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studyinglogic · 24 days ago

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On writing in margins and writing from the margins

So here I am, in a quiet room (which, as Woolf and Pascal have shown us, is a rare thing to be enjoyed). The old country is suffering from floods; the new country is sweltering; now is the time of monsters. People like patterns; they like chiasmus.

Quiet rooms are never quiet for me, since unless I'm very tired, I'm always connecting words and phrases in my head. But not in a literary way---just as bun is the lowest form of wheat, so are puns to be avoided, and I distrust language. Just as I fundamentally disapprove of art even as I enjoy it. If artists use lies to tell the truth, it is even easier to use lies to tell lies.

And as I write these, the reference multiply in my head. Woolf, Pascal, and Gramsci in the first paragraph; Ambrose Bierce and V for Vendetta in the second. Perhaps this is the peril of being raised in the margins. None of us can choose how we are born or how we are raised (minimally, this is "thrownness," as much as I dislike Heidegger) and writing from the margins will shape how you see the world.

Simon Leys has pointed out that people born in the centres of the world might ironically suffer from a sort of parochialism, as they imagine that everything comes to them. MacIntyre has pointed out how we can be imprisoned by our upbringing. Of course, all this is also possible for someone raised in the margins. But as for this particular person raised in the margins, I'm always aware of what I'm missing out.

Even if I read everything in the languages I know, there are always more languages I don't, and there's always what lies beyond language. Another reason to distrust it. And sometimes the mental furniture I rest on is so influential on my thought even as I cannot articulate it (as with Smullyan). Yet another reason.

There is a fundamental difference between writing for yourself (or a small audience) and writing for accessibility. If you write for yourself or a small audience, you can pepper the work with in-jokes and cryptic references; all you need is to remind yourself or your audience what matters. If you write for accessibility, either you need to rely on what is common or everything needs to be explained. That is why people keep retelling the Greek myths; it's easier than trying to explain the Three Kingdoms.

And of course, that's just the content-part of writing. If we move on to style, people like links; people like pictures; all these are things to make it accessible. Here I follow Eco, who made his readers go through a hundred pages of historical setting before putting a murder mystery into place. I ruin my most beautiful effects by putting in scholarly references, but I can't help it, because I think through running through references (cf. Wes Anderson's "The Concrete Masterpiece"), and I distrust the unscholarly.

What you define yourself against is as important as what you define yourself for. I find it hard to enjoy Joyce or Nabokov; in these cases, I console myself with Borges: "If you don't enjoy a book, it wasn't for you."

Personas are the outward facing masks of the self, as Jung put it. (It's time to begin ethics!) And, even as I write for myself, I am trapped by the persona of a semi-formal exposition. Why don't I just change---maybe write like Mencken or Hart, being provocative? The short answer is that it does not come naturally to me. I prefer being irenic. I prefer the stately learning of Leys or the miscellaneous and revealing contrasts of Weinberger. I prefer Borges, who did not pretend to know what the world was, who drew "maps of the world in its becoming." (See commentaries on Daodejing 29 for discussion.)

I enjoy fragments, and even enjoy the encyclopedic as fragments---definitely because I am skeptical that anyone can enjoy the encyclopedic as encyclopedic. Qian Zhongshu, in his preface to Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts, touches on these and related topics of "writing in the margins." The margins of life, and the margins of birth.

Often mistranslations are more interesting than the original. (See Borges for a detailed defence for when "the original is unfaithful to the translation.") Leys points out in an essay on Balzac that Balzac is often better in translation; this is a case when incongruities in the original are smoothed out. But sometimes it is interesting because incongruities are added and that adds to the richness (e.g. Pound's "translations" from Chinese.)

All these have become parts of my mental furniture. Orwell on Kipling, Borges on Wilkins, Carr on history, Collingwood on questions, Benjamin on constellations, Qian on misquoting, Leys on everything. And just as it is possible to rearrange furniture, so it is possible to foreground or background certain elements of style and content. I love both Borges and Vonnegut's writing, but Vonnegut hates semicolons and Borges loves them. I follow Borges.

In his preface to his translation of Pascal, Krailsheimer points out that Pascal often reuses words. Ever since then, I have not worried about reusing words. That's another example of mental furniture. And even bringing up Pascal brings up memories, of course, memories insignificant to others but which form the entire aesthetic of how I perceive Pascal. Seeing a copy at a book sale as a child, carefully bringing the book back, dividing the number of pages and then carefully creasing the spine in order to make sure that the spine was evenly creased. I still have my copy now, even as I repudiate Pascal and remember the troubles he brought me to.

Hardy was lucky: he had unshakeable confidence in his mathematical ability until he was forced to reflect on it. But I was reflecting from the beginning. People say to look to the world for feedback; the problem is that I am part of the world. Like Borges, reality is my enemy. "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody." But contrast Van Gogh.

So what is left? At one time, my form did not exist; the world brought together this form and its motivations and desires and its thirsts and knowledges, its lacunae and gaps. I do not believe in authenticity; I believe in alienation. (The ambiguity behind the use of the word "believe" in that sentence is why it is impossible to say what someone means if they say "I believe in Jesus." It depends on whether they proceed to recite the Nicene Creed or Ram Dass or something else altogether.) Some have enjoyed my work; some haven't. Anyone could write what I do, I think to myself somedays. I have seen two different accounts of Van Gogh's last words. In one, he says, "The sadness will last forever;" in another, he says, "I want to die like this." Which is true?

Going back to fragments. Sometimes incoherence and incongruity can enhance art; the complete lack of context for Ch. 139 of Tokyo Ghoul made it all the more interesting to me when I read it. (Kaneki Ken was reciting a poem; I was not aware it was a poem.) Emerson knew the same thing: remove the stepping stones, and people will try to cross the river all the more. And a part of me approves. Let the people think; let them develop negative capability.

Even as I disapprove of art, I engage with it: it's one of those things which can't be removed from humanity, like poetry, percussion, and philosophy, just to name the things that start with P. My position is that people should enjoy what art they like, but not overrate it, and that's what I try to do for myself.

I keep writing, I keep scribbling. These are my notes in the margin of the world. Don't rate these too highly. One day I'll be better. I promise.

#self #references

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hiswordsarekisses · 2 years ago

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This is so good and so true:

DO WE NEED MULTIPLE BIBLE TRANSLATIONS? WHAT TRANSLATIONS SHOULD WE USE? By Lynette Hughes:

I am writing this in response to several Facebook friends who have questioned my reasons for using various Bible translations rather than exclusively using the King James Bible. If you are convinced that the King James Version is the only legitimate English Bible and that all other translations are false then please don’t waste your time reading this article because nothing I can say will convince you otherwise. If you love and enjoy your KJV, then by all means, you should continue to use and enjoy it. For myself, I believe multiple versions of the Bible can actually be an aid in understanding the message of the Bible, although, I personally like to go back to my primary study Bible [NIV], to compare scriptures.

Since the King James version was translated in 1611 many Bible transcripts have been discovered that are older and more accurate. When Bible scholars research through these older manuscripts they have discovered that some words, phrases, and sentences were added to the Bible either intentionally or accidentally. The verses that you see missing are simply not found in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts and the translators have removed these verses and placed them in footnotes or in the margin because they do not believe they were part of the original manuscripts of the Bible. Bible translators do not compare a translation against another translation, but against the manuscripts that were used.

It is nothing but myth that the King James Version is perfect. A 1611 King James version is virtually unreadable by the average person today, and there have been over thousands of corrections in the KJV from 1611 through 1769 edition, which is the version we use. And, although I believe that the KJV remains an excellent translation, yet today this 400-year-old version remains difficult to comprehend in all too many passages. Everything from the spelling, to syntax, to grammar, to phraseology is very different from what we speak today.

To complicate things, the KJV uses many archaic and obsolete words which have changed in meaning over time and do not convey what the original translators intended to express.. If you were brought up on the King James Version or you have been reading it for years, you might not quite realize how totally foreign sounding the King James Version is to modern readers. Estimates are that the King James Version uses 827 words and phrases that have since changed their meaning or are not used at all. When the Bible is translated, it should be translated into how a people/language group speaks. We understand the written Word of God best when we can read it in our own language – in the vernacular of the day – not how it was spoken hundreds of years ago.

I do realize many people have gotten used to a particular Bible version and resist any attempts to update or revise it, but fierce loyalty to a particular version of the Bible is illogical and for some advocates idolatrous. No doctrine essential for salvation is affected by translations, modern or ancient—unless done by a particular cult to promote its liberal agenda or belief system. There is no perfect translation of the English Bible, as the Scriptures were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, not English. Each translation has its own strengths and weaknesses, and I am not arguing for any specific version.

Hand a KJV to a young person, or even an older person, and ask them to read 1 Thess. 4:5 and then explain to you what "concupiscence" means. Here is another one: "Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may WITHOUT the word be won by the CONVERSATION of the wives;"1 Peter 3:1. That sounds like a total contradiction until one learns that CONVERSATION in that verse does not mean speech, but behavior. The meaning of the word in English is no longer the same. A prime example of words taking on a different meaning because of culture is the Christmas song "Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la, la la, la la la, la." That would have a totally different connotation today.

I certainly concede that the KJV is virtually unsurpassed in poetic beauty and literary elegance. But literary beauty and elegance are not substitutes for clarity. We read the Bible in an effort to know what it’s saying. Reading several translations based on different manuscripts can unlock different shades of meaning that you may have previously missed. It can clarify passages of Scripture, and help you see a verse in a different way.

For those trying to choose a Bible, I would encourage each of you to pick a word-for-word, literal translation [such as, NASB, HCSB, KJV, NKJV, MEV, ESV, or the less literal Bible translations, such as the NIV and NLT (a combination of word for word and thought for thought'), as your primary study Bible, then use other paraphrased versions that may be easier to read to help you wrestle through difficult passages and compare them with your primary Bible translation. If there are distinct differences between versions, you may find it helpful from time to time to utilize the Greek and Hebrew lexicon to verify biblical definitions.

Some Bible versions translate less literally, and should not be used as a Christian’s primary Bible. Bibles, such as The Living Bible, GNT, TLB, NEB, the Amplified Bible and God’s Word are paraphrased to reflect what the author thinks the Bible says, not necessarily what the Bible actually says. A paraphrase of the Bible should be used more as a commentary, a way to get another perspective, but should not be viewed as accurate as it is an author’s idea of what the Bible says. A paraphrased Bible allows the greatest degree of liberty in translation and leaves too much room for personal interpretation [2 Peter 1:20].

Some Bibles, such as The New World Translation [used by Jehovah’s Witnesses], the Message, the Passion Bible, as well as feminist and homosexual versions, are doctrinally corrupt mistranslations that have the specific purpose of altering Scripture to agree with their beliefs; they have an agenda all their own.

The Message Bible promotes the mystical New Age message with a boldness that's never been seen in a mainstream Bible. “Lord” occurs 7,970 times in the King James Bible and the Message contains the Lord only 71 times. I could go on and on but let me clarify one thing.... The amputation of these words, of which there are many more, are no accident. It is not an issue in translation or Greek manuscripts. It's also not a matter of updating archaic words or making it easier to understand. It was a deliberate and intentional doctrinal decision to remove the "Lord" and the use of the "Lord Jesus".

Above all, when we are choosing a Bible and/or comparing scriptures, we must ask God for wisdom and discernment. The Spirit of God will enlighten us to hear and understand the truth of God’s written Word and apply it to our lives. It is every Christians privilege to ask and expect the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are not left to be absolutely dependent on any interpretation of man. 1 Corinthians 2:5 KJV says “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men. But in the power of God.”

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anniekoh · 4 months ago

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elsewhere on the internet: Ex Urbe | Ada Palmer

https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages/ The Black Death contributed too—in school they talk as if the plague swept through in 1348 then went away, but the bubonic plague did not go away, it remained endemic, like influenza or chickenpox today, a fact of life. I have never read a full set of Renaissance letters which didn’t mention plague outbreaks and plague deaths, and Renaissance letters from mothers to their traveling sons regularly include, along with advice on etiquette and eating enough fennel, a list of which towns to avoid this season because there’s plague there. Carlo Cipolla (in the fascinating yet tediously titled Before the Industrial Revolution) collected great data for the two centuries after 1348, in which Venice had major plague bursts 7% of years, Florence 14% of years, Paris 9% of years, Barcelona 13% of years, and England (usually London) 22% in the earlier period spiking to 50% in the later 1500s, when England saw plague in 26 out of 50 years between 1543 and 1593. Excluding tiny villages with little traffic, losing a friend or sibling to plague was a universal experience from 1348 clear to the 1720s, when plague finally diminished in Europe, not because of any advance in medicine, but because fourteen generations of exposure gave natural selection time to work, those who survived to reproduce passing on a heightened immune response, a defensive adaptation bought over centuries by millions of deaths.

while the Medieval Inquisition started in 1184, it didn’t ramp up its book burnings, censorship, and executions to a massive scale until the Spanish Inquisition in the 1470s and then the printing press and Martin Luther in the 1500s (Renaissance); similarly witchcraft persecution surges to scales unseen in the Middle Ages after the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486 (Renaissance); and the variety of ingenious tortures being used in prisons increased, rather than decreasing, over time. Rule of thumb: most of the scary practices we think of as “Medieval” were either equally true of the Renaissance, worse in the Renaissance, or only started in the Renaissance.

Intimidating palaces, grand oratory, epics about the great deeds of a conqueror, expensive tutors so the prince and princess have rare skills like Greek and music, even a chemical treatise whose dedication praises the Duke of Such-and-such, these were all investments in legitimacy, not fruits of peace but symptoms of a desperate time. In an era when a book cost as much as a house (it really did!), and Florence’s Laurenziana library cost more per GDP than the Moon Landing, you don’t get that level of investment unless elites think they’re going to get something out of it. Just as today giant corporations fund charities or space tech because they get something out of it, publicity raising their stock prices, so a mighty merchant family might repair a church or build a grand public square and put their coat of arms on it, drawing investment and intimidating rivals.

Pretty-much every culture, when it tells its history, divides it into parts somehow (reigns, eras, dynasties). These labels may not seem like a big deal, but they have a huge effect on how we imagine things. Think of how the discourse about boomers vs. Gen-X vs. millennials affects people’s self-identities, who associates with whom, and the kinds of discourse we can have with those terms that we couldn’t have with different ones. The lines and labels in our history are powerful. In my Terra Ignota science fiction novels I mention that the people in my 25th century society debate whether World War I ended in 1945 or 1989, and it always blows readers’ minds for a few seconds, and then follows the reflection: yeah, I could see WWI and WWII being considered one thing, like the Wars of the Roses. My first exposure to the way this makes your brain go *whfoooo* was as a kid and hearing Eugen Weber provocatively call WWI and WWII “The Second Thirty Years War”. Feels weird, right? Weird-powerful

And if we zoom into this long, vague period, when was the “high Renaissance” i.e. the best part, the most characteristic part? If you ask a political scientist it’s usually the very early 1400s, when Bruni and other innovative political thinkers were writing; if you ask an art historian it’s the decades right after 1500 when ¾ of the Ninja Turtles overlapped; if you ask a theater scholar it’s Shakespeare who was born fully 200 years later than Bruni and his peers discussing politics. It all depends on what you think defines the Renaissance, so if you have a different focus then different dates feel like periphery or core.

The idea that the Black Death caused a prosperity boom comes from old studies which showed that wages went way up after the Black Death, creating new possibilities for laborers to gain in wealth and rise in status (like the golden 1950s). But those were small studies from a few places (mainly bits of England), and we have newer studies now that show that wages only rose in a few places, that in other places wages didn’t rise, or actually went down, or that they started to rise but elites cracked down with new laws to control labor, creating (among other things) the first workhouses, laws limiting freedom of movement, and other new forms of unfreedom and control. What the Black Death really caused was change. It caused regime changes, instability letting some monarchies or oligarchies rise, or fall. It caused policy and legal changes, some oppressive, some liberating. And it caused economic changes, some regions or markets collapsing, and others growin

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i-is-a-fan-weeb · 3 years ago

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first off:Happy Birthday Percy!! And second:thank you to @percydarling for giving me the inspo for my first fic here! So here we go(also i set this in Percy's fourth year so yea) also TW in the tags

Penny walked into the empty Great Hall and spotted Percy sitting at the end of what is normally the Slytherin table,reading on of his many books on mythology.

"Hi Percy! What mythology sre you reading today?" Penny plumped down next to Percy

"Chinese." Percy simply replied,not looking up.

Percy has always been into mythology,ever since his Uncle Gideon brought a book on Greek myths when he was 4 and Percy read it while Gideon,Fabion and Molly talked downstairs. After that,the onky thing Percy wanted for his birthday and Christmas was a book on Greek mythology,before he branched out to other mythologies and muggle religions when he was 10. Then he asked for books on any myths and religion(Arthur got him an actual Bible on his 11th).

This year,Penny,Oliver and Marcus were planning to do more than that.

"Ooo,Chinese. You're so lucky your parents let you read mythology and explore other religions at home." Penny always complained about not being able to read mythology at home because her parent were over-religious muggles and it took her mother everything to not have her father disown her for being a witch. Penny also wasn't allowed to visit or write any of her friends over breaks either.

Out of nowhere,Oliver and Marcus sat down across from Percy and Penny.

"Hey Perce." Oliver took one hand away from Percy's boom and kissed the knuckles. Then he took the book away from Percy.

"Hey!" Percy cried out,reaching for his book,but Oliver,whose much faster,managed to keep it away.

