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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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Anonymous asked: Knowing you are an accomplished opera buff and especially a big Wagner fan I have appreciated your thoughtful posts about his music throughout your blog. I do love opera - like you I go to Glyndebourne too - but I veer towards the Italians because they seem to be more joyous and even funny. What puts me off Wagner’s operas is they seem too dark and are not the most optimistic of operas. Would you agree?

I think many people - be they the layman or general music lover - tend to think of Wagner's operas only in a darkly tragic way. To me that would be a tragic mistake. I believe that Wagner, of all the great opera composers, is ultimately the most optimistic of them all. Of course there are tragedies in all of his operas but paradoxically the endings generally point to something good coming out of it.

I see you need convincing. Challenge accepted.

In The Flying Dutchman, Santa dies of course but she is seen rising to the heavenly skies with the Dutchman, so the implication is not only is there an afterlife but that the two are united in love for eternity. In Tannhauser, the main principals all die but the staff sprouts leaves to strongly suggest redemption and new life. In Lohengrin, Elsa violates her promise to never ask the true name and identity of Lohengrin and dies of a broken heart but Lohengrin returns home to become the rightful king. In the Ring Cycles all manner of treachery, deceit, greed, murder, incest, lust are committed and yet justice is served upon those guilty with death and destruction, and the world is once again cleansed through fire and love with a new rebirth. In Tristan and Isolde, their tragic love which cannot be fulfilled without betrayal is all consuming, that is until it is finally fulfilled in death - Wagner himself called the ending ‘love, death and transformation’ so that death is not the end but the beginning. In Die Meistersinger, Eva gets the husband she most desires, Hans Sachs gets the love and admiration of the town and the old and the new come to terms. In Parsifal, the fool gets back the holy spear and Amortas is healed, Kundry is released from her curse and best of all Parsifal finds mittleid (wisdom through compassion); if there was any doubt about the optimism of Parsifal it can be seen in the white dove rising to symbolising peace and the Holy Spirit.

Whether anyone finds Wagner’s operas optimistic depends on how one defines optimism. Wagner's protagonists generally experience tragedy in their lives but are driven by the need and hope for redemption and enlightenment. It's hard to say whether or not to call this hope optimism. I personally would.

I think a lot of Wagnerians and opera critics get their knickers in a twist about this because they don’t let the operatic dramas speak for themselves. Instead they tend to overly focus to a fetish degree on what influences shaped his beliefs and ultimately his state of mind. I think it should be possible to do both without elevating one at the expense of the other.

I think I would call Wagner a pessimist about the world but one who is optimistic about man's ability to overcome suffering. For example even when Wagner himself felt at his most misanthropic, he wrote to Theodor Uhlig (15 July 1852) about the "torture and torment" that the "worthless rabble" "vexed (him) time and again". And still Wagner still felt the need to write in the same letter "and yet - how I long to be with people."

I see Wagner working out, from opera to opera, his ideas about where salvation from the tragedy of life is found, beginning with his youthful exaltation of Romantic love as the highest value. This tends to end badly, as the rather contrived deus ex machina endings of the Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser show and that of Lohengrin spells out. Tristan and Isolde is the ultimate distillation of both the tragedy and the glory of love, but Wagner knew he had reached an ending with the terrible scene of mass destruction and Isolde's vision before her own death, and he turned to Hans Sachs to represent his maturer perspective, which is carried out partially in Gotterdammerung and finds fulfillment in Parsifal. Indeed if Parsifal's ending is his ultimate statement about life, then you would have to conclude he was an optimist. And after all, he didn't have to end the Ring with a musical promise of new life. He could have just incinerated the world and left us all in despair.

What I find fascinating how one can trace his own journey for redemption through his operas. Am I speaking optimistically as a Christian in seeking redemptive absolution for a troubled and passionate man because a Christian should believe no one is beyond redemption? Perhaps.

Critics point out the influence of Schopenhauer - who in turn was influenced by Buddhism - who posited the possibility of enlightenment and serenity in overcoming the will, but no one ever called grumpy old Schopenhauer an optimist - and Buddhism itself has been called pessimistic. But there's no question that Wagner was not content with a purely tragic view of life that Schopenhauer’s shadow was casting over Wagner’s life.

One can reasonably trace when Wagner was naively and even dangerously idealistic - take his early opera Rienzi. And then when he falls into what one might describe as Schopenhauer-ish pessimism can be seen in The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin. But then later he at last begins to undergo a kind of spiritual transformation and becomes convinced that enlightenment and escaping the cycle of suffering is possible - The Ring Cycle onwards to Parsifal. This is achievable through detachment from earthly desires - including the thirst for knowledge, hence seemingly glorification of ignorance, Parsifal’s "pure fool" - and an enlightenment made possible through love, wisdom and compassion alone (that German word mittleid’ again).

This is central theme of his mature operas and is basically a re-statement of the core, unadulterated message of Christian redemptive grace. He attempts to really drive this message home especially in Parsifal when he presents institutionalised religion as having lost their way and weighed down and corrupted by an emphasis on doctrine and ceremony, and yet all are redeemed when Parsifal, uncorrupted by the world's knowledge, kisses Kundry and becomes aware of the true nature of suffering and how such suffering is ended by detachment and love.

Of course the trajectory of Wagner’s operas are not a perfect and unbroken line to a convenient end tied up in a pretty red bow. Some operas inconveniently stick out but like human nature it’s messy but not complete shapeless mess.

I see Tristan and Isolde and Die Meistersinger a little differently that doesn’t fit the exact pattern but fits in the mosaic. I believe these two operas belong together and arguably represent a turning point in Wagner's philosophical awakening.

Tristan and Isolde was the moment of crisis in Wagner's work, the final push of his Romantic quest for redemption through all consuming passion. In it the striving of desire reaches its logical extreme, the point beyond which nothing is possible except complete obliteration or a revolution in perspective. I think the opera delivers both. Death, in the clash of the "day" and "night" worlds, is both tragic and welcome - and inevitable. Isolde's final ecstasy is ambiguous: it's both passion's triumph and a deliverance from passion, a fulfillment of love's promise and a vision of what lies on the other side when all-consuming passion, and life itself, has been exhausted. She does not live to become become wise, but she is bathed in the light of a new world before the darkness closes in for good.

It’s possible to see that Tristan and Isolde occupies an ambiguous middle ground between the (relatively) realistic world of Die Meistersinger and the fully symbolic world of Parsifal. Thus it can be read on both levels, on one of which it's a devastating personal tragedy about love and society's destructiveness to human aspiration, and on the other of which it's a work of pseudo-religious hocus-pocus. Perhaps that's what's so disturbing about it, and an important key to its undying fascination. What it's telling us is both very right and very wrong; it shows the danger of the very thing it exalts. Nietzsche hit the nail on the head when he said that "the world is poor for him who is not sick enough for this voluptuousness of hell."

Having got the tragedy of the striving "will" out of his system, Wagner returns to the day world in Die Meistersinger and gives us Hans Sachs, who understands the world's illusions and deliberately puts the brakes on the midsummer madness of both Walther and Beckmesser, carefully bringing the former's unbridled passion and wild creativity, and the latter's envy and dishonesty, under the rubrics of artistic discipline and social responsibility. It's Die Meistersinger that prepares Wagner, and us, for the return of an enlightened Parsifal to the society of the Grail, which the struggles of passion, both indulged and repressed, have thrown into chaos.

Compared to the bleak endings of Verdi's operas, in which, as Iago says, "la morte e nulla." I think overall Wagner's works do show a core of optimism. One that is complicated with all manner of death, murder, betrayal and sadness, but this just makes his music even more analogous to real life.

Thanks for your question

#question #ask #music #wagner #opera #arts #aesthetics #culture

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davidpwilson2564 · 5 years

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Bloglet

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

There is a hope that Michael Bloomberg might run for president. Perhaps this is too good to hope for. Two things to bear in mind: (1) They won't find any dirt on him (that I know of) and (2) he's got Trump's number.

Evening: There is a tech rehearsal at the theater but I am not involved.

Carnegie Hall. The Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of young Maestro Nezet-Seguin. Maybe I haven't been paying attention but I've never seen him use a baton before. None of this fancy white tie and tails for him. He wears a white stretchy casual slipover with the shirttail out. Appropriate, because he has a real workout ahead of him.

Bartok Piano Concerto No. 3. Helene Grimaud. In the fine print it says that Gyorgy Sandor played the New York premiere (1946). This jars lose a memory. Almost fifty years ago when I was living in a spacious (creaky) loft. Roger used to bring his bass and we'd play some of the (increasingly more difficult) Mikrokosmos, he doing the left hand part and me taking on the right hand, on the marimba. (I wonder what happened to that instrument.) Roger learned that Mr. Sandor would be playing the entire Mikrokosmos at Town Hall, on three successive nights. We went. Each evening, after playing, there was a Q and A during which Sandor showed a ready wit, bringing to mind Victor Borge.

There are so many Bartok stories. He died too soon, broke. Lou B said that back in the Forties someone in the music publishing world was looking into the possibility of a piano reduction (maybe for two pianos?) of "Concerto for Orchestra." (I am trying to imagine such a thing.) As these things often go, the money offered wasn't much, maybe a project for an eager young person trying to get his foot in the door. But Bartok, with so little time left, asked if he might do it. Sad.

The mini-bust of Bartok is just up the street on 57th where for a time he resided (uptown side, just west of Eighth Avenue).

Second half: R Strauss. "Alpine Symphony." A day in the mountains. The events of a day musically described. There is even a thunderstorm. One of the great Nature works. It takes about an hour and, of course, brings to mind Mahler's Third, which is even longer. I have gotten to play the Mahler 3 but never the "Alpine." Other Strauss tone poems, yes, but not this one. A real rouser. Huge orchestra. A piece you only get to hear a couple of times in your life.

Strauss was greatly moved by Mahler's death (it is difficult to imagine that Mahler only lived to be fifty). Both were greatly influenced by the writings of Nietzsche and Strauss at first intended to call this work "The Anti-Christ." Good that he didn't.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Astros vs Yankees playoff game called off as huge rain is anticipated.

