part three of the reverse odyssey au! polites' pov this time, cause I thought a constantly changing motive explanation would be fun
1/2/3/?
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Later, they find that it is the prayer of a terrified Elepnor clinging to the mast that saved them.
He'd called out in fear in the prayer he'd heard the most, growing from a boy of ten to a youth of twenty in the Trojan War, under Odysseus and his quick, odd prayers to his patron goddess- and half-surprised, half out of reflex, Polites had thought later by the look on the goddesses' own face-
Athena had answered.
She'd guided their ship to shore through the storm, somehow, and then stood at the wheel, taller than anyone Polites had ever seen, straight-backed and proud. Staring at them all as they slowly got to their feet, bowing and muttering prayers under their breath as they prostrated, more than half of them trembling in fear.
They'd all known their captain was blessed by the Goddess of Wisdom, in a way that was more than a mere touch or grey eyes. All known the way he'd sometimes stop talking and stare into the distance, and bark out orders for a convoluted, twisted, wonderful plan after.
Polites had known it was something more the day his friend had stumbled out of the forest all those years ago, silent as an owl and grin sharper than it used to be. Eyes no longer Hermes' kaleidoscope-amber ones that hurt to look at, but a gleaming silver that struck you still where you stood to listen.
But this was still more terrifying than any battle they'd ever faced.
(He saw so much of Odysseus in her, even standing still, that it hurt.
They had been so close.)
"Owl Lady!" Telemachus cheers, and runs out from behind his mother's skirts to the Goddess of War. Penelope makes an aborted movement towards him, dredging up some mortification beyond the haunted expression on her face (if only they'd had one moment more, to grab each other's hands even a little, if she'd just grabbed at him tightly, if they hadn't forgotten to get rid of that accused windbag-) at the way Telemachus runs to Athena with even less fear than his father had, grinning wide up at her as he hugs her shins in greeting.
"Telemachus," She says, bemused and fond. Her voice is... familiar, actually. Polites can't place it for a second, until Penelope makes an odd choking sound next to him and memory assaults- of Odysseus running around shouting with joy after his son's birth, proudly showing him off to everyone around as if he looked anything more than a raisin, Penelope tiredly laughing as she lay against the pillows. Of him suddenly pausing and turning to the strange cloaked woman in the corner and dragging her out into the light to gently hand her his son.
"Odysseus," she'd hissed, sounding panicked, yet he'd just laughed and shifted her hands to support Telemachus' head. Polites and Penelope had frowned at each other, confused, but Odysseus had only teased the woman about a newborn baby being the thing to scare her and offered them no explanations, and what the fuck, that had been Athena.
Penelope's eye twitches a little bit, some of the heartbreak clearing up in her face in favour of a strong wish for strangulation. Polites empathized. What was wrong with Odysseus.
She stares at them now, expectant, and Polites realises what she's waiting for the same moment her lips curl into a sneer of rage. Shit, right, she and Odysseus had had some sort of falling out after the cyclops-
"So," She says, dangerously low. "Does the King of Ithaca think himself more powerful than the Goddess of Wisdom, that he spurns my presence in such a way? Or-"
"He's been taken by Poseidon."
Polites doesn't know the words come from him until Athena swivels her head around to face him.
Oh fuck.
He takes a shuddering breath as he pushes himself to his feet. Glances out to the side and feels his heart drop at the unfamiliar waters, so far away from-
He turns back to Athena and gathers his courage. "Poseidon appeared before us, one year ago. Demanded reparations for the hurt we dealt to the cyclops, his son."
"So then why target-" Athena cuts herself off, teeth gnashing. Her hair starts rising, even though there's no breeze, feathers appearing across her visible skin. "I had rescinded my blessings from him! For this very reason, so Poseidon wouldn't-"
She stops talking with a hiss, pinching the bridge of her nose in barely contained fury. Polites' breath catches. She'd taken her blessings back- to protect Odysseus, of course, her feud with Poseidon was well-known to everyone and anyone, so the ocean god wouldn't take it out on her favoured.
Did Odysseus know that, Polites wants to ask her, remembering the absolute mourning devastation on his friend's face for that one day before it all went to shit, but knows it won't help anyone.
