#Let Prometheus Beware

[infinitegalahad]

AMERICAN PROMETHEUS AND HIS ATHENA - EPILOGUE

Pairing: J. Robert Oppenheimer x Female Indentifying! Reader Summary: Looking up at the chalkboard, you see him. He’s Dr.Oppenheimer, but to you, he’ll always be Robert or Oppie. Word Count: 2.7k Warnings: Warnings are very spoiler, so well...be warned! Cancer, death, alcoholism, mentions of suicide (not by main characters and is mentioned once at the end), and overall a very bittersweet ending. Beware! This is in fact sad! Notes: for real, the end? it's here. not going to lie, i did get a little emotional writing this. the epilogue is loosely inspired by american prometheus, which made me cry in it's epilogue, just as it is doing to me now. this story has been such a rollercoaster, and I've had an amazing time writing it. thank you all for the amazing support, you guys really rock. I'm starting school soo and I'll be busy, but I'll get back into writing once i find my routinr. i hope you can enjoy this conclusion, and as a warning, apologies in advance! I love you all very much, and thank you so much for all the love! Taglist: @forgottenpeakywriter @queenshelby @chloriine36 @kodzuvk @amanda08319 Taglist | Masterlist

Marriage Certificate

Jurisdiction: Charlottesville, Virginia

Certificate Number: MCS123456789

Date of Marriage: June 1st, 1955

This is to certify that on the aforementioned date, in accordance with the laws of the City of Charlottesville, the following individuals entered into marriage:

Groom:

Name: Julius Robert Oppenheimer

Date of Birth: April 22, 1904

Residence: 91 Olden Lane

Bride:

Name: (Y/n) (Y/m/n) (Y/l/n)

Date of Birth: (Y/dob), 1921

Residence: 105 Ivy Dr

Marriage Ceremony:

Date and Time: June 1st, 1955, at 5:00 PM

Officiant: Dr. Allen Hill

Title: Authorized Officiant

Witnesses:

Name: (y/b/n) (y/b/m/n) (y/l/n)

   Address: 10 Pennsylvania Avenue

Name: Hatomi Haruka Yamamoto-Bell

   Address: 600 Dittmar Oaks  

Under penalty of perjury, the undersigned parties declare that the information provided above is true and correct to the best of their knowledge.

Signatures:

_____________________________      _____________________________

Julius Robert Oppenheimer                (Y/n) (Y/m/n) (Y/L/N)

Groom's Signature                                     Bride's Signature

_____________________________

Dr. Allen Hill

Officiant's Signature

_____________________________      _____________________________

 (y/b/n) (y/b/m/n) (y/l/n)                              Hitomi Haruka Yamamoto-Bell

Witness's Signature                                Witness's Signature

Seal: City of Charlottesville, Virginia

–

You and Robert married the same day of your graduation at UVA on June 1st, 1955. You let your parents know about your marriage and plans to move to Princeton. It took them time to process that you married your Physics Professor, but they accepted it once they met Robert and were impressed. They also enjoyed that you were only a train ride away from the city of Princeton. 

Robert kept to his promise of no more games. He stayed loyal and steadfast and was honest and loving to you. He doted on and adored you, showering you with both affection and gifts. You had kept all of the gifts he had given you at Berkeley, occasionally using the new perfumes if you couldn’t look for all of the new floral scents Robert had bought for you. Despite you both being busy with your jobs at Princeton and the local private high school, you two found time for each other. 

Your time together reminded you of those Friday study sessions at Berkeley, where you were a young girl and Robert was your professor who had been struck by “one of the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen”. Robert had helped you become a woman, and despite how many times you and he tried to move, you always fell back to each other. 

With your newfound marriage, you and Robert could be in public together. Of course, there was scrutiny and controversy of the age gap and both of your involvement with the Manhattan project. Still, Robert could hold your hand, and you could lean on his shoulder. Sure, there stares, but those could easily be ignored. At the many lavish dinners you attend, Robert would put his hand on your hip and whisper into your ear nothing but sweet yet dirty thoughts. You’d look at all of the judgemental onlookers, and simply hugged Robert, brightly smiling at them. 

It was one of those nights. It was like your Friday nights, but extended; talking about the day full of academics, making a delicious dinner, cleaning up said dinner, fucking either by the fire or on the bed, and lazing in each other’s embrace. 

You had your back curled to Robert as he held you. That one night, he let go for a short second, before you felt a cold metal on your neck and the sound of a clink of a clasp. 

“I saw this, and it made me think of you and the Bhagavad Gita,” Robert explained as he moved your hair back forward, “Do you like it?”

The necklace was a short gold chain with a pendant of the seven Chakras. You run your hand hovering the expensive gold and gems inside, smiling to yourself. You turn to Robert and place a peck on his lips, admiring the beautiful necklace. 

“It’s beautiful, Robert. Thank you, thank you, thank you-”

You repeat this sentence over and over as you wrap your arms around his neck, throwing him down to the bed and decorating his body with kisses. Ultimately, the two of you end of lovemaking once again, and remind yourselves to rewash the sheets. Again. 

The next week, you are forced to rewash your sheets as Robert, per usual, fucks you after the University of Washington last minute declines his offer to speak at their commencement ceremony. Like old times, you claw your nails down his neck and scream his name until he finishes inside of you, making your belly feel all warm. You smile and hope, for once, there’s some good news for the future continuation of you and Robert.

It takes many tries, but on January 5th of 1958, you give birth to Thaïs Jackie Oppenheimer. She’s a healthy baby girl. You nearly died giving birth, but it was worth seeing her curl into Robert’s arms as if it were a natural instinct. Even as a child, she’s got the blue Oppenheimer’s eyes and your fiery personality. After Thaïs birth, you remained in the ICU for a while. In a window outside of your room, you would see Robert in the distance as he overlooked Thaïs bed, talking to her and promising her nothing but the world. In your recovering pain, it made you cry. 

Eventually, you returned back to work as a school-teacher, splitting your time with the au-pair while taking care of Thaïs. She’s a very vocal child, and like Robert, highly precocious. By the time she’s six, she can name every rock and flower in your garden by their scientific name. Not to mention, she can hold more basic conversation in Latin and Greek than you, thanks to Robert and his bedtime stories of Ancient Latin and Greek myths. 

Dinner is a family affair. As the three of you all cook, you find it hard to keep up with Robert and Thaïs’s long conversation that switches between Greek and Latin, ranging from what to next in meal prep, the rocks Thaïs’s collected at school today, and what toy Robert will buy her next if she behaves. You can follow the basics, but you smile and keep yourself, cooing and kissing your newborn baby boy, Elias. 

Each night, Robert worships you like you’re a goddess. As you read his book recommendations, he decorates your body with kisses and calls you his “temple”, thanking you for being the Athena to his Prometheus and giving him life. You could not be happier. 

But bliss is temporal, not everlasting. 

First, it’s the apparent hoarseness. Robert thinks it’s cold, but that’s until he’s coughing up blood two weeks later. Also, with the neck and ear pain, you grow worried, and unfortunately, your worst fears come to light. Robert’s heavy smoking did not help his case, and in late 1965, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. 

You had quit smoking a long time ago, long before the birth of your children, but Robert continued. Since you had met him, he had always been a smoker no matter what, falling from a cigarette pack to multiple pipes a day. The cancer is infectious and both of you know it’s in fact very bad, and it’s only going to continue to get worse but not fast, but slowly and painfully. Robert has a persistent cough in which he tries to hide from you and the children but fails to. His skin becomes as gray as his thinning hair, and he’s losing weight faster than you can count. 

After his diagnosis, there are many sleepless nights between you and Robert. You are both worried about each other in your own ways. One particular night, Robert sits on the edge of the bed. The bones in his back are visible, and you feel like you can see the bones in his back. He’s handsome, but so terribly sick all at once. Crawling from under the sheets, you quietly crawl toward him and hug him from behind. You sob into his shoulders, and he grabs your arms.

“Stop worrying,” He reassures you as he kisses your shaking palm, “You’ll be okay, love.”

“Robert, stop. It’s not about me. It’s about you,” You sob uncontrollably, “I’m scared, Robert. Not for you, for me.”

That night, Robert holds you and tells you that things will improve. He doesn’t promise it, though. 

In late 1966, Robert underwent surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, which were all unsuccessful. 

Robert has done so much for you and protected you from so much. Now, it’s your turn to do so. 

When he breaks the news that, realistically, he’s going to die within the next six months, you and his plan to bring Thaïs and Elias to Saint John. 

Robert can’t do the things he used to do. Robert is still as handsome as he always has been, but he’s more frail and sickly looking, a shell of the man he once was. The only thing he can do is spend time with you and his children, valuing his time, which is running out faster than he can count. He builds wooden lodges with houses with Elias, collects seashells and rocks with Elias, and lies in your lap as you read him all of the old books and Greek myths the two of you used to read together. 

Robert tries to make you a Martini one night, but he struggles in the kitchen. A glass drops and you run in, to find both of his hands shaking. He confesses to you that he can’t keep his hands still, and he can’t stop apologizing after. You smile, holding back tears, telling him it’s okay. 

You, Robert, and your family soon return to Princeton. At that time, you call and invite people who are close to you, Robert, so he gets the chance to say goodbye. Kitty and his children come by. They're as devastated as you are, but they thank you. Kitty, for the first time, cries in front of you, and says you have a beautiful family; thanking you for taking care of Robert. You break down in front of her, and Kitty hugs you. 

It’s clear that Robert’s in his final days of life. He can’t remember or speak coherently as he used to. Your children are very aware of this, and you prepare them for the worst that is to come. 

It’s nighttime, and Robert’s in bed, saying he’s going to read a book that you’d enjoyed. You make him peppermint tea downstairs to help him fall asleep. As you make the tea, you can hear Robert’s horse voice as he talks to their children. If you bend your ear further, you can hear his voice shaking as he tells his children that he loves them more than anything, and to treat you, their mother, with nothing but love and respect. 

You go upstairs with the tea you’ve prepared for Robert. He thanks you and smiles as if he’s seen you for the first time, refusing to let go of your hand with a weak grasp. As you change quickly into your pajamas, you jump into bed with him and hold him carefully, not wanting to hurt him. 

“Sweetling?” He says your term of endearment in a sing-song voice. You look up, fully attentive. 

“Yes, Oppie?”

With a trembling hand, he holds out an aged navy book with gold print; Hades and Persephone. 

“Can you please read this to me?”

Once you grasp the book, tears begin to form in your eyes. As much as you want to cry, you hold your tears back and nod your head. Leaning against Robert, you open to the book’s preface and see all of his annotations inside. Some of them are about you. You’re about to start reading when Robert, in his classic fashion, grabs your hand and holds it to his chest. 

“Y/n?”

You don’t look over as you close your eyes. 

“Yes, Robert?”

“I love you, y/n”

A tear falls down your cheek, but you don’t let Robert see it. 

“I love you too, Robert.”

That night, Robert falls into a coma. Three days later, he dies. He was sixty-two years old. 

Once you have the funeral and dump his ashes into the US Virgin Islands water, you and your two children move down to Williamsburg, Virginia. You don’t want to be in Princeton anymore, as if it reminds you of Robert. Your family recommends you move back to New York City or Charlottesville, but you refuse; they all have Robert’s name written on it. 

In Williamsburg, you grieve heavily at losing your first and only love, but motherhood keeps you busy. You get a job as an assistant professor at William and Mary, and just as you usually do, you cope with the pain until it becomes numb, losing yourself in your work and children. It’s what Robert would want for you. 

Each night, after you make dinner by yourself, you go to your room and drink, reading all of Robert’s books from his reading list that shaped his mind. 

One night, you’re drunk and sad. You’re primarily drunk at night, hazy and unaware, but some nights you are sad, not always. A ten-year-old Elias walks into your room, asking why you are crying so much. 

For a second, you think he’s Robert with his big blue eyes and puff of dark hair, which makes you sob even more. 

After Robet’s death, Kitty writes to you frequently to ensure you’re doing okay alone with the kids. You write back, and in her final years, the two of you build a friendship until her untimely death in 1972. You speak at her funeral and say in your speech that you hope she’s reunited with Robert. 

Thaïs and Elias both grow into fine adults. Thaïs goes to study chemistry and history at Davis while Elias studies nuclear physics at Princeton, which you know would make Robert proud of both of them. 

Toni, Oppenheimer’s daughter from Kitty’s marriage, committed suicide in 1977. Robert gave her the ranch in New Mexico. Peter refuses to take it, so it’s given to Thaïs. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, you meet Thaïs and Elias there to celebrate the holidays, taking them horseback riding to explore the beauty of New Mexico that Robert once showed to you. 

Thaïs and Elias grow old, and have their own lifes. They stop visiting for holidays, as they are preoccupied with their own families and affairs. You never get angry at either of them for doing so; it’s human nature. 