Go to the Koch Theater. It's great to be working again.

A glimpse of Misty coming out of the Koch Theater. Her signature cigarette. Can't get over how she has transformed herself over the years. Lost weight. The cigarettes may have had something to do with it. You know, dancers and cigarettes...and yogurt...got to stay thin.

Rehearsal. Break. Performance.

Coming out of the theater. Wretched weather. Heavy rain. Soaked walking home.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Terrible news: Elijah Cummings dead at 68. He was everything Trump isn't.

Rehearsal. Break. Performance.

Note: During the intermission Kevin M steps forwards and addresses the audience re the death of Alicia Alonso (she died today, at 92). It was because she wanted to do that setting of "Carmen" for strings and percussion (that Rodion Shchedrin devised for Maya Plisetskaya [both names are murder to spell correctly]) that I was given a shot, forty some years ago with ABT. I had done it previously with that Stars of the Bolshoi tour (with Ms. Plisetskaya). That was the reason I was asked. Note too that Kuniko was Alicia's dresser when she appeared with the company. And...at this point in her life Ms. Alonso was almost blind. One cannot imagine the courage... Thanks, Alicia.

Home. The last part of the Astros/Yankees game. One or the other will play the Washington Nationals (having bested the Cards) in the World Series. The Nationals are a relatively new team. Trivia: As kids we always joked about the Washington Senators, who were always in the cellar (in the American League) as were the Pirates (in the National League). We said: Washington, first in war, first in peace and last in the American League. The Senators didn't have much luck. The won the World Series in 1924. In 1961 they moved and became the Minnesota Twins and their luck greatly improved.

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riusugoi · 5 years

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PRE FACE: Or How to Begin at the End - Amy Ireland

http://ah-journal.net/issues/01/pre-face-or-how-to-begin-at-the-end - As in a woven image or pattern, the course taken from discrete threads to the emergence of a represented, recognisable object or product, is a nonlinear one. Once enough threads have been put into place, a motif emerges, but it is always in terms of a retrochronic legibility, premised on a process that is necessarily primary: the construction of the hardware and the programming of the software that execute the patterns of intrication presiding over the warp and weft of the threads which form the image. The lesson—one which would fascinate Plant—that can be taken from this is that recognition, conceptual identification and negation are always secondary. In this sense, the primary process of weaving is a future coincident with the present’s past. The moment of identification and appearance always arrives behind the functioning of the process which assembles it as its object—whether this is an industrial product, a historical phenomenon, or indeed, a self. Ada Lovelace’s writings testify to an intuitive apprehension of this fundamental delay. Rebuffed from admission into the Royal Society of London because of her sex, but convinced that her pioneering work would one day be understood for what it was, she did not even bother to append her name to the Menebrea footnotes, confiding to Babbage, ‘I do not wish to proclaim who has written it’.5 In both the conscious maintenance of her anonymity and her contribution to the technologisation of the processes of production that would link computation and weaving together, Ada Lovelace conspired with the primary process immanent to all representation—invisible, patient and quietly anticipating the long term effects of her work, lagging far behind their imperceptible, perpetually futural, initiation.

Women and machines, Plant argues, have historically shared the ghostlike position of the intermediary. They are nonetheless ‘the very “possibility of mediation, transaction, transition, transference”’.6 Man’s ‘go-betweens’, the ‘anonymous editors, secretaries, copyists, and clerks’, those who

took his messages, decrypted his codes, counted his numbers, bore his children, and passed on his genetic code. They have worked as his bookkeepers and his memory banks, zones of deposit and withdrawal, promissory notes, credit and exchange, not merely servicing the social world, but underwriting reality itself. Goods and chattels. The property of man.7

Apocalypse or salvation only appear as legitimate endpoints to a subjectivity premised on integral stasis and an inherently binarising logic that is dialectally subsumed into a temporal linearity produced via a double reference to an inaccessible origin and a fear of death (united in the word ‘matrix’), both of which must be appropriated, mastered and overcome. To usurp the position of authority and channel—through obfuscation, anonymity, intelligence and cunning, the weaving of a coded message or a riddle—the course of history, via the technology of prophecy is also, in its disturbance of telos, a practice of weaving time.

‘Women have always spun, carded and weaved, albeit anonymously. Without name. In perpetuity. Everywhere yet nowhere,’ writes Plant.11 To prophesy is to complicate, pleat, loop or fold time. One is said to ‘weave’ a spell or a charm, knotting a virtual future into the obscure unfolding of the present and its written past. There is a connection, emphasised by Plant, between weaving, magic, prophecy and secrecy, who notes (quoting Mircea Eliade’s Rites and Symbols of Initiation) that, ‘The moon “spins” Time and weaves human lives. The Goddesses of Destiny are spinners.”’12 When Eliade looks at the traditional tribal ‘seclusion of pubescent girls and menstruating women, often the occasion for the spinning of both actual and fictional yarns’, she continues, ‘he detects “an occult connection between the conception of the periodical creations of the world … and the ideas of Time and Destiny, on the one hand, and on the other, nocturnal work, women’s work, which has to be performed far from the light of the sun and almost in secret’.13

As the link between the ancient, feminised labour of weaving and the dawn of accelerating computation technologies, Ada Lovelace is a cyborg, and a prophet. She is in good company. Among such figures always, significantly, feminised, trans- or poly-gendered, are the many, mad monstrosities of mythology and cultural history. These pathologised and frightful seers arrive consistently from outside and approach Read Only Memory history simultaneously from what it understands as a before and an after, the past and the future, always and at once infiltrating from beneath and from afar, like the Sphinx, Tiresias, or the Eumenides that haunt the narrative of Sophocles’ Oedipus plays. The sphinx is a cyborg or a hybrid—part woman, part eagle, part lion—who dispatches a prophecy concealed in a riddle (What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?) to which Oedipus, thinking he has solved it, responds with the answer ‘Man’.16 Tiresias, a transgendered prophet, figured in T.S. Eliot’s indictment of a tragic modernity, The Waste Land as ‘blind / throbbing between two lives / Old man with wrinkled female breasts’ is, according to a footnote, the poem’s ‘most important personage’.17 It is Tiresias who ‘perceives the substance of the poem’ (the seer’s role in the text emerges, interestingly, in relation to the scene concerning two feminised labourers: the secretary and the clerk), and who delivers to Oedipus, in Oedipus Rex, the terrible prophecy of patricide and incest that, precisely in trying to avoid, Oedipus unwittingly fulfils.18 The Eumenides, Erinyes or Fates, ‘daughters of the earth, of the dark!’ preside over Oedipus’ death or disappearance in the enigmatic final scene of Oedipus at Colonus in which, fated to expire in the Eumenides’ sacred grove, Oedipus vanishes, with only the king of Athens and a confused messenger looking on, the latter proclaiming as he returns from the mysterious site, ‘Oedipus is dead! But no short speech could explain what happened’, an utterance reprised moments later in the question of the Chorus, ‘What? What happened?’19 The Fates are traditionally goddesses of time and, infamously, weavers—like Ariadne who is connected with both the weaving and unweaving of the Athenian labyrinth, particularly enigmatically in Nietzsche, as Deleuze points out in Nietzsche and Philosophy, claiming that, ‘Ariadne is Nietzsche's first secret’, the double of Dionysus, who recursively completes nihilism in affirming the Dionysian affirmation.20 The etymology of ‘Sphinx’ in ancient Greek derives from the verb σφίγγω (sphíngō), meaning ‘to squeeze’ or ‘tighten up’ (Plant: ‘[K]nitting is a matter of making loops. At its simplest, it is done with a single, continuous thread, which loops around and intricates itself’) and as Robert Graves recounts in The White Goddess, ‘Sphinx means “throttler” … in Etruscan ceramic art she is usually portrayed as seizing men, or standing on their prostate figures’.21 The concept corresponding to fate in Anglo-Saxon culture is ‘wyrd’ (Shakespeare renders the Greek Fates as the—again, transgendered—Wyrd Sisters of Macbeth), its Norse cognate is Urðr, connected to the Norns, or weaving female deities who control the destinies of men, and both words are derived from the root wert, ‘to turn’, ‘to spin’ or ‘to wind’.

What is it about this fearful link between women, weaving, and temporal power that transforms them into such sick and monstrous creatures in the collective imagination?22 Is it the fact that they are always either partial or multiple—‘at least two’—and thereby intractable to the rules of identity, straddling both sides of being, the transcendental and its objects?23 Or that they index—for the identity that comes to reflect upon them—a primary alienation, from the 'matrix', matter or ‘mother’ that begets it? Representation is always in the thrall of something monstrous it cannot perceive. For Oedipus, for Babbage and his colleagues, for those who speak the language of history, the unrepresentable arrives first, but also last. These threshold beings of the future and the past, presiding over the fragile threads integrating life and death inhabit both edges of time and enfold everything within their trap, secreted in the present. They are at once the secret ‘origin’ of an obscure—because nonlinear—production, and the prophetesses of the ‘end'. ‘There are only two answers to the question “which comes first” and both of them are female,’ writes Plant, 'the male element is simply an offshoot from a female loop’.24 Zeros + Ones itself closes with the casting of a prophecy. Plant writes of the processes she has been describing that they are ‘a code for the numbers to come’.25

En "The Infra-World", un pequeño tratado sobre lo imperceptible en el arte y la cultura, François J. Bonnet resalta un raro fragmento en prosa titulado ‘Heracles 2 or The Hydra,’ encontrado en la obra de Heiner Müller de 1972, "Cement".