"Na-ahhh. You're not getting this back until we're done." Oliver said,closing the book shut(but not before taking Percy's bookmark and putting it in Percy's place in the book)

"Done with what?" Percy asked,narrowing his eyes at his friends(and boyfriend)

"We have sonething to ask you." Marcus said

"If it's about me being tiebraker for whatever Quidditch match is coming up,the answer will always be no." Percy said,slowly sitting back down.

"What? No. The next Quidditch match is in November." Oliver said increduosly

"We wanted to ask you if you're ok with surprises." Penny tiredly said,already done with Oliver.

"Huh?" Percy asked,confused by this.

"Are you ok with surprises?" Marcus questioned,bored.

"Um,yeah I guess. I live with Fred and George so I got used to surprises pretty early on." Percy suspiciously said.

"Cool." Marcus said,before getting up and leaving,Oliver and Penny following behind.

Percy looked after them confused,before leaving himself.

A week passes,and Oliver comes into his and Percy's dorm,with two random people.

"Hello Penny,Marcus." Percy greeted his friends who are under the influence of Polyjuice.

"Come on." the boy on the right-who is Marcus-said inpatiently.

"Wha-"Percy didn't even get to finish his sentence before the girl on the left-who is Penny-grabbed his arm and pulled him downstairs,followed by Marcus and Oliver.

"Where are we going?" Percy asked as he got dragged by Penny

"You'll see." Oliver whispered in ear teasingly,kissing his cheek.

"Can you save all that romantic sh!t for when you are alone?" Marcus asked.

"Oh shut up."Oliver said said

"All of you shut up!" Penny whisper-shouted,and ponted to Filch and Mrs.Norris up ahead of them.

"The h3ll are we doing?!" Percy whisper-shouted back.

"Shhhh!!" Penny shushed him,and threw out what Percy presumed to be a dungbomb at Filch and his cat.

The dungbomb exploded and Filch and the cat ran away,Filch yelling about who knows what,Mrs.Norris yowling.

"Ok,coast is clear." Penny gestured,and she,Percy(still being dragged by Penny),Oliver and Marcus went in the direction Filch was previously(covering their noses) and out the grand doors.

"Where are we going?" Percy choked out,struggling to get his inhalor out of his pocket*

"I said you'll see." Oliver offhandedly replied

The four of them were walking out towards...Hogsmead?

"Why are we going towards Hogsmead? It's not even close to December!" Percy asked Penny,who didn't give him an answer.

Penny stopped outside of the Three Broomsticks,the Polyjuice finally worn off.

Penny dragged them inside(but not after Marcus took another small dose of Polyjuice).

"Hello,Madame Rosemerta!" Penny gleefully greeted

"Hello,youngsters. Your room is ready,and so are your guests." Madame Rosemerta said,vaguely gestering upstairs,before retreatingto the back room.

"What does she mean by that?" Percy asked,fed up with them keeping these secrets. No one gave him an answer,instead they went upstairs and went all the way down the hall to the very last room.

Marcus went up,the Polyjuice now officially worn off,and knocked some sort of special code.

A little boy with light brown hair and big brown eyes opened the door.

"Hey! We've been waiting!" Cedric Diggory held the door open,and Percy saw birthday decorations,a cake on the table in the middle and a bunch of presents in a corner.

"W-what?" Percy asked quietly.

Penny,Marcus,and Oliver went up and joined Cedric and Adrien Pucey around the table,and they alk started singing "Happy Birthday".

Percy just stood there amazed and confused.

"But-but it's not my birthday?" Percy dazedly said

"We know its not you birthday,which is why we did this!" Adrien said

"We wanted to do something for you because we can't celebrate with you." Cedric said excitedly

"So,you all snuck out of the castle and risked getting expelled,for 𝘮𝘦?" Percy asked

"You act as if we haven't done it before." Marcus snorted

"Yeah,but that's different. Penny and I know which rules to break and how to break them. This is breaking who know how many rules,and Cedric is only a First year,he can't get expelled already." Percy protested.

"Just sit your cute a$$ down and eat some cake." Oliver grabbed Percy by the wrist and sat him down around the table.

"Madame Rosemerta said she'll cover us,as long as we pay for the Butterbeer." Cedric said

"What about this room?" Percy asked

"Madame Rosemerta said we could use it anytine we wanted,no charge unless we damage something." Penny said

"So you and lover boy over here can do what you want behind closed doors." Marcus added

"We have a dorn for that." Oliver countered

"Ew!" Adrien and Cedric exclaimed at the same time

"This is a private room Percy,no one except us and whoever we want to invite can come in." Penny quickly explained

"So,this is some sort of late birthday treat-for me?" Percy asksd quietly

"Yes for you." Oliver said,kissing his boyfriends cheeks

"Can you not do that while I'm here?" Adrien asked,while Cedric stuck out his toungue in disgust.Oliver rolled his eyes.

All of them had a good time eating cake and drinking Butterbeer.

"Here." Oliver handed a gift to Percy.

"What is it?" Percy asked after opening thebpresent which turned out to be a sort of old book.

"It's a Qu'ran. It's another muggle religion book." Oliver explained. Percy's pale,icy blue orbs widened in excitement,almost childlike.

"Here! Here's mine!" Pennt excitedly gave Percy another book-shaped present. Percy opened it,and it turned out to be a empty notebook,with a dark purple cover.

"I put a charm on it,so we can all communicate without having to tire our owls! And I can talk to you all over breaks!" Penny was practically jumping on the tips of her toes in excitement

"Perfect!" Percy exclaimed,and looked up to see everyone pulled out colorful notebooks;Marcus had a dark red,Oliver's was bright green,Penny's was a cheerful yellow,Adrien's was a deep pink and Cedric's was a dark blue.

Percy opened up the rest of the presents-Marcus got him two books,one on how to get away with mûrd3r and the other on how to hide a body.Cedric got him a book on how to speak Latin,a book on how to speek Greek and a book on Russian folklore. Adrien had gotten him a book on Italian myths and superstitions.

"Thank you. Thank you guys so much."

"Don't mention it." Marcus wrapped his arm around Percy,giving the ginger a small grin.

"No,seriously don't mention this to anyone. We can't let the whole castle know that us Slytherins are hanging out with the all of you." Adrien said in a serious yet still sad tone.

"And Fred and George would go the extra 10 miles to make Percy's life even more miserable than the already do." Oliver said grimly

"Enough of this sadness! It's Percy's late birthday and we are going to celebrate it happily!" Penny stomped.

Everyone murmered their agreements and went back to celebrating Percy.

They stayed for another hour before they decided to leave.

As Cedric and Adrien downstairs,Oliver,Percy,Penny and Marcus stayed behind.

"Soo,you wanna do a slumber party?" Marcus asked

"Ok!" Percy exclaimed giddily.

"Who's turn is it?" Penny asked.

"I think it our turn." Oliver gestured to him and Percy

"Ok." Marcus said simply and went downstairs,Penny following him. Leaving Percy and Oliver alone.

"We should-" Percy was cut off by Oliver smashing his lips onto Percys. Percy was at first in shock,but quckly melted into the kiss. The two boys stayed like that for what felt like forever before Oliver slowly pulles away,not really wanting to let go.

"Happy birthday,Percy." Oliver said,putting his face into the taller boys chest.

"Thank you." Percy murmered into the Keepers soft,brown hair.

"Ahem." Oliver and Percy quickly jumped away from each other at the sudden sound,but relaxed when it was only Madame Rosemerta leaning against the doorframe.

"I know you two have hormones and stuff,but please not in my private rooms." She said

Both boys muttered their apologies and quickly walked out

"You forgot your presents!" Madame Rosemerta called out. Oliver quickly ran back up the stairs and ran back down with Percy's gifts.

"Thank you for letting us use this room!" Percy called up to Madame Rosemerta

"Of course! I know what it's like having to hide a relationship!" Rosemerta called down from inside the room.

Percy and Okiver walked the rest of the way back down the stairs and met Penny and Marcus outside.

"What did you think,Perce?" Penny asked,now her and Marcus back to their Polyjuice forms.

"It was great. Honestly,thank you." Percy said gratefully.

"No problem. We know ever since Fred and George took the spotlight,your birthday has been forgotten about." Marcus said grimly.

"What did I say about sadness today!" Penny stomped her foot angrily in the ground.

The four walked back to the castle in a comfortabke silence,snuck back in with no problems and manage to get into Gryffindor tower with out a hitch.

"Here." Percy handed Penny and Marcus some spare pajamas that they all kept in their dorms for whenevr they have sleepovers.

After Penny and Marcus changed and brought out the blow-up matresses that they also keep in their dorms,they all stayed up late and talked and ate some junk food and got drunk off of Firewhisky and Brandy that their House Elf friend Dottie had brought. They stayed up and laughed and had a great time. They all eventually fell asleep at different times(Marcus being the lightweight he is fell asleep first).

Percy will never forget that day.

*Ok so i headcannon Percy to have allergic asthma(if u dont know what that is look it up,i aint google) and that he has like a crap ton of allergies bc who else doesnt like torturing their comfort character? Also before anyone asks,i do have a headcannon that a student that was way before Molly and Arthurs time,much less Percys,also had asthma but couldnt bring her inhalor bc it was muggle technology,so she petitioned for muggle health devices be allowed into hogwarts,and evetually they were allowed but only for health purposes. Im not telling you who that student is tho hehe.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PERCY WEASLEY! And once again thanks to @percydarling for giving me this suggestion!

#harry potter #percy weasley x oliver wood #percy weasley #happy birthday percy weasley #cedric diggory #adrien pucey #penny clearwater #penelope clearwater #marcus flint #madame rosemerta #the three broomsticks #perciver #my first fic on here!!#not my first fic ever but my first fic here on tumblr dot com!!

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antiloreolympus · 3 years ago

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8 Anti LO Asks

1. tbh i just think minthe's design just looks better for a queen. she genuinely looks intimidating and regal, meanwhile persephone just looks like a baby who cries at the drop of a hat. thats not to say baby-faced people cant be taken seriously, but rachel has made her too immature and childish looking (as well as canon making her stuck at 19-but-looks-even-younger forever with an even more childish personality) that i just cant buy her as any sort of authority figure.

2. i think thats also it. rachel really wants there to be drama, but at the same time she also refuses to actually let them suffer, so it just comes across as shallow. persephone wont see punishment for killing mortals (who were at fault for being killed, very cool), she was only on the run for maybe a day or two but is now living it up with hades, only like three people dont support hxp, etc. LO wants to be a dramatic epic without having the stakes, so it just ends up as superficial instead.

3. to that one anon about an LO stan saying apollo was obsessed with some princess or whatever: there is a version of that mostly known by parthenius of nicaea which was just combining the daphne and hyacinthus' myths together to make it No Homo™️ to have apollo only love daphne and basically every mythology editor and historian sees that version as some odd ball take that isnt legitimate in the greek myths. im not surprised an LO stan takes it as fact tho, they think LO is factual too.

4. there are bad apples in every fandom, but LO fans in particular seem convinced Greece doesn't exist anymore and RS get free reign to claim the mythology and remove it from its entire culture because "its theirs now" and I can't stand that mentality. It's should be seen as an honor she gets to play around with the stories, not claim it as her own for her to do as she pleases, and it's awful the fans encourage it, especially since LO is a damaging piece of work even outside of mythology circles.

5. its silly LO set up persephone's trauma via demeter as this deep set horror (the locked greenhouse esp was setting it up as that) and yet when we were actually shown demeter's "torture" it was them bickering over her going to college and thats it? like demeter is actually a super doting mother and only failed in making her daughter a spoiled brat and never letting her face consequences, and yet she's framed as evil for this, but hades does the same thing and he's romantic for it? please 😒.

-----FP Spoilers-----

(Please read the message at the bottom)

6. ya know if hades is lying that hes known persephone longer than a few weeks isnt that him knowing this relationship is bad and theyre rushing things but hes trying to save face? like idk maybe its just me but if your relationship is built off lusting after her in a submissive position, yourself controlling the woman including her finances and where she lives, and lying to others and keeping things from her so she never questions you, then the relationship is a no-go 🤷🏿‍♀️

7. if hades literally has to lie that hes known persephone longer than a month to try and excuse his relationship to her and to try and get her out of trouble then 1) thats an automatic admittance of guilt that hes refusing to acknowledge, but also 2) lying on the stand is illegal. like what lawyer is he if he just lies to get her off?? thats not showing he cares, it shows hes a corrupt person who should also be stripped of power along with her. i wouldn't want a liar as an absolute king, TBH.

8. im kinda confused tho? why would he lie about the time? zeus was right there when hades saw persephone for the first time? unless they mean the tapes the fates got them? which even the most dedicated LO fans didnt like since it was a bit of a stupid retcon (also im not sure persephone was even over the age of 18 then so thats concerning) also they apparently forgot each other right after that meeting anyway so?? whats the point??

Regarding #6-8

I've been trying not to say it out right because fp spoilers but a lot of people are confused so I'll explain while trying to avoid more spoilers:

Hades says to Apollo that he's noticed that Apollo has been brutalizing his wife (aka Persephone) for months. Apollo calls him out on that by saying something along the line of "She's your wife now?". Hades then says he misspoke (by calling her his wife). Either they got married of screen or he genuinely misspoke which is still very suspicious.

By months, Hades probably just overexaggerating. LO takes place over the span of March - early April so that also might be why he says months. However, he really should’ve said weeks.

I highly suggest using zahard/./top (remove the slashes) if you want to read the fp for yourself and don't want to pay.

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical

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starofroselight · 4 years ago

Text

Title: He Calls You Theseus (Now Call Him Odysseus and Welcome Him Home)

Chapter 1: In Which Technoblade's Narrative Crumbles

Summary: Technoblade's language is the art of combat and weaponry. Tommy doesn't understand, so Technoblade speaks in a way they'll both understand. Or, Technoblade’s been having strange visions while taking care of Tommy.

Tags: Technoblade, TommyInnit, SBI fic, Introspection, Flashbacks, Found Family, Brothers, Trauma, Alternate Universe, References to Greek Myth, Sleepy Bois Inc. as Family, Sleepy Bois Inc. Angst, Chat as Ghosts, Rose AU

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786947

Author’s Note: This is my baby. I’ve worked for this on a while, and it’s about 5.1k words. I hope you enjoy the first chapter, I plan for around five in all.

A flurry of snow buffeted the snow banks around Technoblade's retirement home.

Technoblade had decided teaching Tommy the art of arrow fletching was important. He had come to immediately regret that decision. Tommy’s loud mouth and shaky hands were something manageable in the best of times, but when the time came for work to be done they became hindrances. Liabilities.

Technoblade didn’t take in liabilities.

“How’s this, big man?” The tooth-gaped teen asked smugly, holding up a shoddily constructed arrow as if it were made of gold.

Technoblade briefly considered how much easier this would have had he cleaved Tommy’s head clean off in the hole under his house.

> You can’t!

> The most efficient way to grind out arrows is village trading. Make one of your downstairs hostages a fletcher, trade sticks, build rapport, then trade in for arrows.

> Tommy pog

> would’ve been funnier if you did

“Chat, do you see what I’m dealing with?” He mumbled to himself.

“Oi Chat! Hey Chat, do you think Technoblade is a big bitch?”

“Tommy, you’re giving me a headache.” That wasn’t all that was giving him a headache: voices, the thousands of voices which were riled up by his every interaction with another living soul. Each voice was vying for a spot to influence his words, to have any effect on the outside world like they once were able to.

And the voices really liked Tommy.

“All I want’s an answer.”

He wouldn’t get one.

"How am I better at this with hooves?! Here, let me show you one more time.” Techno squatted beside where Tommy was sitting on the stone brick floor. “Two ties on each side over the flint. Three sharp cuts into the wood. Feather goes in between. Look, perfectly functional arrows! What part of this aren’t you getting? It’s not that difficult!”

Tommy picked up the tools from the fletching table. He took one look at the sticks, then picked up a fistful of feathers.

“Right—”

“Okay, that’s enough, I’m not going to let you keep massacring my feathers like this. What even is this?" He picked up a feather from the floor. It hung limp between the heel of his hoof, frayed and torn. "These chickens died for nothing!"

“What am I supposed to do while you do all the work if I can’t help?” Tommy was pouting, his face so full of vibracity and energy it looked as if he was choking.

That was it. Techno's face twitched.

“Maybe if you sit down and stay quiet for a minute, I can come up with an idea!”

Surprisingly, Tommy did. His face flushed red with embarrassment.

And Technoblade realized he had screamed at a scared, struggling sixteen year old child covered in scars.

> do you feel powerful now

> OOOOOOO

> You should kill him

> Betray Tommy!

> betray tommy

He dragged a hoof over his face. The gesture was easier with hands.

"Look. . . Tommy. You're clearly not good at fletching arrows. Why don't you go lay down in your racoon hole?"

Technoblade’s plan had been, surprisingly, one of altruism. He wanted to teach Tommy how to make arrows so he could value the ammunition. He had a tendency to complain about. . . well, everything, but specifically running out of supplies. Techno hoped this would teach him how valuable they were. Not in resources, but as assets. In the heat of battle, every shot mattered.

After Tommy had made a quiverful of arrows, Technoblade planned on taking him out to his practice range. Inexperienced hands nocking an arrow were shaking and quick to flinch. Archery hurt. It was a difficult skill to master; the art of shooting an arrow required the fletching to run through the archer’s fingers. If their hands were smooth and uncalloused, the projectile would cut through their fingers like a blade in water. His hands (and hooves) were roughed up to the consistency of leather from arduous repetition. Tommy hadn’t had that experience.

Technoblade had made leather gloves for that exact reason.

And now that plan was ruined.