And so you retreat back to the island of St.John, where your beach house is. It holds both fond and sad memories of Robert, especially within his last years. It’s probably not the best idea if you are out there alone, but you manage to keep yourself distracted with the television, books, and old photos surrounding you. You keep yourself busy and entertained, only getting sad at night about Robert. 

One night, you’re reading on Robert’s old chair. There’s a peppermint tea that’s untouched by your side, along with a fully drinken bottle of wine. With a blanket over you, you read Robert’s old, annotated copy of Hades and Perspehone. You’ve read it a thousand times by now, but the story never gets old to you. It will never get old for you. 

As you reach the end, in which Persephone stays with Hades, your eyes begin to feel heavy. Your hands and fingers feel tingly and heavy. With your eyelids feeling droopy and breathing feeling short, you rest your head back and into the chair. Everything slowly goes back. You're not sad to be going; infact, you’re happy. 

Sometime later, you awaken in a hazy world. It’s an alternate reality since you feel much younger, sitting at a desk, and looking down at your book; it’s an introductory book to Physics with your navy notebook, your name taped on the side. 

Looking up at the chalkboard, you see him; Robert. He’s Dr.Oppenheimer, but to you, he’ll always be Robert or Oppie. He’s got his cigarette in hand, and those damn blue eyes that you loved. Oh, how you’ve missed them. He looks directly at you in the class, and you directly at him. There are people talking, and while they are close, their voices are nothing but mindless mutters.

Robert smiles at you.

Your heart skips a beat. 

You sigh and smile right back at him. At last, you’re home. 

[theblackestofsuns]

“Let Prometheus Beware”

The Invisibles #6 (February 1995)

Grant Morrison, Jill Thompson, Dennis Cramer and Daniel Vozzo

Vertigo Comics / DC Comics

[cabinboy100]

1899: 1x08: "The Key": Prometheus Roll Call

Beware: Season 1 spoilers! If you have not watched all eight episodes of 1899 season 1 on Netflix, get thee to your streaming device and watch! Then come back for a quick review with some visual aids for episode 8. =)

This will be a review of the basic layout and head count in the closing scene of the finale. We see Maura wake up in a vertical sleep pod set into the wall of a cylindrical chamber. Her hair is shorn compared to her 1899 simulation 'do and she is dressed in a grey jumpsuit of the type that we saw her and Daniel wearing in Elliot's recovered memory.

Once she steps out of her pod, she takes in her surroundings. There are 16 sarcophagi in the cylindrical chamber. They are in four groups of four against the wall, separated by sections of wall with portholes. She begins with the group that includes her own now-empty pod and examines the room from left to right, or clockwise, as viewed from the top looking down.

ROLL CALL.

Block 1 (Maura's).

Virginia Wilson

Eyk Larsen

Maura Henriette Franklin Singleton (empty)

Krester

When she recognizes Eyk (sans shock of white in his beard), she is visibly surprised, even taking a few steps backward. Understandable, as the last time she saw him, his First Mate had shut him down and told her it would be "impossible" to bring him back. Still, I have to wonder if something else might be behind her reaction. In any case, she then looks down at her left hand and considers the wedding band on her ring finger for a second or three. Why at that moment? Because Eyk is her husband? Or because she must remind herself that she is married to Daniel?

When she looks back up from the ring, she turns her gaze directly on Krester, whose face is not scarred. Could it be Krester to whom she's married? Watch those seconds again, from Maura turning from the ring to Krester. It's as if she knows whose face she will see next.

Block 2.

Tove

Olek

Ling Yi

Yuk Je

Tove's sarcophagus does not appear to be any different in shape compared to everyone else's, but it's possible that its design might accommodate a pregnant woman without any outward sign or difference. Difficult to say, which means that Tove *might* be pregnant, but is not obviously so.

Block 3.

Iben

Anker

Angel

Ramiro

Block 4.

??? (empty)

Jérome

Clémence

Lucien

2099 PROMETHEUS MATH.

There do not appear to be any doors set into the wall. Once we get an exterior view, that makes sense. The chamber is one of several cylinders attached by their "floors" to a larger wide octagonal boxy base structure, ten of which are connected to one another in an oval ring revolving around the central axis of Spaceship Prometheus. There does not appear to be any inhabitable space directly above the chamber. I think this means that the only egress from the chamber, that doesn't lead to the vacuum of space, must be set into the floor, behind/in the middle of the ring of consoles and cables in the center of the room.

When we get a side view of the spacecraft, stem to stern, we see that there are two rings of ten octagonal boxes, and each of those boxes actually appears to be two conjoined blocks, and each of those blocks has eight cylindrical sleep chambers attached, four above and four below. Let's assume all the chambers have sixteen sarcophagi. If every pod holds a person, the ship carries 2 x 10 x 2 x 8 x 16 = 5120 people in hibernation.

The 2099 Prometheus readout tells us there are 1423 passengers and 550 crew, giving a total of 1973 people. Yikes. That's less than half capacity. Have we seen this scenario before…?

CAP: We're carrying barely any freight. Just like the Prometheus. Our cabins aren't fully occupied either. The company travels this route w/o making any profit.

OLEK: The bunkers are half loaded. Two are almost empty.

CAP: Am I mad? I know this ship inside out. This is not supposed to be here.

CAP: This is impossible. We're on a ship. How does a whole landscape fit inside a ship? MAURA: This isn't the only one.

CAP: It's as if all of this is somehow part of the ship…

If there hasn't been a catastrophic malfunction or accident on the 2099 Prometheus before Maura wakes, this *does* sound similar to the state of the 1899 Prometheus and Kerberos, launched with many fewer passengers and much less freight and supplies than capacity. And how was all that supposedly empty space used? It housed the backstory worlds of the passengers and crew. Does a similar traumatic funhouse await Maura and company in "2099"? Is this one virtual as well? Or—wishing/reaching—could it possibly be Westworld-ly physical?

WHO'S MISSING?

Everything we've seen and heard so far tells me that that empty berth must have been Ciaran's. Does Ciaran wear the face of someone we've already met in the simulation? Who of the 1899 Kerberos passengers and crew Maura interacted with is conspicuously absent in this chamber?

Daniel (Is he real? =)

First Mate Sebastian

Franz

Ada

Elliot (Is he on the passenger list of the 1899 Prometheus?)

Other travelers with whom Maura did not directly interact…

Garlic Necklace (aka Furnace Mulder)

Werewolf skeptic (aka Furnace Scully)

Mustached Adam Driver Crewman

COUPLED 2099ers?

Did the 2099 Prometheus assign paired/adjacent sarcophagi for couples and family who booked together?  The placement of the sleepers in Maura's chamber does seem to support the idea (for me, at least =).

Eyk is beside Maura. (Of course =)

Maura is beside Krester. (I mention it because of that post-ring-gazing look.)

Olek is beside Ling Yi.

Iben is beside Anker.

Angel is beside Ramiro.

Jerome is beside Clemence is beside Lucien. (Interrrresting…)

Mystery Sleeper (Ciaran?) is beside Jerome

Have to say, I'm a little disappointed that Franz was not asleep next to Tove. =)

Just wanted to get this info Out There in this post. Will save follow-up theorizing on the identity and whereabouts of the mystery sleeper for future posts, hopefully.

Wake up 🜃

Keep on keepin’ on~

[shadlad24]

More Funny Little Moments #1: Season 1, Episodes 1-12

So, I decided to do this post after all. Halp. LOL Because I apparently LOVE giving myself a bunch of unnecessary work, I decided to choose two to three extra moments, per episode! SUPER halp! X’D Anyway, these are moments that didn’t make the cut for my FFLM series because: my sense of humor is a little weird, they were gonna be too much work (LOL/Siiigh), I like to highlight patterns, and I don’t like a lot of repetition. [Links to each FFLM along the bottom of the post. :)]

Let’s start with something I originally agreed with other fans on but have since changed my mind. A lot of people didn’t like this part of “Chariots of War” because it seems so ludicrous that Xena would forget her chakram anywhere. Well, let me tell you! This lady has left her weapons behind most episodes thus far. I didn’t note it every time here (and especially didn’t bother with her whip) because that’d really overrun the post buuuuut… You’ll see. XD

1.01 Sins of the Past

Xena’s shift being so much dirtier than the little boy’s clothes though she’s high up off the ground, and he lives in smoked-out rubble.

Yup. Xena forgot her sword (and later, her main saddlebag) at her mother’s tavern. Pft.

Sorry these were kinda lame, but I didn’t want to re-use any more of the original fifteen points I made about this episode... Ah well. Moving on! (heh)

1.02 Chariots of War

Xena loses her sword after the chariot crash, taking up and discarding Sphaerus’s but walking off without her own. (See her front and back and both of Argo’s sides.)

Gabrielle chewing Xena out, Xena being bummed about it, and Argo being surprised. X’D

1.03 Dreamworker

This got me good. Gabrielle does Xena’s war cry so well here that I really thought it was Xena for a few seconds. Realizing it was GabbyWabs only made me chuckle more because she apparently can’t do it when it really counts in “The Greater Good.”

Argo NOT being on Team Gabrielle. XD (Their feud is a little funny to me.)

1.04 Cradle of Hope

Xena tossing aside her sword after killing Nemos. Extras even dance and celebrate right on top of it! Wut thuh?

I decided to avoid mentioning Hope in the FFLM because Xena’s quote here is more ironic than comedic, and Gabrielle’s little face is just so sad, but I didn’t want to let it pass by entirely unremarked upon. At least GW gets to show off her oracle skills again? :’)

1.05 The Path Not Taken

So, Xena and Gabrielle walk into a bar… Heh. No, but really, they enter this tavern for the first time ever, yet the bartender not only knows what they want, he knows that they’re coming and has their drinks waiting for them too. All Xena has to do is knock on the counter and nod to get her fire-breath alcohol/oil, and Gabrielle barely has the word “cider” out of her mouth before the guy hands it to her. Xena, like me, is duly amazed.

Lucy, through Xena, making another timely anti-peanut statement. I just didn’t want to do the same thing twice back-to-back in the FFLM. X)

1.06 The Reckoning

Gabrielle thinking along the same lines Xena and I did about this poor excuse for a judge.

Me not being well-versed in ancient Greek heroes and picturing the fool who Draco killed so handily in the first episode. heh

1.07 The Titans

I’ll let Xena explain this one. …Mostly. I can’t believe Gabrielle not only sassed the Titans such that she unashamedly put Xena and Phyleus in danger too, but also kinda got this (admittedly awful) town demolished and didn’t lift a finger to actually help anyone in the temple. Tsk tsk. XP

So… Hyperion here can smash homes and businesses that were probably well-built and reinforced and all, but he can’t get his hand out of a stocks-cuff that was made in a single evening with scraps from those destroyed buildings. He also, inexplicably, has no use of his left hand or the power-breath that he used to knock Gabrielle over. Okie. XD

1.08 Prometheus

Is this really a thing? I was giggling quite a bit in disbelief that severed windpipes can heal. Like, perforated is one thing; completely bisected? Yeah, I don’t think so.

Gabrielle being incredulous upon learning that Xena has other friends, realizing what the warrior princess means, and then wondering if that could be her one day. 

   1.09 Death in Chains

Gabrielle enjoying watching Xena kill someone for the first time, then quickly realizing that fact. Whoops.

I found this moment really odd and then kind of hilarious. This poor dying old woman begs for water and goes ignored not only by the hospice workers, but also Talus and Gabrielle. Then Talus decides to be helpful. Gabrielle goes to the woman and lets her talk a lot (undoubtedly drying her mouth and throat even more), hears that Xena might be in danger, and then just… leaves. Talus goes with her, not having gotten water from the well after all. What a couple of jerks! XD

1.10 Hooves & Harlots

I really don’t know why Gabrielle kept making this face as Terreis died, but it tickled my funny bone too. So, I provided alternate subs to go with it. [Did you notice how she kind of cringes when Terreis tries to hold her hand and then just lets the Amazon flop once she’s died, flinging her hand aside like, “Ew, get it off me!”? What was that all about? X”) Hm�� maybe she has an aversion to dying people, and that’s why she abandoned the old lady last episode?]

Gabrielle being a smart aleck, just like me, because Phantes’s complaint here is so ludicrous. But then you see the close-up of little hoofies in cuffs too, and, if you’re anything like me too, kinda just topple over laughing. The poor actual horse they did this to, though, man! What even?

Gosh, this episode was chockfull of hilarity, eh? Why did this happen? Gabby, take it away!