‘Heracles 2 or The Hydra’ narra las vicisitudes de su protagonista, guerrero y masculino, Heracles, a medida que se adentra más y más en una jungla desorientadora en busca de una bestia mítica y feminizada que habrá de confrontar y matar en batalla, la Hidra. Mientras persigue al animal que cree estar cazando, siguiendo un rastro de sangre, [...] el abundante follaje de la retorcida vegetación le impide ver el cielo, su única fuente para la navegación temporal, y se encuentra con repeticiones de configuraciones de ramas particulares que alteran y distorsionan ya por completo su impresión de estar avanzando en el espacio. Llevado por un sentimiento de creciente desesperación, Heracles acelera su paso pero no puede distinguir si camina más rápido o más despacio que antes. Peor aún, la jungla parece estar animada por algún tipo extraño de consciencia y él comienza a creer que está poniéndole a prueba. Se olvida de su nombre y comienza a disociarse de su propio sentido de auto-consciencia y de su sentido de integridad corporal.

A medida que el espacio de la jungla cambia a su alrededor "solo él, el innombrable, se había mantenido igual en su largo y costoso camino a la batalla. ¿O era aquello que caminaba sobre sus piernas en el cada vez más rápido suelo danzante también algo diferente a lo que él era? Todavía estaba pensando en ello, cuando la jungla, una vez más, lo atrapó".

[...] Lentamente, lo que queda de Heracles, se da cuenta de que el rastro de sangre que ha estado siguiendo es la suya propia, y que la bestia mítica que creía estar cazando no es otra que la jungla misma:

"No avanzó más, la jungla le seguía el ritmo… y él entendió, con creciente pánico: la jungla era la Hidra, hacía tiempo que la jungla que creía estar atravesando era la bestia, era quien le llevaba en el ritmo de sus pasos, las ondas del suelo eran su jadeo y el viento su respiración, el rastro que había seguido era el de su propia sangre, de la que la selva, que era la bestia, se llevaba buena parte (¿cuánta sangre tiene un ser humano?); y también entendió que siempre lo había sabido, aunque no pudiese nombrarlo".

[...] Mientras él intenta combatirla, se da cuenta de que los golpes se vuelven hacia él, en una confusión entre usuario y herramienta (la separación que permitía su maestría), la compostura y el control se desangran entre los restos en descomposición del suelo nauseabundo de la jungla. [...] Heracles se ha encontrado con la forma del secreto

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chuckling-chemist · 6 years

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You Know What, It’s My Birthday So I’m Gonna Talk About Fantroll Etymology

Now bear with me, this shit’s gonna refer to a lot of trolls without pages (because they’re sitting in drafts or haven’t bothered making a page yet since there’s no art yet, written or otherwise) so a lot of these bad boys (at least of the ones I remember. Look man, I started making fantrolls over 5 years ago and 3 computers ago, and unfortunately some of the etymologies I managed to forget. I think it’s on a flash drive....that’s at my parent’s house.):

Lyzeki Vernus: Lyzeki is based off the owl Ezylryb from Guardians of Ga’Hoole, who was originally known as Lyze of Kiel. (Ezylryb is Lyze backwards + ryb, which means teacher in universe) Lyzeki is Lyze + “Ki” of Kiel.

Nivell Abbela: Nivell comes from the abbess Gertrude of Nivelles, who, while never officially named a saint, is viewed as a patron saint to sailors. Abbela comes from the word Abbess, or the female leader of a community (abbey) of nuns. (She was based off of a human Catholic OC named Maria, whose own name is because her Catholic parents named all their children after Saints or Angels somewhere in their name)

Valeba Medala: Valeba is basically a corruption of valor...I think, and Medala is a corruption on medal. By corruption I mean “I stuck an a at the end and called it a day.” This is reference to her being a treasure hunter. Medals and treasure are...close enough. I guess.

Aluala Medala: Aluala is a corruption (I think? It’s been a while) of a Hawaiian for the morning sun. Because she’s a light player.

Stikla Medala: Stikla is named directly after the Viking pirate of the same name, who turned to piracy to avoid marriage. Stikla worked with Rusla, otherwise known as the Red Maiden

Elliah Fagane: A corruption on Eleanora Fagan, or more popularly known as Billie Holiday. Elliah is a brownblood inspired by Billie Holiday.

Ektome Altses: Ektome is the phonetic spelling of the spider Lakota trickster god, Iktomi.

Nafasi Altses: Nafasi comes from the Swalhili word for Space. No, he’s not Spacebound anymore. Yes, I’m too attached to the name to change it. Turns out Life fits the Altses line better! (I mean...it still does in the sense that Nafasi likes astronomy, among other things, and their lusus is a reference to the Coyote in Navajo faith who put the stars in the sky by accident...okay yeah it still fits.)

Gadung Galiel: Gadung comes from the Tolkien Gnomish word for spider, a reference to her trapdoor spider lusus. The liel on Galiel is the feminine ending for many Elvish words in Tolkien. The usage of butchered Tolkien specifically is because she’s based around a specific type of (thankfully pretty much nonexistent anymore) Dagorhir player. Dagorhir which is a fantasy foam sport/LARP originally based around Tolkien’s fantasy.

Coraxe Heelio: Coraxe comes from Corvid, a reference to his lusus (and one of the animals associated with Helios/Apollo), and Heelio comes from Helios. You know...Apollo.

Sayida Titwan: Sayida comes from the infamous female pirate Sayyida al Hurra, a Turkish pirate queen in the 16th century. This is also where her last name comes from, as one of her other names was Hakimat Titwan, or governor of Tétouan. She’s also from a Dagorhir fansession and represents Sunhawks.

Icasui Zakees: Icasui comes from Icarus - but like Kid Icarus/Pit, not actually the Greek figure Icarus (it’s why her lusus is a flightless bird) and Zakees comes from the angel Zadkiel, the patron angel of forgiveness. This came back from when I was going to make her a Hope player and thought “hey wouldn’t it be cool to base a Hope player off of an actual angel?”, and have her be aspire for no more than runner/intern-esque role the way actual basic angels are. (Not the big fancy kind). Also because Kid Icarus Uprising makes a few jokes about how Pit’s a glorified intern for Palutena. Just so you know, barely any of this still exists. She’s not even a Hope player. ...Though she does work in a mail room when she’s full time babysitter to an heiress.

Haniel Zakees: Haniel is named for the angel Haniel/Anael, the angel of joy.

Fioria Leccia: Fioria comes from the Italian word for flowers, Fiori, and she draws inspiration for composing through her flowers. (Also her moirail, Ektome, has a natural green thumb).

Pallia Alkali/Azotes: Pallia comes from the element Palladium. I swear to God, I had no idea one of Athena’s names was Pallas Athene and that snakes go with Athena until roughly 4 years after I made her. Alkali, her fake last name, is named after the alkali metals on the periodic table. Azotes, her actual last name, comes from Azote, one of many alchemical names for Nitrogen.

Fospha Azotes: Fospha name derives from the element Phosphorous.

Brylis Azotes: Brylis comes from the element Beryllium. Is Pallia’s whole lineage going to be named after elements? Yep, probably.

Volcor Heftor: Volcor comes from Vulcan and Heftor comes from Hephaestus. Fitting for an engineer who’s had more than a few mishaps fighting.

Fenald Heftor: Fenald comes from a portmanteau of Ferrum, the Latin name for Iron, as well as the ASOUE character Fernald (aka: the Hook-Handed man).

Thysus Bakkae: Thysus comes from Dionysus, and Bakkae comes from Bacchus. Thysus is also from the Dagorhir fansession and is based on the unit Sour Wine.

Gliden Rectus: Gliden comes from the protein group gliaden, which are not only found in gluten, and the one your body can’t break down if you have Celiac Disease. Rectus comes from the Latin word for straight. You know, just like how straight and narrow he is on that gluten free diet. Mmhm....

Charis Zakmos: Charis comes from the Greek figure Charon, or the ferryman of the dead. Zakmos is also based off of Zadkiel. Charis is a purpleblood based off of the Ticketkeeper in The Devil’s Carnival, a figure who is frequently the first one the fallen come across, and certainly one of the more sympathetic carnies to their plight.

Glacin Bebuso: Glacin comes from the Irish plague doctor named Niall Ó Glacáin from the second major outbreak of plague in the late 1500s-early 1600s, who was also a pioneer in pathological anatomy. Shockingly, not from the word glacier. Or the protein Glacin A/B which is found in plants. Or Glacin tablets, which are used for cramps and pains. Bebuso comes from the word bubonic. That’s it.

Dontoc Leiniz: Dontoc is a corruption of the word dolphin, which is his lusus. Leiniz comes from Leibniz, the other founder of Calculus - the one who isn’t Newton that you probably don’t remember. I pronounce it “lay-niz” which sounds kind of like how you pronounce “Les Mis”, and while les miserables might be a good way to describe his early life that’s...pretty accidental tbh.

Inaeis Leiniz: Inaeis comes from the Latin word Inanis, which means void, worthless, or foolish. Google Translate 4 years ago only gave me the first (it’s a Voidbound joke, hey!), but the other two words certainly fit just as much.

Nieche Leiniz: Comes from the philospher Nietzsche.

Haiark Noblet: Haiark’s is based on the Dagorhir unit Uruk-hai (and you can imagine what they named themselves off of.) and seeing those names together you can see where it came from. Noblet is just noble, since Haiark is a violetblood.

Careen Elsker: Careen comes from the term “careening”, or dry docking a ship to clean off the barnacles. It’s a shipping joke. @deadmen--tell--no--tales‘s idea 100% thanks to their obsessive knowledge of ships. Careening, of course, also means to move in a wildly unspecific direction, which...yeah okay that was unintentional but it fits too.

Carica Elsker: Carica comes from the Serbo-Croatian word spelled in English that way and is really pronounced more like “charicha” than with the hard c’s I actually read it with that means Tsarina or Empress.

Mayola Yoscan: Mayola is a portmanteau of the Spanish words el mar and la ola, or the sea and the wave.

Domina Gnomen: Based off Rome from the Dagorhir fansession, Domina is named after Dominus of Rome but feminized, and gnomen comes from the Latin word cognomen, or “last name”. Yes, her name is Dominus Last Name. I’m clever.