While his retirement home was the definition of picturesque, Tommy had come to ruin that as well. The foundation had made Techno's house uneven. The ground was unstable and it had started to sag north.

Tommy had literally dug up and unsettled his life.

Somewhere in there was a metaphor and a moment for some much-needed introspection. Technoblade ignored it.

Snow had sloped onto the roof heavy, the sound of monsters outside crunching feet of the stuff. The cold had choked out the will of any invaders at the cost of isolating them together. The house’s floor was insulated with stone, then covered with wood. The chimney doubled as a source of light, warmth, and a way to heat the floor. Technoblade had learned how to make heated floors from Chat. The quality of life improvement was immense.

Tommy hadn’t understood how, but he did enjoy it. Too often he had slept in his boots, curled up into a jacket or blanket or whatever he could find. But this? This was a luxury that could lull him into a rest like no other.

And Tommy needed a good sleep after Logsteadshire.

Still, his spirit reignited despite his body's protests. He stretched his arms upward in attempts to hide his yawn.

He stomped his foot.

"I'm not tired! We need supplies, we need—We need to get back the discs."

That was going to be a hard habit to kick. The kid needed a break; his eyes were ringed in black. He sat hunched over with awful posture, looking pitiful. Technoblade held back the urge to call him a racoon again.

Despite the warmth, Tommy was shivering.

Exhaustion. Techno knew it all too well.

The Piglin man took off his cape, folding it over his arm. It helped increase his bulk, his size when intimidation was necessary. When he was home its purpose became a blatant unnecessity. Still, he often found himself falling asleep in it, curled up in a tiny pile against the wall where no one could hurt him.

It was important.

And he tossed it to Tommy.

"We'll get back the discs after you go to sleep. If you fall asleep in the snow you'll freeze to death and die."

Then he stoked the fire with an iron pole, minding Edward's head. He couldn't be bothered to kill the creature just yet. The flames roared up, consuming the cold air in the room and up the chimney.

Tommy held the crimson cloak in his arms. He stared for a second, then twisted to wrap it around himself. It was enormous, swamping his thin figure in fabric and comfort unknown for weeks in exile. He pushed himself further into the corner with the fletching table, close to his hiding box.

"The 'and die' is kind of redundant, 'innit?" Tommy muttered, head poking up from the fluff of the cloak’s collar.

Technoblade sighed.

They were going to keep talking in circles. He would make a general statement, Tommy would overload him with non sequiturs and nonsense sentences until Technoblade tuned him out with Chat. However, he couldn’t ignore Tommy here. If he did, the boy would never go to sleep, and the cold of the night didn’t need a cold shoulder on top of it. A cranky Tommy and an annoyed Technoblade was a recipe for disaster, overthrowing governments or otherwise.

There was only one way he knew how to talk in times like this:

“Let me tell you a story.”

It was an offer more intimate than Tommy knew.

Naturally, he rejected it.

“What if I don’t want to hear a story?” Said teenager shifted in his cozy corner.

“Too bad.” He pushed the crown up from where it was slipping off his head. If he was going to coax the world's most energetic child to sleep, he needed to let down his guard.

“Why do you even wear that thing?”

“What, the crown? It’s not like I use it in combat or anything, it's just for fun. Fun is banned? You're banning fun now?" He laughed. "Good luck getting anyone on your side."

“I don’t have a side. Or rather, my side is your side? Now you’ve gone and got my head all confused.” Tommy’s voice had grown softer.

Techno couldn’t have that.

“There’s no ‘our side’. We are not a team.”

Tommy huffed. “Until we get the discs back.”

“Will you let go of the discs for a minute? They’re not going anywhere.”

“Could go into a fire.”

Techno huffed heavier. Puffs of true flame curled out from his snout. Not the metaphorical risk clouding Tommy’s mind. He was already headed towards the pitfall he wanted to avoid. It was time to change the subject.

“Considering your limited knowledge of Greek classics, you wouldn’t happen to know Homer?”

“Who what now?”

A solid ‘no’ would have sufficed, Techno thought.

“You probably haven’t heard of Odysseus, then.”

“With a name like that, I reckon I should of. Wait, this is one of your myths again, isn’t it?” Tommy kicked himself up, back against the wall to look at Technoblade as they spoke.

“I like a certain section of stories. Is that so wrong?”

“Is this story about you?”

The Blade tutted. “No, no, no. I don’t have any family. Orphans killed my parents. Family is useless, it slows you down unless you’re exacting revenge. In that case, family is excellent. Nothing better than dead family.”

"That doesn't make any sen—"

"Keep interrupting and I'll make you sleep in Carl's stable."

Tommy pouted. His hair stuck up in every which way, active as he was.

“Odysseus was a king of his own island. He lived in peace with his family on Ithaca, and he was known as a wise man.” It had been a while since Technoblade had told a story like this. His rhythm was lacking. “He was the favorite of Athena, the goddess of battle and wisdom.”

“Gods aren’t real.”

“You’re looking at one.”

Silence. “Yeah, right.”

"Moving on.” He wasn’t willing to indulge Tommy in that story when he was preoccupied with telling another. “While Odysseus was a king, he wasn’t the chief king. At that point Greece was broken up into various city states, other little countries that refused to be conquered. While it was all Greece, there was a difference between a Spartan and an Athenian. Too many fights for power and the geopolitical landscape had torn them apart. Odysseus had his friends, though it would be more accurate to call them his allies, his country with whom he had sworn an oath to fight alongside. Each of those kings would be headed out their own separate way.” That felt right to Technoblade. “They were brothers in arms, finally called to war for the sake of their nation. But Odysseus ended up alone.”

“Why?”

“The people around him broke the rules. They went up against the sun god, and so they were punished.”

“What’d they do?”

“Oh, uh. Ate his cows.”

Tommy gasped.

“No!”

“Okay, so you get it. The Pet Skirmishes but on a much, much bigger scale.”

“Where’s Sapnap?”

“Tommy, it’s a myth, it’s not about your friends. They’re gods.”

“Dunno why you’d tell a story about a bunch of boring, stuffy gods. Hey, why’re you such a bad storyteller?”

That was it. "I'm trying to monologue here! Chat, Chat see how impossible this is?"

“Tell chat that you’re a pussy! And I’m the coolest! TommyInnit is the coolest, got it?” Tommy’s eyes, which had held the murmurs of sleep, were now alive and vicious.

Undoing all of Technoblade’s work. And proving he didn’t understand Chat.

“Bruh.”

“I am!”

“For the third time now, if you will let me talk, I’m trying to tell the story.”

“Right, right, sorry.”

“Odysseus was the only one who knew the warning signs. He had encountered the gods before, and he would rather starve to death than offend them. Because sometimes, Tommy, not offending people is a good thing, and making needless enemies makes the situation ten times worse.”

Tommy bit his lip.

Techno continued.

“But no one ever listens to Odysseus. That’s one of the ironies of the story, Tommy. Often being right lets the hero escape with his life. Doesn’t mean he can save anyone else. Most of the time he doesn’t even save himself.”

“What?”

“I mean, I tried telling you. Heroes are doomed the moment they call themselves heroes. Odysseus never did, he was smart. It was the people that came later and told the story that did that. A hero is born through the crossing of the stars, something divine. Special. For all of his worth, the burden of expectation is put on his shoulders and then he battles with his pride. The Greeks had a word: hubris. It’s the hubris that strikes the killing blow. It’s never the beast or the gods themselves, it’s someone the hero has wronged. Odysseus wronged a monster, a cyclops, but even that was too far.”

Tommy was quiet. All of his focus was pooled into Technoblade.

“Odysseus played the part of warrior. Now it was time for him to be a survivor. See, it didn’t matter what the gods put him through, the trials or the tribulations or the meaningless delays. He had a mental image of what his home was. Ithaca. It had stopped being a real place. Instead it was an idea. A concept.”

“Oh.”

“And even when he was gone, trapped by witches and beasts, he kept that vision of home in his head. Because he was going to get there no matter what. It was all he had left of the world he knew. Even when he was offered another life, another world in what might have been a better place, he turned it down. Because it wasn’t what he wanted. He learned what being a hero meant, and now what he wanted was the opposite: to go home. To be normal. But the thing is, life doesn’t wait around for us to come back.”

Tommy glanced down to his neck. The lodestone compass shimmered in the dim light. His Tubbo.

“The world doesn’t care what your aspirations are, your nation, or your ideas. It doesn’t even care about your friends. The world doesn’t care if what you want does not want you. It doesn’t care, period. It’s cold. Survival is survival.”

"I want to be a hero when I grow up!"

"Oh, you do?" The man chuckled, furloughing his spade to sit down on the steps beside him.

"What's the point of having a name like Technoblade if you're not a hero?" He shut the book in his lap, face beaming.

The young man's mouth opened before a scream rang out from inside the house, followed by shouting and yelling.

The blond haired man sighed. He smiled back, then rolled his eyes. The man reached out and tousled his hair.

Techno laughed as the man’s voice echoed:

"How are ÿ̸̻͓́̑͐́͗̽͝͠ö̶̝͖̱̫̈́̑́͌͒̋ǜ̴͍͖̝̑̋ ̴̢̛̛̮̼̲͖̠̻̼̝̥̗̻̩̲̼̂̽͌̾̇͂̈́̾͐̅͘̚t̷̤͔̥̤̫̫̟̀̐̈́̿͐ḧ̴̡̘̦͔̠͎̰̬̼̜̺̮͎͚͛̈́ͅȩ̵̦̦̠̬̼͔̰̩̯̻̍̈́͐̌̓͆̀̉̑͗ ̸̪̤̣̏͒̚͜ͅm̸̗͇̘̮̥̮̪̤̯̤̞͉͗̾́͜ą̸̡̖̭̣̭͉͎̥̫̝̑̿̅̄̓͐̽̊̂͂̆͠͝ͅţ̶̮͚̰̂̀̈́̐͆͑̍͆͗͝͠ü̶̢̻͔̼͓̹͖̺̯͙̅̂̔̊̐̅ͅr̴͔̐̾͛ẽ̴̱̰̣̀̓̉̀̆̓̈̄ ̸̛̱͇̺̂̿͑̏̍̋͊͊͗̋̇̆͝o̴̬̙͚͇̳͎͆̇̌̐̿͂̓̄͛͝ͅn̵̨̈́̈́̂̋̐ͅe̷̛̟̱͖͙͙̩͆̊̆̓̂͒̈̍?̸͖̟̺͇̬̗̰̭̺͇͆͐̀͊́̄̍̀̅́͜

> home.

> Tommy's still looking at you, you haven't spoken in a minute

> do you feel sick?? whats going on i just got here

“Blade?” And there was Tommy, with a drop of concern in his voice.

Technoblade shook his head. Late joiners. The memory crumbled to dust.

He continued. “The Isle of Ogygia. That was where Odysseus’s survival took him. He stayed there, in the lull of the witch Circe, who wanted him for herself—”

“That’s sexist.”

“W-What?”

“The witch!”

“You think the witch is sexist?”

“No no no, the hero! He gets called upon—lured—by this woman just because he’s what, the hero?”

He could not believe this. “Tommy. I didn’t write it.”

“I’m just saying!”

“The Isle of Ogygia. Or Atlantis, some people think it could be Atlantis, it honestly depends on what version you’re reading but that’s not important. Odysseus spent countless years there, safe but soulless. His heart was gone from his body, kept at bay with thoughts of home. Of family, of kinship. He was out of his body and mind for seven years. He was at the gods’ mercy, but fortune smiled upon him and he escaped.”

Techno took a moment to return his attention to his listener.

Tommy was transfixed, eyes wide.

For some reason, that made him smile.

“He made his way to one of his allied kingdoms. The gods, though, had shifted his appearance. This was to know how he still stood in their eyes. When so much time passes, relationships and bonds fade. Only his dog recognized him. The home he’d wanted for so long was plundered, practically destroyed. His wife—”

“He had a wife? That’s unrealistic.”

Technoblade repeated, annoyed: “His wife and his son didn’t recognize him. Only the dog.”

Tommy continued to ignore his point.

“Well dogs are good like that. I reckon dogs are better than most people."

Moving for the first time since the beginning of the story, he took a step towards the corner.

“Tommy, I’m trying to tell you that even though he won—He got everything he wanted, he got to go home—He didn’t win. His home was different. And he wasn’t the same man.”

“That’s—That’s sad.”

Tommy stood up and Technoblade crossed his arms.

“It’s not a happy story.”

"Then why are you telling it?"

“Forget about it.” If Tommy didn't understand, he wasn't going to waste any more time explaining.

Tommy moved, shifting the cloak on his shoulders crooked. He opened the spruce doors, a strange expression on his face. Like a mixture of horror, fear, and anger. Technoblade recognized the anger first. Tommy looked back, stepped into the snow, then shut the door.

Techno thought, what? He’s going to throw a tantrum because a story doesn’t go how he wanted—

A white substance flitted down through the air like snow. Small, unburnt hands grasped upwards to try and catch it. They had only seen snow, never this new, fluffy, off-white plume.

The boy coughed up ash.

“Hello? D̸̫̦̳̰͐̉ã̸̲̦̞̺͆d̶̗̒̐̕̕?”

Technoblade grabbed the edge of the box, stumbling.

The memory—No, vision—was incompatible with reality. How would he have gotten to the Nether as a child? And Techno never had a father, never depended on anyone, never needed—

Before he could even begin to understand the implications, he was thrown back in.

He was lost.

He was alone.

And he couldn’t have known that enough inhaled ash will scar your lungs, burn your skin, and bury you beneath a mountain of suffocating fire the moment you stop moving. He couldn’t have known that the Nether contains biomes of this stuff.

Ash has suffocated him. It burns, searing his skin and cooking him alive. It’s like the fall of Pompeii. He read a book on Pompeii once. Perhaps in some distant time an archaeologist will discover the hollow shell of his remains and theorize what happened here, or a traveler, a survivalist happening along the same paths years later when he’s just a mound.

He read another book, once. About a volcano. It’s similar to that pyroclastic flow, a mix of awful molten core and heat. There’s no way to swim in lava, not truly. It doesn’t stop a thirteen year old boy from scraping for the surface in a pit.

He was going to die here.

It’s his coat that saves him. Handcrafted and made with love. The bottom half tears, and he loses a precious gift but gets to keep his life.

Everything is burning. Is he screaming? His clothes are torn and he’s burning, he’s burning—

As quickly as it had come, it was gone.

Technoblade was instantly brought to the sensation of cracklings coals. He jumped at the sound, then looked down at his hands.

Hooves, right. Hooves.

This was too much to process.

Techno looked up.

He watched Tommy waddle to the front of the house in front of Carl’s stable, trudging through the snow the most inefficient way Technoblade could imagine. He was wiping his face.

For some reason, he thought it was something his good friend Philza would have a laugh at.

> PHILZA!!!

> Philza Minecraft?

> Philza would love it here

> The child is annoying, I hope he freezes to death

> I miss Philza

> Countdown to Philza visiting!

“Chat, you’re screaming into my ear right now.” He needed clarity, not a thousand voices in unison chanting for a friend.

Even from here, he could see that tears were pooling in Tommy’s eyes.

Technoblade didn’t bother with a coat. He ignored the sounds of the fire and how the heat made him feel uneasy, instead opting to climb down the ladder and go out the front door. Tommy was muttering to himself, a hand petting Carl.

“‘s not a happy story—What’s the point of telling a story if it’s not happy? I reckon he’s just one big downer. Downing all the time.”

It was then Techno decided to speak.

“I’d say talking to yourself is a bad habit but since I can’t really do that without coming off like a hypocrite, I’ll tell you that being quieter usually means people can’t overhear sensitive, secret information.”

Tommy didn’t jump, but his shoulders hitched.

“I don’t care about secrets.” Tommy crossed his arms.

“Everything’s a secret when you can’t understand basic information people are telling you.”

“You don’t tell me anything!”

“I’m trying to tell you why people tell sad stories.”

“If I were his family, I would have recognized him.”

“No you wouldn’t have! That is literally the point of the story. You’re like five now, you think you’d recognize someone you saw as a baby?”

It happens a third time and Technoblade’s world spins.

> Recognize recognize recognize

> Is he finally remembering????

> idk, not yet?

> Ugh, someone get me when something interesting happens

> your dead, whats stopping you from watching all the time?

> It’s actually ‘you’re’

> where

> where?

> WHERE DID I ASK—

There is a house on a hill in the forest. It looks familiar, with a basement, a middle floor, and a top floor with stairs leading up from the outside.

There is a house beneath a hill in a fierce tundra.

There was a house on a hill in a forest. It was a home too, once.

Both can theoretically exist at the same time. The house on a hill in the forest is perfectly ingrained in his memory, enough for him to replicate it bit by bit.

There is a boy with a beanie, taller than him. He wears a scowl.

There is a boy smaller than him with a bandage on his cheek.

Sunlight flows through the curtains like honey, oozing in warm delight. There is something resting on the bridge of his nose, and his fingers fly to adjust it.

He laughs.

The tiny freckled boy smiles and it shows his tooth gap.

A deep, tenor voice calls from downstairs and they rush to where storage is, the chests the dining room.

Their father is tired. There are bags under his blue eyes, but his smile lights up the room like the honey-light and like his brothers’ faces. He takes off his hat to sit at the table, a cape swishing behind him.

They’re singing at the table. Four humans with perfect harmony. They sing together all the time, how could he forget?

The candles on the cake are flickering, and it’s a world away from the fires of the Nether.

“Happy birthday T̶̡͆̋́͝—”

Nothing else but static noise and Chat going wild.

