a special place in my heart, TOS is too far before my time to appreciate properly, I have nothing against it. My favourite changes but ultimately I think DS9 takes the cake for some of the best nuance. Sorry Voyager, Discovery, Next Gen, Enterprise, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Prodigy. I love you all.

TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN - INDOMITABLE HUMAN SPIRIT IN THE FACE OF ALL THE GRIEF THE WORLD FOISTS UPON US (we don't talk about the bathhouse episode 🤢)

Farscape - Childhood escape, my first truly amazing SciFi and honestly nothing like it has ever caught me.

I could overthink these lists for 14 million years, so I'm gonna save us all a headache and leave it as is xD

[wrestlingfaves]

Royal Rumble Marathon: 1991

We’re rumbling into 1991.

Spoilers for past Rumbles,

For those too young to remember, this year’s Rumble took place during the Gulf War. Vince had the brilliant idea to take Sgt. Slaughter, one of the most patriotic wrestlers of the 1980s and star of the GI Joe cartoon and turn him into Hussein sympathizer. Stupid. Personally, I think wrestling should stay away from real-life events as the industry reduces them to racist caricatures and stereotypes. Real-life wars are tragedies, not entertainment. I watch wrestling for entertainment.

I’m only reviewing the Rumble, but the undercard is pretty good:

The Rockers vs the Orient Express

Sherri confronts the Ultimate Warrior. Re-watching the older pay per views can be a depressing experience when you realize how many stars have passed way too soon. All four participants in this segment (Mene Gene mediates, Randy Savage ambushes the Warrior) are deceased. The two commentators (Gorilla Monsoon, Roddy Piper) have passed. From the first match, Mr Fuji has passed. We’re a half hour into this program, and we’re at a fatality count of 7. On a more positive note, Sherri is one of the most talented women the sport has seen.

The Barbarian (managed by Bobby Heenan) vs the Big Boss Man (add two more to the casualty count)

Sgt Slaughter (managed by General Adnan) vs the Ultimate Warrior. Sherri (in a new outfit) and Savage interfere in the match and, honestly, are the best part of this match. Adnan has passed on, so the number of deceased performers is at 10.

Koko B Ware vs the Mountie (managed by Jimmy Hart). The Mountie always gets his man! And we finally have a match where no one has died!

Dusty & Dustin Rhodes vs Ted DiBase & Virgil (add two more to the passed on category, we’re now at a total of 12 performers that have left us too soon. Side note: Dusty’s WWE theme is one of my all-time favorites. DiBase’s theme is also a banger. Virgil finally turns on the Million-Dollar Man!

The entrants of the Rumble in order of appearance:

Bret Hart (2nd time the Hitman has been the #1 participant)

Dino Bravo (managed by Jimmy Hart)

Greg Valentine (managed by Jimmy Hart)

Paul Roma (managed by Slick)

“Texas Tornado” Kerry Von Erich (Kerry ran to the ring – I can see why people were unaware that he had a foot amputated).

Rick Martel

Tony Atlas (or Samba Simba as he was known at the time…such a bad stereotypical gimmick)

Bushwhacker Butch

Jake Roberts

Hercules (managed by Slick)

Tito Santana

Undertaker (managed by Brother Love)

Jimmy Snuka

Davey Boy Smith

Smash of Demolition

Hawk of the Legion of Doom

Shane Douglas (post-Dynamic Dudes but pre-Franchise)

No-Show (Supposed to be Randy Savage but he was too busy running from the Ultimate Warrior)

Animal of the Legion of Doom

Crush of Demolition

Hacksaw Jim Duggan

Earthquake (managed by Jimmy Hart)

Mister Perfect (managed by Bobby Heenan)

Hulk Hogan

Haku

Jim Neidhart

Bushwhacker Luke

Brian Knobbs of the Nasty Boys

The Warlord

Tugboat

Lots of fresh faces in the 1991 Rumble: Roma, Von Erich, Atlas, Undertaker, Davey Boy, Douglas, Crush of Demolition, the Legion of Doom, Brian Knobbs of the Nasty Boys.

Taker clearly isn’t “Taker” yet as he only eliminated one wrestler and was easily eliminated by the Legion of Doom.

Hogan won his second Rumble (boring).

I said the 1990 Rumble was the most depressing when it came to deceased wrestlers but 1991 surpassed it: only 9 participants of the Rumble have passed but if you include the non-wrestlers/wrestlers in the undercard the total number is 21. Looking forward to a Rumble where the deceased count is less than five.

