Arc (or whatever name you know me by), 18, they/them. Queer neurodivergent dumbass who writes gay men kissing and is absolutely obsessed with corgis and DnD. I have very strong opinions on very many things and post random stuff whenever I feel like it (aka once a decade). Current obsessions: EPIC: The Musical, Detroit: Become Human, Undertale, In Stars and Time, BotW/TotK, Ace Attorney, Slay the Princess
You know, considering how Siffrin was almost certainly still a child when the Northern Island got erased- I tend to assume they were around thirteen, but we know that they were "a teenager" so even the oldest they could be is still pretty young- it's interesting that they wound up completely on their own.
Sure, maybe the time period is a little too pre-modern to have Child Protective Services or something- but considering how open and welcoming Vauguardians are to strangers, it's a little surprising to think that they'd look at a clearly-not-okay kid who just washed up on their beach, doesn't speak their language, and looks extremely lost and just go "rough luck, buddy, here's a croissant and some hiking boots, you go do your own thing" instead of like. At least trying to see if there's a House or a household willing to take them in.
It could be that one did for a little while and that they just moved out when they were old enough, but given how attached he gets to the party in like six months when he's a fully-grown adult who had time to process and heal (sort of), if they had a foster family it'd be weird for them to never come up at all.
It's also interesting how Siffrin's memory trauma seems to manifest not just as being frightened of forgetting, but also of being forgotten.
So, here's what I'm thinking: maybe, when Siffrin first arrived in Vauguard, they were easy to forget.
Not because there was anything wrong with them, but because they'd just come from the Northern Island. Everything about them, every single little detail, would remind people of it.
And that place is impossible to remember.
When they first washed up on the northern coastline, of course people took them to the nearest House- that's a shipwrecked child, they need help! And the Housemaidens treated them like any other patient, caring for the heatstroke and dehydration that come from being adrift in a small boat on the wide sea for a day or two.
But once they were recovered enough to do things like talk, they just kept... losing track of them, somehow.
He just didn't stick in the mind very well, leaving a trail of headaches and confused people trailing off in mid-sentence, unable to quite recall what they were talking about.
So he left.
Because clearly they were busy, they must be! They were doing important work, with no time to care for one lost child. That's very clear to him, otherwise why would they keep forgetting about him so much? If they wanted him here, they would have said something.
And it's hard for a child to support themselves, wandering around alone with nothing but what's in their pockets... but, as it turns out, it's surprisingly easy for someone Very Forgettable to just. Slip quietly into a group, without anyone noticing.
They'd get to a new town or city, look around and find a group of kids their own age- a school trip, a birthday party, a pack of them wandering around the local park- and just sort of fall in line with the rest. If a teacher or parent did a quick headcount, they'd slip easily out of their mind.
And that turned out to be a pretty good way to get a meal, and learn useful things- watching the others, picking up helpful tricks from what they say and do, learning how to speak Vauguardian or act like a local, getting an education in bits and pieces of other people's classes.
After a year or two, it stopped working- people didn't go all glazed over or wander away when they spoke to them (because they learned Vauguardian, could communicate and not leave himself and everyone in earshot nursing a headache). Their gaze didn't just slide over him like it used to.
(They picked up more and more from the land they were travelling in, to fill the empty spaces where the things they couldn't remember used to go. Smoothed out their mannerisms, changed their habits. To a fellow countryman, they would still always be unmistakable- but to people who'd never lived and breathed their homeland, the Island, they were vague enough to be just another traveler, now.)
But by then, they were old enough to work little part time jobs, ways of getting at least a bit of money here and there. They couldn't do their old trick anymore, but they didn't need to, they were strong enough to survive without it. Like a cuckoo chick finally getting its adult plumage and flying out of a stolen nest.
It's fine. They didn't want to take more than they needed, anyway. It wouldn't be fair to keep doing it anymore when they had other options.
...Incidentally, Siffrin would be very surprised to know that, to this day, there's a number of towns and cities on the Vauguardian coastline that all have urban legends about a Child-Ghost.
A little waif of a thing all in white that disguises itself as a playmate for a group of living children and tries to hide among them. If you confront it, the story goes, it wails in grief and disappears, leaving your head and your heart aching terribly.
But they don't mean any harm, and if you just give them a little food and let them rest for a moment, they'll be on their way and not cause any trouble.
(Sometimes, even the people who forget you still remember.)
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And this another jab at the epic fandom too. Stop saying that Epic is a concept album therefore it might suffer alterations.
Say it with me children.
That's not the definition of a concept album! A concept album is an album that has a narrative, a story, or a theme.
Concept albums have a purpose, an overarching theme, a structure.
Examples or concept albums: Welcome to The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance tells the story of a cancer patient that is greeting death.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge - also by My Chemical Romance is another example of a concept album, this one telling the story of two lovers who die in a gunfight.
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars by David Bowie tells the story of a fictional rock star sent to Earth as an savior.
The Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd is a concept album about madness and death.
The most famous concept albums would be, perhaps, The Wall, also by Pink Floyd that focuses on isolation.
That's what a concept album is. It has a one - of multiple- common threads and ideas and stories.
That's what Epic is.
It's not meant to be seen as something that is unfinished or incomplete. Rant over.
don't forget the 36 million musical concept albums (e.g. Hadestown, Jekyll & Hyde) that are completely 100% finished and a story in their own right. do people know what musicals are im not convinced they do. like "oh its unfinished" it tells a whole ass story fym??????
On Christmas Day of 2018, I received a paperback copy of George Orwell's 1984. I was 12 years old.
I remember the adults - aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, looking at me cautiously, as if they had handed me a live bomb rather than a book. "That's a very intense book, okay?" my father told me. "If you want, we can talk about it after you read it." 12-year-old me, with only a dim idea of what fascism actually was and an insatiable appetite for books, only nodded.
While my younger cousins and sister played with their new toys, I sat on the couch and read the book in one sitting. When I finished, I looked up to see the adults staring at me with a strange sort of fascination. "Do you want to talk about it?" my father asked.
"No." I shrugged and turned away.
The truth was, I had been expecting a happy ending. Winston Smith was the good guy, wasn't he? Why didn't he win? Evil governments always lost in the end, didn't they? How could Winston have been brainwashed into believing such an evil, awful dictatorship was truly great? After all, when my middle school history teachers talked about dictatorships, those of Hitler and Stalin, it was obvious that they were the worst of the worst. No one actually agreed with them, did they?