1.11 The Black Wolf

I laughed at this too. But now I wonder. Is Xerxes related to Caesar and/or connected to Rome or something? Because Xena does this twice around them too. In “When in Rome,” she jokes that the two guards lost playing tag with her, and in “A Good Day” she informs Pompey that if there were more guards hiding around their meeting space, then she would have had more helmets. heh Oh, Xenie. I think I know why Gabrielle’s turning out to be such a little punk ...or vice versa? Is Gabrielle actually a bit of a bad influence on Xena? XP

So, this fight just struck me as really odd. Xena passes her sword to Flora though she (Xena) needs to battle the big boss of the episode, and… actually, is totally right. The king throws a single wide-ass punch, waits while Xena kicks the guy behind her a few times, lets himself get kicked in the face a couple of times, and then comes at her with a little piece of chain, presumably from the restraints that were intended to keep Flora in place during her execution. Sir, you have a sword! A giant sword, right there on your hip! What are you doing? Then, when Xena kicks him a final time and sends him flying, his (supposed-to-be) metal armor is no match for the splintered wood of the axe she broke earlier. …Okie. XD XD XD   *gif below*

Xena once again leaves her chakram somewhere. …And I am now imagining this being part of Gabrielle’s maid duties: the poor kid has to go find Xena’s weapons each night and bring them back to her. I’m especially imaging the fluffball hilariously, adorably struggling to get the chakram out of things like this wall, as she did with Xena’s sword in the tree stump in “Dreamworker,” but more parallel to the floor. Cuuuute! XD

This plus this 

*pic + GIF below*:

1.12 Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

This scene too really made me wonder, though amused as well. Why is Gabrielle so surprised that the only city nearby, that they were headed to, is the one they find? Is she really being that loud? Is Xena goofing around with the bootlaces question? Why startle Gabrielle and then yank her into enemy territory screaming, when what you want is quiet? What’s with the trapdoor-spider soldiers? Xena’s pose throwing the chakram. XD Gabrielle mostly featherlight dance-y moves through the battlefield. XD XD XD Why is it that when Xena tells Gabrielle to stick right behind her, Gabrielle disappears? And what was with the bucket-sitting soldier? Gabrielle is like, “Oh; no, thank you!” when she sees him and turns tail. Then Xena ...follows her. “We’re goin’ this way! Now we’re goin’ that way!” But they still end up dead-ahead from where they burst out of the bushes. XD That was ridiculous and nonsensical, and I’m very confused but had lots of fun. heheheh  *gif below* [ETA: Darn! The original file was too big, so I had to remake the GIF and cut quite a few things out. :( Sorry]

Xena’s outta-nowhere crusade to emasculate Deiphobus coming full-circle. What was that all about?

Welp, I hope you had as much fun as I originally and then later did. Not so much in the middle with the collage-and-GIF-making and editing and redoing, but; y’know. XD Wouldn’t trade it for …Hm… Nevermind. LOL

If you missed any of the FFLMs, then please click on the corresponding number-links below. :D

#1  #2  #3  #4  #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12

[zephyrthesolitary]

Astrology Charts

Many of us have delved deeply into the craft. We've done spells, we’ve done rituals. We have studied together and apart. We have learned about kitchen witchery, herbalism, medicine crafting, and making; whether it be self-taught. But let’s take a look at Astrology...

I’ll speak from my own personal experiences when using Astrology because I feel like the attached blog image states the main points.

Before my studies, I was always intrigued by astrology. But all I understood was a Sun Sign. And I always thought it was limited to horoscopes we got every day in the newspaper, online or in an app. How wrong was I?? How wrong we all were!

Astrology is a beautiful art that contains loads of secrets about our being. It is a wonderful tool that allows us to learn about ourselves, each other and also speaks to self-care and respect. It allows us to teach others we come in contact with HOW we’d like to be treated, our needs, wants, deepest fears, weaknesses, and strengths and to identify the most vital parts of ourselves: 

Chiron (our wounded healer; something we are perpetually trying to fix across lifetimes and struggle with) - it is an asteroid that orbits our solar system between Uranus and Saturn. It represents a bridge between the material and spiritual worlds. In astrology, it is your placement in your chart where you can get to know and understand what your deeper wounds are, as well as the karmic, past-life energy you are here to work through to grow and evolve. 

However, it is our unhealable injuries and incurable trauma. However, it is said that if a person decides to swim as opposed to drown in their own trauma, can accept their trauma and help others who are also suffering and finally accept that suffering is a part of life, then Chiron can act as the key to wisdom or an “Initiation Gate”.  

Like all the other planets in our chart, Chiron has a sign and house it was located at the moment you were born. 

Focusing in on this information, allows you to identify what your greatest wounds are and provides insight on how to heal them.

Some backdrop about Chiron, the wounded healer, and inner teacher: From a mythological standpoint, Chiron was a great healer, wise teacher, and one of the immortal Centaurs. However, he was deadly injured by a poison arrow from Heracles, who was his best and close disciple. Even though it was deadly, he could not die. At long last, he gave up his immortality for the benefit of Prometheus who was suffering, and Chiron was then sent to the underworld. In the underworld, Zeus showed mercy for him and raised him to the heavens.

An Example for your Understanding: My Chiron is in Virgo. People with Chiron in Virgo are generally sick for much of their lives, albeit illnesses they encounter are not serious, moreover, they are chronic and cannot be cured. This is true since many medical professionals fail to provide a correct diagnosis. With Chiron here, I have to learn to live with my health issues and find ways to cure or alleviate symptoms. I also do have a fear that once my illness is done, another one will take its place.

My Chiron is also in the 7th House. The 7th house is the house ruling of partnerships; where our relationships, spouses, and soulmates can be found. Chiron in this house speaks to my experiencing consistent pains and aches with regards to my relationships with others no matter what routes I choose to go down. These are pains that cannot be prevented or remedied. These are wounds that reopen on their own from time to time. Consequently, my course of action in life is to still try and avoid and resist these experiences. 

How? 

By turning away and shying away from people. By bracing for impact once I come in contact with others. However, this can cause me to experience even more difficulties and more severe. All of which is the case. 

We also have our North Node (What we should embrace as it is a lesson learned) to our South Node (What we should learn from and release because it proves truly detrimental to character development). 

They are also keyed ‘Lunar Nodes’. 

Funnily enough, these are not planets but astrology’s own mathematical points that happen to be directly opposite of each other in our charts. These nodes are said to have our life purpose encoded in them and in the line between the nodes.

North Node resembles our life lessons and what we are striving for in this lifetime.

South Node indicates our comfort zone and habitual place. 

An Example for your Understanding: My North Node is in Scorpio in the 8th House. My South Node is in Taurus in the 2nd House. This speaks to the conflict between spiritual and material property, between acknowledging that everything is temporary vs the desire to own something and it is in a state permanence. Recognizing that death is a great teacher. People with this node placement should not base their lives on material values. They should explore spiritual values instead. They also should stop avoiding conflicts and not stay in comfortable sterility. Lastly, they should beware of greed and try to not cling to material assets. 

Having this knowledge puts us better in the position of resolving deeply rooted issues we face in our day to day lives. If you believe in past lives, then these are things you will want to try and resolve/work out before entering the next life cycle otherwise, you may very well encounter these troubles again until you’ve learned!

Until Next Time! 

🌙🧡✌🏽

[hurtthemgently]

A degree in superpowers 

A story i've been working on for a while with some OC’s, beware: don't get invested unless you're ready for things to get bad for our dear hero later on. 

     Serenity cracked open the window to the file room, long blue hair trailing behind her in a ponytail. Stepping inside, her ice-blue eyes scanned the letters on the side of each cabinet. Project Prometheus would be filed under "P". The prime suspect in the origin of the recent boom in superpowers. Including her own.    "Hey Arctica," a soft voice said from behind her. "Turn around slowly, and don’t even try to use your powers," It was plasmos, the most annoying superhero ever. Why couldn’t he just let her do villainy in peace?    Of course, Serenity had expected him to come. That’s why she had part of a half-baked idea. Because the best villains always have a plan. "Aww, and here I was, just hoping to be stopped by that frustratingly charming smile," sadistic with a hint of boredom. Good.     "Don’t be mean. We both know how this ends,” it was like he was trying to calm a stray dog. Serenity just wanted to punch him in his perfect teeth, mess up his perfect wavy brown hair, and monolog over how terribly, awfully perfect he was. He tries way too hard with the media.     "Yes, we do. We fight. I win, and I get away. You win, and you lecture me on switching sides while I plan an escape. Either way, you look like a fool, so, I always win."    "So true it hurts."    "Shall we then?"     She sent a frost arc towards his shoulder. He blasted it away, and activated the fire alarms. Hook, line, and sinker. As water rained down on them, she froze the droplets into a block. Keeping it up with a steady draft. Plasmos couldn't make any fire while wet, so he was occupied with drying himself out. She let the ice block fall on him. Instantly out. The fight lasted ten seconds.    Serenity turned back to the cabinets, picking through for the file. Grabbing the right one, she put the papers into her bag. Stepping towards the window, twirling her fingers to create a tornado of cold air. She jumped out, using the air to cushion herself. Leaving ice marks in her wake, she disappeared into the night.

   Serenity sprinted down the alley, her ski goggles making it very hard to see in the darkness. If they weren’t there to hide her identity, she’d of thrown them out in this dim lighting. Terrible for fighting at night.     Can’t go to the apartment, or someone, probably August, might see, and find out. Still in costume. She made a sharp turn into an alley to her left, and ended up in an adjacent street. Creating a small whirlwind, she drifted up to the nearest rooftop.     Using small drafts to aid her jumps, she soon made her way to the abandoned warehouse she called a lair.    Landing softly on the windowsill, she dropped into the storeroom. She shook the frost from her hair to show her normal brown, and released her control on the elements. Removing her ski goggles, she stepped over to the closet with her civilian clothes in it. She put her disguise ring on a thin chain necklace.   Once she changed, she started to flip through the file. Mostly containing research on magic, there was little on super powers; only the basic powers held by some of the weakest supers. No use.    Sighing in frustration, Serenity leaned back in the chair and checked the time. 10:00 p.m. If she didn’t get back to the apartment soon, August might start to worry. On the other hand, she could text him and say she’s spending the night at the bay. There’s a sailboat that her parents own docked there.     Clicking send, she resolved to sleep on the couch in the main room of the warehouse. “Ding” she checked her phone and saw August’s affirmation. Grabbing a blanket off one of the boxes, she flopped onto the couch, and promptly fell asleep. 

 A ray of sunshine was glaring starkly onto the closed eyes of the sleeping villain. She groaned and turned over, knowing she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, but stubbornly refusing to get up. That is until her alarm went off.     Grudgingly, Serenity sat up and stretched, wishing she’d had the foresight to put a coffee machine in the warehouse. If only.     Trudging over to the door, she grabbed her helmet and jacket, not caring that she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. She crept outside wearily, and took the keys to her motorcycle out of her jacket pocket.     Stopping only to buy a bagel and a coffee, she made her way down the familiar streets to the apartment building. A light gray building, dark rooftops and white trim, the place blended with the rest of the city. The inconspicuous building had a small fenced-in parking lot for residents.    Pulling up to the entrance, she swiped her card in the slot and the gate opened. Maneuvering through the parking lot, Serenity found a spot close to the building. Humming some meaningless tune, she started on the path to the stairwell. Taking a deep breath of the warm late morning air, she swiped her key through the slot. The lock disengaged with a click.     Mounting the stair, she began the trek to the fourth floor. Part of her decision to start using her powers was to exercise wherever possible. Staying true to this, Serenity did her best to avoid elevators.    Once she was in the apartment, she made a quick check that August wasn’t there. Summoning a small whirlwind, she cleaned the accumulated dust and crumbs in the kitchen. Using a slightly more powerful twister, she cleaned the dust from the carpets. She deposited it in the trash and marked vacuuming and sweeping off the chore list.    ‘Ring ring’    Gasping, Serenity almost dropped her phone. Caller ID showed no number, just a silhouette of a hooded figure in the picture. Sagacoid, a powerful telepath, and a member of the villains council. She clicked answer, knowing that he could discern her every thought through the line.     “Hello Serenity,” a smooth hypnotic voice came through the tiny speakers. “No need to say anything, I can already hear you.” The implication that he could sense every thought and emotion she had during the conversation was chilling.    “You have a special connection with one specific hero that the council wants captured. You have been assigned to lead the mission in trapping the hero known as plasmos and bringing him to me.     “I see a small waver in your resolve, but I trust that you will come though. I will send someone to help since you would be equally matched on your own. Techweaver seems an appropriate minion for this operation. That will be all.”    After the beep, Serenity leaned back against the wall. Sliding to the floor, she contemplated what she had to do. Sure she didn’t like plasmos that much, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hand him over to the villains council. She’d heard of how heroes would quit after even battling a council member. These people have killed heroes before. Plasmos may be annoying, but he’s still a good person.     But if she didn’t do this, they might hurt her parents. They’ve threatened them to get to her in the past, they’ll do it again.

[junk-jester]

The Sigmatrix

I’m feeling a bit creatively drained at the moment, so, taking inspiration from this post by @jennifer-10nyson​, here’s my own version of the Omnitrix.