He swallows and continues. This part is going to anger her beyond anything, he knows. "Poseidon cursed him into a creature of the sea," He says cautiously, watching strange colors dance across her armour in her growing anger, looking less and less like a woman as he spoke, eyes glowing fire-hot. "His legs melted and turned into the tail of a fish, and he no longer could breathe above land, so we had to put him in the sea. And-"
His throat closes up, and the sailors around wince back, gathering Telemachus and pulling each other away from the wheel, knowing what's about to come.
"And?" Athena says, deceptively calm, as she watches them stumble away from her.
Polites gulps and feels tears run down his face as he says it. "And he ripped out his tongue."
Athena screams.
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After they've all wiped the blood from their ears and eyes and huddled down in the belly of the ship, holding onto each other until they've stopped trembling-
They're going to write songs about that scream, Polites thinks vaguely, staring up at the wood. His hands still are shaking. The rage of Athena will be recorded for the ages, in songs and poems and books.
Still, he can't bring up any secret resentment against her for nearly killing them- he felt the same, that first day, when he'd found the bloody tongue on the deck and had vomited over the side of the ship, sobbing.
Odysseus, his silver-tongued friend, wisest of the Greeks, able to talk his way out of anything, tongueless. An unimaginable cruelty, especially to the favourite of Athena.
Although, that was probably why, wasn't it.
They all stiffen as the door creaks and Athena ducks to walk inside. Someone whimpers. Polites doesn't blame him.
She looks at them with Odysseus' eyes, staring around at them once more with a blank expression.
"The continuation of this quest will ruin your kingdom," She says simply, and Polites barely holds back five different protests that will get them all killed.
Penelope stands up, walking to the front. "I will not abandon my husband." She raises her chin, meeting the Goddesses' gaze without fear. "Not ever."
Athena rolls her eyes. Eurylochus chokes, and Polites has to hold back some hysterical mix of a laugh and bursting into tears. Gods, she acts just like him.
"I did not expect you to," She says dryly. "But it will take years, and you can't expect Ithaca to finance your search for that long without a ruler."
Penelope's expression wavers, voice cracking to a whisper. "Years?"
Athena looks remorseful at least when she nods. "Years," She says kindly. Someone puts their head into their hands, but Polites can't tell who, because his vision is blurring out with tears. "He has been blown to the far eastern shores, where the sands stretch over a land a thousand times the size of Sparta. It will take a year alone for him to make it back to the ocean, and Poseidon will fight to keep him away from you all. And by then-"
She closes her eyes and purses her lips, swaying back like someone has dealt her a physical blow. "By then," she continues, steeling herself back to untouchable Goddess. "He will have been of the wild waters for so long that he will be little more than an animal. You will have to catch him, with nets and boats and ropes- and then find a way to bring him back to normal."
They are silent for a while.
"So be it," Eurylochus says, standing up and placing a hand on Penelope's shoulder. He nods to the Goddess, even though he's close enough that Polites can feel him shaking to do it. "What would you counsel us to do for Ithaca in the meantime, Goddess?"
"Ctimene has an equal claim to the throne, as does Penelope," Athena muses. Polites starts and feels the men murmur. Still, who would argue with-
"How will Ctimene rule, though?" Someone pipes up. Nevermind, then. Clearly, Odysseus took everyone's common sense with him when he was rolled off the side of the ship.
Eurylochus snorts before Athena can answer, turning around with a wry smile. "Odysseus may have won us the Trojan War," he tells the lackwitted man. "But never has he once won a single fucking fight with his sister in all the time I've known them. She is a terrifying woman."
Polites feels a laugh slip from him before he can stop it. "She's your wife."
Eurylochus nods grimly. "And I am scared."
"She is rather... shrill." Athena agrees, mouth curling in distaste. "Still, she and you can rule when Penelope is on the waters and the kingdom will not suffer for it. But you cannot both abandon Ithaca to possible invaders."
Penelope sobs and quickly tries to muffle it with a hand, screwing her eyes closed. Polites puts his hand on hers, trying to be reassuring even though his own chest aches. Years.
They will do it, he knows. But still.
"You will find food to eat on these shores," Athena says, turning around. "Ithaca is twelve days west from here."
"Where are you going?" Telemachus pipes up.