#fantroll #fantrolls #i should do some kind of write up on the dagorhir fansession but it's technically not done?#some of them are finished #some don't even have names #like drentha's is just unnamed drentha troll #while blood horde; sour wine and sunhawks are basically complete

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jflashandclash · 7 years

Text

Attrition of Peace

Twenty-One: Alabaster

I Have a Tea Party with My Best Frenemies

Warning: Spoilers for Child of Magic by Haley Riordan. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out.

As Axel told their story, Alabaster forced his hand to stop shaking. Each time he picked up the teacup, he had to concentrate not to spill. But he didn’t want to look weak around Axel or Jack, and he didn’t want Pax to see any emotion on his face.

He tried to pay full attention to everyone’s reactions as Axel spoke of returning to his father, Santiago Pax, running away again, kidnapping Rachel Elizabeth Dare, bargaining with Hephaestus for Leo Valdez’s location, trading for the reforging of Kronos’s scythe, about how Santiago Pax had caught his sons, murdered their friend, Joey Song, and how the daughter of Demter, Euna Song, had ripped Santiago and his men apart from the inside.

Jack supplied appropriate music for the tale, strumming into a crescendo when Euna faced off with Eris, before Phobetor lulled them all to sleep. In too brief a sentence, Axel ended with, “We ended up in New Rome, the Romans realized who we were, and tried to capture us. We ran.”

“Congratulations on killing your pops,” Jack cheered. He folded his middle finger and index finger down to make a rock on symbol before going back to his five string base.

Two of Axel’s friends, the tall boy with ebony skin and the Indian girl with curves worthy of a Renaissance painting, were ill at ease during the retelling. They exchanged a glance when Axel mentioned Rachel. Though, the girl was so exhausted, she had trouble not nodding off in his chair.

The Pax brothers must have suffered, crawling back to their father after the Slaughter of Mount Othrys, withering under his tyranny until Eris told Pax there was a way out, and a way to fight back. Seeing them alive gave Alabaster hope.

“Do you think Eris and the others are staging a strike against Mount Olympus?” Alabaster asked.

Axel shook his head. “Knowing Eris, it’s far pettier than that. I think she only wants Camp Half-Blood, though I’m not sure what her plan of attack is. She’s kidnapped Hemera and has the Olympians arguing amongst themselves.”

Alabaster frowned. He wondered if the Pax brothers could convince Eris and the other minor gods to aim at something bigger. If they joined forces, they would have access to a god-killing weapon and a net to capture deities. They could never do another all-out assault on Olympus, but that wasn’t the Sabotage and Magic Unit’s style.

Though, that could wait until morning. Everyone looked exhausted, and Alabaster was too numb to discuss battle plans.

Pax tugged at the ends of his sweater and Alabaster had an uncomfortable memory of giddy, twelve-year-old Ajax, brown and hazel eyes wide with awe, asking, “Can you really do magic?”

Alabaster shook off the memory. Pax had grown up a lot in the last year. His shoulders had broadened, foreshadowing that he’d have a build closer to Axel later in life. His cheeks still retained their round cuteness, but his jaw line had hardened. His smile still held that air of innocent mischief, like Pax hadn’t been traumatized on multiple occasions. Above all, one thing hadn’t changed: he was still short.

“Where’s our Potter been?” Pax asked.

If Alabaster hadn’t already used up the fire rune, he’d set Pax ablaze on the principle of the matter. Though, hearing the stupid nickname gave him nostalgia. The smile it brought dribbled away at the thought of the Battle of Manhattan.

“Hundreds died. The Olympians… spared me in exchange for Hecate’s compliance with the peace,” Alabaster explained.

“They blackmailed her,” Axel snarled, “At least we can rely on them to use their traditional methods.”

Alabaster felt some relief at Axel’s anger. Although Alabaster knew the nightmares he’d been having the last few months were ridiculous, he couldn’t help but wince at the thought of Axel becoming a Roman or sympathetic to their enemies.

“Blackmailed her?” Kally asked. Alabaster could barely see her poking around Pax’s shoulder. She’d finally stopped shaking from Jack’s approach.

Axel and Pax must not have given her their welcoming speech yet.

“He can give you the full riveting lecture tomorrow, so you have a slightly higher chance of staying awake during the Alternative History of Olympus. Or, as I like to call it, Watching Paint Dry Part II: Too Many Shades of Grey,” Pax said to her.

Although Alabaster knew he’d never met Kally before, she reminded him of something he couldn’t place. Before Alabaster could figure it out, Pax tugged Alabaster’s sweater again. “So you were adopted by a famous writer after the battle. That seems legit.”

Adopted..? Alabaster shook his head. “No. He can’t legally adopt me; he’s dead.” His mind spun. At the thought of explaining from the beginning, he looked away from Pax. “I assume you’re familiar with Gaea’s rise to power?”

Everyone nodded, except Merry. The girl’s tangled, shoulder length hair splayed on the armrest, where she was napping fitfully. Calex’s bow was still in his lap. He held it in one hand, the other touching Merry’s sleeve, like his fingertips were her anchor to this world. His grey eyes narrowed in suspicion at Alabaster. If he really was an Olympic sympathizer…

The other girl, Euna, watched absently as Nietzsche, Xbalanque, and Hanapu thundered into the room, rolled under the couch, and rumbled out of sight.

“Gaea sent Lamia to kill me, so Lamia could become the leader of Hecate’s children.” Although Alabaster wasn’t looking at Pax, he could feel the smaller boy sink more into the couch. “I killed her over and over, but she wouldn’t die. So I sought the help of an expert on death, Professor Howard Claymore.”

Axel nodded, though Alabaster caught a glint of his ears perking up in excitement. He still stood beside Kally protectively, but he looked away from Jack when Jack made an… uncomfortable tongue gesture at him.

“So, Clay swooped in all vampire hunter style and kicked ass?” Pax asked. His voice shook, though he tried to sound playful.

“No, he died, as I said,” Alabaster explained, “Mother used his life force for a spell to separate Lamia and me. Then she brought him back to life as a Mist form.”

“Mist form? Like the weasels?” Euna asked, pointing to where Nietzsche scrambled to crawl out from under the couch. Xbalanque and Hanapu tackled him back down.

Alabaster nodded. He guessed Claymore wouldn’t like that comparison, but it was a sufficient example. What was taking Claymore so long downstairs? The professor must have been stalling to give them more time alone. Alabaster just hoped Claymore remembered to snip off a section of the ear to be dried into a powder before he tucked it into Alabaster’s ingredients cabinet.

“Claymore and I were theorizing about how to bring the children of Hecate some peace, though someone else must have risen to power in my absence—”

“Lou Ellen,” Axel supplied. “She’s the head counselor of Hecate’s new cabin.”

Alabaster scowled. That name sounded familiar. His head ached thinking about it, and he had the nauseating feeling he was forgetting something important. And a cabin to Hecate? Next time he could contact his mother, he’d have to ask her, though, that was the other problem.

“Claymore and I were also researching how lucid dreaming can help with dream visions. I—”

Alabaster tensed. He didn’t want to talk about his nightmares. Demigods’ dreams were never just dreams, but normally Alabaster had more control over what he saw. Something had been infringing on his nighttime wanderings, and it wasn’t as pleasant as the times Morpheus decided to mess with him.

From the apprehension on everyone’s face, Alabaster could tell he wasn’t the only one having nightmares.

“We’ve all been having dream-prophecies,” Kally spoke up. When Alabaster glanced over at her, she blushed and shifted like she was going to lean back into the couch. After a pause, she exhaled and lifted her chin. “That’s what Phobetor has been doing to us. He’s been giving all the other demigods in Camp Half-Blood and New Rome reruns of monsters from their pasts, but the seven—six of us have been getting dream-prophecies. What have you been dreaming about?”

The Pax brothers went pale and still. Jack strummed out something tense and high-pitched.[1]

Alabaster cupped one hand around his teacup, wishing it was warmer. He gazed at the fire in the corner, keeping his voice as even as he could. “Children of Hecate get everything in threes. I see Ajax laughing with Hermes’ Cabin beside Matthias Severre Hanson and Chris Rodriguez, giving praise to the same gods that killed my siblings. In the second, Axel is with that Roman praetor, the one that stormed Mount Othrys with Jason Grace and destroyed our home. He’s discussing joining the legion with her and that he doesn’t mind scrubbing the streets of Camp Jupiter if that’s what it takes to join…”

Alabaster didn’t want to look at his two friends. They were more than friends. Axel had become an older brother and great strategizing partner during their time at Camp Othrys. And Ajax had started off as an obnoxious puppy that followed him around camp, but later…

The thought of these two spitting at the memory of their friends fallen in battle and all the ideals they fought for... Nausea twisted his stomach.

Alabaster glanced up from the fire. Although Axel’s jaw was clenched to keep his emotions neutral, his tufted ears drooped in shame. He kept eye contact with Alabaster with calculated steadiness.

Alabaster didn’t want to look at Pax. A sense of betrayal made him tremble.

“Those are your nightmares?” Kally asked, confused. She touched her lip. “You said that you had a third one?”

He nodded. If those two had already come true—then—

“It’s also about Axel and Ajax,” he said. Alabaster tried to stop shaking. If these things were really happening, he couldn’t ignore it. But, what was he supposed to think? He’d just gotten them back, only to find out they were either considering or had already joined their enemies.

“Let’s not talk about them,” Pax suggested, “Let’s talk about happier thoughts, like Mom’s evil plan and—”

Alabaster swallowed. “Axel is hunting down Ajax in my last nightmare. He’s killing him.”

“NO!” Pax shouted and jumped to his feet, nearly knocking Kally off the couch. “NO! He’s not. It’s the Leonis Caput—and he wouldn’t do it anyway—he—he’s my older brother and Axel would never—” Tears streamed down Pax’s cheeks.

Axel closed his eyes. His brow furrowed, and he sighed in pained realization.

All three of them were having the same nightmare. Even if they had betrayed their cause, Alabaster’s stomach still churned at the thought.

“Ajax—” Axel tried.