“I’m sixteen! I am an adult man!” Tommy’s fists are balled as he stands, beating against his chest to each word and anger burns in his eyes until he sees his hero’s face. “Technoblade?”

His heart pounded.

The boy that Technoblade has been seeing through the eyes of is not an adult. Now he is a teenager. He is taller, the clothes more unfitting than before. There are stitches to fix the jacket, now forced to be a half-coat that tucks into his shirt.

He looks like the mockery of a man.

Actually, he doesn’t look like a man at all.

Technoblade remembered this part.

The rest had to be a daydream, the machinations of a tired mind. Separating his identity from his mask is impossible.

Literally.

He has forgotten what snow feels like. He has forgotten snow. There are many things Technoblade has forgotten, but the name of snow sticks. Snow. It sounds like a dream, like the deranged ramblings of a piglin who lost his mind, and like a fairy tale all at once.

He liked fairy tales, once.

Now they’re just unrealistic.

The piglin group he is trailing turn to look at him. He’s been following behind them, scavenging whatever food they decide to discard and bartering whatever he can get his hands on. Their eyes are vacant, white. His eyes are present, despite his appearance. Alert. He has to be, it’s one mistake and death.

The Nether is not forgiving.

He notices when their behavior shifts.

The piglins decide to attack.

Technoblade sighs.

He doesn’t want to attack this one. There have been too many packs, too many attempts at communication, too many tries at a family.

Technoblade has no tools. He’s forced to work with his fists and some metal the pigs scrapped, which with enough tempering he’s made into knuckles. Netherite knuckles, but that knowledge will evade him until years in the future.

He busts one of the pigs’ heads open, then shoves another’s head into the netherrack wall. Blood spills on his boots. A tusk is embedded in his hand; he puts pressure on the wound then yanks it out, stabbing it into the head of the third. The fourth pushes into his back, and Techno slams his head back into its skull until it fractures.

The fifth runs off.

And all at once, an uproar, a chant from a place and group he cannot see or hear.

It sings that Technoblade never dies.

All at once Chat was unanimous:

> Technoblade never dies.

> TECHNOBLADE NEVER DIES

> technoblade never dies

> blood for the blood god!!!

> Techno never dies

> Technoblade never dies!

He nodded in agreement.

“Technoblade.”

Tommy laughed.

Techno realized he had convinced the child he was fine.

“Is that how you get the girls, Blade?”

“I’m not interested.” The art of combat and potato farming interested him more than girls. Or anyone, for that matter.

“Are you crying?”

“No.” Tommy sniffed.

“Here, let go of Carl.” Technoblade pulled Tommy away.

“But I wasn’t—”

“I killed everyone that ever touched that horse.”

“Okay, fine.” Tommy doesn’t move.

Techoblade can’t sigh because he’s already sighed too much and anything that exacerbates the situation will give him a headache. Instead, he picks Tommy up and lifts him over his shoulder. He chooses to say nothing in response as Techno headed inside and down, down, until they were both in Tommy’s little nest of shiny things and stolen goods.

Tommy struggled to stay on the bridge of consciousness. Technoblade takes his hand and walks him all the way there, staying down in the pitiful hole until Tommy has tired himself out from the sound of his own voice.

It was hours before he risked stepping away from the bed.

Snow fluttered down. It was cold and wet, but it was snow; a miracle all the same.

Technoblade stretched out a hoof. It was not the hand of a small child that was trapped in the Nether. It was a Piglin beast who had believed he'd never feel the cold again.

Technoblade glanced out the shutters. Tommy was inside, falling asleep. The silence of the home told him as much.

He pulled his hand back inside.

The fire of the top floor crackled. Techno dipped his head forward. His hands clasped around an invisible buckle, hidden underneath his hair.

As easy and simple as changing clothes, Technoblade the human stood in his retirement home. His height was the same, scars still present, but now a long unkempt braid of hair trailed down his back. It was ill-maintained, tangled and disgusting. A liability.

Without thinking twice, Technoblade took his sword and slashed the braid off.

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?!” Dream yells. It feels like the ground is shaking beneath them.

Techno stands firm. He’s towering above him, sword at his side.

“Nope. I’ve been told it’s one of my best qualities.” His voice is monotonous as always.

The green fiend stood hunched over his stomach, shoulders rising and falling to the tune of his ragged breaths. He knew that they didn’t need to breathe. It was all theatrics, even in the middle of a fight. Still, Dream’s voice was frantic, jittery, shaking, and loud; something Chat assured him they altogether had never seen in their combined existences.

Technoblade felt smug.

Technoblade made the grave mistake of hubris.

In a flash, the god is behind him. The god that can see the straps of his mask, the god that slices it off with a well-placed swordstrike and grabs him by his braid.

“Y’know, I really didn’t want to kill you. I’ve heard about you, a little bit. I just didn’t care.” He whispers into Techno’s ear as the pain tears into his scalp.

It only took a half-second for him to find a solution.

Dream was guarding from the left, expecting another hit to his mask.

Technoblade swiped at the right.

In a flash, he’s cut off his braid of pink hair and freed himself from the clutches of his enemy.

He smirks, and pulls out his axe. He doesn’t need the mask to fight, it’s already a part of him.

“C’mere, Dream.”

That one. That memory is real and he has all the proof he needs of that. He turned over his hand and pushed up the brass knuckles to see the gashes along his finger from where he held the grip. He sets the hand-to-hand weapon on the crafting table as he massages his hands.

Soaking his fingers in instant healing should alleviate the pain. Even for a moment.

Dream hit hard. The wounds never left.

But Technoblade hit harder.

A burned hand reached out to the snowfall.

The snow didn't burn back.

"He's not me, Chat. We're keeping it that way."

If there was one thing Technoblade was good at achieving, it was his goals.

#dream smp #dream smp fic #smpfic #sleepy bois fanfic #dsmp fic #Technoblade #tommyinnit #philza #wilbur soot #sbi #sbi fic

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kookie-doughs · 4 years ago

Text

Y/N L/N AND THE HALFBLOODS

Percy Jackson X Reader -Y/N L/N met Percy Jackson and everything was now ruined.

CHAPTER 8: I Really Hate Water

The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur. Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth and sometimes Luke, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English. After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache. The rest of the day, I'd rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something I was good at. I had struck around with Percy the whole time unless it was dinner time or night where I spent with Luke. Chiron tried to teach Percy and I archery, and we found out pretty quick he wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. He didn't complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail. It was hilarious. While I on the other hand, could compete against Merida and Hawkeye with wining in favor of me. Foot racing? He sucked. The wood-nymph instructors and I left him in the dust. I told him not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But I guess, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree. And wrestling? Forget it. Every time he got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize him. Luckily I took some martial arts class back then and stood some chance against her. "There's more where that came from, punk," she'd mumble. The only thing he really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn't the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur I guess. But hey, He's better at canoeing than me. I don't even know how I drowned all the time. Percy had to save me a couple of times. I knew the senior campers and counselors were watching us, trying to decide who our Olympian parent was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. I was as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. I have Hephaestus's skill with metalwork, luckily I didn't have Dionysus's way with vine plants. Luke told me Percy might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make him feel better. He really didn't know what to make of me either. Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real parent. Nothing came. I tried not to think too much about my mom and dad, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save them, to bring them back.... Even D/N would do...

I started to understand Luke's bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn't they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn't my parent, whoever they were, make a phone appear? Thursday afternoon, three days after we'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor. We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armor. I did okay. At least, I understood what I was supposed to do and my reflexes were good. The problem was, I couldn't find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either they were too heavy, or too light, or too long. Luke tried his best to fix me up, but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me. We moved on to dueling in pairs. Luke announced he would be Percy's partner, since this was his first time. And then my turn after his, so I had to train with another kid from the cabin. "Good luck," one of the campers told us. "Luke's the best swordsman in the last three hundred years." "Maybe he'll go easy on me," Percy said. The camper snorted. By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the drinks cooler. Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good idea. I turned to talk to Percy and he had done the same. "Okay, everybody circle up!" Luke ordered. "If Percy doesn't mind, I want to give you a little demo." I wanted to try going against Luke as well. I wasn't confident with my skills. The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured they'd been in his shoes before and couldn't wait to see how Luke used Percy for a punching bag. He told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming technique: how to twist the enemy's blade with the flat of your own sword so that he had no choice but to drop his weapon. "This is difficult," he stressed. "I've had it used against me. No laughing at Percy, now. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique." He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword clattered out of his hand. "Now in real time," he said, after Percy had retrieved his weapon. "We keep sparring until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?" He nodded, and Luke came after him. After a while of clashing, Percy tried the disarming maneuver. His blade hit the base of Luke's and he twisted. Clang. Luke's sword rattled against the stones. The tip of Percy's blade was an inch from his undefended chest. The other campers were silent. He lowered his sword. "Um, sorry." For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak. I had a huge grin on my face. I had no idea why, but I was proud. I was so close on giving him an encore and all that. "Sorry?" Luke's scarred face broke into a grin. "By the gods, Percy, why are you sorry? Show me that again!" I didn't want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned me. But Luke insisted. This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor. After a long pause, somebody in the audience said, "Beginner's luck?" Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised at me with an entirely new interest. "Maybe," he said. "But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced sword... ." My time with Luke wasn't as amazing as Percy's was but I wasn't that bad. Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Grover and Percy at the lake, resting from a near-death experience on the climbing wall. Grover had scampered to the top like a mountain goat, but the lava had almost gotten me. Percy and I's shirts had smoking holes in it. The hairs had been singed off our forearms. We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket-weaving, I was resting my back on Percy's since I felt like any moment they'd drown me. Percy then ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr. D. His face turned a sickly shade of yellow. "Fine," he said. "Just great." "So your career's still on track?" He glanced at me nervously. "Chiron t-told you I want a searcher's license?" "Well... no." I had no idea what a searcher's license was, but it didn't seem like the right time to ask. "He just said you had big plans, you know... and that you needed credit for completing a keeper's assignment. So did you get it?" Percy said. Grover looked down at the naiads. "Mr. D suspended judgment. He said I hadn't failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive, then maybe he'd consider the job complete." "Well, that's not so bad, right?" "Blaa-ha-ha! He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty. The chances of you getting a quest... and even if you did, why would you want me along?" "Of course I'd want you along!" Grover stared glumly into the water. "Basket-weaving... Must be nice to have a useful skill." I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look more miserable. Percy and him talked about canoeing and swordplay for a while, then debated the pros and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the four empty cabins. "Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis," he said. "She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she didn't have one, she'd be mad." "Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big Three?" Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. "No. One of them, number two, is Hera's," he said. "That's another honorary thing. She's the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn't go around having affairs with mortals. That's her husband's job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos." "Zeus, Poseidon, Hades." "Right. You know. After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what." "Zeus got the sky," I remembered. "Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld." "Uh-huh." "But Hades doesn't have a cabin here." "No. He doesn't have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here..." Grover shuddered. "Well, it wouldn't be pleasant. Let's leave it at that." "Why though? What would children of Hades do then? How would they fend themselves?" "I-I don't know... Its not my idea not adding Hades!" He shrieked as if he was at fault and felt guilty. "But Zeus and Poseidon—they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths. Why are their cabins empty?" Percy changed the subject. Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably. "About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn't sire any more heroes. Their children were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades on the other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx." Thunder boomed.. . . . . .. I said, "That's the most serious oath you can make." Grover nodded. "And the brothers kept their word—no kids?" Grover's face darkened. "Seventeen years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon. There was this TV starlet with a big fluffy eighties hairdo—he just couldn't help himself. When their child was born, a little girl named Thalia... well, the River Styx is serious about promises. Zeus himself got off easy because he's immortal, but he brought a terrible fate on his daughter." "But that isn't fair.' It wasn't the little girl's fault." Grover hesitated. "Percy, children of the Big Three have powers greater than other half-bloods. They have a strong aura, a scent that attracts monsters. When Hades found out about the girl, he wasn't too happy about Zeus breaking his oath. Hades let the worst monsters out of Tartarus to torment Thalia. A satyr was assigned to be her keeper when she was twelve, but there was nothing he could do. He tried to escort her here with a couple of other half-bloods she'd befriended. They almost made it. They got all the way to the top of that hill." He pointed across the valley, to the pine tree where we'd fought the minotaur. "All three Kindly Ones were after them, along with a horde of hellhounds. They were about to be overrun when Thalia told her satyr to take the other two half-bloods to safety while she held off the monsters. She was wounded and tired, and she didn't want to live like a hunted animal. The satyr didn't want to leave her, but he couldn't change her mind, and he had to protect the others. So Thalia made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill. As she died, Zeus took pity on her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of the valley. That's why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill." I stared at the pine in the distance. The story made me feel hollow, and guilty too. A girl my age had sacrificed herself to save her friends. She had faced a whole army of monsters. "Grover," Percy said, "have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?" "Sometimes," he said. "Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini." "And have they ever returned somebody from the dead?" "No. Never. Orpheus came close... . Percy, you're not seriously thinking—" "No," Percy said. "I was just wondering. So... a satyr is always assigned to guard a demigod?" I looked over to him warily. "Not always. We go undercover to a lot of schools. We try to sniff out the half-bloods who have the makings of great heroes. If we find one with a very strong aura, like a child of the Big Three, we alert Chiron. He tries to keep an eye on them, since they could cause really huge problems." "And you found me. Chiron said you thought I might be something special." Grover looked as if I'd just led him into a trap. "I didn't... Oh, listen, don't think like that. If you were—you know—you'd never ever be allowed a quest, and I'd never get my license. You're probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don't worry, okay?" I got the idea he was reassuring himself more than us. "What about me?" They looked at me. "Chiron said you didn't know I was a half-blood..." "We didn't. When you didn't forget who... Mrs Dodds was. We thought you just saw through the mist. Then when I saw you with Percy that night... and your parents aware of me and the camp. I assumed you were... a half-blood." "How about now? What do I smell like?" He looked at me gingerly then at Percy, "Nothing. You smell too human. Even for a very minor god. That's why there are plenty of satyrs then are confused as to why there's a human here. That night after dinner, there was a lot more excitement than usual. At last, it was time for capture the flag. When the plates were cleared away, the horn sounded and we all stood at our tables. Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about ten feet long, glistening gray, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar's head. I turned to Luke and yelled over the noise, "Those are the flags?" "Yeah." "Ares and Athena always lead the teams?" "Not always," he said. "But often." "So, if another cabin captures one, what do you do— repaint the flag?" He grinned. "You'll see. First we have to get one." "Whose side are we on?" He gave me a sly look, as if he knew something I didn't. "We've made a temporary alliance with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And Percy's going to help." The teams were announced. Athena had made an alliance with Apollo and Hermes, the two biggest cabins. Apparently, privileges had been traded—shower times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities—in order to win support. Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. From what I'd seen, Dionysus's kids were actually good athletes, but there were only two of them. Demeter's kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff but they weren't very aggressive. Aphrodite's sons and daughters I wasn't too worried about. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped. Hephaestus's kids weren't pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem. That, of course, left Ares's cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet. Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble. "Heroes!" he announced. "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!" He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxide shields coated in metal. "Whoa," I said. "We're really supposed to use these?" Luke looked at me and laughed. "Unless you want to get skewered by your friends in cabin five. Here—Chiron thought these would fit. Do you want to be border patrol with Percy or come with me?" I smiled at him, "Tempting offer but I think I'll stay with Percy." "Your lost." He smirked then ruffled my hair. I went over to Percy who was holding a shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the middle. Our helmet, like all the helmets on Athena's side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes. "Looking at real good." I laughed. He frowned at me. "Like you look that different." "I am sporting this helmet just fine excuse you." I said picking up a dagger from the table. Annabeth yelled, "Blue team, forward!" We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off toward the north. Percy and I managed to catch up with Annabeth without him tripping over my equipment. "Hey." She kept marching. "So what's the plan?" Percy asked. "Got any magic items you can loan me?" Her hand drifted toward her pocket, as if she were afraid I'd stolen something. "Just watch Clarisse's spear," she said. "You don't want that thing touching you. Otherwise, don't worry. We'll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you your job?" "Border patrol, whatever that means." "It's easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan." She pushed ahead, leaving me in the dust. "Okay," he mumbled. "Glad you wanted me on your team." "I don't want to be near the creek." I said anxiously. "Maybe I should just go with Luke..." Percy then took my hand. "Since when have I ever let you drown? Don't worry. I'll be there for you." He smiled. With a pout and a worried look I stuck out my pinky said, "Promise me." "I swear I will never let you drown. I will save you with all I can." He swore connecting our pinkies. "Everyone knows pinky promises are better than Styx." We laughed and made our way to our station not letting go of each other's hands. It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view. Annabeth stationed us next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees. The bronze sword, like all the swords I'd tried so far, seemed balanced wrong. The leather grip pulled on my hand like a bowling ball. There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? I mean, Olympus had to have liability issues, right? Far away, the horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue-plumed ally from Apollo raced past me like a deer, leaped through the creek, and disappeared into enemy territory. I lied down on the ground. "This is so boring." "Stand up, who knows when an enemy will show up." He scolded pulling me up. "I don't know... I think I'd rather shrivel and die." I shrugged. "Plus I know I got a knight in shining helmet to save me." "I mean yeah of course you do." "Luke's like few meters away after all." I smirked. He turned to me with a frown and a 'not funny' face. Which made me laugh. Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up my spine, a low canine growl, somewhere close by. I stood up and Percy pulled me behind him as he raised his shield instinctively; I had the feeling something was stalking me. Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating. On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors came yelling and screaming out of the dark. "Cream the punk!" Clarisse screamed. Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a five-foot-long spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had only the standard-issue bronze swords—not that that made me feel any better. They charged across the stream. There was no help in sight. I could run and leave Percy. Or I could defend myself against half the Ares cabin with no more than 9 inch dagger and Percy Jackson. I managed to sidestep the first kid's swing, but these guys were not as stupid the Minotaur. They surrounded me and Percy, while Clarisse thrust at us with her spear. Percy's shield deflected the point. My hair stood on end. "Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric." Percy groaned and I pulled him back. Another Ares guy slammed me in the chest with the butt of his sword and I hit the dirt. They could've kicked me into jelly, but they were too busy laughing. "Y/N!!" Percy yelled but he had a sword pointed at his throat. "Give her a haircut," Clarisse said. "Grab her hair." I managed to get to my feet. I raised my dagger, but Clarisse slammed it aside with her spear as sparks flew. Now my arm numb. "Oh, wow," Clarisse said. "I'm scared of this guy. Really scared." "The flag is that way, let her go!" Percy told her. "Yeah," one of her siblings said. "But see, we don't care about the flag. We care about a guys who made our cabin look stupid." "You do that without my help," I told them. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to say. Someone took a hold of Percy so the sword was no longer pointed at him. Two of them came at me. I backed up toward the creek, tried to raise arm, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn't been wearing an armored breastplate, I would've been shish-ke-babbed. As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-size cut. Seeing my own blood made me dizzy—warm and cold at the same time. "No maiming," I managed to say. "Oops," the guy said. "Guess I lost my dessert privilege." "Y/N!! I will kill you all!!" He was thrashing around. "Let her go! She can't swim!!" "It's fun seeing your girlfriend suffer ain't it?" Clarisse laughed. The guy finally pushed me into the creek and I landed with a splash. They all laughed. I figured as soon as they were through being amused, I would die. I was sinking. I couldn't breathe. The water was pulling me for what felt like 10 meters deep. Blood were coming out at every wound I had. I was loosing consciousness. Help me. Please... -With Percy- Clarisse and her cabinmates came into the creek to get you, but you weren't there. "Hey, she's missing?" One of the cabinmate said. "What? It's like 3 meters deep. She's just there." Clarisse scoffed. "I's telling you she's can't swim! Water pulls her down! I will kill you if she doesn't survive!" Percy managed to get power from somewhere and got out of the hold. He knew what to do. I swung the flat of my sword against the first guy's head and knocked his helmet clean off. I hit him so hard I could see his eyes vibrating as he crumpled into the water. Then he jumped down. Hoping to see you somewhere. Muttering your name over and over in hopes to catch you. Save us He heard from his right. When he turned he finally saw you at the bottom. He swam with all could and got a hold of you. To haul you up. Finally surfacing, Percy panted and laid you of the ground. Pumping your chest. When the water finally came out of your mouth. Percy turned to glare at the people. Ugly Number Two and Ugly Number Three came at me. He slammed one in the face with his shield and used his sword to shear off the other guy's horsehair plume. Both of them backed up quick. Ugly Number Four didn't look really anxious to attack, but Clarisse kept coming, the point of her spear crackling with energy. As soon as she thrust, he caught the shaft between the edge of my shield and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig. "Ah!" she screamed. "You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!" She probably would've said worse, but Percy smacked her between the eyes with his sword-butt and sent her stumbling backward out of the creek. -Back to you- Coughing myself awake. Water came out of my mouth. "Percy..." I called. He turned so fast that I was surprised his neck didn't snap. "Y/N!" He ran to me and pulled me in a hug. I couldn't move, I felt tired and weak. "I want to sleep." I could feel my wounds stinging. Cold air hitting it. I felt sore despite barely moving. Then I heard yelling, elated screams, we both turned and I saw Luke racing toward the boundary line with the red team's banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat, and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse. "A trick!" she shouted. "It was a trick." They staggered after Luke, but it was too late. Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the horn. The game was over. We'd won. Percy carried me still with an angry expression and tense body. I wanted to reassure him but I knew it wouldn't work. Luke looked over and saw us. I could see his sudden shift of emotion. He wanted to approach but he was surrounded by every cabin. We then heard Annabeth's voice, right next to us in the creek, said, "Not bad, hero." I wanted to turn to see her but I couldn't. I could barely keep my eyes open. "Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?" she asked. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she'd just taken it off her head. She was now in front of us. I felt Percy tense up once more. "You set us up, You put us here because you knew Clarisse would come after me, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all figured out." Annabeth shrugged. "I told you. Athena always, always has a plan." "Because of you, Y/N is like this." The venom in his voice were obvious. "I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but..." She shrugged. "You didn't need help." "I didn't. But Y/N did! And what did you do?! She could've died!" Percy was shaking. I could feel it. "Calm..." I managed to whimper. "What's that?" Annabeth pointed at Percy's neck. "A sword cut, obviously." "No. It was a sword cut. Look at it." The blood was gone. Where the huge cut had been, there was a long white scratch, and even that was fading. As I watched, it turned into a small scar, and disappeared. "I—I don't get it," Percy said. Annabeth was thinking hard. I could almost see the gears turning. She looked down at our feet, then at Clarisse's broken spear, and said, "Step out of the water, Percy." "What—" "Just do it." He came out of the creek and immediately I could feel myself better. Percy almost fell over, but I managed to hold him. "I got you." I panted. "Oh, Styx," she cursed. "This is not good. I didn't want... I assumed it would be Zeus... ." Before I could ask what she meant, I heard that canine growl again, but much closer than before. A howl ripped through the forest. The campers' cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly: "Stand ready! My bow!" Annabeth drew her sword. I drew my dagger and pushed Percy behind me. There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers. It was looking straight at me. Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, "Percy, Y/N, run!" She tried to step in front of me, but the hound was too fast. It leaped over her—an enormous shadow with teeth—and just as it hit me, I was pushed aside as Percy stumbled backward and its razor-sharp claws ripping through his armor, there was a cascade of thwacking sounds, like forty pieces of paper being ripped one after the other. "Stop that!!" I screamed and somehow managed to grab her. She turned to me sharply and stared me down. As if she was waiting for the perfect opportunity to jump me. It approached me and settled down at my feet, sitting down as if she was an obedient dog. She watched as I catch my breath. From the hounds neck sprouted a cluster of arrows. The monster fell dead at my feet. By some miracle, I was still alive, and wasn't even hurt. I instantly turned to look uat Percy. His chest wet, and I knew it was badly cut. Another second, and the monster would've turned him into a hundred pounds of delicatessen meat. Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim. "Di immortales!" Annabeth said. "That's a hellhound from the Fields of Punishment. They don't... they're not supposed to... How did..." "Someone summoned it," Chiron said. "Someone inside the camp." Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone. Clarisse yelled, "It's all Y/N's fault! Y/N summoned it!" "Be quiet, child," Chiron told her. We watched the body of the hellhound melt into shadow, soaking into the ground until it disappeared. "You're wounded," Annabeth told Percy. "Quick, Percy, get in the water." "I'm okay." "No, you're not, Y/N get him to the water," she said. "Chiron, watch this." "No... She doesn't do well in water..." Percy choked. I carefully swung his arm around my shoulders and without thinking twice, I stepped back into the creek, the whole camp gathering around us. Instantly, I felt weak. I could feel the pulling me down. Some of the campers gasped. Percy who could barely stand few minutes ago got a hold of me. I could feel my consciousness loosing once again. "Look, I—I don't know why," Percy said, trying to apologize. "I'm sorry... But I need to get out of here. Y/N---" But they weren't watching Percy's wounds heal. They were staring at something above our head. "Percy," Annabeth said, pointing. "Um..." By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident. "Your father," Annabeth murmured. "This is really not good." "It is determined," Chiron announced. All around us, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn't look happy about it. "My father?" Percy asked, completely bewildered. "Poseidon," said Chiron. "Earth shaker, Storm bringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God." Percy looked down at me. I wasn't sure what but I had the feeling it was somewhere along the lines, 'I am the reason you drown every time you step on water.' "You're claimed..." I managed to squeak. Percy stepped out of the water. "Congratulations." I smiled weakly.