Then I remembered my fourth grade class talking about the upcoming election, laughing about how obviously stupid Trump's wall idea was, and how strange it felt to hear someone say Clinton was worse. I don't remember his reasoning, but I distinctly remember thinking it was dumb because what could be dumber than a giant wall around Mexico? I remembered my grandmother arguing against vaccinating children, and I remembered flat Earthers I had seen online. That day was the first time it clicked for me: people believe what they want to believe.
The years passed. I read 1984 again, and again, and again. I watched as Trump shut down the government for sake of a temper tantrum, as he was impeached, as he told Americans to inject bleach, as he politicized a pandemic and let thousands die. I didn't know about his SA scandals. I didn't know he had called Mexicans "thieves and rapists." I just knew he could not be allowed to be president again.
Yet, when 2020 rolled around, I was only 14 years old and could not vote. I settled for watching anxiously as the votes came in - I didn't know much about Joe Biden, but he was clearly a better alternative. He actually believed the COVID-19 pandemic was real, for one. So I sighed in relief as the results came through four days later: Joe Biden had been elected president of the United States.
I kept watching. I watched as Trump incited insurrection, as terrorists stormed the Capitol. I stared in horror at the TV. How could this have happened? How were so many people so delusional?
In December 2021, for my sophomore year English class, I read 1984 again. I thought of January 6th.
My classmates thought it boring, confusing, stupid. It didn't make sense. What did it matter? Who cared whether or not we knew the significance of the character of O'Brien?
I kept watching. The summer before my junior year of high school, just before I entered a relationship with my now-partner, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and I felt a sinking pit in my stomach. Six months later, a friend of mine read 1984 for that same English class, and he loved it - we had a few intense study hall discussions about the nature of doublespeak, of totalitarianism, of a surveillance state. My partner agreed, reading it with a terrified fascination.
I kept watching. I realized I was nonbinary, and I watched in horror as the Republican Party made their creeping advances to eradicate trans rights. Idly, I reread 1984. What the right wanted did seem a lot like Oceania's government, didn't it? I wondered if I'd ever be able to marry my partner, who, despite also being trans, was still the same sex as me. If Trump ran again, he'd probably win, and then what would we do?
Then, 2024. Trump won the primaries in a landslide. I turned 18 and registered to vote. In the meantime, I skimmed Project 2025's bits about banning pornography and thought of 1984 and its carefully curated sexless society, created to achieve perfect complacency. I went off to college and voted absentee, carefully bubbling in the circle next to Vice President Kamala Harris's name. I woke up on Wednesday, November 6th to see Trump had won the presidency.
It has been one week. Again, I watch as Trump proposes a Department of Government Efficiency, which sounds euphemistically horrific. I watch as he suggests Musk to head it, a man known for being as inefficient as possible. I think of the Ministry of Truth and how its entire purpose was to disseminate lies. I watch as people celebrate, mocking me and many others who had desperately voted against a fascist, a rapist, a convicted criminal, a man who would kill us and spit on our graves if he was elected to office. I think of Parsons and duckspeak, the practice of simply spitting out the "correct" propaganda the same way a duck quacked. People really did believe what they wanted to believe, didn't they? I realize Trump won because, deep down, people hated minorities more than they loved democracy.
I hope my loved ones and I will survive another Trump presidency. I hope those in Gaza and Ukraine will survive it too, along with so many others - Jews, POC, immigrants, students, disabled, Muslims. At the very least, I hope to live long enough to watch as the bigots are forced to eat their own words and come to terms with the fact they gleefully voted in their own downfall.
At the end of the day, 1984 taught me something I could not have comprehended at age 12, 14, 15, or 16, but can understand now: democracy dies not with a bang, but with a whimper.
so this is my most popular post and it literally only has 69 likes (nice). in light of Trump's inauguration, there are a few things I'd like to add:
- the Republican-controlled Congress will NOT push back on anything Trump does, regardless of how unconstitutional, undemocratic, or overtly fascist it is.
- because of this, while we are incredibly lucky that a federal judge has pushed back against the executive order Trump spat out about removing birthright citizenship, we cannot count on that holding true.
- people have been defending Musk's Nazi salute and will continue to do so.
- we have already had a Congressman pushing an amendment that would allow Trump (but notably, not any other former president) to run for a third term.
- knowing all of the above, we cannot guarantee that our democracy will survive the next four years.
I do not say this to scare people (even though it is absolutely fucking terrifying), but to educate people. if we are going to survive this, we are going to need to know as much as we can. we are going to need to fight for our siblings - our poc siblings, our queer siblings, our AFAB siblings, our Muslim siblings, our immigrant siblings, our Jewish siblings, our siblings in Ukraine and Gaza, our disabled siblings. we cannot give up no matter what our pathetic excuse of a government does or says.
keep fighting in every way you can. outlive the bastard government fucks out of spite. I believe in you guys!!
I love how we don't even need Apollo to be captioned, it's just "he's holding a dodgeball and looks Greek statue, of COURSE it's Apollo delivering the gift of prophecy unto unsuspecting tumblr users"
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how in the fuck is ANYTHING in this godforsaken fucking country real. Trump has proposed to just buy Greenland and rename it Red, White, and Blueland. what the fuck. that's a name a 5 yo would come up with.
also, let's not forget that he's proposing doing this instead of doing literally anything that would benefit the country, such as bringing down the price of eggs from $6.50/dozen. it's crazy how the orange fuck can't even achieve the ONE THING he ran on. THE ONE GODDAMN THING.
wake the fuck up, people, or our country is doomed. honestly, it probably already is.
BELOVED MOOT. it is a scone. americans are just weird :3 i think americans also have them with gravy. but their gravy is also not like british gravy. shrugs
im having jam and cream on mine, #the proper british way /silly
sky. sky no one in america calls that a fucking scone. that is not a scone. a scone is these muffin ass thingies.
those are scones. if u say "hey want a scone" and we are in Murica I assume ur talking about one of these. the british scone is that savory bread thing that we call a biscuit. this is one of the few american variations of things ill defend because honestly a scone just sounds like it should be sweet. it sounds like ice cream cone.
what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?
would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldn’t it?