Rating: 5 out of 10

[grandhotelabyss]

What's with the late-20th early-21st century trend of literary novels pastiching late-18th early-19th century styles? Just of major works, there's The Sot-Weed Factor, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and Mason & Dixon. I'd be tempted to chalk it up to a postmodern fascination with Laurence Sterne and the like, but then there's Jonathan Strange which has a lot in common formally with the others but AIUI isn't really "postmodern" in the same way.

A. S. Byatt, to whom the observation also applies, wrote in On Histories and Stories,

This brings me to language. The journalist Chris Peachment interviewed various novelists about ten years ago about why they were writing historical novels, expecting some answer about paradigms of contemporary reality, and got the same answer from all of them. They wanted to write in a more elaborate, more complex way, in longer sentences, and with more figurative language. (I think the novelists interviewed were Golding, Ackroyd, Fowles and Swift but am not sure about this.) This surprised Chris Peachment but interested me. I associated this answer with a story of John Cheever, ‘MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN’, in which a man finds that the graffiti in an imposing marble-partitioned gentlemen’s lavatory are long literary-aesthetic paragraphs, and with Anthony Burgess’s 1985 where the skinheads are secretly learning Latin in garages, because it is forbidden. Cheever’s narrator is baffled by forms resembling (or perhaps they are) Poe, Pater and Wilde, and compares the archaic texts to the paperback books of ‘graphic descriptions of sexual commerce’ in the ‘noble waiting room’. ‘What had happened, I supposed, was that, as pornography moved into the public domain, those marble walls, those immemorial repositories of such sport, had been forced, in self-defence, to take up the more refined task of literature.’ His final discovery in an airport men’s room, written on tile, is ‘Bright Star! would I were stedfast as thou art – Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night . . .’ Rhetoric has become shady and a secretive pleasure.

I think she's right, and for this reason I semi-unreasonably also think writing novels in this way is effectively "cheating." ("Semi-unreasonably" because this catches too many good books in its net. I will still stand by the argument in its general form, however.) I prefer novelists who make the mistake in the opposite direction. Yes, the characters in Toni Morrison's Beloved fundamentally think more like 1980s professionals than like the 1870s historical personages they are supposed to be, but I'm glad she didn't try to write in the style of Frederick Douglass or Herman Melville! She wrote in her own style, which is what we want to read. The novel—or the realist novel—is best when enshrining the language of its own time as literature, not when amusing itself like a basement hobbyist with bygone styles.

[fzzr]

I was going to write a post about the "longest-lasting imperial title"

But I didn't, in the end. The way it was supposed to go is I would define an imperial title as one that asserts claim to a core territory and one or more periphery territories. To constrain things I was going to limit it to those who held at least some amount of temporal power over at least some of that area. I would specifically *not* have required an imperial title to be a monarchical one as well, asserting that a Roman Republican consul was just as much an emperor as any Czar or President of the United States. Titles could be in abeyance (say due to a revolution) but could maintain continuity after, just with the downtime not counted. After that I would introduce the commutative property of imperial titles, where the legacy of one imperial title is considered to continue if someone holds two simultaneously and one subsequently expires.

I had started out assuming the longest-lasting such title through the commutative property would start with "King of Sumer and Akkad", as that continued in use for over 1000 years and had continuity into Shah, but it turned out that the most compelling route was to start with Pharaoh of Egypt and conclude that that title still exists by the commutative property in the form of the Pope. In order to distinguish Pharaoh and King of Sumer and Akkad I had to figure out when Egypt became an empire, but that's when things started to fall apart.

The unification of the crowns of upper and lower Egypt by Narmer/Menes(?) could very much be defined as the founding of an empire, but today we consider Egypt to be one entity, meaning Pharaoh would only become an imperial title once it made a claim to land outside those of the ethnic Egyptians. But... were there ethnic Egyptians when the crowns were unified? Does an empire temporarily stop being an empire if ethnogenesis occurs within its area, then start again if it picks up new land again? If empire is defined by ethnicity, does a polity become an empire if it's temporarily conquered by outside ethnic group, and cease when it's ruled again by the native one?

This pushed me to step back another layer and assess my criteria from the top. Why had I started by defining an empire in terms of land and not people? Well, when you're studying history, there are inevitably going to be both words and maps. I'll leave aside the amount of bias that can hide in words for a moment and focus on maps. Maps are lines, colors, and words on a representation of some projection of the earth. So, let's say you're writing a history of the expansion of Rome's empire, and you want to show the changes in modern day Western Europe. Do you choose to show the Roman political subdivisions applied there after the conquest? The names given to that region by the people living there at the time? The names of the peoples? Do you use the names the Romans used, or make an attempt to use the names they used for themselves? Well, virtually none of the pre-Roman inhabitants of those lands had written languages that we know of, and certainly not ones that survived in a comprehensible form to today.