“NO!” Pax repeated. “I’m going to go storm up those stairs in protest!” he stated, stomped once, then paused to glance at Alabaster with red-rimmed eyes. “No runes are going to blow me up if I storm up those stairs, right? I need my protest to be uninterrupted.”

Alabaster waved him on numbly.

Pax pointed a finger at Axel. “And it isn’t you, and that’s not what I dreamed about anyway. I dreamed about a boar with a bowtie, thank you very much.” He huffed and scurried towards the stairs.

“Interrupted,” Jack said, snatching Pax and dragging him into his lap. Pax sniffled and squirmed, though he couldn’t have been putting up any real struggle, since Jack managed to hold onto him. “It’s okay, kid. Tartarus isn’t that bad. You’ll get to say hi to Luke and our other friends.”[2]

“Jack,” Alabaster and Axel snapped at the same time.

“What? I’m helping,” Jack protested, ruffling Pax’s hair.

“No, you’re not,” Alabaster said.

This was too much.

Alabaster glanced around the room. Kally had caught her balance on the couch and covered her mouth with one hand. Calex’s eyes had widened. Euna glared at the ground. Nietzsche, Xbalanque, and Hanapu poked their heads from under the couch to stare at them. Hanapu nipped at Xbalanque’s ear, as though to say, You know I wouldn’t try to stab you to death, right bro?

“How’d they find you?” Pax sniffled quietly into Jack’s shoulder.

“Shortly after meeting up with Claymore,” Alabaster answered, “I saw a new report that bubonic plague hit a mental health institution in New Mexico. Claymore made a few calls on my hunch and it turned out to be correct,” Alabaster said wearily. He left out the information about how much of a mess Jack was or how Claymore repeatedly suggested they rid the world of him.

Everyone was too exhausted and scared for this conversation to be productive.

“I think that’s enough for tonight.”

Alabaster jumped. He hadn’t heard Claymore come back up the stairs and reenter the living room. Since he’d become a Mist form, he was incredibly stealthy. He returned to his position beside the bookshelf, where he stored several enchanted guns should something go wrong.

“I take it these children are staying the night,” Claymore asked, “It looks like two have taken the liberty of deciding for themselves.” He nodded to where Merry was out cold on the couch and where Pax was pretending to sleep on Jack’s shoulder. Pax mustn’t have realized that Jack probably couldn’t carry him up the stairs anymore, though Alabaster bet Jack would kill both of them trying.

Alabaster nodded. “The girls can take the upstairs guest room. The boys can sleep in the attic.” He wondered how much sleep any of them were actually going to get, and how many of them would wake up screaming from nightmares.

Thanks for reading! I’m sorry I’m running so late. Things have been crazy over here ^^’‘

[1] http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/875/895/fae.gif

[2] So, I meant to address this in the next chapter, since I’m aware Luke says he’s going to be reborn when he dies, but I haven’t found a point where it naturally works into the conversation. So, the explanation behind this will probably come up later, assuming the author doesn’t disappear into a field of leprechauns.

#The Attrition of Peace #PJO #HOO #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #Heroes of Olympus #fanfiction #Traitors of Olympus #Alabaster #Axel #Ajax #Jack #Kally #Calex #Merry #Euna #TRIPLE W TEEEAMMMM!#Claymore #Does anyone else love Claymore as much as I do?

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ecayday · 7 years

Text

It’s been a month now into seeing that boy I’ve talked about before and it’s really interesting. He challenged me in a lot of ways, some aren’t necessarily good but I’ll take it. We aren’t officially dating. His best friend decided things were weird and I gotta clear that up. I tried, but it’s one of those things that can’t be talked out over text, just gonna have to see how we vibe in real life and if we’re really chill.

Life is weird right now. Still in this weird pause in my life. Puppo got neutered last Wednesday. He’s been really out of it but his energy came back tonight -- he can be an evil little thing!

I started drawing again, made a new instagram to make my art public -- aavisual. Ghoste liked his fan art, Craig Xen fucking commented on a piece of mine of Stefan Burnett, and horsehead liked my fan art of him as well. Wild. Really motivating, especially Craig -- I actually think I talked about the video he made on this blog! The one about depression and “getting sick of being sad”. It really stuck with me, I think about it all the fucking time.

I bought one of Nietzsche's writings. I think I spelled his name right.

I love my friendship with Jon. He’s the only male in my life I’ve ever been able to keep a consistent (I’m talking 8~10 years type of consistent, other people come and go) platonic relationship with and I treasure it so much. When I woke up this morning he messaged me to Skype because he was having a bad trip. By the end of the Skype call he said he was relieved and that what we had spoken about really helped him and turned it into a good trip. Before we hung up he said “I’ll miss you”, what a goofball.

I initiated the conversation with That Boy, too, which felt good. I feel better about reaching out to him now. I was really stressed about it. I think I just need to stop stressing and dial his number sometimes. I hope we hang out soon. I bought an Arizona Tea for him for whenever we do, because he mentioned he’d like to pick me up on the way home from work since I live close. I feel like being greeted with one of your favorite drinks after a day of work would be nice.

Then I got really high and Skyped my friend Clifford. I just rambled a lot and gushed about the thought of a projector as my computer monitor instead of an actual screen, and then asked how often he cried. I love the casually intense things I come up with to talk about when high.

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clmcl · 7 years

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HEy! could u rec me some good dramione blogs? (and fics please im starving)

Yes! I don’t know a lot of dramione blogs, but I really like these:

Columbrina: It’s not specific for dramione, but she posts a lot of aesthetis and moodbords. Ah! And the most important: she’s a wonderful writter and somentimes you can find stuff like that.

Hermione Fanfics: I’ve just discovered this blog. You can find some good fanfics pairing Hermione and Draco.

Incorrect Dramione Quotes: A lot of funny and romantic quotes (you can stalk and be happy)

Harry potter shit: good dramione AU here.

The Tale of the Ferret and the Otter: quotes from dramione fanfics (the last update was 2 years ago, but you can stalk)

I Dream of Dramione: a lovely blog with lovely stuff.

I will put some fanfics here, but if you think it’s not enough, you can ask me again or go here or here.

How To Marry A Malfoy: It’s funny, smut and romantic. “One egregious mistake and she never wanted to hear his name ever again, but the Fates force them together eight months later. How will she cope without surrendering to or strangling him? Will she be able to?” COMPLETE (Chapters: 17 - Words: 132,634)

Inverse: “Dumbledore asks Hermione to carry out a secret mission before the start of her fourth year. “Keep the Time Turner, Miss Granger. I want you to use it to help Mr. Malfoy reevaluate his beliefs. He is now depending on you.” This one is soooo good! It’s not complete, but the last update was inDec 29, 2016 . (Chapters: 29 - Words: 168,733)

In Reverse: “Your hair,” he says, without looking at her. “It’s enormous, you know.” A few, silent seconds pass, before Hermione makes a happy sort of sob. “Your chin is too sharp,” she whispers. “We grew into them.” “We certainly did.” Suddenly, her perfect mouth is on his, and he realizes that maybe he hasn’t ruined anything after all. (Words: 9,566)

The Letters From Everyone: “A collection of short letters and notes sent to and from various characters throughout a year of their lives.” fluffy and funny

Knowing You: Post-Hogwarts/War, forced marriage law. This one is really good. COMPLETE ( Chapters: 30 - Words: 256,588)

Educating Draco: funny and smut. COMPLETE (Chapters: 2 - Words: 15,288)

Graveyard Valentine: sad and beautiful. COMPLETE (Words: 9,193)

Turncoat: Switching sides. “I have only one condition, and I trust it won’t be hard for you to meet. I want Granger.” It’s one of my favorites. COMPLETE (Chapters: 101 - Words: 256,732)

Commentating: smut and funny. COMPLETE (Words: 1,723)

Physically Impossible: funny and smut. COMPLETE (Words: 5,299)

What the Room Requieres: “Hermione is the one who finds Draco weeping in the bathroom. He flees. She chases him into the Room of Requirement, and the room forces them to face their greatest fears together in order to find the door.” beautiful, a little bit sad and sweet. COMPLETE (Chapters: 26 - Words: 111,821)

Lock The Door: funny and smut. COMPLETE (Words: 4,934)

The Nietzsche Classes: “The Ministry takes action against the remaining prejudice in the wizarding society and asks Hermione for help. “What do you want? Money? Power? Name your price, Granger. I’m not about to let pride get in my way when an Azkaban sentence is on the line.” COMPLETE (Chapters: 15 - Words: 45,807)

Twelfth Use Of Dragon’s Blood: “Draco and Hermione do not have a conversation in the library. No, really.” This one is very cute! COMPLETE (Words: 686)

Olivie Blake (ff.net/tumblr) (I didn’t read all of her fanfics, so take a look in her profile. I’m sure it’s amazing)

Ride or Die: “The Death Eaters are an outlaw motorcycle club run by Tom Riddle, a notoriously ruthless leader who gradually works the brotherhood into high stakes criminal activity after the death of their previous president. Draco Malfoy is heir to the throne, but his life abruptly changes when fate lands him in the hands of a young doctor who is about to get in way over her head.” An amazing AU fanfic. It’s not complete, but she posts regularly.

Nightmares and Nocturnes: “A story per night to save her life. Dramione, dystopian post-war AU” This one is sooo good! I love it. It’s not complete, but she posts regularly.