I'm italian and there's something that people defending this shit don't fucking understand.
they think the “Roman salute” is something unrelated to nazis or fascists but the “Roman Salute” IS the fascist salute. It's not a different concept, it's the same thing!! It's not "good" because it doesn't have the word "nazi" in it, It's the same shit.
And to people saying "He is throwing out his heart to the crowd" tell me if YOU would do it at a 45 degree angle with your thumb tucked in and your fingers closed together. Personally, a throwing motion in my imagination has your palm completely open and your fingers spaced out
Regardless, This is what propaganda is, They do bad thing and then they say "no it good actually" and the population goes "Ok then it's all good" it's not all good, They're making you think it is. It sucks
Politicians gain power through the Ignorance of the people, don't trust people just because "They said it"
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btw Saint Nicholas, whom Santa Claus is based on, was a black guy
and we don’t know exactly what jesus looked like, but here’s an artistic reconstruction of an average 20-something male from his ethnic group at the time
jesus was represented more or less accurately as an ethnically jewish arab man up until the reign of pope alexander vi, in the late 15th century. since he was viciously persecuting roman jews during this time, alexander wanted to make them less sympathetic to the public, and did so in part by ordering that portrayals of jesus be based off of his son, cesare borgia.
the reason “jesus is white” is because someone purposefully attempted to alter the perception of history to benefit his goal of persecuting a targeted ethnic group.
the angsty prequel to this (ik there's plotholes now but shh I'll fix it in a bit) that i accidentally made after getting possessed and writing for 3 hours straight for what was supposed to be a short hc post jfc. angst ahead (brain damage talk, temporary mcd), but there's a happy ending!
-
zeus saying he's going to make athena's "kingdom fall" doesn't make sense unless you consider. the lightning bolt she takes to the face gives her brain damage.
no one notices at first. Athena brushes it all off, goes to odysseus, oversees their long-awaited reunion. stays in their house after- because it's not like they'll be around forever, after all. and she can do her work just as well from down here- there's no need, to be honest, to go back to Mount Olympus. anyone who needs her comes to Ithaka, and she's content, for the first time in a very, very long time.
and then one day odysseus comes across her seizing on the floor.
she doesn't know the details of what happened- only remembers the first terrified scream of horror, remembers warm hands on her face and being carried to a bed, remembers Penelope's voice shaking as she drags a wet cloth across her forehead. comes to confused and mute minutes later, wandering around and stumbling into walls, unresponsive to the voices begging her to stop, to rest.
finally, she reaches a familiar room with a familiar face, and she touches Telemachus on the cheek lightly before collapsing onto the nearest chair. panicked voices chatter above her and calloused palms lift her face up to meet her own grey eyes, worried and scared, and it finally dawns on her that something has gone terribly wrong.
(later she will find out odysseus held her and sobbed the whole night, knowing more than anyone else what had happened to her and what it meant; he'd taken the throne at thirteen for the same reason, after all)
(later she will find out that penelope wrote to every ally they had within the hour for healers and literature; letting more than half their cleverly planned schemes fall through in exchange for it as she begged)
(later, she will find out that telemachus went running barefoot through the market, banging on doors and shouting for the healers and making the alarmed roused villagers sing prayers for her even though it was the middle of the night)
she recovers under the attention; court abandoned in favour of emergency, odysseus proclaims when he bullies her into placing her head in his lap so he can massage her aching head, not having left her side for six straight days in a row. penelope comes in every few hours, feeding her the olives from the wedding bed she lies in, unable to move, and brushes out her hair. telemachus barely shows during the days, but he comes in every evening without fail, curling up by her side and hugging her tight.
but it happens again. and again and again, and each time she regains consciousness in one of the royal family's arms, no matter where she was at the time. she never remembers it, only has the disgusting taste in her mouth and dried spit on her chin and tears in the eyes of those around her to know it happened.
she loses time as well- has no idea how long it's been happening until she becomes aware of the sound of Odysseus' calm, steady voice dragging her out of a trance, gentle fingers tracing her palm as they stand next to an unassuming tapestry. she'll be walking one moment and be lost to everything around her the next, staring at nothing.
Odysseus has done this all before, she realises one day, when he seamlessly pulls her out of another relapse and ropes her into a cheerful, easy conversation about goats that Athena keeps having stilted replies to.
"Do you know how to do this because-" She murmurs, and his eyes go wide and then grieving.
"Yes," He murmurs sadly, and Athena feels guilt settle in her belly at making him go through this again. He massages at her temples, and she closes her eyes, listening to the smile in his voice. "But there is no hardship, Pallas Athena. The sadness is that you have to go through this, not for the taking care of a cherished one."
"And anyways, Laertes suffered madness in the wake of a terrible fever and the stress of a famine," Penelope says without looking up from the newest scrolls they'd received. Athena feels the guilt worsen at the sleep bags under her eyes, when she knew the reason and just didn't have the courage to- "Your sudden collapses could be due to this one witch curse we found, or perhaps a-"
"It was Zeus."
The room falls silent as two heads slowly turn to look at her.
"What?" Odysseus says quietly, with barely withheld rage.
Athena takes a shuddering breath. "I am sorry, my Penelope, that I didn't have the courage to tell you before." Penelope leaves the desk to cross the room to her, and Athena feels tears prick at her eyes as the queen takes her hand. "But when I petitioned the court of Olympus, Zeus did not take kindly to everyone agreeing to me over him- and such was his punishment. To make-"
Her breath hitches in a sob and she notes with surprise that she's crying. Penelope and Odysseus are both crying with her, staring down in horror.
"To make my kingdom fall, he said," Athena whispers, shoulders jerking oddly as she forces it out, acknowledges what he'd done. "But my kingdom is the mind and-"
Odysseus lets out an animal cry of sorrow and descends on her, pulling her to his chest as she breaks down into shivering tears, the fear running through her as she realises the scale, the enormity of the consequences. Penelope stands by the bed and trembles with anger for a full minute, before she crumples too, crawling into their bed and pressing Athena tight between them.
"I forget things," She confesses in a whisper, shaking. "I blank out during fights, cannot recall certain strategies- I- I do not know how much worse-"
"Easy, darling, easy," Penelope whispers in a rush, stroking her face. Odysseus really is so lucky to have her as a wife, she thinks disjointedly, pressing into the gentleness. "Don't say that. It won't get worse."