A smile props up on Athena's face, small and lacking joy. Cunning and cruel. She still feels so much like Odysseus. "I was dealt a great insult," She tells the child. "And I must return my reply to it."
When they set out the next morning, all the fish in the waters are floating at the surface, dead.
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Elendira the Crimsonnail (I)
I'll start with my thoughts on the Maximum version; maybe it will soften some people's feelings to know I'm fond of her. To be clear, if I am wrong about this and Orange are just backdooring in loli fan service I will extremely displeased, but I don't think that's what they're doing.
When I read Trigun Maximum I couldn't figure out what El's deal was, thematically. Like all of Knives's followers, she had something going on with bodily autonomy (I've also heard it that they're all marginalised in some way, but I don't see it? However, they do all have unusual relationships with bodies and agency over them); she's a transgender woman who impales people with nails. But we learn nothing about her past, save that she's been at Knives's side for even longer than Legato has. We learn more about the inner life of Midvalley the Hornfreak.
The Guns are in many ways an argument in favour of Knives's beliefs about humans, but compared to… well really the majority of the cast, Elendira is self-confident and refreshingly free of angst. She sees no reason to deprive herself of the finer things in life or to refrain from doing what amuses or excites her, especially if it's violent. She's committed to assisting Knives in his genocide, knowing he will not spare her, but she claims to hate the suicidal (such as Legato) and is dismissive of immature men (such as Legato). Knives is respectful of her (in a way he isn't of, say, Legato - to whom Knives is attached, but deeply in denial about). They're very nearly equals. If he falls, Elendira will be the one to bring an end to the world. (Presumably because if Knives hasn't survived, there's no way Legato has.)
(Okay, I'll stop dunking on Legato but the way he and Elendira interact is absolutely hilarious. They hate each other so dearly you can feel the hostility crackling off the page whenever they're both on it, but they also rely on each other without question. I would read a workplace sitcom about these people in a heartbeat.)
There are theories - she has some sort of tragedy in her past ("I don't like nice men. They die too soon," gets brought up in this context) or that her transition was not met with acceptance. I can't disprove either one, but neither do I see solid evidence to support them in particular, I suppose? Beyond planetary society's general horribleness, we're given no clear reason she's in the position she's in. El has decided it's none of our business and that's that. It's her prerogative, though I do feel uneasy if "she's a transwoman" is supposed to serve as the entirety of the explanation for her being a willing accomplice to genocide.
So I have my own theory, and it's that Elendira defines and masters herself. She is resolutely singular. In a story where so much of who we are is shaped by others - via names, purpose, scars, grief, longing, imitation, jealousy, rivalry - Elendira neither needs nor is needed by anyone. Legato was rescued and named by Knives, the first ever to treat him as though he's any other human, and even his powers need other people to fully express themselves; Elendira named herself and presumably sought out Knives for her own reasons. Whatever the tragic backstory reasons for that, we don't learn them, because it doesn't matter to her. I wonder if Knives sees something to aspire to in her total self-sufficiency, or even in her nihilism. Of all the characters, Elendira does most consistently have her shit together, while Knives is… well, he was a sensitive boy.
Regardless, if ending the world presents an amusing enough challenge, Elendira sees no compelling reason she shouldn't take the shot. There's nothing else on, none of these people mean anything to her, and she'll look damn good doing it.
To her credit, she does look incredible. Being well-dressed in the face of the apocalypse is a very specific niche, but El owns it as few others could.
She's pitted against Razlo and Livio (I'd say particularly Razlo) because their purpose has always been to be needed by someone else; Razlo joined the Eye of Michael because it was a place where we will be needed. Not to mention their selfhood is by definition a little unstable, whereas Elendira knows of self-doubt and uncertain identity by reputation, but has never met either one of them face-to-face.
And yet in the end she's defeated. Because, having perfect mastery, she's not learned to recover from the kind of ego-shattering loss she regularly doles out. Razlo and Livio, for obvious reasons, have that shit down to a science - Razlo exists to step in when Livio's at the end of his strength, and Livio learns to step in when Razlo's at his limit. Whereas perfection has no room for improvement. There's certainly prestige in being peerless in your field and unbeatable one-on-one, but who do you rely on for back-up?
Elendira neither needs nor is needed by anyone. So in the end, with Legato fully occupied, when she's pushed right to the limit of her strength -
- there's no one to step in.