Columbrina (ff.net/tumblr) (same for her. Amazing)

Like Brothers: “Minerva McGonagall steps in on the awful night the Potter are killed and arranges to have Harry Potter raised by Sirius Black and his somewhat cousins, the Malfoys. Draco and Harry grow up as almost brothers and everything - everything - is different. Gryffindor!Draco. Dramione. AU.” Hiatus (sad but true) (Chapters: 41 - Words: 97,690)

If I’m Gonna Fall in Love: “Draco had made a list of everything he needed to fall in love. She had to be beautiful, and deferential, and from a good family. She had to be someone his parents would like, someone his friends would approve of. But how was he supposed to meet the perfect girl if he kept getting caught up in arguments with Potter’s bushy-haired sidekick?” A lovely one-shot (Words: 6,785 )

No One Minds: fluffy and funny AU (Chapters: 5 - Words: 21,678 COMPLETE)

Madness in Love: With the Order of the Phoenix recast in popular opinion as dangerous, a law is put into effect to have them work off their debt to society via what is termed ‘good, honest labor’ and it leaves Hermione Granger sitting in Draco Malfoy’s parlor as a smirking Ministry official condemns her to be her former enemy’s slave. COMPLETE. (Chapters: 5 - Words: 14,201)

The History Project: Draco Malfoy finds a way to magically write notes in History of Magic but the only person the spell will work with is Hermione Granger, or so he claims. (Chapters: 19 - Words: 15,937)

Fairy Stone: Draco is sentenced to one year in Azkaban, release contingent upon someone willing to vouch for his good behavior. Hermione does. “Oh, I want you,” he said. “You, just you, always you. You forever and you for always and you until the bloody sun explodes.” COMPLETE. (Chapters: 4 - Words: 13,827)

The Green Girl: Hermione is sorted into Slytherin; how will things play out differently when the brains of the Golden Trio has different friends? COMPLETE (Chapters: 22 - Words: 150,508)

Veela fanfictions:

Veela And The Perils Of Losing Control: smut and funny. “When Snape stops administering the control potion for Draco’s veela instincts thanks to a little meddling from Blaise, Ron and Harry, all hell breaks loose and trouble abounds. Especially for poor unsuspecting Hermione.” COMPLETE (Words: 5,468)

Silver Eyes: “I’m so sorry.” The familiar voice spoke again. This was enough to wake Hermione’s brain from her trance. Enough to open her eyes, and see two magnificently silver eyes dissaparate in the dark”. COMPLETE (Chapters: 29 - Words: 84,108)

Internal Yearning: “As if becoming a Veela wasn’t bad enough, he had to go and find out his mate was one Hermione Granger. Merlin, he was in for a rough year at Hogwarts.” (Chapters: 28 - Words: 73,691)

Well.. I hope this can help you. Have a nice year! XOXO Feel free to ask me again :)

#answered #dramione

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thrombosys · 7 years

Text

Epilogue: Myth & Society - Part III: The Hero Today

From ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ (1949)

By Joseph Campbell

•••

THE HERO TODAY

The democratic ideal of the self-determining individual, the invention of the power-driven machine, and the development of the scientific method of research have so transformed human life that the long-inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed. In the fateful, epoch-announcing words of Nietzsche's Zarathustra: "Dead are all the gods." One knows the tale, it has been told a thousand ways. It is the hero-cycle of the modern age, the wonder-story of mankind’s coming to maturity. The spell of the past, the bondage of tradition, was shattered with sure and mighty strokes. The dream-web of myth fell away; the mind opened to full waking consciousness; and modern man emerged from ancient ignorance, like a butterfly from its cocoon, or like the sun at dawn from the womb of mother night.

It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods once supported. The social unit is not a carrier of religious content, but an economic-political organization. Its ideals are not those of the hieratic pantomime making visible on earth the forms of heaven, but more of the secular state, in hard and unremitting competition for material supremacy and resources. Isolated societies no longer exist except as areas to be exploited. And within the progressive societies themselves, every last vestige of the ancient human heritage of ritual, morality, and art is in full decay.

The problem of mankind today, therefore, is precisely the opposite to that of men in the comparatively stable periods of those great coordinating mythologies which now are known as lies. Then all meaning was in the group, in the great anonymous forms; today no meaning is in the group – all is in the individual. But there the meaning is absolutely unconscious. One does not know toward what one moves. One does not know by what one is propelled. The lines of communication between the conscious and the unconscious zones of the human psyche have all been cut, and we have been split in two.

The hero-deed to be wrought is not today what it was in the century of Galileo. Where then there was darkness, now there is light. But also, where light was there now is darkness. The modern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the coordinated soul.

Obviously, this work cannot be wrought by turning back, or away, from what has been accomplished by the modern revolution; for the problem is nothing if not that of rendering the modern world spiritually significant – or rather, phrasing the same principle the other way round - nothing if not that of making it possible for men and women to come to full human maturity through the conditions of contemporary life. Indeed, these conditions themselves are what have rendered the ancient formulae ineffective, misleading, and even pernicious. The community today is the planet, not the bounded nation; hence the patterns of projected aggression which formerly served to coordinate the in-group, now can only break it into factions. The national idea, with the flag as totem, is today an aggrandizer of the nursery ego, not the annihilator of an infantile situation. And the numerous saints of this anti-cult – namely the patriots whose ubiquitous photographs, draped with flags, serve as official icons – are precisely the local threshold guardians whom it is the first problem of the hero to surpass.

Nor can the great world religions, as at present understood, meet the requirement. For they have become associated with the causes of the factions, as instruments of propaganda and self-congratulation. The universal triumph of the secular state has thrown all religious organizations into such a definitely secondary, and finally ineffectual, position that religious pantomime is hardly more today than a sanctimonious exercise for Sunday morning, whereas business ethics and patriotism stand for the remainder of the week. Such a monkey-holiness is not what the functioning world requires; rather, a transmutation of the whole social order is necessary, that through every detail and act of secular life the vitalizing image of the universal god-man who is actually in all of us may be somehow made known to consciousness.

And this is not a work that consciousness itself can achieve. The whole thing is being worked out at another level, through what is bound to be a long and very frightening process, not only in the depths of every living psyche in the modern world, but also on those titanic battlefields into which the whole planet has lately been converted.

But there is one thing we may know, namely, that as the new symbols become visible, they will not be identical in the various parts of the globe; the circumstances of local life, race, and tradition must all be compounded in the effective forms. Therefore, it is necessary for men to understand, and be able to see, that through various symbols the same redemption is revealed. “Truth is one”, we read in the Vedas; “the sages call it by many names.” A single song is being inflected through all the colorations of the human choir. General propaganda for one or another of the local solutions, therefore, is superfluous – or much rather, a menace. The way to become human is to learn to recognize the lineaments of God in all of the wonderful modulations of the face of man.

With this we come to the final hint of what the specific orientation of the modern hero-task must be, and discover the real cause for the disintegration of all of our inherited religious formulae. The center of gravity, that is to say, of the realm of mystery and danger has definitely shifted. For the primitive hunting peoples of those remotest human millenniums when the sabertooth tiger, the mammoth, and the lesser presences of the animal kingdom were the primary manifestations of what was alien – the source at once of danger, and of sustenance for those primitive peoples – the great human problem was to become linked psychologically to the task of sharing the wilderness with these beings. An unconscious identification took place, and this was finally rendered conscious in the half-human, half-animal figures of the mythological totem-ancestors. The animals become the tutors of humanity. Through acts of literal imitation – such as appear today only on the children’s playground (or in the madhouse) – an effective annihilation of the human ego was accomplished and society achieved a cohesive organization. Similarly, for the tribes supporting themselves on plant-food; the life-rituals of planting and reaping were identified with those of human procreation, birth, and progress to maturity. Both the plant and the animal worlds, however, were in the end brought under social control. Whereupon the great field of instructive wonder shifted – to the skies – and mankind enacted the great pantomime of the sacred moon-king, the sacred sunking, the hieratic, planetary state, and the symbolic festivals of the world-regulating spheres.

Today all of these mysteries have lost their force; their symbols are no longer of interest to our psyche. The notion of a cosmic law, which all existence serves and to which man himself must bend, has long since passed through the preliminary mystical stages represented in the old astrology, and is now simply accepted in mechanical terms as a matter of course. The descent of the Occidental sciences from the heavens to the earth (From 17th century astronomy to 19th century biology), and their concentration today, at last, on humankind itself (in 20th century anthropology and psychology), mark the path of a prodigious transfer of the focal point of human wonder. Not the animal world, not the plant world, not the miracle of the spheres, but man himself is now the crucial mystery. Man is that alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms, through whom the ego is to be crucified and resurrected, and in whose image society is to be reformed. Humankind, understood however not as “I” but as “thou”: for the ideals and temporal institutions of no tribe, race, continent, social class, or century can be the measure of the inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful divine existence that is the life in all of us.

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence, with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal – carries the cross of the redeemer – not in the bright memories of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair. It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. “Live”, Nietzche tells us, “as though the day were here”.

#joseph campbell

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hkparkandplay · 6 years

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on how to write an essay. Ideas and Tips

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jflashandclash · 7 years

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Attrition of Peace

Twenty-Two: Alabaster

A Prophecy’s Surprise Encounter… or Two

Warning: Sexually suggestive commentary and themes. Less weasels than one might expect, though that is completely unrelated to the former comment. Regardless, enjoy!

The next fifteen minutes progressed exactly as Alabaster expected they would. He’d locked his room up, resigned from restructuring his spell book for the night, and shut the light off. That’s when he heard the jiggling of his doorknob.

Alabaster tried to ignore it and the ache of nostalgia he felt. He didn’t have the time or energy to renew the flame incantation that he’d used earlier. Although he’d positioned his sheets precisely as he preferred them, he shoved them and the comforter down in irritation.

He’d guess it would take about three seconds before—

Someone yipped as the secondary hex on the lock shocked the picklock user.

Despite the ward, the door opened. There was no noise between that, a breath of darkness, and the weight at the edge of Alabaster’s mattress shifting down.

Alabaster thought about rolling away or summoning Claymore, but he couldn’t bring himself to do either. He’d thought… he’d thought Ajax was dead for too long to kick him out immediately. And… Alabaster thought he, himself, would be isolated and exiled from his family forever, that he’d never have an assistant helping him craft his spells, that he’d be chased by his demonic sister until she wore him down with exhaustion and taunts, that he’d die purposeless with the guilt of his siblings’ deaths shattering his sleep every night.

Pax’s lips brushed Alabaster’s ear as he whispered, “I had this horrible dream about a boar with a bowtie. Can I examine your PJs so I know not everyone has such boorish taste in night gear?”