"And even if it does," Odysseus continues, pressing a kiss to her cheek, where the lichtenberg scars cross her right eye, to her brow. "We will write down everything you know, copy it a hundred times and keep it safe. So you will never forget."
"And we will find you a Lytrakas owl, to keep you safe when we are no longer here to do it," Penelope murmurs, lips brushing Athena's neck as she speaks. She relaxes finally under the combined reassurances, at the solutions and possibilities that would work, finding a content she has never achieved before in their embrace. "We will keep you safe, our goddess."
And they do. When she teaches the children of Ithaka sparring, at least one of them is there, ready to intervene smoothly if they sense something wrong. They make the books they promised her, and she sends it to her realm, so she doesn't lose them. They cannot come with her when she has to travel- she wouldn't ask it of any of them- but Telemachus is always humming a hymn when she's away so she remembers where to return. When she dissociates in the middle of talking, Penelope guides her over to the loom so she can weave until she feels better, muscle memory kicking in enough for it to help the gradual lift of the fog.
Odysseus always somehow knows when she's about to have a seizure, in the forty years after that they spend together. In all her time in Ithaka, she never woke up from one without the familiar gravely cadence of Odysseus singing under his breath above her, head in his lap and Telemachus perched on her thighs or Penelope by her shoulders.
-
But it can't last forever.
Odysseus kicks her out of the room when he dies, Penelope's breath already slowing on the bed behind him, peaceful in the way that means she won't survive the night. They all know Odysseus will go with her, and Athena feels herself tremble as Odysseus gently guides her outside.
"You are not watching us pass," He tells her firmly, as she opens her mouth to scream at him. He's an old man now, but his eyes are the same, and the different versions of him flash in front of her eyes as he gives her a crooked smile. "I will not have you watch, are you crazy?"
"Odysseus," She chokes out, gripping tight onto her spear.
"My beautiful, wonderful goddess," Odysseus murmurs adoringly, leaning up to press their foreheads together. She sobs. "Thank you. For everything. And know-" His breath hitches. "-know that, for the rest of your existence, remember it- that you were loved."
"How can I ever forget?" She smiles back through the tears. "I will never be the same."
"My Athene," He whispers, swaying them back and forth. She closes her eyes, trembling, and pulls him into their last embrace, last touch.
"You will always be my favourite," She confesses, half-laugh, half-sob.
Odysseus smirks at that, a trace of smugness, then turns to a sobbing, chuckling Telemachus, who's also been kicked out, pulls them both in a hug. "We will meet again, my son," he murmurs. "But Penelope is waiting for me now. Goodnight."
He closes the door, two bright last flashes of smiles aimed at them as it shuts and Athena and Telemachus both fall to pieces.
Telemachus takes twice the care of her than his parents did, somehow juggling ruling the kingdom and spending as much time as he can with her as he can. His wife is sly and mischievous, more fox than owl- but Athena loves her too, just as she loves their children. Telemachus goes with a smile on his face and an arrow in his heart, having taken an arrow for someone else, holding Athena's hand as he laughs for the last time.
It is horrible and she wanders around desolately for days, grieving. But then she sees bright eyes spying on her from behind a bush, carefully watching her to see if she's alright and Athena smiles and goes back to continue the legacy.
-
For 500 years, Ithaka does not fall- when it does, she makes sure the grey-eyed children all make it off the island, scattering on the mainland as at last, her job is done.
Which means there is nothing left for her here, and it is time to go back to Mount Olympus.
She's met with teasing quips and pointed comments, but general ignorance, no one bothering to ask where she was. After almost six hundred years of care, it feels untethering and strange, but the grief of losing Ithaka makes her relieved for it, even if she has to lie down sometimes, press her face into the roots of the olive tree scattered about in her realm and pretend there are three sets of hands in her hair, a familiar voice humming above her.
How did you do it, she wants to ask Penelope. How did you survive knowing what you were missing, she wants to ask Odysseus. Will you sit with me one last time, she wants to ask Telemachus.
Eventually, she can no longer bear the quiet, and one evening she sets out and crosses the pantheon floor to go gently sit down in Apollo's room.
Artemis is there, slouched on the floor with mud in her hair and an arrow in her eye as Apollo chides her. They both look up when she comes in, bowing and worriedly asking if something was wrong.
"Nothing," she says, ignoring the pang of sadness that that would be the only reason she was here. But the idea of leaving back to the books written in Odysseus' horrible chickenscratch penmanship is worse, and she takes a tentative seat in the corner. "Continue your work."
They do so hesitantly, conversation slower and interspersed with bouts of asking her if she wanted ambrosia or a new dish or something while she was here. She declines.
She feels awkwardness radiating off all three of them as she leaves an hour later, but it doesn't stop her from coming back again, stubborn. She will hold a conversation this time- it has been two decades since Ithaka, but that is nothing to her, and she cannot have forgotten how so soon.
Apollo seems to have prepared for the same thing this time, lighting up with a pleased grin like he wasn't sure she would come. "Enter!" He says cheerfully. "Come here, give me your wisdom on this piece I've been composing- I know, I know, owls are not songbirds, but just see if you can help, it's driving me mad-"
Athena closes her mouth and listens to the melody quietly. Thinks about how Telemachus' third daughter would have spun it, added her Ithakan folk style to it, interspersed the perfection with carefree, imperfect beats.
"May I?" She asks, holding her hands out, and Apollo's mouth drops, even as he scrambles to hand her the lyre. She concentrates, trying to pull the melody out from the strings. "Here," she says, manifesting her spear and shield and handing it to an increasingly wild-eyed Apollo. "Bang them together. Create a tempo."
They create something of a passing song in the next few hours until Athena's headache makes its way to the forefront and she has to retreat. Apollo accompanies her across the floor to her room, pressing herbs onto her even as he chatters a mile a minute, excitedly going on and on about new ideas and begging Athena to come by again. She smiles, briefly, and promises to return when she is free, going back to her pallet under the olive trees.
(She cannot bear to sleep anywhere else.)
The next day, Apollo is busy creating new songs and she knows better than to disturb him. She turns and goes to his twin's realm instead, shedding her armour for bark and a bow. Artemis and her women look as equally terrified as Apollo did at the start, looking at her like she's lost her mind, but they all straighten up when Athena raises an eyebrow and silently descend on the night.