Previous | Masterlist | Next

UwU Here's another chapter I am sorry for some holes in the story -kookie-doughs

Taglist?

@gayer-than-the-gayest-gay @the-natureofme @booknerd-3000

#Percy Jackson #Percy Jackson X Reader #Percy Jackson X Y/N #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo #luke castellan #Luke castellan x reader #Y/N L/N #Y/N L/N and the halfbloods #X Reader #Lightning thief #Book 1 #Chapter 8 #Fanfiction #fanfictions

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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

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I don’t often muse upon PJO, but when I do, its random as hell.

Anyway, tonight’s thought (singular, also: derogatory, as in very possibly a mistake) is about exploring aspects of the Greek gods that are extrapolations of like, what they’d be like in the modern world instead of just in terms of their ancient myths.....and how that might widen the scope of their demigod children and their powers.

Like take Hephaestus for instance. God of the forge and fire, of invention and artifice......now widen the scope on those things through the lens of the modern age.....might he also be considered the god of modern science, not just in terms of things like engineering and technology, but also physics, chemistry? Or would those things fall more under Athena’s purview......unless you separated them into finer divisions. Like, you could consider Athena’s overview of knowledge and wisdom to make her the goddess of science and higher learning or whatever in general........OR you could separate it like.....Hephaestus is the god of natural or physical sciences like physics and chemistry, and Athena is the goddess of not just wisdom and tactics but things like psychology, computer sciences, etc.

Or OR get Dionysus up in there too, and make it like Hephaestus is the god of chemistry, of chemical reactions and the like, Athena is the goddess of physics, of the most full and complete understanding of the physical universe via things like the unified field theory and its comprising forces of electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, etc, and then Dionysus the god of biology, hmmmm.....

Cuz imagine then, demigod children of Hephaestus, where instead of pyrokinesis, some get powers like transmuting elements.......oh man, the things you could do with that??? Not just lead into gold but they’d be terrors in battle because they could transmute the very air someone breathes into chlorine gas, blood into acid, flesh into stone. Or using that power defensively, making them able to keep guns from firing by dampening the chemical reaction that comes from igniting gunpowder, or just knocking someone out or putting them to sleep by just tanking their metabolic reactions. Mingling magic with modern know-how and creating their own version of truth serums by turning the water someone drinks into something akin to sodium pentathol when just brushing their fingers against someone’s glass, or rendering all drugs or toxins that might have been slipped into their drink null and void by transmuting them into harmless H20.

(I know that Luke was mentioned briefly as being good at making potions aka alchemy due to being a son of Hermes, but frankly, transmutation as a mastery of the periodic table makes waaaaay more sense for Hephaestus’ kids, I’m just saying. And plus the Greeks didn’t so much consider Hermes an actual god of alchemy as they more just kinda viewed him as their god of all things miscellaneous and tended to lump anything they didn’t have particularly strong feelings about and/or a grasp of under his umbrella. Hermes was really just the patron god of being random as fuck and oh great gods of Olympus I have no idea what I want to do with my life, give me a sign. Hermes: poofs into existence on their shoulder and says SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED TO GO BE GAY AND DO CRIME YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, DIVINE MANDATE, LETS GOOOOOOO).

Give children of Athena more practical applications for being heirs to her wisdom, knowledge and strategic acumen by also giving her dominion in the modern age over humanity’s quest to better understand the universe we live in and all its rules, the ins and outs of the laws that govern reality itself.......thus Annabeth and others’ potential acumen for magic being here not the end result of them stepping on Hecate and her kids’ toes, but rather more a function of making them the embodiment of ‘magic is just sufficiently advanced technology’ as they - via an innate and heightened understanding of the very nature of the physical universe - find holes in the fabric of space and time that let them slip from Point A to Point B as easily as crossing the street, play tricks with gravity and relativity and things that leave others baffled and amazed and them just shrugging and being like its all in the wrist, dude, and also, the fact that our mom just GETS reality in a way that everyone else will still be playing catch-up to a thousand years from now.

Children of Dionysus (yes I know he barely has any shhh we’re not paying attention to the series we’re just musing on demigod powers here) who combine the godhood of grapes and revelry with loud music and laughter......the way music can help with plant growth, because music is essentially just VIBRATIONS and vibrations stimulate activity in plant cells in a variety of ways.....and thus similar to Mr. D’s tricks with controlling vines and rapidly growing plants, AND his ability to affect the psyches of others, which is described as inflicting or curing madness and I’m like ehhhh do we have to describe it thus though.....put all that in a pot, shake it, not stir, and abrakadabra, alakazam, other psychic pokemon random Psyduck shout-out and voila! ALL of that could be afixed to and made the end product of godly and demigodly control and manipulation of vibrations, cuz Dionysus is literally the god of just vibing in all its infinite forms.....and thus its all just about how vibrations affect plant life on a cellular level, how they can affect brain chemistry in a variety of ways, triggering a lot of the more primal centers/functions of the brain, etc. You kids are driving me crazy, he’d yell at his demigod kids, and they’re like umm wow, like ACK CHOO UGHLY, father, welcome to the 21st century, all we’re really doing is directly stimulating the prefrontal cortex of your cerebellum with our banging rock music, and its making you angy, what about it?

And speaking of actually, if we and by we I mean me cuz I am and its wheee, are theorizing about Athena’s brood getting to be all magical wunderkind whizkids with their scientific acumen and divine cheat-sheets for the physical universe, maybe Aphrodite and her kids could snatch up those psychology and psychiatry job titles instead. Love, desire, also things like obsession, hyper-fixation......is Cabin Mighty Aphrodite really just pheromone central or are its campers more like magical dopamine and serotonin factories just pumping out good vibes all around them, being like come hang out, its free brain juice. Like, imagine kids of Aphrodite who just by their mere presence could help the legions of ADHD demigods focus better, concentrate easier, get shit done because the goddess of passion and her children like....have the gift of helping people to more productively pursue their passions in ALL forms, not just the physical desires they hold for others but the passions they hold for arts and crafts and sports and y’know, saving the world on magical coming-of-age quests when their milkshakes bring all the monsters to the yard.

And then Ares not just as a god of war and conflict, but of entropy....the tendency of the universe to trend towards disorder, randomness, uncertainty....the kind of things that so often incite or enflame conflict......but applied at large not just to interpersonal dynamics but to the world itself. With his children possessing demigod abilities that disrupt or weaken bonds, both in the form of emotional ties between allies and commitments towards various ideals or courses of action, but also the ability to PHYSICALLY weaken bonds, resulting in an enemy’s weapon falling apart at a touch, or increasing the instability or volatility of an object so it blows up akin to how Gambit of the X-Men’s powers work and can turn even playing cards into a weapon, etc, etc.

And don’t even get me started on Hermes! No, seriously, don’t. Mostly because I haven’t thought that one through yet and I got nothing. I mean I got some things but they are nebulous and have yet to spring forth fully formed from my head like Athena from the fuckhead of Zeus, that absolute fuckhead of legend and yore. In my defense though, I haven’t like, eaten any primordial goddesses of thought and memory, so.......like, idk, I’m taking the longer route here I guess.

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allbeendonebefore · 3 years ago

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atlas cronus cyclopes helios hermes poseidon titans

Atlas- Favourite myth?

quatsch called me out and said i like the myth of theseus the best and she's right and i'm sort of but not really ashamed. Every iteration and every retelling of theseus just makes me laugh. I love how stupid he is. I love how the story was used to forcibly insert Athens into the mythological histories of older and more important poleis. I love how the theseus myth was somehow used as propaganda during the persian/peloponnesian wars (I need to re-investigate this) where the city state of athens said "you should take us seriously because of this absolute moron hero"

(i fall short of calling him a himbo, but I can see the argument being made for it if you subscribe to the versions where 1. he was Asked to leave Ariadne on that island and 2. remember that time his wife said straight faced that his son made advances towards her and his first reaction was welp better go kill my son"_ 3. i dont have any explanation for the kidnappings beyond a. they were completely misinformed on helen's age and panicked and b. with persephone and hippolyta i guess they just wanted wives that could destroy them so)

Cronus- Favourite food?

I said curry last time so maybe i should say something different this time... i did mention i love bread and likewise because of its versatility. I enjoy making bread as much as i do eating it (and i did prior to covid also). Some of my favourite breads to make include naan, rye, and black pepper cheese bread. My favourite bread to eat is sourdough (which I don't have a starter for so I haven't made it yet)

Cyclopes- What’s your favourite joke?

Another one hmm, let me think.

the one that annoys quatsch the most is the one about the greek guy who ripped his trousers: Euripides, Eumenides! :^)

Helios- Night or day person?

hard question. I think i am actually a morning person in that I do like being up with the sun but only if I am alone and have nowhere else to be and I'm not being told what to do xD so like once my night classes ended and I could set my alarm earlier I noticed an improvement in my mood - but when I'm at home with the fam it's pointless to be up before my parents who wake up before me no matter what so I can't enjoy those quiet early morning hours unless I yeet myself straight out of the house which I don't like doing.

Traditionally my best creative time was 7pm ish (or so i noticed in high school and undergrad) so I had always thought of myself as a night person but I don't actually like staying up super late and I only like to sleep in once in a while.