Alabaster wanted to punch him in the face.

“You actually had a dream about a boar with a bowtie?” Alabaster asked, staring at the blackness of the ceiling. Neither of them wanted to talk about their shared nightmare. What would make Axel murder his brother? In Alabaster’s dream, assuming all their dreams were the same, Pax didn’t have a real chance to fight back, not that Pax would ever fight against Axel.

The thought threatened a stronger sense of dread. Alabaster had just gotten these two back.

Pax hesitated. “Yea. That was the one with Phobetor. He and Atë have interrupted my nightmares a few times. She… she gave me two more dreams tonight. Aphrodite occasionally kidnaps Axel on little forced dates to get him out of his nightmares, though I’m not sure how that’ll work with the whole ‘Reyna’ thing now.”

Alabaster felt like Pax had just said Percy Jackson was the best hero alive. He tensed, tightening his fingers into fists, making him swallow any sentimentality. “So, Axel really is sinking to the level of Roman scum for that witch.”

“A: irony alert on hearing you call someone a witch, B: don’t discourage Axel. We need him to breed his awesome genes with someone, and C: I’m pretty sure they broke up after he set her room on fire. Though you never know, they flirt weird.” Although Alabaster couldn’t see him, he could envision Pax shrugging. “How’s that saying go? Love always finds away even if it wrecks people emotionally and physically.”

“You would know,” Alabaster snapped. He bit his lip. That was harsher than he meant it to be.

Pax paused. Then he slipped into the sheets beside him, nuzzling into Alabaster’s neck, tickling his skin. “I know a lot more about love than I did last time you read a book to me in bed.”

Alabaster did not like his tone. “I did that because you were an illiterate child,” he said.

“I’m still illiterate. Though… I’m not a little kid anymore.”

He wasn’t. This had been less complicated when Pax’s emotions could be chalked up to a childish infatuation. And when Alabaster had a solid reason for rejecting him. Other than, “I’m straight,” since Pax had crunched that away with a bite from one of his mother’s morph apples. “I kinda wish you were,” Alabaster muttered, wondering how long before Pax crossed the line. He gave him 5 seconds.

Pax laughed and slipped a hand around Alabaster’s waistline, gracing the strap of his pajama pants. None of this was helping Alabaster relax. “Perv…” Pax whispered, “I missed you. At least I’m old enough now that it isn’t creepy when I hit on you.”

“It’ll always be creepy. You’re not guilting me into anything.”

“Not even cuddling?”

“No,” Alabaster said. He focused on the calculated calm Claymore always retained in uncomfortable situations. “It’ll set the precedent for future interactions, making you think I’ll just forgive you for everything because of external circumstances. I’m still mad at you. We’ll talk about everything in the morning, with everyone around.”

Pax sniffled. Alabaster was about to snarl at him not to fake crying, when Pax whispered, “I don’t want what happened with Dad and Uncle Frasco to happen to Axel and me.”

Alabaster wanted to curse. He remembered how scared Pax had been when he first got to Camp Othrys, and how suspicious Axel had been of everyone. They’d just seen their father beat their uncle and aunt out of existence.

For an instant, Alabaster wanted to pull Pax into a hug. They’d both suffered a lot. Most likely, neither of them had properly mourned the deaths from the war. From their story, the Pax boys had lost the rest of their siblings, Hiro and Lapis, to Eris. Pax’s family was crumbling.

Then Alabaster remembered everything with Lamia and how Pax joined Camp Half-Blood.

He pinched Pax’s hand and removed it from his waistline. Alabaster sat up, not caring how Pax hiccupped and said, “W-witch Boy, I’m not gonna pull anything. I just needed to talk—”

“We’ll talk tomorrow. Go to sleep,” Alabaster commanded. He got out of bed and snatched his spell book off the nightstand. Ignoring Pax as best he could, Alabaster made his way around the dark room, shutting the door behind him.

He sighed in relief when he didn’t hear Pax shuffling in the room to get up.

There was no way he could sleep now. He needed fresh air and something to make his head stop spinning.

Despite the cold, he made his way downstairs, past the helmets hung in the living room, past Hanapu, Xbalanque, and Nietzsche curled by the roaring fireplace, to the back door.

The air was freezing when he stepped outside.

He was surprised to see someone on the back porch. Kally sat on the top step, hunched over a notebook. She stared up at the cloudless sky, at the brilliant moon, like she was waiting for Artemis to high five her.[1]

Before everyone settled down, he’d offered them a change of clothing to sleep in. He frowned to see Kally wore his oversized Mist sweater that one of his siblings made him. He knew it read Hecate’s Babes on the front and Witches and Bitches on the back. He couldn’t remember which siblings gave it to him, but did remember them swearing that Pax had nothing to do with the construction.

Had she not glanced back at him, he would have headed back inside. When she startled, he exhaled, watching his breath steam out in the silvery light. “Did Ajax try to break into your room?” he guessed.

She hesitated. “Um… I’m not sure… well… yes, he did. Someone tried to come in and stepped on Euna. You really don’t want to step on Euna when she’s sleeping.”

Alabaster wondered if Pax was limping when he crept into his room. Alabaster stepped closer to Kally, wishing he’d put on some shoes instead of just socks. From what he could see, Kally’s feet and legs were wrapped in one of the Triple A sleeping bags: his.[2]

Something about seeing Kally in his sweater and sleeping bag made Alabaster pause. She wore glasses, the ones he saw inside her messenger bag when he went through everything.

“Do you mind if I…” he gestured beside her.

Kally lifted up the edge of the sleeping bag to offer the material where Morpheus signed his name. Alabaster had only meant to sit down, not to share the sleeping bag, but the mischievous, twinkling grin on the fabric reminded him of how warm it was.

Alabaster sat beside Kally, wrapping the other half of the sleep bag around his feet.

She blushed and stared down at her notebook. “You looked cold.”

“Thank you,” he said. Then Alabaster realized he’d done something horrifying: he’d sat within a foot of someone he didn’t know without any conversation prompt beyond sharing a kinda-sorta-not-ex-boyfriend. At Camp Othrys, he was always working on some project that he could talk about, but he doubted she’d know anything about how concealment incantations cast during REM sleep might affect lucid dreaming.

The moonlight made her skin glow in contrast with her hair. She must have let it down to sleep. Alabaster hadn’t noticed how long it was when it was in that messy bun. She still reminded him of something.

He hated the idea of talking about Pax, but he wanted to know. “What did Ajax do to you?” he asked, assuming she wouldn’t need any clarification if she really was one of Pax’s not-relationships.

Kally inhaled shakily. She stared at the grass of the backyard. The house backed up to the woods—not as nice a fortification as his last house on a cliff, but an acceptable replacement.

“He messed around with Praetor Zhang to steal a ‘mysteriously important stick.’ He twists the truth a lot. He and Axel threatened me when I first found out about Backbiter… and I—I think he and Axel only saved me originally to get into Camp Half-Blood.”[3]

The last part was quieter than the rest. Her knuckles were white as they gripped her notebook. “You?” she asked.

Alabaster hadn’t talked to anyone about it. That would have meant admitting to relations with Ajax. Despite that, he swallowed. “He cheated on me with my sister, Lamia, a monster. He claimed he was trying to ‘make things better’ in proper Pax fashion.”

“Oh…” she whispered.

“Yea… that and his hyper invasive, disrespectful attitude. At least he’s calmed down now.”

Kally smiled. “Calmed down? You’ve gotta be joking. What—did he send Baller to spy on you?”

“He doesn’t for you?”

Alabaster hadn’t meant it as a joke. He was startled when she laughed.

They quieted down and Kally seemed to relax while staring at the sky.

He glanced at her journal, feeling uneasy. He wondered if she realized where the note came from. “I’m sorry I read what you wrote,” he said.

Normally, privacy was all-important to Alabaster. He didn’t know who was traveling with Axel and Ajax—curiosity had consumed him. The Pax brothers weren’t the type to keep logs. When the van showed up, he would have accepted any form of information about them, or anyone who lived through the Battle of Manhattan or Slaughter of Mount Othrys.

“It’s…” she hesitated. Her shoulder slumped.

“I’m sorry you and your mother’s first interaction with the Olympians was so thuggish,” he said, struggling to contain his bitterness. Axel and Pax had always been better at easing ignorant demigods into the truth. All Alabaster wanted to say was, at least you won’t be deluded later.

“You mentioned we were Olympic sympathizers… and you made it sound like you wanted Camp Half-Blood destroyed…” Kally paused. She looked nervous. She exhaled and made eye contact with him, her face grave. “Wanting to save Camp Half-Blood has nothing to do with the Olympians. Even if Apollo did… rape my mother and even if I am the product of a mistake, I’d still want to stop Eris from whatever she’s doing.”

“Why?” Alabaster asked in bewilderment. That sounded self-defeating and stupid.

“Because, my personal anger is pointless here,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Even if Axel and Pax kidnapped Rachel as a set up to gain the camp’s trust, and even if she’s Apollo’s favorite and I hate that narcissistic womanizer and—uh—mananizer, I’d still save Rachel from Python again. She’s still a person exterior to all of that, just like the campers are still people.”

“Those ‘people’ you’re referring to are Olympia’s soldiers. You need to kill off soldiers to immobilize a leader,” he snapped.

Kally flinched but kept her lips in a firm line. “We’re not talking about that war here. We’re talking about my half-siblings, and your half-siblings dying because the Goddess of Strife is bored.”

Alabaster tensed. He wanted to slap Kally.

“Besides…” she sighed and pulled her knees up to lean her chin on them. “Maybe, after we save Camp Half-Blood, we can make another camp. Not one for war, just somewhere people can go that don’t belong in Camp Jupiter or Camp Half-Blood. Axel and Pax can’t go back. I… I don’t think I’ll want to go back. And I don’t think Euna will want to.”

Alabaster glared. “The other two camps would attack us and wipe us out.” He didn’t mean to say us. The word slipped out. He’d thought about restarting a camp, but Zeus would never allow that.