"You must teach me!" Artemis enthuses at the end of it. She does not do anything other than scowl often, but she looks more like her twin than ever now, as she beams up at her. "I never knew there were so many strategies, how much smoother-"
"Peace," Athena chuckles, amused. "I will teach you, sister. Next fortnight?"
"Aye," Artemis says, hair matted and covered in filth, eyes sparkling.
"Here," Athena says, taking out her own ribbon- one of the many she has from Penelope, braided in her hair from all those years ago- and turns Artemis around to tie her mess of a mane out of her eyes. "Do not impede your vision in the name of wildness."
"Okay," Artemis squeaks quietly, and Athena snorts and squeezes her shoulder as she departs.
She sits in Aephastus' forge next, watching him create weapon after weapon, with the best of each round being blessed onto a blacksmith in the mortal world.
"Come to see if my work is up to par, Pallas Athena?" Aephastus says self-deprecatingly, a flash of resigned hurt in his eyes.
"No. I wish to learn," Athena decides suddenly, pushing herself up and removing her helmet at the blast of heat that comes from the forge as she nears. "It is shameful, I think, that I know not how my own tools are made."
Aephastus stares at her with surprise, then his kind eyes crinkle into a smile. "Only if you let me replace that," He nods to her admittedly rather dented helmet. "I have been wanting to fix your armour to something respectable for centuries."
Athena laughs.
Of course, once it is done, she has to use it. It fills her with excitement she had almost forgotten, the idea of a good, difficult spar, and she barges into Aphrodite's realm and bangs on the edge of the bed with her new spear, making the occupants screech and jump in fright.
"Good evening," She nods at Aphrodite, who looks to the side and then back at her as if she'll find an explanation somehow, stunned. She turns to her brother, and tries on a grin. "Ares, my brother. Would you care to spar? Aephastus has gifted me this new set and I find myself eager to test it out."
"...Are you fucking possessed?" Ares asks her, flabbergasted, and she clicks her tongue and smacks him upside the head.
"Yes or no?" She says, crossing her hands.
"Y- yes, yes!" Ares blurts out, straightening up. He looks something approaching disbelieving excitement, a small, tentative grin appearing on his face. "You are... not joking, right?"
"Do I look like I joke?" Athena jokes, smiling. Ruffles his hair in a bout of fondness. "You are the only one who will actually give me a good fight, as erratic as you are. I look forward to it."
"What did I FUCKING MISS?" Aphrodite shrieks after her as she goes. "Wha- Athena, get back here, you better have not fallen in love while I wasn't looking-!"
But Athena's not ready to face Aphrodite just yet, so she takes advantage of their height difference and strides back to her realm as her sister chases her, shouting.
The next day, they meet in the arena, and Athena feels herself freeze up as soon as she steps in. Sees the lightning scorch marks on the ground she had almost forgotten, and cannot move.
"ATHENA!" Ares booms, snapping her out of it. "TODAY YOU WILL MEET YOUR DEFEAT AT MY HANDS AT LAST!"
"WHY ARE YOU SO ANNOYING," She shouts back automatically, and Ares bursts out in a peal of laughter, surprised out of him. She knows he has three aspects- the boyish glory-seeker, the soldier filled with bloodlust, the hardened warrior- but Athena thinks the first one suits him best.
He readjusts his grip on his sword and grins. "Begin!"
-
She continues this, finding a strange happiness she never had before in meeting all the other gods, major and minor. She'd never known how intimidated they all were by her, but they open up readily enough, bringing her peace for a little while as she sits with them.
(She avoids Aphrodite, who is getting increasingly more frazzled by the day as she fails to find a hidden lover that does not exist and then switches to trying to find Athena a companion when it is clear that there is no one, in a comic game of chase around the realms that is a great source of amusement to everyone else.
She avoids Hermes too, because it hurts too much to see him. But she leaves him a book of riddles once in a while, when he's away, and he always takes it.)
Hera walks in her room one day, with her train of peacocks and attendants.
"God-Queen," Athena bows, setting her weaving down.
"Athena," Hera nods back. "I hear you have been visiting your siblings."
Athena nods, confused. "Yes?"
Hera studies her and Athena shifts, wondering what she's seeing. "The Pantheon is no longer silent, you know. The Olympians meet in the court almost every day, sharing their gifts with each other. Something I have found out is because of you."
Athena has no idea where this is going.
Hera shifts closer, opening her mouth to say something, then her eyes catch on the weaving, widening in shock. "What is that?"
Athena looks down, also unaware of what exactly she'd made. Then her heart skips a beat in fear.
"No, no, no, no," Athena snaps to her feet, shaking her hands out in dismissal, trying to stop the impending damage. "This is not what you think it is."
Hera's eyes are getting wider and wider, a manic grin on her face. "Athena! A wedding veil? Do you-"
"No!" Athena interrupts. "No, Hera, it's nothing like that, please-"
"Nonsense!" Hera says, grabbing it from her and holding it to the light, grinning wider than Athena has seen from her in years. "You must have made it for a reason. Do not worry daughter, I know you are shy, I will handle it all."
"Hera, it really is not like that!" She pleads. "I was simply weaving- I made a fisherman's garb the other day as well, it does not mean I want to get out into the sea!"
"Have you made the rest of the outfit as well?" Hera says excitedly, ignoring her as she moves to the wardrobe to rifle through. "Oh, Athena, how beautiful! Is this what you would like to wear?"
She pulls out a men's wedding outfit and Athena stops protesting to stare in disbelief. When had she made that?
"I must go announce this to the others," Hera squeals, bangles jangling. "Oh, I had almost given up on you, dear, but you have made me so happy today! I would have arranged something for you so long ago, why didn't you tell me you were interested?"
"Because I am not," She groans, pulling her hands down over her face. "Hera, please, I do not even have anyone-"
"Easily remedied," Hera dismisses her with the wave of a hand as she strides off. "Oh Aphrodite, you won't believe what I just found in your sister's closet! Look!"
A deafening din rises from the crowd there and Athena is forced to tackle Hera to the ground.
She laughs, surprisingly, and tosses the outfit over to Aphrodite, who snatches it up with a scream of excitement. Athena is immediately flanked by a crowd of screaming gods, each talking over the other, and Athena has to bellow at them all for two hours before the misunderstanding is cleared.
"Oh, but you really have outdone yourself with this one," Aphrodite gushes appreciatively as she lands next to a panting Athena. She turns it back and forth. "So soft, and such patterns! The Ithakan style, yes?"