History

My name is AJ. My Omnitrix, locally known as the Sigmatrix, was created by my universe’s Azmuth, similar to Ben Prime. When I was 9 years old, I lived out deep within the Rocky Mountains of Canada, where my father operated at a local military base. Out of nowhere, one fateful day, a gunner at the base had shot down a passing by UFO, and it crashed right in my home’s front lawn! My father and I went to investigate, and an injured Azmuth exited the vehicle, his life in serious peril. My father and I attended to his wounds and helped repair his ship over the course of the next several weeks, no doubt thanks to some strange technology he had onboard. When all was said and done, and as thanks for helping repair his ship and heal his wounds, he bestowed upon the both of us a small, red box. I opened it and a gold and brown watch that felt like smooth felt jumped up onto my wrist! Now, by using this strange device that I still don’t know all that much about, I can transform into a number of different alien species from across the Multiverse and protect those who cannot protect themselves! Those who are wicked by choice, beware!

Main Function

The primary use of the Sigmatrix is to hold the genetic code of a variety of different alien life forms from thousands of different planets, galaxies and beyond, with most being from the Milky Way. However, I only started out with seven! Those seven being the following:

Meltdown (Mustarite)

Beatbox (Hyper-Evolved Sonorosian)

Huntdown (Yautja)

Hardware (Galvanic Mechamorph)

Airborne (Lepidosaurian)

Hexagon (Vreedle)

Overcharge (Conductoid)

Other functions

Master Control: While I currently don’t have it unlocked, the Master Control would allow me to transform into any alien with just a thought and allow me to remain alien for as long as I desire.

DNA Modifying: The Sigmatrix is capable of modifying the DNA of any selected transformation (as well as myself) to a limited degree in order to repair wounds, expand muscles to make my aliens (or myself) stronger, and more. 

Quick Change: While in alien form, I can choose to switch to a different alien without reverting back to human before hand. However, this does drain the “battery” faster.

Life Lock: If I so choose, I can remain in a specific alien form for an extended period of time without timing out. However, the longer I remain in said form, the longer it takes for the Sigmatrix to recharge once I revert back to human form.

Artificial Intelligence: The Sigmatrix is home to an A.I. Program known as Sigma, who manages a majority of the Sigmatrix’s other functions and acts as a moral conscience, giving me advice when in times of need. Sometimes, she even goes so far as to act like the mom I never had growing up...

Universal Translator: The Sigmatrix is able to translate any language within the galaxy to English in both a speech and text format, with the exception of Xa’tese, the native tongue of the Yautja species. I end up circumventing this by just transforming into Huntdown, anyway.

2-Way Communicator: The Sigmatrix can connect to any wireless communication device (be it a Plumber’s badge, cell phone, or computer) and communicate through said device. This basically allows the Sigmatrix to gain access to the Internet whenever I need it!

Voice Command: The Sigmatrix can act and engage or disengage any of the other features mentioned here according to various verbal commands given to it, with the exception of Master Control. Only Azmuth can access that one.

Anti-Removal Failsafe: The Sigmatrix is bonded to my DNA on a genetic level, meaning it is extremely difficult to remove and downright painful if done so by force. Any attempt to force the device off my wrist will result in an omnidirectional energy pulse that can knock away people with enough force to turn a brick wall into dust! Thank god this thing’s water-proof...

Anti-Death Failsafe: If I was placed in a position that would result in my death, the Sigmatrix will quickly cycle through my available aliens and attempt to transform me into something that will protect me from whatever threat I’m dealing with. However, if no aliens are available, it will forcefully unlock a brand new alien instead! This is how I managed to unlock my most powerful alien, a Celestialsapien named Prometheus. This is an imperfect failsafe, however, as it only works while I’m in human form.

Sigmatrix Modes

Orange-- Active

This mode means that all systems are operating normally and I’m ready to transform. It also allows me to activate and use the other functions mentioned above.

Glitched Purple-- Hacked

This one means that the Sigmatrix has been hacked and is under someone else’s control. To reverse this and get thins back to normal, I gotta hard-reboot it.

Brown-- Selection

This isn’t really a mode, but I figured I’d include it anyway. This one shows up when I’m getting ready to transform into a particular alien. For example, Overcharge.

Dark Red-- Time Out/Recharge

The roughly 17~ minute time limit for a transformation is up and I gotta wait out a recharge time, which is usually only about three minutes. This mode also engages if I manually revert back to normal.

Pink with Spots-- Mind Control

I’m being hypnotized and Sigma’s currently in the process of trying to shake me free. 

Teal-- T.S.T. (Trix Space Travel)

This one is... a bit on the strange side. From what I can tell, inside the Sigmatrix is this sort of simulated alternate dimension called the Trix Space, where all my aliens hang out and live life like normal people, patiently awaiting the next time I transform. They got all the normal needs, like entertainment, food, drinks and even their own form of government. Subsequently, this mode allows me to kinda-sorta project my consciousness into the Trix Space and interact with my aliens. When I’m inside, the Sigmatrix creates a barrier around my physical body that’s completely indestructible, just so no one tries to hurt me while I’m not home.

Grey and Red-- Self-Destruct

For this mode, the Sigmatrix recognizes that it’s been compromised and will destroy itself in order to prevent its technology from falling into the wrong hands, such as Vilgax or Malware. The detonation sequence can also be charged for various periods of time to either increase or decrease the blast radius and level of destruction, from only a few feet to almost the entire Universe!

Yellow w/ Question Mark-- Encyclopedia

Oh, I love this one! This mode acts like a hand-dandy guide to all things alien, such as culture, fashion, language and more, as I can’t really access the Internet when I’m not on Earth. I can always find just what I need through this one!

Yellow w/ Exclamation Point-- Message

This one is basically the Sigmatrix’s own form of texting. Lets me get in touch with friends real quick from just about anywhere, no matter how far away I am!

Dark Grey w/ Moon & Star-- Sleep Mode

What this one does is exactly what it says on the tin. Nap time!

Two shades of Grey w/ Clock-- Disguise

Also self-explanatory. This mode alters the Sigmatrix’s outer-shell to disguise it as just another ordinary wrist watch, just so people don’t get weired out. I can still transform like normal, though.

Green, Purple, Blue, Red and Orange-- Multiverse Communicator

This is basically the Message Mode, but way better! It allows me to get in touch with other Omnitrix Users from across the Multiverse, on the off chance I may need help in a fight or we just wanna hang out. Benzarro never returns my calls...

Black-- Shut Down

The whole thing is shut off and can’t be used until it’s turned back on. Perfect for getting under the hood and fixing the advanced tech when something goes wrong. Funny enough, I’ve managed to engage this mode while transformed into an alien before, and while I thought something terrible might’ve happened, nothing of the sort did. Score for me!

[redteabaron]

The three gods and their lots - (three heads of the dragon)

Contains meta below the cut as well as possible interpretations and theories and speculation. I feel like I should also add a disclaimer that no, I don’t think Targaryens are gods incarnate, this is just examining mythological aspects in their stories and characters and finding commonalities. (I only respect one mortal turning into a god and that is Bran) 

The major three gods of the Greek pantheon were: Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. They drew lots and shared dominion over the world - Zeus was god of the sky and king of the gods, Poseidon was god of the sea, and Hades was the god of the Underworld. Three dominions, three gods. 

“The dragon has three heads.” - Daenerys IV, ACOK 

Aegon/Zeus

“I have. Why should I go running to my aunt as if I were a beggar? My claim is better than her own. Let her come to me...in Westeros.” - Aegon, The Lost Lord, ADWD

The lesson began with languages. Young Griff spoke the Common Tongue as if he had been born to it, and was fluent in High Valyrian, the low dialects of Pentos, Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys, and the trade talk of sailors. … Geometry followed languages. There the boy was less adroit, but Haldon was a patient teacher…” - Tyrion IV, ADWD

“...Yandry said we ought to throw you back, but the lad forbade it.” 

The prince. - Tyrion VI, ADWD

Upon his birth, Zeus had to be spirited away from his father, Cronus, who had swallowed his siblings and hidden so he could escape the fate of his siblings. He would later grow, revolt against his father, and regurgitate his siblings. After drawing lots, Zeus would be given dominion over the sky and be named king of the gods. 

Zeus was affiliated with protection, authority, righteous rule, battle, and justice. He was considered a fair protector and ruler, but not above petty jealousy or anger (or amorousness). 

Aegon, in what little we have seen from him, is actually groomed from a young age to rule. He doesn’t have the hands-on experiences several other characters are thusly put through in the books, but it is very clear he knows what is expected of him, has the knowledge required for the position, and has a good claim to the throne - one that is seemingly preordained, as Zeus’s was foretold before his father swallowed his children. 

Aegon’s connection to the red comet seen on the day of his birth can be loosely traced to Zeus’s mastery over the sky itself (where the sky reflects a point of significance to both Zeus’s temper or demands, so did Aegon’s birth seemingly coincide with the prophecy of the prince that was promised). 

“Young Griff”/Aegon had similarly been spirited away as Zeus had during a time of catastrophe when his claim would threaten another (where instead of a stone wrapped in swaddling, Aegon’s escape was tendered by Varys switching him with another baby) and raised in secrecy, despite being the rightful heir of a kingdom. It’s not Cronus he was hidden from or his actual father, but Robert Baratheon who is hellbent on wiping out the entire line of Targaryens, even agreeing to Tywin’s methods (whether or not he ordered the Mountain to do what he did to Elia and the children doesn’t matter; he was the Mountain’s lord, and so at best he just insinuated ‘do what you want’ very well knowing what Gregor was like). Not so different from Cronus, who, desperate to keep his power, swallowed all of his children.  

In text he’s shown to be a little impatient in his desire to be taken seriously and not be coddled by Griff (but honestly he’s 16 and every teenager everywhere in the history of anybody can be impatient and a little overdramatic; Tyrion is briefly reminded of Joffrey when Aegon throws a tantrum over cyvasse, but Tyrion is shown to not like a lot of people for various reasons, so). However, he has a fantastic grip on his studies, in particular language and history, and we can infer that he has an interest in ruling that goes well beyond ‘it sounds like fun’ (Robert Baratheon’s quote that he never felt so alive as when he was winning the war, and never so dead after it was won comes to mind), at least from what we know from Varys and Griff, and a bit from Tyrion. 

But aside from the impatience we see from him, he shows compassion and an unwillingness to forget kindness when he refuses to let Tyrion drown after Tyrion saves him from a stone-man. From the Tyrion chapters in ADWD, we see Aegon laugh quite freely, is at ease among people of a different station from him; we actually get the idea that even if he can be a little immature, he shows a lot of promise for rule and justice.  

One of the more interesting connections between he and Zeus is the fact that there is some debate as to whether Zeus is the youngest or the oldest of his siblings since he was never swallowed by his father (who technically, after he regurgitated them, also gave ‘birth’ to the swallowed siblings) - and there is understandable debate as to whether Aegon is really Aegon. It could go either way; they are Schrödinger's brother and represent a puzzle, a possible paradox (I do actually believe Aegon is the real deal; if Ned can smuggle out a secret-baby from a tower across a battlefield with only his buddy from the swamps, Varys could certainly have arranged a switch).  

And associating Aegon with justice, imo, isn’t a stretch - particularly when we’ll get to see him gain some traction outside of Jon Connington’s influence (who just likes to hate on the Martells because he’s a Rhaegar fanboy don’t @ me) and we see him meet Arianne. Jon C only sees Rhaegar in Aegon because all Jon C can ever see is Rhaegar; once we move beyond Jon C’s immediate and constant influence over Aegon (and him trying to shape him as Rhaegar 2.0) we’ll see Aegon have the opportunity to connect directly with his Martell side. I believe there’s a good chance we’ll see Aegon seek out, and speak about it, justice for his mother and sibling especially given that he’ll have a positive Martell influence at his side. We just haven’t had the opportunity yet. (And Zeus was always associated with righteous authority and justice). 

It’s not a huge hint, but there is also the connection Zeus has with gryphons; in a translation of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, Prometheus has a warning for Io “Beware of the sharp-beaked hounds of Zeus that do not bark, gryphons”. Gryphons/griffins are also said to pull Zeus’s chariots. Jon C is undoubtedly the guard dog that stands ready at Aegon’s side and manages to ‘carry’ him in a sense to Griffin’s Roost (poor influence on him notwithstanding, I can’t really cast aside the fact that he is loyal to Aegon, regardless of the reasons why). 

Admittedly, Aegon is definitely much milder than Zeus with his flaws microscopic compared to the king of gods, but I think a lot of mythology references aren’t word-for-word, and in asoiaf they sometimes pull through less obviously. Casting Aegon as Zeus works specifically for this because of the rule of three, and who I ended up going with for the other two in this meta/theory. 

Zeus was not without his share of flaws and while he was king of the gods, his rule never went unchallenged - chief amongst them to instigate things was Poseidon. Aegon similarly won’t be unchallenged for it. 

