#ugh about to write another rambling incoherent essay in the tags so I will just stop

[baejax-the-great]

this is super late but I think of you as THE Achilles pov writer. the way you weave his mythology and humanity, arrogance and vulnerability, selfishness and generosity so effortlessly and IN HIS HEAD has made me cry so many times. Thank you thank you!

Ahh, thank you!!

It's funny, because I tend to default to writing from Pat's perspective, and I think I only have a few fics where Achilles POV gets to shine (Sunset, Agua Caliente, Numbered Days... that might be it).

Achilles really is such a fascinating character to me--a spiteful child and a great leader, generous and unyielding, calm and respectful to the men who take away Briseis and the Embassy while also purposefully causing the deaths of hundreds of his own side... And then, of course, there is his all-consuming grief (the only reason I read the Iliad if I'm being honest), grief so big it changed the course of the war, it changed the very landscape, it changed history--and it changed absolutely nothing at all.

He's just so... (I was going to put an emoji, but is there one for staring off into the distance for fifteen minutes thinking about the futility of the journey of grief, how it is long and winding and necessary and required and yet never leads you to a place beyond the grief because it will be with you forever, it simply cannot be undone, and the strongest, fastest man in history cannot outrun it and he cannot bear it so all there is to do is accept the crushing weight that his life has come to nothing and everyone in his entire culture was complicit in this conclusion...)

Anyway, I am working on an Achilles POV one-shot right now, but it's basically pwp so I don't know that any of that character analysis will realllllly be in there 😂