Hermes- Do you like travelling? Where is one place you want to travel to?

tbh travelling stresses me out a lot and I need to be with a person who knows what they're doing. But when the actual travelling part is over and we're just out wandering the hills in northern england or scotland or wherever enjoying nature or on the train watching the countryside go by, it's amazing. I also like having tomodachis with itineraries to show me their hometowns because I don't even have to think about what I want to do I can just follow and enjoy learning about how they see where they're from and be led to tasty food -w-

Poseidon- Do you like to swim?

yyyes and no i think i answered this recently in another meme but i have mixed feelings about swimming. also apparently i can't figure out floating and need to work on that so i don't drown in the river when i do go swimming ;u;

Titans- If you could go anywhere in time, when would you want to go?

urghhg i mean part of me is like lets go to ancient greece and make notes for my thesis but part of me is like oh no i'd have to understand ancient greek far better than i do and try not to get in trouble, part of me is like what if.... i just go back to the 90s but as an adult so i can get a more nuanced look at what i was living through at the time because at least i speak the language and have a vague idea of what was happening xD (i think i'd have no problem avoiding interacting with past me lol)

#hapo replies #ask meme #ask game #about hapo

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muthaz-rapapa · 4 years ago

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Let’s talk TroPreCure! (^∀^ 🌺)

i’m so stupidly proud of this dumb pun “tropurikyua~”, hahahahaha

Last post of the year and wow is there are lot to be excited for!

I even had to make a list for the stuff I want to talk about and I’m sure I already forgot one or two things but we’ll get to them as we continue to float~ along the wave to February 28th, mmkay? :)

Now for what has peaked my interest so far. And yes, we have to talk about the following first:

1) HealPre the shortest Precure season??

Unless they plan for double features in February (which I doubt but you never know), HealPre is likely going to reach only 45 episodes long instead of the usual 48~50 before TroPre I’m using this shortening of the title for now so if there’s a better alternative, tell me and I’ll switch out begins its broadcast.

Understandable because the producers probably want to get back to their normal scheduling as soon as possible (toy sales, y’know) and I suspect pushing the start of the new season back by a month is the most they’re willing to compromise.

As for me, I’m quite happy about this since HealPre’s lost its hold on my attention a while ago so the sooner TroPre gets here, the better. Though the downside might be a scrambled climax and a rushed, underwhelming ending for HealPre (I dunno if it’s January’s titles that feel a bit messy or if the hiatus is still throwing me off) but whatever. We’ll refresh ourselves with the new blood Cures so it’s all good.

2) Tropical movie announced for Autumn 2021, no All Stars??

(source)

First saw this mentioned on Youtube somewhere but it’s all over the fandom forums by now. I mean, HealPre’s movie is set for March, the usual time slot for All Stars release. If Toei intended for there to be an All Stars in 2021, there’s no way they would announce the seasonal movie before it so speculations of them skipping it this year are probably true.

To squeeze it somewhere between March and October-ish would force them to readjust their budgets as well and I don’t think even Toei wants to go through that extra hassle after all the trouble the pandemic’s caused for everyone already. It’s just easier to resume All Stars in 2022.

That, and I think Laura being a major character in TroPre despite not having a Cure title (yet) would make for an awkward situation when the three latest teams gather so perhaps that’s also one of the reasons. But I’ll get back to Laura in a bit.

3) Cure Summer is a RAINBOW Cure

So god help me if I see anyone calling her a Pink Cure.

Yes, she’s the lead Cure for this season. NO, she is not a Pink Cure.

Look, even the official website has a rainbow overlay for her profile pic and text font while everyone else’s respective theme colors are a solid hue:

Therefore, RAINBOW.

In promotional material and merchandising, they’re probably going to advertise her primarily with pink bah and at worst, she might occasionally be labeled as a White Cure with multiple subcolors (her outfit is not pink-dominant) but definitely NOT. PINK.

...also, this goes without saying but f***yea, we finally got a lead Cure practically and unabashedly wearing the LGBTQ flag and you cannot tell me otherwise, Toei!

Own up to it! Declare Manatsu/Cure Summer as the Precure queer icon!

I’m not gonna stop yellin’ until you do! 😠

4) Laura = obvious midseason Cure is obvious

First of all, Laura is a babe. I already love her the best and she’s not even Precure yet. <3

Anyways, the set-up is pretty much in the description. Important main character who’s not a mascot, stated to have a self-confident personality and just speaks her mind (oooh, I like~ :D), magical/foreign being from another world looking for Precure to save her home, possesses her own special item(s), has aspirations to become the next Queen (so she’s a princess-candidate or something to that effect, I suppose).

We’ve seen various combinations of these traits in past midseason (and a few starter) Cures so nobody should be surprised when we all guessed that one of the Cures would be a real live mermaid.

The only question is why not just make Laura a Cure from the get-go if she’s introduced to us at the beginning (like Hime or Lala) and having a team of five with no unnecessary extra add-ons later on (like Smile).

Well, there’s a simple answer for that: formula.

Toei is afraid that if they don’t spit out some new animation sequence at the halfway and third quarter points of the show, the kids will lose interest and abandon the series altogether. Which means failed toy sales. Oh nooo... [/sarcasm]

...Yea.

And this way they can also have Laura available in the Cure lineup for the next All Stars in 2022 instead of making her sit the fight out if we were going to have one in 2021. I’m convinced that’s gotta be one of the reasons. *shrug*

But ok, whatever. Her debut is gonna be later, that’s all. She’s a delayed Cure. Midseason Cure, same difference.

Moving along to the more important stuff now like what’s her Cure name gonna be, y/y?

Well, knowing Toei, a translation of the term “mermaid” into another language is the most predictable route even though we already have a Cure Mermaid. Not like that ever stopped them from repeating words before (ex. Cure Happy vs Cure Felice). Though if they do go down that road, I hope they opt for the Spanish/Italian “sirena” and not the French “sirène” because the latter sounds too close to how Cure Selene is pronounced in Japanese. And, putting it nicely, we all know Japanese pronunciation of foreign words is as off kilter as can be.

Hell, even the the Portuguese “sereia” sounds aesthetic as hell so it’d be nice if they can just remember there are other languages that exist out there besides Japanese, English and French when making the final decision at the writing table! *stomps foot* >:/

Alternatively, “nereid” or “naiad” are good choices too but they remind me too much of Greek myths and Laura’s from the Grand Ocean which covers more than just a couple of seas (Greece is surrounded by three, btw) so...

I dunno. But whatever it’s gonna be, she’s definitely got a strong association with water and her powers will probably be based on that.

As for theme color, since there’s noticeably no blue or green Cure in the starter lineup, it’s likely she will take up that spot when she debuts around ep 20.

Pink is also open since Cure Summer, again, is technically not a Pink Cure and Laura’s hair and tail fin are hot and light pink respectively but looking at Laura’s design and concept, does anyone seriously believe that?

Her upper torso consists of aquamarine while the body of her tail is definitely some shade of cyan, implying they’re aiming for somewhere around the middle of green and blue on the lighter spectrum.

And yea, I’m aware that green and blue are considered exchangeable in some perspectives with how close some of their shades are to each other but officially, I think Laura’s gonna be grouped with the Green Cures.

Cuz of the hair. If Laura’s gonna keep it the same or a similar shade after transforming, that is. The Blues have always had cool-colored hair so putting Laura in with them might disrupt that harmony whereas if you put her with the few Greens there are (including Parfait), she’d fit right in.

I mean, we’ll see but that makes the most sense, doesn’t it?

On another note, I just want to say that I love how they added frills to her arms instead of letting her elbows go bare naked. It definitely makes her look more like a genuine mermaid than if she didn’t have them (remember, half fish doesn’t mean half the body :P).

5) Magical Items

Frankly, I’m tired of seeing the transformation device being a compact again even though one of the main motifs is make-up this season. But at least, as far as Precure compacts goes, the Tropical one is my favorite cuz of how cute and delightfully colorful its toy version looks! So I guess I’m okay with it.

The Heart Rouge Rod, though? ...I dunno. I think it would’ve been fine without that...straw (?) jutting out at the top. It looks weird, doesn’t it look weird? :S

As for the collectible clip-ons, I can live without those for the rest of my life. Yeesh.

Laura’s items, the Aqua Pot and the Ocean Prism Mirror.

Again with the portable, travel-size housing. *sigh* 😩

Alright, I can let this year slide cuz Laura (I’m so soft for her, omg) probably won’t be getting legs for 20 weeks so she’s got to move about on land somehow. But unless they’re really thinking about turning this idea of carrying your apartment around in your bag/pocket/purse into a reality (cuz that would be effin’ awesome), please be more creative with your toys.

On the other hand, I’m much more interested in the Ocean Prism Mirror but from what Kusyami (the Precure merchandise reviews I follow on Youtube) said in his latest vid, this is the ED dance item so don’t know if it’ll actually have an relevance to the story or not. But I did hear him mention it having something to do with the Queen as well and since Laura wishes to become Queen, maybe it’ll be important after all? Maybe it’s her transformation device?

That’d be super cool. Let’s continue the trend of the midseason Cure having a different transformation item than the starters. Honestly, we should alternate every other year or two but we’ve gone three seasons with all of them using the same henshin gimmicks up till HealPre and I just want a break from that.

6) Fin sleeves??

These look so impractical for combat so maybe it’s exclusive to group attacks.

And/or a sort of precursor to the super forms?

*GASP* Does that mean they all eventually turn into mermaids? 🤩

7) Yui finally became Precure!! 😭

lol, it’s all crack from this point on so don’t take it too seriously but man, after Yuni’s deceptive braids, I thought I wasn’t gonna see anything that reminded me of Yui for a while and lo behold, Sango.

kehehehehehe xD;

Though Yui might be closer to Minori in terms of personal interests (fairytales and storybooks).

8) Akira, the actual Onee-chan version

I didn’t think this when I first saw her but once I read “Onee-san” in her profile, there’s no saving you now. Sorry, Asuka. 😅

Also, damn, do her sandals make her feet look big! Compare them to the heels she wears as Flamingo. Are they even the same?! lololol

9) ...this sounds awfully familiar...

Translation:

Tokimeku Tokonatsu! [Exciting/Thrilling Everlasting Summer!] Cure Summer! Kirameku Hoseki! [Sparkling Jewel!] Cure Coral! Hirameku Fuurutsu! [Flashing Fruit!] Cure Papaya!

Japanese reiteration:

Mallow/Mao: Pink no tokimeki! Lillie: Blue no kirameki! Lana/Suiren: Yellow no kagayaki!

….........

@Toei

Care to explain yourselves, punks?!

୧(ʘ ∀ ʘ ╬)

#it is 1:30 AM and im hungry and still have to do work on new year's eve so i'll come back to amuse-rage later #tropical rouge! precure #precure 2021 #cure summer #cure coral #cure papaya #cure flamingo #laura la mer

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kerblackthorn · 4 years ago

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Unmasking the Master-Mistress of Magic

I am the prophet of the Mastriss, the seer in the Darkness. I sought a path: I looked to religion, to science, and to the innumerable paths within Paganism, Hinduism, the occult, and Wicca, but none could hold, none could contain fully my heart nor express the language of my soul. I pilgrimaged to India and Europe, became certified in yogic instruction, I took many plants hoping to finally rend the Veil and see the Truth. Intuitively, I always knew that Truth is One although our languages and cultures are many. Truth is absolute although our experiences are as countless as the stars. As variable in sound as the way each child develops their speech. We do not invalidate one another but expand our breadth and depth of knowledge for this beautiful wondrous Kosmos through one another.

I shall seek to express in such variable human skills the Truth of our existence. I shall try to explain how to experience this Truth, that anyone who reads my words would make connections and find their own words. That when you speak to the spirits, they would speak back and be heard. I want to do this because I love you, although I do not yet know you. All of this World is my kin, and so you who read my words are my brothers and sisters, my aunties and uncles. I was discouraged and deluded, full of doubt and fear, but when I found the footsteps of the Trickster in every culture, the fingerprints of that profoundly simple dual-natured Mastriss experientially everywhere I sought the reality of things, all of my burdens were shed. Now, I wander around with a head as empty as a child and eyes as open as a madman. I come and go from my body as a mouse from their hole.

Having drunk from the breasts of the Mighty Goat, I smile at the Wind, talk to the Tree-People, and sometimes cry when I pluck a Plant. All of my needs and desires are taken care of, and I have no fear of any future need or desire to go unmet. My spirit-mate walks beside me and I see Her smile and hear Her voice all throughout my days. One day, when the Dark Angel comes for me, that demon that once terrified me but whose mighty name I know now and call, I will go along hand-in-hand with a smile as friends on our merry way to those well-known Lands I often dream of.

If you would set out upon this path, you must make every effort to break open your mind. The mind will always doubt, always delude, and always unnecessarily entangle you. Therefore, go to war with the mind: empty it, destroy its barriers, and achieve madness for yourself. The boons of Dionysus and the panic of Pan are your friends on this path, and the comforts of Aphrodite are your secure fixing point. Make Venusian love your great guiding principle and no evil will overtake your soul. As this war of the mind is undertaken, you must work to change your mind to its very core when it comes to 3 human beliefs whose presence is the greatest reason that unnatural religions continue to prevail in this world and the body clings so tightly to the soul that people have forgotten how to dream and how to sojourn out of the bonds of the daily self.

The first is the basically gnostic worldview which has been so ingrained through it's Christianization and the subsequent spread of Christianity. Gnosticism teaches us that the world is spiritual over physical, mind over matter, principles over practice… this is the first great trick which the Mastriss uses to test us. You must see past this preoccupation with compartmentalizing. Break open the dam of your spirit and let it flow out over your life! Embrace the truth of animism. Until science began to overtake religion in the 19th century it is clear from the journals of clergymen that even the Christian Church embraced this worldview until it had been supplanted by a science which was entirely incomplete, which could not comprehend the things which modern minds have found: the truths of quantum physics, the language of trees and water, and the true nature of consciousness were all matters of religion then, and when microscopes did not reveal these miniature worlds, the old world dismissed all the majesty of mystical religion. The reality is that mysticism was and always will be far ahead of science. Embrace animism, return to the primal.

The second trick we must overcome from the Mastriss is that of nature's triumph over nurture. We have fought with nature for so long, becoming, as anthropologists assert, cooked and "overdone". But now an eldritch call is going out in this last age of humankind, a voice that tells us we must return to the primal, the primitive, the raw, or else we will perish. This latest viral threat is just a taste of what the spirits will unleash unless we can succeed. A true religion must therefore be primal, entirely banded to the natural world and the survival of the Earth. A religion which neglects the eternal nature of the Earth as the World Tree itself, containing the 3 worlds within Her, will bring about an organic age of peace, balance, and harmony without needing laws and courts and tariffs and the imbalanced malarkey of the patriarchy to succeed. Earth-centric spirituality is fundamental.

The third and final trick we must overcome is the myth of humanity's separateness. Now, this is rough ground to till due to the preoccupation people have today with avoiding something called "cultural appropriation". And in one aspect, this preoccupation is something very positive: syncretism can quickly turn into a cycle of devouring, digesting, and regurgitation which leaves people with something so different and new that the original culture is lost. However, there is also a deeply ingrained principle in us all that Truth is absolute, even if it is not capable of being explained in absolutes. No one would seek out religion and pour over books and demand experiences if they were not wanting to know the true nature of existence and the laws and spirits behind the Kosmos. That doesn't mean that the language and system they learn is absolute, but that they are experiencing the reality of things. It's like meeting a person for the first time with your best friend: you both may discuss the same event and make up entirely different judgments about this newcomer.

Syncretism is, however, very helpful, as the process of seeking synchronicity with spirits and experiences and books allows one to develop a system of fact checking oneself and developing a road map toward broader horizons through knowledge one has not yet experienced. When viewed through the lens of animism, this process becomes even simpler. There is a strong chance that when viewed through the lens of animism some of the spirits that seem related from other cultures are, at times, angels of the primary deity who dwells within the same natural phenomenon. Angels are simply messengers, reflections of the spirit-gods they serve… the 7 primary Olympic Spirits who correspond to the 7 planets have hosts of angels that serve below them. Every one of the 72 Elohim encountered by Solomon has so-called "legions" of angels below them. I use angel here in the older and proper Grecian context which accords the etymology of the word.

I fall back on Helleno-Roman texts and worship a lot, alongside grimoire texts. I do this simply because it is so well preserved and so well ingrained in the Western corpus. Moreover, the “Papyri Graecae Magicae” and the “Orphic Hymns”, two veritable treasure troves of mystical wisdom handed down to us, veritable scripture for me, are culturally Hellenic. Jesus' draws on beliefs around Ouranon, Olympus, and Hades constantly in his teachings, teachings which most of us are somewhat familiar with. And the names of the Gods of All are contained in the PGM and Orpheus’ songs; that said, most of us have 4 seasons, so relying solely on Hellenic Reconstructionism does not necessarily make sense. It is absolutely divine that such a culture rooted in animism survived for us today, and it is so easy to understand their recordings due to the omnipresence of the Christian Church in the West, but not all of the personality of the True Religion has been contained therein. Moreover, celebrating the overlap and gaps filled in by other cultural beliefs is a beautiful treat: something the Orphics did to a lesser degree and the mageia of Alexandria did at length, and so is true even to the spirit of these origins.

Furthermore, relying solely on the ancient Hellenic religion does not make sense for a witch because Hellenismos was not predicated on the survival of witchcraft, seeking to outlaw and destroy it really, and the philosophy behind ancient Greek religion revolved around the worship of the 12 Olympians. The True Gods, the Old Gods, had been displaced and locked away to greater and lesser degress. Hecate, Hades, Persephone, Cybele, Helios, Selene, even Eros and Pan were mostly propitiated out of dire necessity. The mageia of Alexandria remembered Their true names, however, as well as the worship appropriate to Them and Their existence at the Root of All Things. In Rome, the peasantry are recorded handing down the story of Diana and Lucifer (the latter of whom is Eosporos before Roman naming came into effect) in “Aradia: the Gospel of the Witches”. This should be a sacred text for any true witch for in it we have the story of how the True Gods came and how They mean to come back, as well as Their natures and the relationship witches are invited to have with Them.