Having lost access to the native demonym, you face the final choice. You either label the land "Gaul" for the land or "Gauls" for the people. I live and was entirely educated in the USA, and most of the maps I learned from (across all of history) made the choice like this: Before conquest, put the current vernacular name for the indigenous people on the vague area where they lived, usually not attempting to include drawn borders. Use the names of the political subdivision once the region is colonized.

That's where I stopped. It was no longer interesting to try to trace imperial titles from the beginning of history until today because it would be too fuzzy to give the punchline I wanted or even an interesting set of possible solutions. I did learn something from the project though, and that's a new definition of "empire" for myself. Empire is what happens when you replace people with land.

Empires draw lines on maps.

[kuningaskunta-sielut]

Hello kontekstin puute my old friend.

Tää perustuu suoraan Daysin cutsceneen, missä Xion (ainakin kuvittelee) puhuvansa Roxasin ja Axelin kanssa. Pelissä tää on vähän selvemmin esitetty ja siinä käy paremmin ilmi, kuka tässä puhuu ja kenellekin, joten selittelyn nopeuttamiseksi lainataampa tähän että miten tää menee pelin enkkuversiossa:

Xion: Is it that I'm not supposed to exist?

Axel: Well, what do you want to do, Xion?

Xion: I want... I want to be with you two.

Roxas: Then come back with us.

(btw tässä vaiheessa pitää pikaisesti ylistää Wayfinder Projectia koska herranjumala se helpottaa hommaa huomattavasti kun pitää jostain kaivaa esiin just joku tietty KH-cutscene)

Elikkä joo, tässä Xion toisessa replassaan suoraan puhuttelee mielikuvitus-Roxasia ja Axelia, mutta suomennoksessa se taas ilmeisesti puhuu tai ajatteleekin itsekseen ja viittaa ystäviinsä "heinä" eikä "teinä". Eli mitäs ihmettä nyt taas?

Japaniksi Xion sanoo tässä, sekä mangassa että pelissä, että あたしは二人と一緒ににいたい/atashi wa futari to issho ni itai, ja ongelma on se, että vaikka tässä käy selväksi, että Xion sanoo haluavansa olla Roxasin ja Axelin kanssa, niin tästä ei mitenkään käy ilmi, puhutteleeko se niitä suoraan vai ei. Tässä lauseessa ei ole minkäänlaisia toisen- tai kolmannen persoonan pronomineja, Xion viittaa ystäviinsä vain sanalla futari eli "kaksikko" ja japanissa ei sanoja taivuteta erikseen riippuen siitä, onko niiden kohde lauseen kuulija vai joku muu. Ikävä kyllä suomessa taas ei oikein voi tuota viimeistä jättää tekemättä, joten tää lause on vähän pakko kääntää niin, että siinä selkeästi puhutaan joko toisessa tai kolmannessa persoonassa.

Kuten alussa sanoin, pelissä tää on suht selvä tapaus: Axel kysyy Xionilta kysymyksen, joten tietysti Xion puhuu sille (ja Roxasille) vastatessaan. Mutta mangassa tää kohtaus on vähän taiteellisemmin esitetty ja tästä ei edes käy ilmi, kuka tuon alun kysymyksen Xionille esittää, joten se voisi olla Axel, mutta yhtä hyvin se voisi olla joku ihan muu puhuja, joka on vain jossain ruudun ulkopuolella näkymättömissä. Eli jos se olisikin vaikka Riku, joka on tässä vaiheessa nähty hengaamassa Xionin kanssa, niin silloin Xion tietysti viittaisi Roxasiin ja Axeliin kolmannessa persoonassa, ja ilmeisesti suomentaja on veikannut, että tässä tapahtuukin jotain sen suuntaista. Hupsista.

Koska tää on tässä vähän epäselvästi esitetty, niin tavallaan ymmärrän, että ilman pelistä löytyvää kontekstia tästä ei välttämättä osaa sanoa, kuka tässä puhuu ja kenelle. Mutta toisaalta on se vähän hassua, että Xion ilmeisesti ajattelee jotain itsekseen ja Roxas sitten vastaa siihen, eli musta senkin puolesta tuossa lauseessa olisi ollut enemmän järkeä, jos Xion puhuttelisi siinä sitä ja Axelia suoraan. Toisaalta tää kohtaus on muutenkin sen verran symbolista huttua, että ehkä sen vois ajatella niin, että Xionin sisäinen monologi vaan on tässä vaiheessa vähän sekavassa tilassa ja siksi asioita ei välttämättä ole esitetty loogisimmalla mahdollisella tavalla. Ken tietää.