Daenerys/Poseidon

“The Dothraki sea,” Ser Jorah Mormont said as he reined to a halt beside her on the top of the ridge. Beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse that reached to the distant horizon and beyond. It was a sea, Dany thought. - Daenerys III, AGOT

“...I shall fear the Dothraki the day they teach their horses to run on water.” - Ned, Eddard VIII AGOT

The horse seemed to know her moods, as if they shared a single mind...The Dothraki were a hard and unsentimental people, and it was not their custom to name their animals, so Dany thought of her only as the silver. She had never loved anything so much. - Daenerys III AGOT 

“...I know that somewhere upon the grass, her dragons hatched, and so did she. I know she is proud. How not? What else was left her but pride? I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen are proof enough of that. She has survived assassins and conspiracies and fell sorceries, grieved for a brother and a husband and a son, trod the cities of the slavers to dust beneath her dainty sandaled feet.” - Tyrion VI, ADWD

Poseidon was lord of horses, god of the sea (and all that it entailed). Upon drawing his lot, he envied Zeus his position as rightful king and challenged him for it several times (conspiring with his siblings at some points), and would often needle his sibling. He was a key deity to pray to for protection, mostly travelers and sailors. He was associated with the sea, storms, earthquakes, and horses. In some stories, he too was smuggled away from Cronus, in others, he was swallowed like his siblings. 

Poseidon’s temperament was known to reflect the sea and storms; he was unruly and seen as a rebel against authority that existed both in the divine realm and the mortal realm. Him being lord of the sea, storms, earthquakes, and horses, reflects a wilder nature. 

While Aegon is seen as the rightful heir to the iron throne (and consequently has the Golden Company with him, lending a further air of credibility to his right since the GC are ‘honorable’) and has a shared mastery of the sky with Zeus (referring to the day of his birth and its connection to the red comet), Dany has been ‘given’ domain over the sea. The Dothraki sea, at any rate, and the Dothraki themselves (who are also known as horselords). While her temperament hasn’t shown itself to quite the extreme Poseidon’s has shown in his tales, she has a connection to the foreshadowing of a storm, of bringing a storm (her name, the day of her birth, repeated connection with the unruliness of her largest dragon Drogon, and indications of her possibly forming an alliance with Euron Greyjoy in the future etc). 

No squall could frighten Dany, though. Daenerys Stormborn, she was called, for she had come howling into the world on distant Dragonstone as the greatest storm in the memory of Westeros howled outside, a storm so fierce that it rippled gargoyles from the castle walls and smashed her father’s fleet to kindling. - Daenerys I, ASOS 

It’s an interesting connection that Dany has with the sea and horses, imo. She’s shown to love the freedom of the sea, of sailing, and she loves horses. Both are associated with freedom to travel and journey, as we see her ecstasy on the back of Drogon flight gives her a similar feeling. It is, I think, reflecting the fact that she isn’t shown to enjoy ruling, but she does enjoy power and victory (and conquering although it’s not so cartoonishly overt). The fact that Ned says there’s nothing to fear so long as the Dothraki never learn how to cross the Narrow Sea on their horses was setting up that they will ‘learn’. 

Dany, cast under Poseidon, as lord of horses and the sea (and journeying), gives them that “opportunity” (one they don’t want or need, desperately). 

While all the gods of the pantheon were guilty of petty meddling and warring with each other and having rivalries, Poseidon was infamous for having disputes with other gods for supremacy and control of other countries. At once point, when Athens chose to follow Athena over him, he flooded them in his outage. Some believed that his anger roused storms, caused earthquakes, and floods. (Again, he was far from the only god to do petty things like this, but he was held up as the one who was infamous for it even as he was also viewed as a protector). 

Dany doesn’t summon any of those things, but there is a buildup of her anger/frustration in the books. Her justice is biased (to say nothing of her hypocrisy in dealing with slavery, in one breath claiming it is abominable, in the next allowing it to happen and partaking a portion of the profit just as the slavers she had ousted did) when she corrects herself to demand that the wineseller’s daughters be questioned more harshly, rather than gently (implying there is torture to follow in the interrogation). 

We see that temper rear its head when she burns Mirri, a victim of the Dothraki who was taken as a slave after being assaulted a number of times, after Drogo dies, when Jorah’s duplicity is revealed to her and she sends he and Barristan into the sewers hoping they’ll die, etc, (not necessarily to say her anger in some of these moments isn’t warranted, but gradually over the course of the books, her frustration becomes more obvious and her solutions bloodier and less focused). 

Poseidon, despite having his own dominion and having drawn the lot for the sea, challenges Zeus for his. He loses, but it isn’t the only time he challenges Zeus, or any other gods, at times enacting terrible vengeance on them or their favored humans. 

Dany and Aegon meeting is pretty inevitable, but there is foreshadowing that they will be at odds. Maybe they’ll meet with the united idea that the Lannisters/Baratheons have to face justice for what was done, but Dany’s idea of a legacy is wrapped up only in the legacy of the Targaryens, and she refuses to consider any other elements that occurred during the Rebellion (her father going mad, why the Starks and Baratheons rebelled, what Rhaegar was at fault for, etc). Aegon at least is implied to listen to Tyrion - he isn’t only blinded by what Jon C undoubtedly has told him - meaning he’ll likely hear Arianne out too, and Jon Snow. Dany has one truth, passed down from Viserys, one legacy. 

Like Poseidon, Dany already isn’t satisfied with her lot, warring over other countries (or conquest, claiming Meereen for her own after Astapor falls to the butcher). She will challenge Aegon for a lot that belongs to him, but I believe that unlike Poseidon, she’ll actually win against him. 

Jon/Hades

Casting Jon as Hades is something I’ve already written about in this meta, so this is just a summary with bits added on. 

When I compared Jon to Hades, I also compared the Night’s Watch being the place when men went and died, metaphorically, they died in the eyes of the realm (no wife, no sons, no land, no glory, etc). I believe that Jon is being groomed for rule in a different way, that is, holding domain over the condemned or forgotten. 

When Aegon and Dany inevitably clash over the throne, the aftermath is going to look like a hellscape. King’s Landing is repeated through the text to be the seat of power, the center of Westeros, multiple times, and with another Dance building up, I think, leads to foreshadowing that it’ll be ruined or on the brink of ruin at the end. It’ll still need someone to rule it, whether through the infant stages of an elective monarchy (it sounds like they’ll need something more than that or it’ll just invite more chaos as though rule can only be achieved through conquest of some kind, particularly for a monarchy) or otherwise. 

Jon has already fallen into an unenviable position. Sure, he gets to be Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch - an order that vows to remain at the Wall, against a horde of undead, with no support besides Stannis, with ‘dead’ men as his subjects. 

Some myths meld Zeus and Hades into the same being existing on different plains. Hades is also known as “Other Zeus” or “Infernal Zeus”; here, where Zeus is the god of living mortals, Hades is the god of the dead souls. 

Aegon is meant to take the Iron Throne and be the ruler over the Seven Kingdoms, in King’s Landing, a place of power, wealth, bounty from other kingdoms, etc. Dany will be his end in the Dance of Dragons and turn that bounty, or its possibility, into a wasteland. I don’t doubt people will still be alive, but it’ll be a place of ruins, and so will quite a few other places. I think Jon will likely kill Dany after the fact, for kinslaying and being a threat to the north and the realm, and thereby becoming a kinslayer himself. 

The gods of Westeros punish kinslaying. Jon, at this point of finding his family and being murdered for being Lord Commander and spending time under threat with the free folk (even if they do get along now) will probably just want to go home. Punishment for kinslaying will be for him to hold another position no one wants; the throne. Where when Aegon is set to take it, the kingdoms are in chaos, he’ll seem like a bright spot with hope, we might see him pay attention to food issues, the chaos, logistics, etc. And then he dies. And then Dany dies. And all that’s left are the survivors - those seemingly forgotten and condemned to this place afflicted by war and famine -, and Jon. His punishment for kinslaying (and maybe making mistakes with Dany) will not be able to go home, or be made to take up a post at the Watch; he’s condemned, once again, to the people who’ll seem more dead than alive after everything that’s occurred. 

Jon’s duty was, and will continue to be, to the condemned.

[begitalarcos]

100+ Years of Horror

This is not a definitive list. These are just the films I believe every Horror fan should see at least once. I’ve excluded any sequels that I didn’t feel needed including. I hope you enjoy.

For @mechamag​

1922 – Nosferatu

1925 – The Phantom of the Opera

1927 – The Cat and the Canary

1931 – Dracula, Frankenstein

1932 – Freaks

1933 – The Invisible Man

1934 – The Black Cat

1935 – The Bride of Frankenstein

1939 – The Cat and the Canary

1941 – The Black Cat, The Wolfman

1942 – Cat People

1945 - Dead of Night

1953 – House of Wax

1954 – Creature from the Black Lagoon

1955 – Night of the Hunter, Les Diaboliques

1956 – Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Bad Seed

1958 – The Blob, Macabre, The Fly

1959 – House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, The Killer Shrews

1960 – 13 Ghosts , Black Sunday, Eyes without a face, Peeping Tom, Psycho, Village of the Damned

1961 – The Pit and the Pendulum

1962 – What ever happened To Baby Jane?

1963 – The Birds, Black Sabbath, The Haunting

1965 – Repulsion

1966 – Island of Terror

1967 – Wait until Dark

1968 – Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary’s Baby, Spider Baby

1970 – Mark of the Devil, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

1971 – The Cat O’ Nine Tails, Let’s scare Jessica to Death, What’s the matter with Helen? A Bay of Blood, Play Misty for Me

1972 – Ben, Children shouldn’t play with dead things, Deathdream, Don’t torture a Duckling, The last house on the left, Night of the Lepus, What have you done to Solange?

1973 – The Crazies, The Exorcist, The Legend of Hell House, Sisters, The Wicker Man, Don’t look now

1974 – Black Christmas, Deranged, It’s Alive, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Vampyres

1975 – Shivers, Trilogy of Terror, Jaws, Deep Red, The Stepford Wives

1976 – Alice Sweet Alice, Burnt Offerings, Carrie, Eaten Alive, The Omen, Squirm, To the devil a daughter, The town that dreaded sundown, The Tenant

1977 – Audrey Rose, Day of the Animals, Demon Seed, Eraserhead, Exorcist 2: The Heretic, The Hills have Eyes, Rabid, The Sentinel, Shock, Suspiria

1978 – Damien: Omen 2, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, I Spit on your Grave, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jaws 2, The Legacy, Magic, Martin, Piranha

1979 – Alien, The Amityville Horror, The Brood, Phantasm, Prophecy, Tourist Trap, When a Stranger Calls, Zombi2, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Salem’s Lot

1980 – Alligator, Altered States, The Changeling, City of the Living Dead, Fade to Black, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Hell of the Living Dead, The House on the Edge of the Park, Humanoids form the Deep, Inferno, Maniac, Motel Hell, Prom Night, The Shining

1981 – An American Werewolf in London, The Beyond, The Black Cat, The Burning, Dead and Buried, The Entity, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th Part 2, The Funhouse, Galaxy of Terror, Halloween 2, Happy Birthday to Me, Hell Night, The House by the Cemetery, The Howling, My Bloody Valentine, Omen 3: The Final Conflict, The Pit, Possession, The Prowler, Wolfen, Scanners, Blow Out, Ghost Story

1982 – Alone in the Dark, Basket Case, The Beast Within, Cat People, Creepshow, Friday the 13th Part 3, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Madman, Pieces, Poltergeist, Q: The Winged Serpent, Tenebrae, The Thing, Visiting Hours

1983 – A Blade in the Dark, Christine, Cujo, Curtains, The Deadly Spawn, Eyes of Fire, The House on Sorority Row, The Hunger, Mortuary, Nightmares, Sleepaway Camp, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, Twilight Zone: The Movie

1984 – C.H.U.D., Children of the Corn, The Company of Wolves, Gremlins, Night of the Comet, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Razorback, Silent Night Deadly Night, Firestarter, Starman, Ghostbusters

1985 – Cat’s Eye, Day of the Dead, Demons, Fright Night, Ghoulies, LifeForce, Phenomena, Re-Animator, The Return of the Living Dead, Silver Bullet, The Stuff, Cut and Run, The New Kids

1986 – Aliens, April Fools Day, Chopping Mall, Critters, Deadly Friend, The Fly, From Beyond, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Hitcher, House, Invaders from Mars, Little Shop of Horrors, Maximum Overdrive, Monster Dog, Night of the Creeps, Poltergeist 2: The Other Side, Rawhead Rex, Terrorvision, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Trick or Treat, Troll, Vamp, The Wraith

1987 – Angel Heart, Bad Taste, Creepshow 2, Dolls, Evil Dead 2, The Gate, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2, Hellraiser, The Hidden, House 2: The Second Story, The Outing, The Lost Boys, The Monster Squad, Near Dark, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Opera, Prince of Darkness, Predator, Stage Fright, The Stepfather, Street Trash, The Witches of Eastwick, Lady Beware, Fatal Attraction

1988 – Bad Dreams, The Blob, Child's Play, Dead Heat, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Fright Night Part 2, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Lair of the White Worm, Maniac Cop, Night of the Demons, Phantasm 2, Pin, Prison, Pumpkinhead, Return of the Living Dead Part 2, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Uninvited, Watchers, Waxwork, They Live