How then do we bring back the Old Gods as They choose, no longer boxing Them or packaging Them, but rather letting Them rule with Their own personalities? Quite vehemently, magic on the level of the miraculous, brothers and sisters. The story of Aradia is the story of how, when one has been granted a boon by Hecate-Diana, you should tell everyone how great She is and tell others how to pray to Her for their own benefit. Same as the story of how Isis won the secret name of Ra… you don't need to attack people with your faith as the Christians do, but to tell everyone how great your life has become as a result of Hecate, Eosporos, and Hades work in your life. If you are wont to, call Them Morrigan, Dagda, and Cernunnos, or Freya, Odin, and Thor. As long as the secret names from the PGM and the grimoires are intact and you know that you are talking to the God of Death, the Goddess of Fate, and the Mastriss of Storms you'll get far.

And on that note, I'd like to share some of the miracles I've seen Them work for me and those I love through me. 5 years ago, when I went to look for a home, I couldn't even qualify for a measly $450k loan, barely scraping up to the $300k level. In my home state, this means all I could afford were places that had been destroyed by the previous tenets, and the only bank loan I could qualify for required the home to be perfect… I had two kids and was very afraid what this meant for my future. I now have a $450k rental and I live in a $1.5M home in the woods. I let the Mastriss take the wheel of my life: I started working a little harder and accepting job offers and life offers that came in, and the Mastriss took care of me. This gave me the time and freedom to actually start pursuing my true passion, which is worshipping the Elder Gods, preaching and writing about Them, and practicing the Craft of the Witches.

When my middle son was very little, 1 year old, his older sister accidentally slammed his thumb in the door at a hotel in Disneyworld Orlando. It was a heavy, metal door and his little thumb was as flat as a pancake and oozing blood. I asked the Mastriss to heal him as we drove to the ER, using an old Germanic charm I have picked up. By the time we arrived, he was asleep. By the time we checked in, the thumb had stopped bleeding. By the time we got seen, it looked normal and he was already using it. They laughed at the resiliency of children, but a doctor visiting Disney had already seen the thumb and said that the bones looked smashed to pieces from the door, which had closed shut without any space in the frame at all. I had found him trying to yank his little thumb free from the steel frame, and it was not budging. And yet, 2 hours later, here was his thumb looking and feeling as well as ever. It didn't even swell up.

I have lived in the woods for more than half my life, and when I was young, I saw the Mastriss standing at the edge of the woods in the moonlight. The creature-form was mesmerizing and terrifying, with the haunches and mouth of a goat but the torso of a breasted humanoid. The Mastriss had piercing dark eyes that saw into my soul and the moonlight draped the Beast’s form like a cloak; my mother froze looking at the Beast beside me, standing at the woods edge. She was angry with me when the Beast left, saying that this was all my fault due to my "dabbling". Later, when my little sister and I were wandering in the same woods, I accidentally kicked a mountain lion who was sleeping in the underbrush. Startled, the lion roared and took off and then, to our terror, began running back at breakneck speed. When the lion was back within sight, I yelled, "I have seen the Master of these woods! I have seen the Master of all the woods! And not one evil can befall Them! Help me, Master Goat! Send Your angel!" And the lion stopped in its tracks, lowered its body, and slunk back gently into the grass.

If anything in your life is concerning you for any reason, no matter how big or small, try the Mastriss out. Put the Goat Angel to the test. Don't be afraid, because the Mastriss will appear to you as you need, and often appears as a little blue child to those who would fear Their Bestial Form, as to those Hindus who call Them little baby Krishna and those grimoires who call Them Lucifer or the King of the Fae respectively. In reality, the Mastriss is neither male nor female, but third-gendered. The One Who stands at the Gate to the Otherworld, Scirlin, Janus, Papa Legba: all masks that the Mastriss of Misrule wears, disguises and spirits that serve Them. Pray at the Threshold of your home, the edge of the Woods, on a Bridge, at the edge of the Ocean: "Mastriss of the Winds and Storms, Goat Angel Who tussles the tops of the trees, Adonai Sabaoth Who leads the Deathless Hosts through the windswept realm, I ask You to come into my life and order it how You see fit. Child and earthly consort of our Dark Mother, Brimo, let Your name be blessed by my tongue. Light up my life, Mastriss Lumiel, and let Your breast be my sweet succor. In the name of Your Chief Angel, Heliou Amene."

#witchcraft #animism #mastriss #western folk #lucifer #lumiel #brimo #pgm #greek magical papyri #hellenism #witch

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thatmultifandomhoe · 5 years ago

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A Lifetime under Moonlit Nights

Word Count: 5,289

Overview: It was a love story that began when Gods roamed the Earth, and lasted over the course of several centuries, always under the beauty of the moonlit sky. But when one life is cut too short, you realize how tiresome it is to constantly be reborn.

Pairing: Seokjin and Reader

Genre AU/Rating: God AU - Fluff - Angst - Past Lives - Reincarnation - Rated: PG-13

Warning: Character Death - Greek Mythology - brief mention/appearance of Jungkook and Seonghwa.

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A/N: Part of the Bulletproof Bingo Event hosted by @ficswithluv

The sun had long since fallen for its slumber, allowing the moon to grace the world with its silver beauty. Millions of stars were intricately stitched into the sky overhead, and the dew from the grass leaving small wet patches on Seokjin’s clothes, but he didn’t mind.

It was in the early hours of the new day that he waited for you. The meeting spot was far from the world he called his home, but he went out to the country side where the grass reached his knees and the purple wisteria tree you loved so dearly created a veil between the two worlds.

Every night when he came to this spot, you were already there waiting from him, hidden within the branches and their petals, that ever-patient smile painted on your lips. Only on rare occasions did he find himself arriving first.

On those nights, he’d usually hide behind the tree until you arrived, cheeks flushed red and chest heaving, worried that you’d been too late. It was then that you’d sigh, allowing yourself to catch your breath as you sat on the ground, fingers running along the blades of grass as if they were a dear friend. He’d then wait, a gentle smile always present as he listened to your soft mutterings for a few moments before suddenly appearing.

Sometimes there would be the clanking of glasses, an occasional treat hidden within the picnic basket you’d bring along. Then the kisses would be rich with sangria stained lips, but Jin would always say that he’d get drunk off you and not the wine. You’d laugh, possibly even call him corny, and the stars would shine brighter in the midnight sky.

Tonight however, he laid on the grass in front of the trunk of the wisteria, recalling the day it had been planted. That had been a different time and way of life. Easily over a hundred years and was yet just as beautiful as the day it grew, unknowingly from his magic.

Magic that sadly, many have forgotten.

These were now the days of lore and myths, stories told to wide eyes souls and used for lessons to navigate life, but everyone seemed to forget that perhaps, once upon a time, were the very fabric of everyday life. Gods and Goddesses once roamed the Earth before retiring to their new homes in the heavens. Only a handful remained and lived in modern society.

As God of the moon, Seokjin slept his mornings away and spent his nights making sure that the moon stayed in the sky until dawn. Whether or not he was in a good mood or not, was reflected in how dull or bright the stars appeared.

Most of the time, the stars were easily seen. When he was with you underneath the wisteria tree, they gleamed liked freshly polished diamonds. For living as long as he had, it was hard to be affected by the on goings on mortals and he had all but managed to turn a blind eye to their antics. Sometimes on his travels, he’d spy someone walking alone or a couple out on a late night adventure and he’d be reminded of you, and partially amused, he’d bless the rest of their night or offer them protection with the moonlight, ensuring a safe journey to wherever they wandered.

You were the only human that he cared deeply about, and when you were sick or hurt, the stars would dull, and remain so until you were yourself again. Jin was a God and yet, the very thing he was in charge of, was really controlled by you. He was wrapped around your precious fingers, wanting nothing more than to please and treasure you.

“Jin?”

Tilting his head, his lips curled into a smile when seeing you standing in front of him, the wisteria petals parting like a curtain for you. The scarf you wore to cover your head was silver, glowing every so faintly that one might mistake it for a reflection of the moonlight up above. For a brief second, the light surrounding it grew brighter in his presence before disappearing.

“What are you doing here so early?” you softly asked, letting the branches slide from your palm as you joined him.

Jin raised an eyebrow as he stood, slipping his hands into yours as he gave a gentle kiss to your cheek. “Is there another who you meet here?” He teased.

“Ah, but you’d know if I was meeting someone else,” you shot back, unfolding the blanket on to the ground by the tree.

“That is true, the moon sees all.”

His smile softened as you laughed, the sound reminding him of the music that Jungkook played to soothe the other Gods when things didn’t go their way. But yours was better.

You carefully lowered yourself to the ground with his help, sighing when you leaned backwards against the trunk. For a brief moment, his smile faded at the sight of your face scrunching up, knowing that it wasn’t because you had sat on an awkwardly placed root.

“Darling,” Jin said, settling next to you on the blanket. “I can come to you so you don’t have to walk this far out.”

But you shook your head, choosing to lean against his chest as he curled his arm around your waist. “I’m fine. I swear, these trips are the only time I get to leave the house these days.”

He knew that. Which was why he had asked Jungkook to check on you when he made his journeys with the sun. Some days were better than others, but according to him, you spent the days sleeping more often than not. It worried Jin greatly, and even his brothers were showing their concern. With the modern age and new medicine, mortals had begun to live longer than before.

However, this mortal body was already failing, and you were barely halfway to your thirty years.

Inhaling the sweet scent of the wisteria, he laced his fingers with yours, trying to ignore how they had a shake to them that didn’t used to be there.

“Please,” he whispered, kissing your cheek once, twice. “I’d hate for you to get hurt on your way.”

“Jin—”

“If you won’t let me take you to see Jungkook, then at least let me visit you at home.”

You pressed your lips together in silence, choosing to focus on the flowers instead of meeting his gaze. This wasn’t the first time the two of you had this discussion. Ever since that fateful day two years ago, all he wanted to do was make things comfortable for you, but that wasn’t what you wanted. You wanted life to go on as normal. Like you always have.

But how could he do that when the life you were supposed to live was only a small fraction of what it should be?

“Do you remember the first time we met?” You suddenly asked.

He frowned at the change of conversation, slightly frustrated that once again, you were choosing to ignore your safety. Despite his worries, he leaned his head against the tree, able to recall the memory with ease.

“I had been a so young,” he simply said.

A warm breeze drifted into the area, the purple branches swaying as both of you recalled a simpler time.

“And so handsome,” you teased, squeezing his hand.

The indignant sound that left his mouth would have sent his brothers laughing from their homes in the heavens, but it had you giggling. “I am still handsome,” he argued. “In fact, I’m even more handsome now. I’ve aged like fine wine over the centuries.”

Rolling your eyes, you settled your free hand on his leg. There was a twinkle in your gaze that was strong tonight, glowing brightly as you stared at the grass in front of you like it held all the secrets in the world.

“Still so full of yourself,” you joked, relaxing once again upon feeling his other hand settle on top of yours. “And that was how I knew you were a God. So cocky.”

If any other mortal had said that – and it was a couple centuries earlier - they would have been cursed without a second thought. Coming from you, Jin simply chuckled. “Usually you’re praising me for that darling,” he murmured, kissing your temple as you elbowed him.

Blush tinted your cheeks but you ignored his comment. “If you told me back at our first meeting that I’d be spending the rest of eternity being reincarnated, a new body, a new life, to be with you – a God nonetheless – forever…I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Your voice had softened, piquing his interest as he recalled that fateful day himself. He hadn’t expected anyone else to be in the clearing, especially in the middle of the night, but there you were, standing alone and hugging yourself as you stared up at the stars. The plain dress hadn’t done anything to emphasize your figure, but the fire in your eyes was alive, daring him to do the wrong thing.

One gaze was all it took for him to be interested, and with your smart remarks, he couldn’t help but be drawn to you. Every night he went back to that spot hoping to see you again. Sometimes you weren’t there, but more often than not, you waiting for him with a witty remark.

“Do you remember our first kiss?” He asked, resting his head against yours.

Closing your eyes, you hummed in agreement.

Back then you thought it was impossible for the two of you to be together. He was a God, destined to live forever while your existence was numbered by the Fates.

The idea had been silly, but you had been concerned with what would happen after you passed away. A young woman who was in love with Jin, you knew that unless you became pregnant with his child, your legacy was going to die with you since you refused to love another. You wanted something to live and prosper long after you had left this world.

The sapling had caught your attention one day at the market, the idea that it would have bloom purple and grow into a massive tree was what you sold you as you handed over the coins to the seller, eagerly carrying it back to your home where you waited until the stars came out to plant it. You had been digging the hole when Jin arrived, curious as to what you were doing.

“This is my legacy,” you told him, stopping to wipe your brow.

He frowned while smiling, amused that you were concerned with such a simple thing. “A tree?”

“Yes, a tree. But it’ll grew tall, and beautiful, outshining everything in this clearing forever.”

Not wanting to waste time, you continued to dig, only needing to go a little further until it’d be deep enough.

The air was warm that summer, and as you dug, he took the chance to admire you. You weren’t like the Goddesses he knew, who demanded to be pampered and chased after by multiple partners, vying for everyone’s attention but never satisfied when someone specific wasn’t looking their way. Dirt didn’t scare you, and because you lived in a small home by yourself, you did the work that men usually did, thus making your hands rougher and leaving aches in your body from the day’s work.

“Won’t your legacy live on with your children?” He forced himself to ask, his chest aching at the mere thought of you being with another.

Hesitating, you barely glanced at Jin. “I…I don’t plan on getting married,” you said instead.

Deciding that the hole was big enough, you tossed the shovel to the side and got on your knees to remove the cloth wrapping from the base of the tree.

This was news to Jin however. He had always thought that you’d one day marry someone who was your equal. “Why not?”

“I won’t marry someone who I don’t love.” With delicate touches, you carefully undid the twine that held the wrapping together, setting it to the side for later use.

“Do you love someone?”

“Yes…but it’s not possible for us to be together.”

You hadn’t planned to say that, but the words spilled out of your mouth before you were able to stop them. It was too late now.

The wrapping was finally removed, but you didn’t hurry to plant it into the ground. Instead, you kept it in your lap, the dirt staining the cloth of your dress. There was a longing within to tell him the truth, wanting to say that you loved him so much that it hurt when he hugged you goodbye, or how during the day while doing the simplest of tasks, your mind wandered to what it would be like to kiss his plush lips, even delving into fantasies of sharing a bed with him. Of being by his side as more than a friend.

With every daydream, your heart swelled with love only to get beaten when you remembered what you both were. There just was no possible way it could work out.

Your vision blurred and stung as you sniffed, reaching up with the back of your hand to wipe away the tears, but a hand stopped you from doing so. Lifting your head, you saw Jin on his knees in front of you, the sapling in one hand while he caressed your cheek with the other. He quietly wiped away the tears, took your hand, and placed the sapling into the hole. Together, the two of you pushed the dirt back over it, gently patting the mound it made once it was securely planted.

“You know,” Jin softly spoke, lacing his fingers together with yours. “Anything is possible, if you’re willing to take a chance.”

He was closer than you originally thought, your gaze darting down to his lips before looking into his eyes. They were as dark as the night, timeless even. A soft breeze rustled his black hair, his bangs covering his forehead and without realizing it, you were reaching up to brush them out of the way.

As if under a spell, you leaned forward when he did, his lips gently touching yours in a sweet kiss. And then another, and another. He released your hand to cup your face, allowing him to add pressure to the kisses, drawing them out to make each one last.

It was the moment the two of you had been holding yourselves back from, and now that it happened, there was no going back. Jin hadn’t even realized that he was crying himself until your fingers gently touched his face, forcing him to pull back at the wetness on his face. Seeing that you were in a similar state, he brought you into his arms, being mindful of the newly planted tree.

Caught up in your emotions, neither of you saw the silver moonlight outlining each branch and leaf of the sapling, the tears of two lovers mixing together and sinking into the tree itself, going all the way down to the roots to help anchor it to the clearing. Forever.

“I miss those days,” you murmured, resurfacing from the memory.

Jin simply kissed the side of your head, trying to ignore the tightening in his stomach. “They were simpler times.”

You tilted your head back against his shoulder, gazing up the wisteria tree. It had grown so beautifully since the day you planted it, and while no one else remembered who had been the one to do it, the legacy you had so desired back then was fulfilled.

“Jin, are there any wisteria trees where you live?”

He froze, the tightening of emotions traveling to his heart as he recognized the longing in your voice. It was the same one he had heard all those years ago when you brought up being with him always, but wanting a mortal life at the same time. Reincarnation had been the answer to solve both problems.

“Yes,” he answered, licking his lips as his arms tightened just the slightest around your frail body. “This exact one in fact is in my garden. Why do you ask Darling?”

“I’m tired,” you said.

There was no easy way to say it, but it was true. For the first time in all your reincarnations, the body you were given for this life was not going to die of old age like the others had. You were sick. The treatments and medicines made you worse and you ached everywhere. When you weren’t at the hospital you were stuck in your bedroom, your parents always there to help you move about and get you things, hovering by the doorway in-case you needed something else. It was overwhelming and tiring. The only time you felt like yourself was when you managed to sneak out while they slept, taking these stolen hours with Jin to relax and be yourself.

Now that you tired out more easily, you took naps often and each time you closed your eyes, a memory from before replayed itself out. Whether it was from your very first life, or your fortieth, to all the weddings you and Jin had, you got to relive them all. There were just so many. It was truly a gift to be able to live so many lives and remember them, but it wasn’t until now – diagnosed and dying from cancer – that you realized how simpler it all would have been, had you only joined Jin’s side in heaven the first time.