Then her smile drops like a stone as she hears her own words and freezes, and Athena's stomach swoops, heart skipping a beat as she stops breathing. Aphrodite turns to her slowly, cold horror in her eyes, realisation solidifying at the terrified, raw, pained expression on Athena's face.
"The Ithakan style," She repeats in a whisper, horrified grief creeping into her voice. "Athena-"
Athena snatches the outfit from her and closes herself off in her realm, breathing hard in the dim blue light of the olive tree orchard. She suddenly realises she's holding the robes against her chest and unfolds it hurriedly to look at them.
It is the Ithakan style. It is, in fact, a mix of Penelope's and Odysseus' wedding outfits, in her size.
She throws it into a trunk and screams.
-
She does not know if Aphrodite tells Hera, but the latter does not stop coming by every day to pester her for details of an imaginary wedding.
So now she has three gods to avoid.
-
But of course, the effects of her affliction cannot be hidden forever. She gets up one day from the Pantheon floor to retrieve the threads from her room to be used in the game they are playing, and feels the room swim in a familiar, hated manner, and she only has a moment to feel dread before she tilts sideways and falls.
When she regains consciousness, she feels for a moment the delicate hands on her cheeks, the weight of a young man on her belly, the gravely singing above her- and then it dissipates and she becomes aware of shouting all around her.
"Can you hear me? Athena, can you hear me?" Hera says, shaking her. "WILL SOMEONE FIND APOLLO?"
Athena moans and pushes off the hands on her body, bruising in their panic. She pushes herself up, ignoring the dizziness. "Do not bother."
"Athena, what on Gaia was that?" Ares demands, ashen. "Have I injured you? What-"
"It is of no concern," Athena snaps, getting to her feet and glaring at them, mortification blazing through her. "All I need is rest. Goodnight."
They shout after her, but she's already at her room, closing the shields back up. It nearly knocks her out again to do so, and she barely drags herself to her bed before she collapses.
"What are you staring at?" Hypnos asks her the next day, confused. Athena blinks and realizes she's standing between the thrones, facing an odd patch of wall and losing time.
"Nothing," She sighs, and hefts her spear and walks away.
She fends off all other questions, curt and snapping, and the others uneasily let it go. She has not forgotten her purpose, after all, and will not do anything less than a perfect job, even with this impediment.
Yet-
"Athena," Aphrodite shakes her, and Athena blinks as she comes to herself. It is night, Pantheon bathed in blue and both of them in their nightclothes. Aphrodite is crying and Athena's face is wet.
"What-?" She murmurs.
"You were calling out for Odysseus," Aphrodite whispers, sounding stricken. "Asking him to stop hiding from training. Then laughing with nothing and telling Penelope to stop tormenting your allies."
It hits her straight in the sternum, making her gasp with grief that hits her so hard it feels new, and oh, she misses them, she misses them, she misses them so.
She sobs, and Aphrodite brings her close, holding her as she shakes.
"What is happening, sister? Why is this happening? Please, tell us," Aphrodite pleads. "We only want to help." She pushes her back to stare at her. "It cannot be just for them- something else happened to you."
Athena cannot reply for weeping, and Aphrodite's face crumples on seeing her tears. "You loved them." She says, her own voice catching tears. "You loved them so much, didn't you? That's who the dress was for. Them."
Athena sobs louder and doesn't reply.
-
Zeus' eldest daughter has not talked to him for over eight hundred years.
He still burns with anger some days, on remembering her insolence, her disrespect for his orders. Yet, now it has cooled off and he rather misses her quiet presence, her wit. She is angry with him in turn, cold and formal when they talk, never meeting his eyes.
"How fares Athena?" He asks casually one day. Hera stops removing her earrings and looks up at him sharply- she's been frosty with him since that day as well, disapproving of his actions. "I have not seen her in quite some time."
"That is of your own design," Hera replies blandly. "She spends time often with her siblings now. I am quite proud of her for it, actually- it is no mean a feat to get the entire Pantheon to sit down and indulge in few games without bloodshed."
"Games?" Zeus frowns. "With the others? Why is this the first I'm hearing of it?"
"Well, if you left your realm ever, you would know." Hera says distractedly, shrugging as she takes off her necklace. "They gather in the courtroom, usually."
The wind blows in, blows out.
Zeus ponders on this in silence, thinking of what to do next. Perhaps he should extend the first hand, since she had followed all the rules. He remembers her on the ground, beaten and burning, one hand extended to beg him to let that insolent hero she had pinned all her hopes on leave Ogygia. Frowns again in discomfort at the memory.
Her gamble paid off. Even as the Greek Pantheon declined in power, the story of her hero persisted to give the gods power, to keep them remembered.
Wise Athena, he thinks fondly. Smarter than him, he can admit now.
Zeus is just about to ask Hera if Athena would appreciate a spar when the rustle of fabric past the door of their realm catches his attention.
"Who is there?" He calls out, and Hera turns as well to look. No one enters and they both look to each other with a frown.
Quick footsteps sound out and both of them push themselves to their feet immediately, armed and tense as they rush to the door.
"Athena?" Hera calls out, confused, as they look down over the empty courtroom, Athena pacing erratically silently alone in the middle, no lights on. She does not reply. "Athena!"
Zeus feels foreboding creep up on him as they carefully walk down. "What are you doing up, Athena?" He calls out, voice authoritative. Hera glares at him, and he amends his tone, gentling it. "Is something the matter?"
Athena does not stop walking, at that same hurried pace, turning around at the end of the hall and continuing back towards them, ignoring his words. Zeus feels irritation spark, but the sudden glimpse of his daughter's eyes makes the words die on his tongue, unseeing and glazed over. She does not have her armour on, and her hair is tangled and open, he suddenly realises, along with the growing certainty that something is wrong.
And then Athena drops to the ground and starts seizing.
"ATHENA!" They scream as one, and all the gods of the Pantheon come awake, lamps catching fire as they all come stumbling out of their rooms and realms. Zeus reaches out and holds her hands down as she starts clawing at herself, drawing blood. The others start shouting and crying around them, Athena's head snapping back and forth gruesomely, eyes bleeding ichor. "Athena, gather yourself!" He shouts at her. "Cease this- cease this at once, you are stronger than this!"