“Maybe…” She frowned. “But, maybe not if we have someone like Merry or Nico to act as a convoy between camps. Then we could have visitations for games or something. Didn’t they do something like that in Ancient Greece? Even cities that didn’t like each other could get along for festivals and stuff?”

“They’re called poleis,” Alabaster corrected. He stared off to collect his thoughts. He and Claymore wanted to bring the children of Hecate to peace. Then he lost his position as their leader and he found Jack. If they had someone on neutral terms with the Greeks and Romans, could they start a new home for more than just the three of them?

He shook his head. It was too late for them to having this conversation. He was too rattled about Axel and Pax being alive, about finding out his nightmares were coming true, and that Pax and Axel were having the same final nightmare he was. Plus, the way she’d pulled her knees up let cold air into the sleeping bag.

“Can I try something on you?” Kally asked suddenly.

When he glanced back at her, she blushed. “Oh that sounded—um—it’s nothing ba—it’s a healing technique Merry and Will were experimenting with that’s supposed to help Pollux with his bro—I don’t even know if it’ll work…” she trailed off and looked away.

A daughter of Dionysus and a child of Apollo teaming up for a healing technique? The idea was interesting. Alabaster’s mind spun at the possibilities for psychology. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he didn’t need help. Both he and Jack had been seeing Dr. Cenote under Claymore’s orders. Without Merry around though, could Kally do anything?

“Can you sing quietly enough for Jack not to hear you?” he asked.

She nodded, though still wouldn’t look at him. “He gives me the creeps.”

“He should. He doesn’t get along well with his siblings,” Alabaster said absently. If they could make song magic heal psychological wounds, maybe it could help Jack. He narrowed his eyes. “So you know, children of Hecate can sense when people try to alter memories or erase them. And my defensive runes will set off if you try to give me an illness.”

Kally stared at him. “Are you this suspicious of everyone? I don’t even know how to do what you said.”

“I—I’m sorry. It’s been a long day,” Alabaster admitted. Jack’s paranoia must have been wearing off on him. He’d forgotten she was on the run from Camp Jupiter as well, and a friend of Axel and Pax.

Kally hesitated. “Um…” she said and angled herself towards him, putting her legs back on the top step. Her notebook started to slip down the sleeping bag. Alabaster caught it before the journal could tumble off the porch. When he glanced back up, Kally hovered her hands an inch away from either side of his temple, like she was about to smack him cartoon style with invisible cymbals.

Before she sang, Alabaster thought about how impractical it would be to kill someone like that, unless you were Hercules.

“You’re a mess, tangled with your confidence.

You think you haven’t sinned.

Well, you’re unstoppable,

Your walls are impassible.”

Her voice was lovely, as would be expected from a daughter of Apollo. But he couldn’t focus on that. As the notes whispered out, Alabaster felt his eyes flutter closed.

The Battle of Manhattan played in fast forward—the soldiers that were washed away when Percy collapsed the Williamsburg Bridge, the soldiers engulfed in flames when they had to split ranks around the reservoirs, Hades and Nico’s indestructible undead army cutting off any retreat for a full platoon, the mindless skeletons massacring monsters and demigods alike, with no regard to those who dropped their weapons in surrender, because the skeletons couldn’t tell the difference and didn’t care.

The half-charred, half-drowned, and diced siblings he couldn’t heal, because Ethan Nakamura convinced Kronos to leave their best healer, Jack, at Mount Othrys, saying the Silver Tongued Snake, the Leonis Caput, and the Scourge of Rome were in conspiracy with the spy and were allowing Luke too much control over his body.

The bitterness and anger threatened to overtake Alabaster. Did Percy even know how many died in that war? Did he even care? And after all his conniving, Ethan Nakamura himself betrayed them?

But something gave. A tightness in Alabaster’s stomach eased. The deaths were too numerous to conceptualize, and he remembered the smiles on each of his siblings faces’ during the games and concerts Ajax and Jack organized to keep up the army’s moral. He remembered the time Matthias painted Kronos’s chariot pink, and the way Krios and Prometheus tried not to crack up in front of Kronos’s face. The way Mercedes would laugh when Axel dragged her into one of their festival dances. How their tiny toddler Charlie would climb giants as a jungle gym.

When Alabaster gained awareness of his current surroundings, he could feel his chest heaving. He could smell eucalyptus and mint as he inhaled sharply through sobs. Alabaster thought crying was useless, despite everything Dr. Cenote said, and was furious this was the second time in a day he’d let himself go.

Kally’s voice was trembling as she sang:

“I know you lay in bed,

Contemplating all of your dead,

And you look at what you’ve done,

Please, don’t forget the sun.”[4]

Her forehead had pressed into his. There were tears streaking down her cheeks. Had she seen all of it too? Could a child of Apollo do that? He knew they could heal any physical damage but… was she trying to accelerate healing his mind?

Alabaster pressed a hand up to her lips, so she’d stop singing. He wanted to tell her to stop, but his mouth was already producing words he hadn’t registered until that moment, “—why? It all feels so pointless. Everything we worked for—everything—” He caught himself. He didn’t know this girl. There was no reason for him to be babbling this off to her. Normally, he wouldn’t even talk to Claymore.

Slower, without the hiccup of sobs, he whispered, “Th—thank you. Th—that was a good experiment. But that’s—this is too much, right now—”

Kally leaned forward and hugged him.

Alabaster let her. After a moment, he hugged her back. They sat on the porch, Kally trembling with her own tears. She had seen. He was glad she didn’t say she understood or tried to give a stupid apology. Just the warmth of a touch.

Although Alabaster felt dismal, something was… calmer. A tension eased in his chest. He focused on the chill of the air and the way the sleeping bag winked.

Kally withdrew her face from his shoulder and disentangled her hands to wipe away her tears. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get your sweater gross with tears and snot—”

Alabaster tried not to give a half-hearted laugh, but only managed to choke it off. That’s what she was apologizing for. He should have apologized for being so suspicious earlier.

When she took off her glasses to wipe her eyes—

“A Livemont Art Nouveau poster,” Alabaster realized, “That’s what you remind me of.”

“Excuse me?” Kally asked. The comment surprised her out of the tears.

Alabaster shrugged, trying to calm his trembles. He picked her notebook off the ground—it fell when he hugged her. “When my father was studying at Columbia, they made him take an art appreciation class during his undergraduate. As much as he hated it, Mother said that’s when he started hanging Livemont posters of beautiful women all over the house. He even commissioned one of her...”

The lack of sleep and memory overload must have been getting to Alabaster. He didn’t understand why Kally was blushing in the silvery lighting until his mind sluggishly made the connection by transitive property of equality: Kally=Art Nouveau poster. Art Nouveau poster=beautiful women. Therefore, Kally=beautiful.

“I didn’t mean to say—” Alabaster cut himself off from ending that train wreck of a sentence. He had meant it, it was just… “I’m sorry. I’ve exclusively been talking to Jack and Claymore recently. I’m not used to having other company.”

The warmth of her knee pressed into his became agonizingly prominent.

Kally pushed her glasses back onto her face. “Does Jack look like an Art Nouveau poster?” she asked, sniffling the remains of her tears.

“Gods no,” Alabaster hissed.

She laughed softly. “We just have soccer trophies, family portraits and pictures of Jesus on our walls. I don’t think we have artwork to compare people to.”

An actual home with a full family. Alabaster frowned. He hadn’t had one of those since his father died. These houses only ever lasted a few years before something went wrong, though Camp Othrys had come close to being a solid home.

He wondered, now, if Kally thought about Apollo attacking her mother every time she thought about home. From the hesitation in her voice, he thought she might.

Maybe he could repay some of her attempted kindness.

“Do you miss any of it?” he asked.

“Yea… a lot. Whenever I was having trouble in chemistry or other stuff at school, my older brother, John, would sit on the back porch with me—kinda like this—and talk about it,” she said the last part in a voice too light. Kally didn’t want him recognizing her worry.

“Problems with chemistry?” Alabaster asked in confusion. “It’s a lot like the formulas I need for potions and spells. If we see each other after tomorrow, I can give you some pointers. Now, describe your backyard,” he said.

As she gave the details, Alabaster felt a tug in his gut. He reached out to the Mist lingering around them and twisted it to mimic her memory. Alabaster knew her mind would need to fill in the holes he couldn’t create, but that’s what everyone always did—they liked to see what they wanted to see, regardless of reality.

But as he crafted, something shifted behind them. Kally and Alabaster jumped, glancing at the door to the back porch. No one was there.

Alabaster felt uneasy. Neither of them was armed for a sudden attack. He’d have to withdraw his Mist sword and he thought Kally’s weapon was in her bag, inside. Though, the magical barrier around his house should guard them from sight as long as no one stepped out.

They should be alright.

He exhaled and turned back to Kally. “Continue,” he requested, “But close your eyes this time. When you open them, imagine you’re in your backyard. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

Thanks for reading guys! As per usual, I hope you enjoyed. Also, good luck to everyone with their first few weeks of school!

Footnotes:

[1] Betanote from Mel, a paragraph before this: “I’m going to be so low key mad if he meets Kally outside because I still ship Pax x Kally and also Pax X Alabaster, but also low key shipping Kally x Alabaster and cheering the meet. The struggle for a multishipper is becoming real.”

[2] Another Beta Note from Mel: “OH MY FUCKING GOSH. JACK. HAVE YOU BEEN SECRETLY SHIPPING THESE TWO SINCE THE BEGINNING??? IMMA BE SO MAD AT YOU BUT ALSO HIGH FIVING YOU DAMNIT.”

[3] Beta Note from Mel: “WE’RE GOING TO LEAVE OUT THE NICO THING” Note from Jack: Yep. If I were her, I would absolutely never want to explain that one to someone I might like.

[4] These are altered lyrics from Don’t you Dare forget the Sun by Get Scared.

#The Attrition of Peace #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #Heroes of Olympus #fanfiction #PJO #HOO #Traitors of Olympus #Pax #Alabaster #Kally

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