1989 – 976-Evil, The Church, Grim Prairie Tales, The Horror Show, Intruder, Leviathan, Night Life, Pet Sematary, Shocker, Society, Warlock, Dead Calm, The Forgotten One, DeepStar Six

1990 – Braindead, Bride of Re-Animator, Child’s Play 2, The Exorcist 3, Frankenhooker, Graveyard Shift, The Guardian, Hardware, IT, Jacob’s Ladder, Misery, Night of the Living Dead, Nightbreed, Predator 2, The Reflecting Skin, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, Tremors, Two Evil Eyes, Arachnophobia

1991 – Body Parts, Cape Fear, The People under the Stairs, The Pit and the Pendulum, Popcorn, Scanners 2: The New Order, The Silence of the Lambs, Sometimes they Come Back

1992 – Army of Darkness, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Candyman, Demonic Toys, Dolly Dearest, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Innocent Blood, Sleepwalkers, Spilt Second, Man Bites Dog

1993 – Body Bags, Carnosaur, Cronos, The Dark Half, Leprechaun, Return of the Living Dead 3, Trauma, Kalifornia, Man’s Best Friend

1994 – Brainscan, Cemetery Man, The Crow, Death Machine, Hellbound, In The Mouth of Madness, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Stand, Wes Cravens New Nightmare, Wolf, Interview with the Vampire

1995 – Castle Freak, Demon Knight, Lord of Illusions, The Mangler, Mosquito, The Prophecy, Species, Village of the Damned, Screamers, Dolores Claiborne

1996 – Bad Moon, The Craft, The Frighteners, From Dusk till Dawn, Jack Frost, Scream, Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Mary Reilly

1997 – An American Werewolf in Paris, Anaconda, Campfire Tales, Cube, The Devils’ Advocate, Event Horizon, I know what you did last Summer, Mimic, The Night Flier, Nightwatch, The Relic, Quicksilver Highway, The Ugly, Wishmaster, Kiss the Girls, Se7en, Perfect Blue

1998 – Blade, Deep Rising, The Faculty, Ringu, Strangeland, Urban Legend, Vampires, Sphere

1999 – Audition, The Blair Witch Project, Deep Blue Sea, The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, Lake Placid, The Mummy, Ravenous, Sleepy Hollow, Stigmata, Virus, The Sixth Sense, Idle Hands

2000 – American Psycho, Bless the Child, Blood: The Last Vampire, Cherry Falls, Final Destination, Ginger Snaps, Hollow Man, Ju-On, Pitch Black, Python, Versus, What Lies Beneath, The Gift, The Cell, Shadow of the Vampire

2001 – The Attic Expeditions, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Dagon, Jeepers Creepers, Mulholland Drive, The Others, Session 9, Thir13en Ghosts, The Devil’s Backbone, Frailty, From Hell, Hannibal

2002 – 28 Days Later, Blade 2, Bubba Ho-Tep, Cabin Fever, Dog Soldiers, Eight Legged Freaks, Ghost Ship, May, Queen of the Damned, Resident Evil, The Ring, They, The Mothman Prophecies, Red Dragon

2003 – Darkness Falls, Dream Catcher, Final Destination 2, Freddy Vs. Jason, Haute Tension, House of 1000 Corpses, A Tale of Two Sisters, Undead, Underwold, Willard, Wrong Turn

2004 – Alien Vs Predator, Club Dread, Dawn of the Dead, Dead & Breakfast, Exorcist: The Beginning, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, Godsend, Saw, Shaun of the Dead, The Village, Taking Lives, The Forgotten, Enduring Love

2005 – 2001 Maniacs, The Amityville Horror, Constantine, Dark Water, The Descent, The Devils’ Rejects, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Land of the Dead, Wolf Creek, Hard Candy

2006 – Abominable, All the boys love Many Lane, Black Sheep, Fido, Final Destination 3, Hatchet, The Hills have Eyes, Slither, The Woods, The Host, Silent Hill, The Tripper, Wild Country

2007 – 28 Weeks Later, 30 Days of Night, 1408, Grindhouse, I am Legend, The Mist, My Name is Bruce, Nature of the Beast, Paranormal Activity, Primeval, REC, Skinwalkers, Teeth, Trick r’ Treat, An American Crime, Rogue, Funny Games

2008 – Book of Blood, Cloverfield, Deadgirl, Diary of the Dead, Let the right one in, The Midnight Meat Train, Mirrors, Quarantine, The Ruins, Splinter, The Strangers, Eden Lake, Outlander

2009 – Case 39, Grace, The Haunting in Connecticut, Heartless, The House of the Devil, Jennifer’s Body, The Loved Ones, Orphan, Pandorum, Splice, Triangle, Zombieland, Carriers, Dread

2010 – Black Swan, The Crazies, Exorcismus, Frozen, Insidious, The Last Exorcism, Let me in, Primal, Tucker & Dale Vs Evil, The Wolfman, Troll Hunter, Devil

2011 – The Awakening, Don’t be afraid of the Dark, The Innkeepers, Livid, The Thing, The Woman, The Rite

2012 – American Mary, Bait, The Cabin in the Woods, The Devil Inside, The Possession, Prometheus, Sinister, Byzantium, Compliance

2013 – The Conjuring, Evil Dead, Jug Face, Mama, Under the Skin, Only Lovers Left Alive, Warm Bodies, Horns, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Contracted, Stoker

2014 – Annabelle, As Above So Below, The Babadook, Deliver us from Evil, A Girl walk home alone at Night, Life after Beth, Starry Eyes, Tusk, It Follows, Goodnight Mommy, The Voices, Digging up the Marrow, When Animals Dream, Gone Girl ,The Remaining, Late Phases, Cub

2015 – Crimson Peak, Krampus, The Lazarus Effect, Maggie, The Visit, The Witch, Bone Tomahawk, Green Room, Regression, The Devil’s Candy, The Lure

2016 – The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Belko Experiment, The Boy, The Conjuring 2, Don’t Breathe, The Eyes of my Mother, Split, The Forest, The Love Witch, The Neon Demon, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Raw, Train to Busan, The Void, What We Become, 10 Cloverfield Lane, A Cure for Wellness, The Shallows, Pet, Hounds of Love

2017 – IT, Get Out, Mother!, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Ritual, Thelma, Veronica, It comes at Night, Life, Gerald’s Game, Revenge, 1922

2018 – Annihilation, Halloween, Hereditary, Mandy, Mom and Dad, The Nun, Overlord, Possum, A Quiet Place, Suspiria, The House that Jack Built, Bird Box, Apostle, The Meg

2019 – Brightburn, IT Chapter 2, Midsommar, Ready or Not, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Us, I am Mother, Crawl, The Dead Don’t Die, Extremely Wicked Shockingly Evil and Vile, Glass

[classic-starters]

starters from the 430 b.c.e play by aeschylus, translated by david grene, PROMETHEUS BOUND

“i am forced to do this ; do not keep urging me.”

“you can be softhearted.”

“come, why are you holding back?”

“our kinship has strange power ; that, and our life together.”

“do you not fear that more?”

“you are always pitiless, always full of ruthlessness.”

“i have no answer to this.”

“so must i bear, as lightly as i can, the destiny that fate has given me.”

“what am i saying?”

“my enemies can laugh at what i suffer.”

“this is a sickness rooted and inherent in the nature of a tyranny.”

“against these plans none stood save i: i dared.”

“is there no limit set for your pain?”

“i placed in them blind hopes.”

“let me be and have no care for me.”

“you are better at advising others than yourself.”

“his is a heart you should beware of vexing.”

“your own misfortune will be my teacher.”

“kindness that can never be requited, tell me, where is the help in that, my friend?”

“what land is this?”

“say what you are asking for: i will tell you all.”

“will you then grant me this favour?”

“tell me, who are you?”

“some have been wretched before me, but who of these suffered as i do?”

“and what was the offense of which this is the punishment?”

“i beg you, do not hide from me what i must endure.”

“i hesitate to break your spirit.”

“you would be glad to see that catastrophe, i think.”

have you no fear of uttering such words?”

“worship him, pray ; flatter whatever king is king today.”

“your words declare you mad, and mad indeed.”

“you mock me like a child!”

“i have said too much already.”

“i am the one whom he cannot kill.”

[arcticdementor]

Here is the acceptance speech by Travis Corcoran for 2019 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Causes of Separation.  (Corcoran could not attend the Dublin Worldcon but wrote this acceptance speech to be read there at the ceremony.)

I would like to thank the LFS for this year’s award, but more generally, I’d like to thank them for existence of the Prometheus award, all forty years of it. It’s good that our subculture has a long-lived award to recognize excellent science fiction, especially pro-liberty science fiction.

But the Prometheus award is not merely recognition, it’s an incentive!

In fact, I might not have written my novels without the Prometheus to aim for. But the Prometheus is not a financial incentive. The one-ounce gold coin on the plaque is nice, but neither I nor any of the other winners over 40 years would ever trade or sell it, and thus – ironically – it has no financial value.

And yet the award – a recognition by a community – is a huge incentive. There’s an interesting argument here about anti-libertarian tropes like the not-so-veiled anti-semitic and anti-capitalist propaganda of socialist Star Trek’s Ferengi, the bourgeois virtues, and the non-market human flourishing that only human liberty unleashes, but that’s a rant for some other day. Thomas Aquinas said “Homo unius libri timeo” – “beware the man of one book.” The meaning has shifted – almost reversed – from “beware the man who has studied one topic intensely” to “beware the man who has only one simple view of a thing.” I concur with this advice (in both forms!). Libertarianism is absolutely correct in its magisteria (the morality of freedom vs coercion), but we need other theories to augment it when we move our sights from individual liberty and financial incentives to other topics, like culture formation – and culture subversion.

…

Every ideology and subculture likes to tell stories about how it will naturally and obviously win. Nineteenth century Protestant missionaries knew that European Protestantism was the way of the future. 20th century Marxists knew that Marxism was. In the early 21st century Wired magazine told us that “netizens” would use technology to create a brave new world. The fact that every one of them has been wrong so far should inform our Bayesian priors. Perhaps cryptography, bitcoin, and the internet aren’t going to create a libertarian future. Perhaps the future looks a lot more like Orwell’s boot stomping on a face, forever.

Why might this be, and – if it does – how might we respond to it?

Last year I spoke about the essay “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution” by David Chapman, which argues that new subcultures are pioneered by geeks, appreciated by members of the public, and taken over by sociopaths. His thesis is a particular example of a more general case.

There’s also Pournelle’s – yes, that Pournelle – iron law of bureaucracy” which states “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”

Robert Conquest’s third law expresses something similar: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”

Chapman’s essay and Pournelle’s and Conquest’s laws are three observations of a single underlying phenomena: the collectivists always worm their way in and take over. We know THAT this happens, but WHY does it happen? How can we model it and understand it?

…

My theory, which unites Chapman’s “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths”, Pournelle’s Iron Law, and Conquest’s Third Law is this: organisms, whether they’re unicellular, multicellular, or purely information, like Dawkin’s memes, egregores, and ideologies, mutate, evolve, and are selected for. Those that are best at surviving and reproducing soon dominate the population…and one of the best ways to survive is secure energy resources by hunting, killing, and eating (or, more gently, parasitizing) organisms that do the hard work of harvesting energy and building structures.

David Hines has a great essay at the status451.com blog titled “Days of Rage” where he discusses the surge in left-wing organizing and terrorism in the US in the 1970s. One thing that Hines points out again and again is that collectivists plan, they train, and they invade. I note that their organizations also exchange members and ideas (mate) and fission (reproduce). We are looking not just at a parasite, but at a class of parasite, forged and refined in the Darwinian furnace.

Evolution is a harsh mistress.

…

Predation and parasitism are selected for in the biosphere because they are efficient. They’re selected for in the realm of human culture for the same reason. It’s easier to harvest energy from a parasitized host species than it is to grow leaves, and it’s easier to take over a subculture than it is to create one. Thus science fiction will always suffer wave after wave of entryists, trying to claim the subculture for themselves. And, like Orwell’s Big Brother, they will rewrite history to declare that they invented it. “Let me join your club. You have to change now that I’m here. You have to leave now. We all agree that I made this, decades ago.” We see that all entrusts do this (“The United States was always about social justice ; the Jewish faith was always about social justice ; this TV station and car line and toothpaste were always about social justice”) and we conclude that they do because it is the optimal strategy, tested and chosen by evolution.

So, is that it? Are we doomed to lose all battles, to be preyed upon and parasitized?

In the biosphere, only a minority of organisms are predators or parasites. How could it be otherwise? Someone still needs to do the hard work of capturing solar energy and building biological matter. So too in the world of human culture. Tax-thieving governments and culture-thieving brigands can’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The Lotka-Volterra equations, first developed in 1910 to describe chemical reactions, but echoing Pierre-François Verhulst’s logistic equation from almost a century earlier quantified the mechanism.