"She cannot hear you!" Hera cries, falling to her other side, trying to straighten Athena out from the fetal position she is curling into with painful, stuff jerks. "She never does- she doesn't-"
"This has happened before?" Zeus bellows, outraged. His answer comes in the form of Ares pulling her weapons off her body, the ones who can't help holding onto each other and hiding their faces in each other's shoulders or staring at Athena with fear as they sob.
Her arm slips Zeus' grip and swings at him erratically before he can grab it again. It nearly knocks him down, so powerful in its animal madness that he actually feels his aspect waver to half its size for a moment- but he is her father and he pulls himself together enough to stay standing, pinning her down again.
"No, let her go!" Apollo shouts as he sits down besides them in his night robes, flipping through an old book of some kind, barely holding in his own panic and fear. "Don't hold her down, give her space."
Zeus grimaces but lets her go, feeling nausea and fear rise within him as she writhes and twists, unhearing of Hera's desperate sobs for her to stop. "What is happening to her?" He demands, unable to watch. He is furious, lightning blazing in his hands as he itches to find the culprit, to find who dared to do this. "Who did this to her?"
"I do not know," Apollo says horrifically, lips pressed thin, eyes flicking up to her and then back down to the book. "But I found this in her realm- she apparently is aware of it, this is some sort of book of instructions on the affliction-"
"Give me that," Zeus growls, snatching it away, and flipping through it. "Go get a bed," He instructs, the other Olympians springing up to do so immediately, desperate to help. "Olive- olive branches, she wakes to branches. Get water- no, get ambrosia, get a cloth to wipe her face. A change of clothes. A cold compress, if she has fever. It will stop on its own, let it run its course- Muses, what is this?"
"A lullaby," Euterpe says, pulling the book down to scan it. "From old Ithaka, if I'm not mistaken."
The gods all stop and stare at her. "Ithaka?" Zeus repeats, flipping to the front of the book. "Who has written this-"
"PENELOPE!" Athena screams suddenly, making them all jump in fright. Her back arches to a painful degree, spit running down the side of her mouth as her eyes roll back in her head. "PENELOPE, TELEMACHUS-"
Aphrodite puts her hands over her ears and squeezes her eyes shut, just as Athena takes a deep breath in and screams louder than before, "ODYSSEUS!"
(In life, he had only failed her once. But now he is dead, and cannot come.)
"Odysseus, please," She moans, in the old Greek that has not been used in decades. "You promised to help, please- Penelope, where are- where is- Telemachus, please-"
Zeus feels his heart break as proud, strong Athena breaks down on the floor, calling for mortals clearly much dearer to her than they thought. But it's not the end of it- he flips through the book again, desperately searching for something to stop this, a cause, an enemy- and then he sees his own name.
Curse proud Zeus, may his life never be happy, may his legacy forever be tainted, Odysseus has written, the letters harsh and burning with fury, even though the curse means nothing from a mortal, even though he risked the ire of the gods writing it. Below it, in what must be Penelope's neat handwriting, an equally furious and clipped diagnosis is penned- brain damage, extensive but occasional, caused by a lightning bolt to the face, that targeted her realm's power and left her with seizures, memory loss and dissociation.
A lightning bolt to the face.
Zeus stands there numbly, as the Pantheon scrambles and chatters worriedly around him, hesitantly singing along to the lullaby in the book as Athena continues to shake, unresponsive. His fault. It is his fault that she is like this, that she is left reduced to calling for dead mortals, crying blood over her siblings' feet.
He did not mean to, he thinks, feeling small and pathetic and monstrous. He did not mean for this to happen- only wanted to teach her a lesson, keep his pride; had not meant for her realm to sustain damage for so long. He thought she'd healed. He thought she hadn't been hurt, past the scar on her face that he'd felt vaguely guilty about, from time to time.
How stupid he was.
"Athena," He whispers, aching to reach out, but she screams again and it's drowned out completely. His daughter. All his own, no longer his- because she was never angry at all, these past years; she simply no longer saw him as her father. And why should she, when he has done the unforgivable, when he has done what no other had managed to do, and broken her.
What has he done?
"We are here," Hera says desperately, taking Athena's head in her lap. Ares sings creakily next to her, offtune and shaking. "We are here, love."
Zeus steps back to let the others rush in, each providing their own solutions, some calling to Athena entreatingly to guide her back to herself. He is not needed here- he does not deserve it, and knows not what more damage he will wreak.
I am sorry, he wants to tell her, as froth escapes her mouth like a rabid dog. I am so sorry, I beg forgiveness, my daughter, please let me fix it.
But she cannot hear him and Zeus raises his head to look for Hermes instead. The messenger god is standing at the very back, well out of view, with a blank face as he meets Zeus' gaze. He feels a surge of fury at the lack of caring, before he remembers that Athena's hero and his son were descendants of Hermes- and sees past the facade to see the other's gods multiplied distress at that fact, unable to come forward to help without possibly making it worse with the likeness.
Zeus inclines his head and then tilts it towards Hades pointedly. Hermes twitches in surprise, then nods determinedly, running off.
Zeus exhales and looks back at Athena as she finally calms, breathing hard. Shoulders slump in relief, frightened muttering taking its place- this wasn't supposed to happen to gods, to Olympians.
Zeus steps forward and brushes her hair out of her eyes as Athena loses consciousness, as they pull her onto a makeshift palanquin and prepare to take her to her room.
"I am sorry," He whispers to her, but it is far, far too late.
Other people want Doctor Who to go back to it's roots by having the Doctor be a white man. I want Doctor Who to go back to it's roots by having the Doctor tell a Dalek to kill itself. We are not the same.
I find it so funny, in light of TikTok’s imminent American demise, that even now they aren’t considering moving to tumblr. The last two social media refugee crises (Twitter -> X and whatever happened with Reddit) prompted a wave of wide-eyed new baffled tumblr users to flood this app and yet last I heard all of the tiktokers are flooding en-masse a Chinese social media app. That is entirely in Mandarin. Instead of moving to tumblr.