@ultraviolet-cello
Part II
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These men just don't want to be around kids otherwise they would be the fun uncle, volunteer for Big Brothers and Big Sisters, be ok with dating women with kids and have a good relationship with the step kids. They just think they were entitled to biological offspring.
Amelia Hill
@byameliahillMon 28 Aug 2023 11.00 EDT
Father’s Day is dangerous for Robert Nurden. Childless not through choice but, as he puts it, “complacency, bad luck, bad judgment”, he tries to stay indoors and ignore the family celebrations outside.
But one year, he went for a walk. “I met family after family. There were children everywhere,” he remembered. “It was terrible. Just so painful. So many ambushes and triggers for my anguish.”
There is very little research into men who have not had children, although that is beginning to change. Research by Dr Robin Hadley has found that 25% of men over 42 do not have children – 5% more than women of the same age group.
Half of the men who are not fathers but wanted to be describe a huge grief and isolation from society. Almost 40% have experienced depression and a quarter feel a deep anger
Now 72, Nurden had a sheltered upbringing. Reaching adulthood, there was a lot he wanted to experience. “Having children was a very low priority. I was complacent: I just assumed it would happen,” he said.
It was not until he was in his early 40s that Nurden started to get broody. But by that point, he discovered, women of a similar age had already had children, if they were able or wanted to.
“I went into this 15-year period of not going into relationships or ending relationships quickly because I knew that person wasn’t going to want or be able to have a child with me – or that the relationship wasn’t going to be strong enough to last if we did have a child,” said Nurden.
He said high-profile older fathers breed complacency in ordinary men. “If I’m honest, even when I was in my 50s I believed that it might happen for me. But in real life, the Mick Jagger and Jon Snow-age fathers are actually very rare – and in any case, it’s medically not wise, as regards sperm quality.”
What compounded Nurden’s pain was that there was no public or private discussion about how men feel when circumstance leaves them unable to become fathers.
“There’s lots of publicity, quite rightly, about women and childlessness but men are very mute about this. Married men don’t want to hear it either: I’ve had men with children react with anger, as though they feel threatened, when I’ve tried to talk about my pain,” he said.
“I was mute too until recently, because as I aged, I found the regret grew into a great pain,” he added. “Unlike many other forms of grief, this compounds itself as it gets older: I wasn’t a father but now I’m not a grandfather. When I’m even older, I might find myself entirely alone.”
Nurden has published a book, I Always Wanted to be a Dad: Men Without Children, about his story and that of some other men. “It turns out that there is a lot of pain, regret and sadness out there,” he said.
Hadley, the researcher, is childless because although his wife had wanted children, by the time she and Hadley met, her age meant the risk of having one was too great. “I chose love but that doesn’t make the pain of not having children any less,” he said. “When a close colleague had his first child, I was so jealous that I couldn’t be in the same room as him.”
Being a father is a marker of status in many countries, said Hadley, but not in the west. “While there has recently been a lot more public discussion about how to be a good father, we still don’t have any narrative or celebration about how important it is for men to become a father in the first place,” he said.
Paul Goulden, the chair of Ageing Without Children, said that, along with the lack of public dialogue about becoming a father, he was “not convinced that there’s this Game of Thrones genetic push felt by men to have children”.
Instead, he said: “There’s this mistaken belief that men are fertile across their lifespan, so there’s no imperative to get on with it.”
That complacency persists because men without children historically have not spoken about their grief. But, Goulden said: “I hope Robert’s book will trigger a change in public dialogue around this issue. I think there’s an overwhelming sense of loneliness and fear out there about who is going to be there for these men, when they’re old and all alone.”
I wonder what their exes for these men would about them. Because the bar for Father's is so low that women showing they didn't want kids with them should really be a sign to do some soul searching.
Personal experience.......I think of my ex fiance who constantly said he wanted ro get married and have kids. However his actions said he wanted me to have the kids while he worked full time, he didn't believe in daycare so no job for me, and he would have to go to the gym almost everyday, he had a physically demanding job, and of course have his weekly card night with his buddies. And yes I stated all my objections but he had tunnel vision when it came to his fantasy family life. There's more but those were the issues relevant to this article.
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