And, since biology is economics is sociology, I note that Mancur Lloyd Olson Jr.’s theory of roving bandits, which are willing to loot everything from a village, and stationary bandits, who learn to restrain themselves so as to keep the village alive, and capable of being pillaged (or “taxed”) again reaches the same conclusion: predators can never outpopulate the prey … at least not for long.

Based on Lotka, Volterra, and Olson, then, I suggest that the collectivists’ social entryism will never be total. Negative feedback loops will ensure that. When will the entryist wave peak? Perhaps it already has. The last decade saw the cultures of video games and comics under attack from entryists, but perhaps the high water mark has already been reached, as we’ve seen several horrific market failure, such as the female Ghostbusters fiasco, Mass Effect: Andromeda, or that time when Zoe Quinn of comicsgate / Five Guys fame was given a DC Comics title. As the Twitter meme says “get woke, go broke”.

But on the other hand, perhaps not. Strauss–Howe generations theory, which I tentatively give the nod to, suggests that we’re going to be deep in the suck for quite a while yet.

…

What strategies can we use to improve our odds, to make life somewhat more tolerable in a world where Darwinianism means that threats are ever present?

Look to biology.

We can evolve physical defenses, we can evolve camouflage, or we can adapt to new environments that are less conducive to predators.

What do these mean in social terms?

Physical defenses means organizations building mechanisms to keep entryists out – a topic on which I am not an expert…and Pournelle’s Law and Conquest’s Third Law suggest that perhaps no one is.

The social equivalent of camouflage is a mixture of esotericism (in dangerous times people speak in code) and foot-dragging Vichy coexistence. Scott Aaronson and Slate Star Codex wrote essays on “Kolmogorov complicity” (a good pun on Kolmogorov complexity), and I urge you to read them.

My favorite, is the third option: moving to where the predators aren’t. Which – surprise – boils down to my old favorite, exit.

Jame C Scott talks about exit extensively in his book “The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia” and in his later book “Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States”. He makes the core point that when you see a populace that does not have certain social technologies, that does not mean – contra the default narrative – that they never evolved them. Sometimes populations intentionally abandon technologies because those techniques make them legibile to control and subversion by the overculture. If you want to avoid computer viruses, rip the computers out of your Battlestar. If you want to avoid land taxes, burn down the land registry, or become nomadic. If you want to avoid having your subculture taken over by collectivists … what, exactly?

[dalpaladin]

Late Night Thoughts

#personal. Reader beware.

I hate staying up later and later during the work week. I can’t sleep, I can’t think straight. I keep having all my old thoughts again. Every time I try to sleep I get so downtrodden.

I hate driving 90 minutes to get to work and 90 minutes to get home. I hate working for 9 hours at a job I don’t care about and a job I won’t move up/around in. I hate making $12/hour. I hate having to pay $400 for a car, $250 for student loans, $200 in medical bills, $160 in tolls, $108 in insurance, $80 in gas, and many other bills such as rent, food, etc. per month that I can’t think of at the moment.

I hate getting so little time after work (if I intend on sleeping on a normal schedule) for myself.

I hate myself. I hate where I am in my life right now. I hated where I was last year, the year before, and the year before that.

It’s a burden to just keep moving. To keep trying. I don’t want to anymore. It’s exhausting. I am so tired.

I’m going to wake up tomorrow at 5 AM and have the same thoughts. I’ll wake up and see them again. Getting ready for school and work. Let them know I’m still here. Drag my husk to my overpriced car and drive to a place I loathe going to. A place where, honestly, the journey is worse than the destination.

Time will move slow. Agonizingly slow. Routine pleasantries will make me free Prometheus and take his place. Just so I can fucking feel something. Tired of faking it for over 32,000 seconds a day. On the way home I’m hypnotized by the Sirens’ soft melody to drive off the road.

I’m tired of writing bullshit because I have no other way to express myself. I can’t keep holding this in all the goddamn time and the people I have paid to help me, who are professionally licensed to help me, don’t do a goddamn fucking thing about it.

But maybe tomorrow will be better. Even if it’s not, I still have video games to keep me company.

[cabinboy100]

1899: Season 1: (Conspiracy) Theory: Undercover Clemence…?

Beware: Season 1 spoilers! If you have not watched all eight episodes of 1899 season 1, get thee to your streaming device and watch! Then come back for some outlandish connection-making and crazytalk theorizing based on a funny look, the wrong pants, and an envelope. =)

THE HONEYMOON IS OVER.

CLEM: Are you telling me this is my fault? LUC: Stop your little act. It's pretentious. Your parents aren't around anymore. It's fine. You don't love me, you never did. This is not a marriage. It's an arrangement. So you can stop pretending.

Lucien explicitly characterizes their marriage as a sham and releases Clemence from any obligation she feels to keep up appearances. He exits the cabin immediately after this and we see Clemence aghast, at a loss, for maybe three seconds. Then a change comes over her and her expression turns to lip licking satisfaction or anticipation. It is a pretty radical transformation, and remarkable to witness.

This may be relief and pleasure at being freed from playing the role of doting newlywed wife, but I like to think that it's something more—delight in something falling into place as planned.

SAY YES NO TO THE DRESS!

Later, when searching for survivors of the clock ticking siren song, Tove and Clemence wander into a certain cabin and Clemence is moved to wax philosophical on the compulsory wife and mother role of women in society. She does not find anything fulfilling in that purpose, a part she was raised to seek and play and accept. Inspired by the strength and independence she admires in Tove, she decides to declare her own independence from patriarchal expectations with a fashion flourish…

CLEMENCE: I feel ridiculous. Do you know what they say? That men invented dresses and heels so that women can't run away.

With this, she trades her skirts for a pair of trousers from an open wardrobe trunk, signifying her rejection of the societal expectations she has experienced placed on herself and women in general.

Her words and actions *are* a nice follow-up and follow-thru on her reaction to Lucien's real talk about the nature of their marriage. But maybe that's not all they are…

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE…

Later still, when Eyk and Maura are reunited in the lifeboat launch bay of the archived Kerberos, Maura produces the envelope she received from her brother…

MAURA: The last thing I remember before waking up on board the Kerberos was finding the envelope in front of my door. I think my brother sent it.

This prompts each of the survivors* to produce their own identical envelopes.

*Except for Jerome, but I believe we've already seen that he has received one, as I'm certain that's how he acquired the information that led him to Lucien and his cabin on the Kerberos.

And just like everyone else, Clemence pulls her envelope out of her pocket. 

Correction—she pulls an envelope out. And not out of her pocket, but out of the pocket of the pants she is wearing! Whose pocket of whose pants, then? And whose envelope?

Let's take a closer look at that cabin she and Tove were in. Look there, behind Tove, over her left shoulder…

It's the wolf and sheep painting! They are in Angel and Ramiro's cabin! If you didn't notice it before, that is the painting that inspires Angel's wolf-sheep metaphor when he chastises his definitely-not-his-brother earlier. It is also the painting hanging in the sexytimes corner of their cabin.

In the boat launch bay, we see Ramiro pull out his envelope, so the pants Clemence is wearing—and the envelope contained in its pocket—must belong to the dear departed Angel!

I believe that Clemence has maneuvered her way into being counted as a member of a select subset of travelers aboard the Kerberos—those who have received envelopes from Ciaran. She did not receive an envelope herself, but is aware of them and who received them. How and why?

1. She is a passenger who remembers the envelopes and their recipients from a previous Prometheus loop or loops. This would mean that she is aware of the repeating nature of their world and is immune to or able to avoid the memory reset between loops, perhaps like Daniel and Elliot do, or perhaps thanks to an innate natural gift. She has experienced loops in which Ciaran contacted other travelers and realized that they always survived longer than she herself did. Once she understood this, she began trying to get her hands on an envelope and so make it to the end of a loop. In this scenario, she does NOT necessarily know that the loop is a programmed and hackable simulation.

2. She is an undercover "plant" of Father's, like First Mate. Her mission is to locate and acquire the exit key via more surreptitious means than kidnapping and extortion. Flashing one of Ciaran's envelopes is meant to ingratiate herself with Ciaran's "chosen", a subset of travelers who for whatever reasons manage to keep closer to Maura by the end of a loop than most everyone else on board. This in the hopes of getting a chance to locate or even seize the key for Father.

3. She is an undercover "plant" of Ciaran's, a traveler selected—or created?—by Ciaran to maneuver herself into an ever-tightening spiral orbit around Maura for the duration of each loop.* And she may be doing so without being consciously aware of it, hacked/programmed to do it at a subconscious level. 

We don't see her make any drastic moves that seem to directly affect Maura, but perhaps her being a connection between and for Lucien and Jerome is an important role in itself. Producing the envelope in the launch bay bestows upon her some mystery cred, "proving" that she belongs among the final survivors of the loop.

*This is the weakest explanation that's come to me, because if she is Ciaran's agent, there's no reason he couldn't pump up her story and inventory with an envelope of her own. I say "no reason" based on his already demonstrated ability to materialize envelopes containing traveler-specific content for others.

4. She is a passenger whom Daniel has tweaked to be an agent in his plans, programmed to contain a piece of code vital to Maura's exit. She operates completely independently and in character to go unnoticed, but her ultimate goal is to be one of the last travelers standing when the Kerberos is deleted and the simulation shut down. She contains a vital piece of code that is only effective at the moment of ship deletion and in conjunction with the activated key, saves Maura from deletion and/or reboot into a new loop. Sure, Daniel never mentions her role, but why would he, when doing so would only expose her to Father and his henches?

5. Some other crazy possibility… =)

Of course, if crazytalk notion 1, 2, or 3 is true and Clemence ends up with Angel's envelope by design, it doesn't seem to get her—or her puppetmaster—anywhere, right? But we have only been privy to this last loop. Perhaps in previous loops Clemence is not one of the last travelers standing, is not immune to the click ticking, or does not have a friendly exchange about prisons with Jerome on deck, or does not enter Angel and Ramiro's cabin with Tove. We just witnessed the latest attempt, and the closest she's gotten to Maura and the key. Who knows? Perhaps she has won enough of Maura's trust in this last loop that Maura will wake her in 2099 and Clemence will be able to proceed with the *next* phase of her mission. =)

Are her earrings another sign of her secret agenda and/or allegiance? Perhaps, but the "Earth" triangle icon/logo appears in so many elements and contexts, it's difficult to say when it is significant and what it's significance might be beyond as an artifact and clue that the world of the Kerberos is not as real as its passengers and crew believe.

Wake up 🜃

Keep on keepin’ on~

[geneshaven]

Always

This season has been a long, dark torturous ride for us all. Until last night. I woke up this morning, alone again, but not really. Over the past few months, I’ve wrapped myself in the blanket of the Olicity Fandom. It’s been a place where I can channel my own personal grief and loss over losing my wife. It has helped, (through writing fanfiction and metas) to start processing my loneliness and sorrow. Last night’s episode was another leg of that journey. So I just wanted to begin this analysis by thanking all of you.

I read a post this morning that MG received, basically telling him to fuck off for bringing back the Olicity trash. And then this cheerful and colorful person asked Marc to please not do it.

Too late, my gregarious hater, too late.

Happy birthday, Oliver. I should be so blessed with my own, (which is next week by the way, on the 27th.) There were fantastic moments during the festivities. As I watched them, I could hear the fandom squealing and screaming and cooing in my head. But there were two moments that really stood out and motivated me to climb into my office chair and fire up the laptop.

The first was when Oliver told Felicity he thought her ruse to have dinner with him was a possible date. Felicity responded with---“We can take it one step at a time.” Not I or you---we. As in together. As in who let the elephant (that crowded them all season) out of the room. The look on Oliver’s face when he told her he’d like that very much was akin to someone winning a lottery. With the crazy pacing that Arrow utilizes, I think those steps Felicity mentioned could end up as a sprint to the wedding alter. One thing I would say to Oliver though; it isn’t hypothetical, dude. When they do decide to hook up for good, there won’t be any anxious first date vibes we got in 301. When Felicity reminded him (and it was a reminder) of their Pacific Coast Trail excursion, of their intimate nights spent under the mountain stars, I thought to myself their next “date” won’t be in a restaurant or a trip to the zoo. Break out the camping gear Oliver---she wants a repeat performance.

The “hypothetically dating my ex-fiancé” line and Felicity’s big, beautiful smile in response to it just melted me in my recliner. Her telling Oliver that they won and he can put his feet up and relax---well, it felt like coming home. The little tug on his tie just emphasized it. These two are crazy in love and it showed in this scene. Doubters and haters beware---it’s only going to grow larger.