Like. People are learning mandarin to join this social media site. I’m not joking. There are tutorials going around to show people who don’t speak Mandarin how to sign up for this app. They’re all talking about how they’d rather learn a new language than join instagram reels and it is not a thought in ANYONE’S mind that tumblr is also potentially an option
To be clear im not mad about this. I’d rather see a generation of people learn a new language and engage in cross cultural connections than have a wave of tiktokers flood this app but I still think this whole thing is very funny
no because that is quite literally what is happening on Red Book right now like. All of the Chinese users went “hey why are there suddenly a gazillion Americans on here?” to which the Americans went “they’re banning TikTok and we’re moving out of spite” and the Chinese were like “oh cool send us pictures of your cats and help us with English homework and we’ll send you pictures of our cats and help you learn Mandarin” and as far as I can tell everyone is having a genuinely very nice time together.
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On Christmas Day of 2018, I received a paperback copy of George Orwell's 1984. I was 12 years old.
I remember the adults - aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, looking at me cautiously, as if they had handed me a live bomb rather than a book. "That's a very intense book, okay?" my father told me. "If you want, we can talk about it after you read it." 12-year-old me, with only a dim idea of what fascism actually was and an insatiable appetite for books, only nodded.
While my younger cousins and sister played with their new toys, I sat on the couch and read the book in one sitting. When I finished, I looked up to see the adults staring at me with a strange sort of fascination. "Do you want to talk about it?" my father asked.
"No." I shrugged and turned away.
The truth was, I had been expecting a happy ending. Winston Smith was the good guy, wasn't he? Why didn't he win? Evil governments always lost in the end, didn't they? How could Winston have been brainwashed into believing such an evil, awful dictatorship was truly great? After all, when my middle school history teachers talked about dictatorships, those of Hitler and Stalin, it was obvious that they were the worst of the worst. No one actually agreed with them, did they?
Then I remembered my fourth grade class talking about the upcoming election, laughing about how obviously stupid Trump's wall idea was, and how strange it felt to hear someone say Clinton was worse. I don't remember his reasoning, but I distinctly remember thinking it was dumb because what could be dumber than a giant wall around Mexico? I remembered my grandmother arguing against vaccinating children, and I remembered flat Earthers I had seen online. That day was the first time it clicked for me: people believe what they want to believe.
The years passed. I read 1984 again, and again, and again. I watched as Trump shut down the government for sake of a temper tantrum, as he was impeached, as he told Americans to inject bleach, as he politicized a pandemic and let thousands die. I didn't know about his SA scandals. I didn't know he had called Mexicans "thieves and rapists." I just knew he could not be allowed to be president again.
Yet, when 2020 rolled around, I was only 14 years old and could not vote. I settled for watching anxiously as the votes came in - I didn't know much about Joe Biden, but he was clearly a better alternative. He actually believed the COVID-19 pandemic was real, for one. So I sighed in relief as the results came through four days later: Joe Biden had been elected president of the United States.
I kept watching. I watched as Trump incited insurrection, as terrorists stormed the Capitol. I stared in horror at the TV. How could this have happened? How were so many people so delusional?
In December 2021, for my sophomore year English class, I read 1984 again. I thought of January 6th.
My classmates thought it boring, confusing, stupid. It didn't make sense. What did it matter? Who cared whether or not we knew the significance of the character of O'Brien?
I kept watching. The summer before my junior year of high school, just before I entered a relationship with my now-partner, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and I felt a sinking pit in my stomach. Six months later, a friend of mine read 1984 for that same English class, and he loved it - we had a few intense study hall discussions about the nature of doublespeak, of totalitarianism, of a surveillance state. My partner agreed, reading it with a terrified fascination.
I kept watching. I realized I was nonbinary, and I watched in horror as the Republican Party made their creeping advances to eradicate trans rights. Idly, I reread 1984. What the right wanted did seem a lot like Oceania's government, didn't it? I wondered if I'd ever be able to marry my partner, who, despite also being trans, was still the same sex as me. If Trump ran again, he'd probably win, and then what would we do?
Then, 2024. Trump won the primaries in a landslide. I turned 18 and registered to vote. In the meantime, I skimmed Project 2025's bits about banning pornography and thought of 1984 and its carefully curated sexless society, created to achieve perfect complacency. I went off to college and voted absentee, carefully bubbling in the circle next to Vice President Kamala Harris's name. I woke up on Wednesday, November 6th to see Trump had won the presidency.
It has been one week. Again, I watch as Trump proposes a Department of Government Efficiency, which sounds euphemistically horrific. I watch as he suggests Musk to head it, a man known for being as inefficient as possible. I think of the Ministry of Truth and how its entire purpose was to disseminate lies. I watch as people celebrate, mocking me and many others who had desperately voted against a fascist, a rapist, a convicted criminal, a man who would kill us and spit on our graves if he was elected to office. I think of Parsons and duckspeak, the practice of simply spitting out the "correct" propaganda the same way a duck quacked. People really did believe what they wanted to believe, didn't they? I realize Trump won because, deep down, people hated minorities more than they loved democracy.
I hope my loved ones and I will survive another Trump presidency. I hope those in Gaza and Ukraine will survive it too, along with so many others - Jews, POC, immigrants, students, disabled, Muslims. At the very least, I hope to live long enough to watch as the bigots are forced to eat their own words and come to terms with the fact they gleefully voted in their own downfall.
At the end of the day, 1984 taught me something I could not have comprehended at age 12, 14, 15, or 16, but can understand now: democracy dies not with a bang, but with a whimper.
so this is my most popular post and it literally only has 69 likes (nice). in light of Trump's inauguration, there are a few things I'd like to add:
- the Republican-controlled Congress will NOT push back on anything Trump does, regardless of how unconstitutional, undemocratic, or overtly fascist it is.
- because of this, while we are incredibly lucky that a federal judge has pushed back against the executive order Trump spat out about removing birthright citizenship, we cannot count on that holding true.
- people have been defending Musk's Nazi salute and will continue to do so.
- we have already had a Congressman pushing an amendment that would allow Trump (but notably, not any other former president) to run for a third term.
- knowing all of the above, we cannot guarantee that our democracy will survive the next four years.
I do not say this to scare people (even though it is absolutely fucking terrifying), but to educate people. if we are going to survive this, we are going to need to know as much as we can. we are going to need to fight for our siblings - our poc siblings, our queer siblings, our AFAB siblings, our Muslim siblings, our immigrant siblings, our Jewish siblings, our siblings in Ukraine and Gaza, our disabled siblings. we cannot give up no matter what our pathetic excuse of a government does or says.
keep fighting in every way you can. outlive the bastard government fucks out of spite. I believe in you guys!!