Yes, the two of you had been so young, so in love, but you had also been so wrapped up in finding a solution – him wanting you to be with him forever, and you not wanting to have more than a mortal life – that you had been blind to the consequences.

Until you were able to truly understand your memories and locate the wisteria tree, Jin spent years alone, waiting for you appear once again. The reunions and the years together were always worth it, but he also saw you grow older, watched as strands of hair turned white and grey, and the wrinkles became more defined. He stayed by your side through it all, the good and bad, and he was always the one to suffer when the day came where you wouldn’t open your eyes.

The weight of living so many lives wasn’t a light burden either.

“Darling, I can bring you home –”

You shook your head though, carefully reaching up to remove the scarf that Jin had given you the night after you shaved your hair off. It had been thinning and falling out in clumps, and this way, it was easier to manage. “No Jin, we both know that’s not what I mean.”

He pressed his lips together, feeling his eyes sting at the possibility of what you were implying. “What do you want to do then?”

Heart racing, you turned to face him, unable to keep your own tears at bay upon seeing his face. Jin, your lover, husband, hadn’t age at all since the day you met. He was exactly the same, while you felt like a stranger with the memories of a million different versions of yourself.

“I don’t want to be reborn after this,” you said. “I want to go home, with you to the stars. As grateful as I am for all these lives I’ve lived, it’s exhausting and not worth having, when we could have had one life together this entire time.”

For a split second, Jin was prepared to argue your request, to give multiple reasons for why you shouldn’t let this go, and then the fight was all gone. Gods were always giving. Whether they were gifts, blessings, curses, punishments, they gave and gave, but rarely did they take it back. You were the love of his immortal life. He didn’t want to lose you, and the idea of you not being reborn again was terrifying.

“I can’t take you straight to heaven with me,” he softly explained. “Your soul will go to the Underworld where it’ll be judged. Only then can I try and plead our case, but it won’t be up to me.”

“I know Seokjin,” you said, using his full name for the first time in so long. “Just because I’ve had more than my fair share, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten our ways.”

He didn’t stop the chuckle that escaped. Only you would reprimand a God. Cupping the side of your face, his smile reappeared when you leaned into his touch, sighing as he ran his thumb across the skin. There had been so many rebirths that he had lost count of which life you were on, and while your physical features were not always the same, the littlest things from your first life were still there. Like the small scar on your chin from when you had been sharpening an arrow. Or the slight curve in the middle of your nose, a result from when he suggested taking a swim in a lake after midnight. How was he supposed to know that you’d slip and land on a rock?

Jin leaned in and kissed your chapped lips, the scarf slipping from your hands as it landed on the blanket underneath you.

“This will be your last mortal life,” he firmly said, pulling back to see the relief in your eyes. The power of his words rippling in the air, the stars dulling as his heart ached. How long have you wanted this but not said a word to him? “After this, your soul will go to the Underworld to be judged by Seonghwa, just like everyone else.”

You gently smiled at him as you watched Jin take the scarf you always wore and loosely tie it around your neck. His fingers brushed against your skin but he remained quiet, the moon light dimming when he felt how cold you were.

“Thank you,” you said.

He shook his head, bringing you to his chest and hugging you. Whether or not releasing you of being reborn hurried up what time frame you had left, he wanted to enjoy this moment. The last thing he wanted to think about was the fateful day to come. All he wanted was to pretend that he wasn’t a God, because instead of healing you like any other would have done, he had taken away the one thing that guaranteed you a future.

All because you asked, and he loved you too much to say no.

Jin held your hand to his lips, refusing to look anywhere else but at you.

It was the moment that he had been dreading, the one you had been looking forward to.

Jungkook had woken Jin up in the middle of the day – something that no one would ever do – and it was only when he mentioned your name that Jin listened to what the sun God had to say. Apparently, your illness had taken a turn for the worse, and the doctors now had morphine in your IV drip.

“It’ll make her comfortable,” Jungkook explained, having followed after Jin to the hospital room that you were staying in.

It had been a few days since then, and Jin had taken to staying by your side as long as he could. The only time he left your side was when he was needed to make the moon rise and descend, but even then, it was a half-hearted effort. Like always when your time came to an end, his emotions bested him, dulling the stars to smudged glass and cloudy nights.

Normally, he’d be able to find hope within his heart at the prospect of you returning to him in your next life, sometimes even making a game out of it to see where you might come from, what language you’d speak, how’d you look, but it was all different now.

Lowering his gaze, he kissed the back of your hand, a small smile appearing at the sight of the silver wedding band on your ring finger. While the two of you hadn’t been able to get married in this life, it had been his one request that you eagerly said yes too, sighing when he had slipped it on for you. He always wore his, having refused to take it off after the first wedding because in his eyes, no matter how many lives you lived or centuries passed by, you had never stopped being his wife.

He had thought that he’d get used to seeing you grow ill and passing away by now, but it never got any easier. Usually it was when you reached your older years, so it was jarring to see you so young but so ill and fragile. The sight of you in pain made him collapse to his knees, begging you to take back your last wish so that you’d be reborn again. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

But you had simply shook your head, even daring a slight smile as you offered your hand for him to take.

The heart rate monitor was slow, consistently beeping in the otherwise silent room. Both your parents had gone for the today, having been convinced by the nurse that they needed to go home and get some sleep even if it was just for a few hours.

Even without Jungkook’s expertise in the area, Jin knew that by the long paces in-between each beat, your heart was slowing down. This was not a battle you were going to fight this time. Although, with a fond smile, he recalled how well you once fought with a sword when you had to defend your home from thieves back in Greece.

Or that time when in Paris, some fool thought that he could run off with your purse when the two of you had been walking along Le Mur des Je t’aimes in Montmartre in Paris at dusk. Not only had you made the French raise an eyebrow at your choice words – spoken perfectly might he add – but you had even made the police nod in approval.

“Oh darling,” Jin whispered, kissing your hand again as his eyes watered up. “You have lived so many beautiful lives. I just wish I had been there more than I was.”

Tears dripped down his cheeks as he bowed his head, sending a silent prayer that your soul would reach the Underworld without any trouble, and another to Seonghwa personally, pleading for him to take care of you until he decided your fate.

When he lifted his head, your hand slumped in his while the glimmer of silver light that had been surrounding your body disappeared. Gently, he placed your hand back on the bed, the nurses rushing in when a single long beep echoed from the heart monitor.

But Jin was gone by then.

It had been weeks since the funeral. Not a word had been heard from Seonghwa about his decision, there hadn’t even been a heads up to let Jin know if your soul arrived to the Underworld or not.

As a result, the night sky had been cloudy. With the exception of when he visited your grace and he made the moon and stars glow brightly just for you, the nights had been dark and dreary, just like how he felt. The other Gods were used to him being emotional after your deaths, but this hit harder for Jin, and the longer he went without knowing where you soul ended up, he was starting to think that he’d never see you again.

He had centuries of memories with you, and as wonderful as they all were, there was nothing better than being able to hold and kiss you all over again.

He hadn’t been back to Earth since then. There was no point, you had been the main reason for all his visits. He had debated on going down to visit your wisteria tree. It was your meeting spot, a sacred place the two of you shared, but it wouldn’t be the same if he were to arrive and not see you there with a smile.

Instead, he had taken to walking around his garden more often than not, isolating himself from the other Gods and choosing to be by himself. The night the two of you had planted the sapling on Earth, in his own personal garden up in heaven, the wisteria sapling appeared even though he hadn’t planted one. Over the years it grew alongside yours, a perfect replica that reminded him of you that he visited often when you were in-between lives.

It was to the wisteria tree that he found himself walking towards, hands crossed behind his back, the moon high in the sky. His mind drifted away, barely even thinking about the duties he had to attend to. There were already plenty of council meetings that he had missed and as lenient as Namjoon was, Jin needed to get his act together soon or there’d be consequences. His brothers knew how much he loved you, they themselves all had their own experiences with their own special human, but he had gotten more time with you than any other.

The time to move on was drawing near.

Gently separating the branches, Jin entered the hideaway that the wisteria tree created, it’s petals and branches acting as a veil from reality for the time being. Perhaps he would stay out here and reminisce on the past, at least until it was time for the moon to descend.

“Hey there handsome, you’re late.”

Jin’s eyes widened as he suddenly looked towards the trunk of the tree, staring at the woman standing there.

Your eyes twinkled brighter than the stars, a subtle silver laurel wreath style crown was placed gently on top of your hair, and you wore the white cloth dress with the silver belt that you had worn on the day you two got married. Your first wedding to be exact.

“What?” You asked, your smile widening as you stepped closer to your husband, unable to help yourself from teasing him a little bit. “Do you usually meet up with another woman here?”

In his chest, he felt his heart warm up and begin to beat again at the sight of you. Not wanting to risk you disappearing from him, Jin hurried to your side and swept you off the ground, your laughter echoing throughout the garden as you hugged him back just as a tightly, both his and your bodies glimmering with a silver outline in the darkness.

“Darling, I’ve missed you,” Jin cried, not wanting to speak anymore to kiss your shoulders and neck. Everywhere and anywhere he could, he kissed before finally reaching your soft lips, not letting you get a single word out as an explanation because to be frank, he didn’t care anymore.

You were by his side once again, and without either of you breaking from the sweet reunion, the stars began to illuminate in the night for the first time in months. The moonlight bathed the world in silver stardust, protecting the humans who walked in the night and granting safe journeys to wherever they went, and a blessing for lovers all around.

Even the Gods themselves were stepping out of their homes, all admiring how beautiful the moon and stars looked tonight.

Jin would no longer have to mourn the loss of you, or only have one life at time with you. Now…now the two of you had an eternity of moonlit nights to be together.

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thejudgingtrash · 5 years ago

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My unpopular opinion: Chiron is a horrible teacher, protector, whatever. He’s as bad dumbledor. He often manipulates children and put them in danger? Also is RR really trying to tell me not one single demigod from before percy’s generation made it to adulthood? Not even demigods of minor gods? If not then why haven’t we heard from them, why weren’t they called to fight in the war so that literal children didn’t have to? I have more but I’m not brave enough to post them lol

Fuck, I gotta check my asks more often. Too much stuff laying around and oh please people! Send your stuff in! Don’t be shy! It’s so interesting to see what’s on your mind! Let’s have that conversation and ask me!! :D I mean a bunch of people agreed and disagreed with my stances (Part 1/Part 2), let’s see how I feel about yours!

Anyway HERE WE GO BOYS! LET’S GO LESBIANS LET’S GO!

LET’S HAVE THAT WHOLE DAMN ESSAY!

Chiron is clearly a self insert from Riordan. I mean come on…

That’s a solid Chiron if I see one. Which is pretty ironic as Chiron’s the shitty teacher who we all know and love. Got something to admit, Riordan? You as a former teacher? HMM?

Hiding incompetence under the disguise of the gentle old wise teacher is definitely something that Dumbledore and Chiron share. Chiron is the old centaur who lived for aeons and helped out the most famous heroes of their times, so shouldn’t modern times be considered to be an easier job for him? He’s barely present, highkey vague and has absolutely no problems with tossing children literally out into the open across the entire fucking US and A to clean the gods’ bathroom messes.

Had the heroes been in their 20s like in the original myths (or even older) it would’ve made more sense to let them find their own ways. It would be rude, but somewhat okay. You could expect adults to find the way and connect the dots. But this is just messing with a bunch of 12 year olds because you can at this point.

Chiron is that supposed sweet teacher that just fucks up. We all had one, you know the one. Seems gentle and nice and but has clearly chosen the wrong job. Don’t know if that’s the trauma of living that long and/or seeing kids dying constantly that’s hitting him in the back of the head.

I have the feeling that people are projecting their teacher fantasies on to him just like step-father fantasies that include Paul. Because we want a guide who is trustworthy, we want an authoritative figure that we can share our concerns with and who guides us to solid solutions without betraying our trust.

But like I said, he’s essentially sending out kids to deathly missions and encouraging deep traumas. Yes, we can partially blame Chiron, but most of the blame goes to the gods who enable and encourage this weird dynamic. Would all of them straight up cut the bullshit and mostly resolve their own issues without using their children as pawns, it would’ve been easier for everyone involved. Additionally, there are many kids in camp to keep busy, look after and care for. I don’t know how many there were pre-TLO but I’d assume the number was in the hundreds? Of course, in larger cabins are camp counsellors that help out and guide next to camp schedules. But since Percy’s the only kid in the Poseidon cabin I guess that thought went south? Percy being the special kid would actually mean that there should be a focus on him unless you’re going for the “I’m neutral” spiel. Chiron knew from day one that Percy was walking Poseidon seed, come on.

Also like I somewhat implied, seeing people die left and right might have impacted Chiron to make him feel indifferent/despressed (could also be a stretch, who knows). Which isn’t an excuse, but might explain some takes. Explaining the same stuff for millennia in its essentials is probably getting tiring.

I think this is the third time that I mentioned it on my blog but showing and telling are the most powerful story telling concepts/fundamentals and you see Rowling and Riordan constantly failing at that which is concerning. Instead of Chiron (or Dumbledore) just simply getting down to the point and telling and explaining stuff briefly, he only eludes, vaguely formulates and it is simply confusing especially for a child in a brand new environment who just lost his mother (if we’re speaking about TLT). This does nothing but add more stress in such a fragile situation especially when a new and bigger threat makes its way.

There’s also the discussion on how much of Greek myth Percy actually gets. He has the basic/ obvious knowledge which many tend to forget. He doesn’t come in with no knowledge. He had Latin classes back at the academy, he studies with Annabeth, he knows some of the monsters. What he simply doesn’t know, is the magic of it all. That is the most confusing part for him.

The actual magic is not explained, which it doesn’t have to be in all of its entirety, but needs to be addressed somehow and gradually.

Percy asking a simple question like how the camp stays sunny and covered 24/7 and how the wardens work and Chiron casually sitting here like you a stoopid one

doesn’t help.

What many people forget: Magic doesn’t erase logic. Even in a magical setting, unless clearly stated, there has to be some kind of logic to connect the dots. It doesn’t need to be a clear cut A to B, but it should be comprehensible for both the readers and the characters in a particular situation. And that’s just not happening for Percy as the character. This also sets up the premise of Percy being ”stupid” which he isn’t. He is surrounded by incompetent teachers and staff that don’t bother telling him how things work and assume that he’ll just manage.

Yeah. Both Dumbledore and Chiron are awfulness in a sweet calm disguise.

Onto part two of the ask. I have had so many talks with people on that exact problem. It simply boils down to one issue:

Rick Riordan‘s inconsistency in world building and setting. The story telling doesn’t make any sense.

So kids are dying like flies before 18 but many are also super famous and in powerful positions? Many are historical figures that made it well over 18? Make that make sense. Also was WW2 supposed to be kicked off by some 12 year olds with that logic? The biggest man made catastrophe of the modern era boiled down to a bunch of fighting kids? No. We all know it. Just simply no. I actually don’t mind the WW2 background but Riordan should’ve given it another thought and be a bit more sensitive…? Like the whole fascist gang being team Hades? Uhh… sure…. nope.

Also the same logic applies to Civil War? You’re telling me a bunch of kids were supposed to have started this stance? Who was for and who was against slavery then? What in the actual fuck? Using children as child soldiers to stand in for these large complex historical issues that stretch over years and show many of humanity’s horrifying sides is just….eh.

No. This whole thing about campers dying as soon as they reach the magic number of 18 are either bedtime stories to scare the kids or toughen them up orrrr my guess, Riordan actually managed yet again to fuck up his own lore.

It’s the same logic with New Rome. You have a whole city full of adults but have a few kids run that bitch? You did your ten years of service as a child soldier and then do one of these?

As if adults magically exit this world. Like is that the reason why Percy’s been 17 for a whole damn decade? Because otherwise he gotta hand riptide in and all of the boys scout medals he has collected so far? Adults would’ve had the experience and expertise to win those fights but it would break the magic and charm of the books that a bunch of kids are saving the world for the younger demographic. Let’s do not forget that the targeted audience of the books are middle schoolers. Makes somewhat sense with PJO but with HOO Riordan really shot himself in the leg. He should’ve matured the OG characters at least.

(Also speaking about the actual myths again. A good chunk of them died in their 20s/30s/40s. Odysseus guided as an old man. The heroes weren’t twelve and dipping by the age of 16. The Trojan war went on for 10 years for example. So whereas the real Perseus lived a longer life and had a somewhat happy ending in comparison to his peers, he wasn’t the only one that made it into adulthood.)

Riordan mixing up his own lore is just a shame. Yes, it’s human and he already gets a lot of flag for other stuff. I also get it as a writer with my fanfic where I really have to scroll up to search tiny details that I’ve embedded and not noted down. Perhaps it’s my inner capitalist speaking, but for I’m way more forgiving towards a free product, a gift like a fanfic, rather than something I’ve paid actual money for when it comes to this. The process of publishing a book is large. You mean to tell me that there was no editor at Disney that bothered to fact check? Riordan got a check from us all and doesn’t even bother looking up his own stuff. A little bit more effort, Ricardo. Please. You have an entire damn wiki you could use to check for free if you’re too lazy to read your own books/don’t use authors softwares. Like what?

It’s stupid. You know it, I know it. And as you can see, I fully agree with you.

#ask #ask me anons #percy jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo #chiron #chb #rr crit #rick riordan #hoo #heroes of olympus #my rants #camp half-blood #dumbledore #pjo hot takes

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