The next great moment related to the party for me was Felicity and Curtis on the phone. Curtis wanted gossip: give me all the details, the sexual tension you could cut with a knife, the sexy dress, the heart eyes, (okay, that one was mine.) The last time they talked about her and Oliver like this was last summer in the Bunker. He called them a power couple. He brought up the longing looks, the supposition that Felicity shouldn’t have broken up with Oliver, the way Oliver looks at her. Felicity was taken aback, probably because it was true. It was still in her heart if not right in front of her. The trust issues and William and not seeing the point in being in a relationship with Oliver---it was all still simmering in her. And then Oliver came in with Chinese food and Curtis made an obvious exit after mentioning the wine. Food and drink, mutual desire, the salmon ladder---it all came together for them, they came together…

Okay, I had to refill my coffee cup and take a cold shower. Anyway, when Curtis was talking about her and Oliver while she was cleaning up, I half expected Felicity to start giggling---not in embarrassment but in confirmation.

Post party Olicity. Another couple of moments I wanted to look at. The obvious one was Oliver telling Felicity he wanted her with him in the Bunker, not as Overwatch or the brilliant computer genius or the trusted crime fighting partner. He wanted the love of his life by his side. It wasn’t because she needed his protection. It wasn’t tactical or practical or logical. It was him needing to be with her, to breathe her in, to not wanting her to be apart from him ever again.

And Felicity needed to hear this from Oliver. What they shared at the party only established this for both of them. Felicity was just checking to make sure. Ever since their breakup, it’s been about Oliver striving to become the man she deserved. She told him this after their Bunker sex. She wanted his pain, his doubts, his worries, and his darkness---all of it. He gave that to her in 520. And showed it 100% last night.

Just before Felicity and Diggle agreed with Oliver’s plan to split up, (reluctantly by Felicity) there was that moment Oliver said William was the purist part of him. He put his son in danger because what Oliver became on the island came back to Starling City and created Prometheus.  I could sense Felicity wanting to hold him and give her love and support. That is coming sooner than we think, folks.

Instead, they held each other’s hands. It was brief, but it was huge. It showed me their connection. It showed me, more than any other time in their relationship, they can weather adversity and tragedy and distance and pain---and be strong for one another, more than they’ve ever been before.

Curtis was right. They are a power couple.

Next week is going to be awesome. There is nothing now in Oliver and Felicity’s way. Whoever or whatever tries to pull them apart will only make them stronger. It is their legacy. As Felicity told Oliver in 411—it’s who they are.

Always.

@hope-for-olicity @louiseblue1 @lovelycssefan @almondblossomme @tdgal1 @it-was-a-red-heeler @dmichellewrites @jbuffyangel @memcjo @cruzrogue @blushorchid @candykizzes24 @ruwithmeguys

[kwasifmp]

Prometheus

The story of Prometheus is a very long one in my sketchbook i used only the first section but I’m putting the entire story on here

I. HOW FIRE WAS GIVEN TO MEN. In those old, old times, there lived two brothers who were not like other men, nor yet like those Mighty Ones who lived upon the mountain top. They were the sons of one of those Titans who had fought against Jupiter and been sent in chains to the strong prison-house of the Lower World. The name of the elder of these brothers was Prometheus, or Forethought; for he was always thinking of the future and making things ready for what might happen to-morrow, or next week, or next year, or it may be in a hundred years to come. The younger was called Epimetheus, or Afterthought; for he was always so busy thinking of yesterday, or last year, or a hundred years ago, that he had no care at all for what might come to pass after a while. For some cause Jupiter had not sent these brothers to prison with the rest of the Titans. Prometheus did not care to live amid the clouds on the mountain top. He was too busy for that. While the Mighty Folk were spending their time in idleness, drinking nectar and eating ambrosia, he was intent upon plans for making the world wiser and better than it had ever been before. He went out amongst men to live with them and help them; for his heart was filled with sadness when he found that they were no longer happy as they had been during the golden days when Saturn was king. Ah, how very poor and wretched they were! He found them living in caves and in holes of the earth, shivering with the cold because there was no fire, dying of starvation, hunted by wild beasts and by one another-the most miserable of all living creatures. "If they only had fire," said Prometheus to himself, "they could at least warm themselves and cook their food; and after a while they could learn to make tools and build themselves houses. Without fire, they are worse off than the beasts." Then he went boldly to Jupiter and begged him to give fire to men, that so they might have a little comfort through the long, dreary months of winter. "Not a spark will I give," said Jupiter. "No, indeed! Why, if men had fire they might become strong and wise like ourselves, and after a while they would drive us out of our kingdom. Let them shiver with cold, and let them live like the beasts. It is best for them to be poor and ignorant, that so we Mighty Ones may thrive and be happy." Prometheus made no answer; but he had set his heart on helping mankind, and he did not give up. He turned away, and left Jupiter and his mighty company forever. As he was walking by the shore of the sea he found a reed, or, as some say, a tall stalk of fennel, growing; and when he had broken it off he saw that its hollow center was filled with a dry, soft pith which would burn slowly and keep on fire a long time. He took the long stalk in his hands, and started with it towards the dwelling of the sun in the far east. "Mankind shall have fire in spite of the tyrant who sits on the mountain top," he said. He reached the place of the sun in the early morning just as the glowing, golden orb was rising from the earth and beginning his daily journey through the sky. He touched the end of the long reed to the flames, and the dry pith caught on fire and burned slowly. Then he turned and hastened back to his own land, carrying with him the precious spark hidden in the hollow center of the plant. He called some of the shivering men from their caves and built a fire for them, and showed them how to warm themselves by it and how to build other fires from the coals. Soon there was a cheerful blaze in every rude home in the land, and men and women gathered round it and were warm and happy, and thankful to Prometheus for the wonderful gift which he had brought to them from the sun. It was not long until they learned to cook their food and so to eat like men instead of like beasts. They began at once to leave off their wild and savage habits; and instead of lurking in the dark places of the world, they came out into the open air and the bright sunlight, and were glad because life had been given to them. After that, Prometheus taught them, little by little, a thousand things. He showed them how to build houses of wood and stone, and how to tame sheep and cattle and make them useful, and how to plow and sow and reap, and how to protect themselves from the storms of winter and the beasts of the woods. Then he showed them how to dig in the earth for copper and iron, and how to melt the ore, and how to hammer it into shape and fashion from it the tools and weapons which they needed in peace and war; and when he saw how happy the world was becoming he cried out: "A new Golden Age shall come, brighter and better by far than the old!" II. HOW DISEASES AND CARES CAME AMONG MEN. Things might have gone on very happily indeed, and the Golden Age might really have come again, had it not been for Jupiter. But one day, when he chanced to look down upon the earth, he saw the fires burning, and the people living in houses, and the flocks feeding on the hills, and the grain ripening in the fields, and this made him very angry. "Who has done all this?" he asked. And some one answered, "Prometheus!" "What! that young Titan!" he cried. "Well, I will punish him in a way that will make him wish I had shut him up in the prison-house with his kinsfolk. But as for those puny men, let them keep their fire. I will make them ten times more miserable than they were before they had it." Of course it would be easy enough to deal with Prometheus at any time, and so Jupiter was in no great haste about it. He made up his mind to distress mankind first; and he thought of a plan for doing it in a very strange, roundabout way. In the first place, he ordered his blacksmith Vulcan, whose forge was in the crater of a burning mountain, to take a lump of clay which he gave him, and mold it into the form of a woman. Vulcan did as he was bidden; and when he had finished the image, he carried it up to Jupiter, who was sitting among the clouds with all the Mighty Folk around him. It was nothing but a mere lifeless body, but the great blacksmith had given it a form more perfect than that of any statue that has ever been made. "Come now!" said Jupiter, "let us all give some goodly gift to this woman;" and he began by giving her life. Then the others came in their turn, each with a gift for the marvelous creature. One gave her beauty; and another a pleasant voice; and another good manners; and another a kind heart; and another skill in many arts; and, lastly, some one gave her curiosity. Then they called her Pandora, which means the all-gifted, because she had received gifts from them all. Pandora was so beautiful and so wondrously gifted that no one could help loving her. When the Mighty Folk had admired her for a time, they gave her to Mercury, the light-footed; and he led her down the mountain side to the place where Prometheus and his brother were living and toiling for the good of mankind. He met Epimetheus first, and said to him: "Epimetheus, here is a beautiful woman, whom Jupiter has sent to you to be your wife." 005 "Epimetheus, here is a beautiful woman.'" Prometheus had often warned his brother to beware of any gift that Jupiter might send, for he knew that the mighty tyrant could not be trusted; but when Epimetheus saw Pandora, how lovely and wise she was, he forgot all warnings, and took her home to live with him and be his wife. Pandora was very happy in her new home; and even Prometheus, when he saw her, was pleased with her loveliness. She had brought with her a golden casket, which Jupiter had given her at parting, and which he had told her held many precious things; but wise Athena, the queen of the air, had warned her never, never to open it, nor look at the things inside. "They must be jewels," she said to herself; and then she thought of how they would add to her beauty if only she could wear them. "Why did Jupiter give them to me if I should never use them, nor so much as look at them?" she asked. The more she thought about the golden casket, the more curious she was to see what was in it; and every day she took it down from its shelf and felt of the lid, and tried to peer inside of it without opening it. "Why should I care for what Athena told me?" she said at last. "She is not beautiful, and jewels would be of no use to her. I think that I will look at them, at any rate. Athena will never know. Nobody else will ever know." She opened the lid a very little, just to peep inside. All at once there was a whirring, rustling sound, and before she could shut it down again, out flew ten thousand strange creatures with death-like faces and gaunt and dreadful forms, such as nobody in all the world had ever seen. They fluttered for a little while about the room, and then flew away to find dwelling-places wherever there were homes of men. They were diseases and cares; for up to that time mankind had not had any kind of sickness, nor felt any troubles of mind, nor worried about what the morrow might bring forth. These creatures flew into every house, and, without any one seeing them, nestled down in the bosoms of men and women and children, and put an end to all their joy; and ever since that day they have been flitting and creeping, unseen and unheard, over all the land, bringing pain and sorrow and death into every household. If Pandora had not shut down the lid so quickly, things would have gone much worse. But she closed it just in time to keep the last of the evil creatures from getting out. The name of this creature was Foreboding, and although he was almost half out of the casket, Pandora pushed him back and shut the lid so tight that he could never escape. If he had gone out into the world, men would have known from childhood just what troubles were going to come to them every day of their lives, and they would never have had any joy or hope so long as they lived. And this was the way in which Jupiter sought to make mankind more miserable than they had been before Prometheus had befriended them. III. HOW THE FRIEND OF MEN WAS PUNISHED. The next thing that Jupiter did was to punish Prometheus for stealing fire from the sun. He bade two of his servants, whose names were Strength and Force, to seize the bold Titan and carry him to the topmost peak of the Caucasus Mountains. Then he sent the blacksmith Vulcan to bind him with iron chains and fetter him to the rocks so that he could not move hand or foot. Vulcan did not like to do this, for he was a friend of Prometheus, and yet he did not dare to disobey. And so the great friend of men, who had given them fire and lifted them out of their wretchedness and shown them how to live, was chained to the mountain peak; and there he hung, with the storm-winds whistling always around him, and the pitiless hail beating in his face, and fierce eagles shrieking in his ears and tearing his body with their cruel claws. Yet he bore all his sufferings without a groan, and never would he beg for mercy or say that he was sorry for what he had done. Year after year, and age after age, Prometheus hung there. Now and then old Helios, the driver of the sun car, would look down upon him and smile; now and then flocks of birds would bring him messages from far-off lands; once the ocean nymphs came and sang wonderful songs in his hearing; and oftentimes men looked up to him with pitying eyes, and cried out against the tyrant who had placed him there. Then, once upon a time, a white cow passed that way,-a strangely beautiful cow, with large sad eyes and a face that seemed almost human. She stopped and looked up at the cold gray peak and the giant body which was chained there. Prometheus saw her and spoke to her kindly: "I know who you are," he said. "You are Io who was once a fair and happy maiden in distant Argos; and now, because of the tyrant Jupiter and his jealous queen, you are doomed to wander from land to land in that unhuman form. But do not lose hope. Go on to the southward and then to the west; and after many days you shall come to the great river Nile. There you shall again become a maiden, but fairer and more beautiful than before; and you shall become the wife of the king of that land, and shall give birth to a son, from whom shall spring the hero who will break my chains and set me free. As for me, I bide in patience the day which not even Jupiter can hasten or delay. Farewell!" Poor Io would have spoken, but she could not. Her sorrowful eyes looked once more at the suffering hero on the peak, and then she turned and began her long and tiresome journey to the land of the Nile. Ages passed, and at last a great hero whose name was Hercules came to the land of the Caucasus. In spite of Jupiter's dread thunderbolts and fearful storms of snow and sleet, he climbed the rugged mountain peak; he slew the fierce eagles that had so long tormented the helpless prisoner on those craggy heights; and with a mighty blow, he broke the fetters of Prometheus and set the grand old hero free. "I knew that you would come," said Prometheus. "Ten generations ago I spoke of you to Io, who was afterwards the queen of the land of the Nile." "And Io," said Hercules, "was the mother of the race from which I am sprung."

Baldwin, James. Old Greek Stories (Kindle Locations 112-214). Kindle Edition.