#perhaps i could retcon it... shhh.....

[johaerys-writes]

WIP Wednesday

I have been working on As Fate Would Have It, so here's a sneak peek from the next chapter!! We have some Thetis POV, and sort of an intro into the next arc of the story 👁👁

The nymphs’ tittering laughter echoes lightly across the beach like windchimes. Few of the oceanids are strangers to the Trojan shores—the Dardanelle straits are rich with fish, and the Trojans generous with their sacrifices—and many of them have seen Priam's sons and daughters first-hand. They know of Hector's piousness and his famed skill with spear and sword, and of his brother Paris' love of wine and women.

“Helen, Zeus' daughter, is known the world over for her beauty and her glib tongue,” Cymothoe says, her usually placid blue eyes dark like stormy seas now, “but young Paris must have grown to be handsomer and glibber still to have been able to convince her to leave behind her husband's bed and her daughter. I hear she's but a baby in the cradle.”

“Ah, but he wasn’t acting alone, my lady," Hermes says with a knowing smile. "It was—"

"Aphrodite," Thetis finishes quietly for him. "Aphrodite acted for him."

The nereid's laughter and excited chatter dies down as they all turn to stare at her. Thetis has been silent all along, frozen and numb as she listened to Hermes’ tidings, but now the words rise like waves to her lips. 

“Lady Hera, queen of the gods, and the wise Athena offered that boy power, wisdom and riches beyond counting," she continues, "but it had been Lady Aphrodite of the white sea foam that promised him Helen’s hand. Is that not so, Lord Hermes?”

The god’s winged foot, which had been tapping impatiently on the sand all the while they have been talking, now stops its ceaseless motion. His flashing coal-black eyes focus on her in a hawk-like stare. “Quite right, my lady, quite right!” he exclaims. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you know this; after all, it was at your very own wedding that the seeds of strife were first planted among the goddesses.” 

The reminder brings bitter memories to her. Thetis had been but a young goddess then, but already Zeus and Poseidon had been clamouring for years for her hand. When goddess Themis of the white hands had delivered to her the prophecy—that she would bring forth a son, of strength mightier than his father—all attempts at courting her or claiming her by force had swiftly been abandoned. No god, no man wanted a child whose fame would come to eclipse their own. 

All but one.

How small and unassuming he had seemed to her when he had arrived to the shore she dwelt, with carriages filled to the brim with precious gifts, all the wealth he had gathered after sacking the city of Iolcus. A king of men in his own right, but of modest fame, from a small kingdom. But he was favoured by Zeus, and that alone had been enough for Peleus Aeacides to summon the courage to ask for her hand. 

Thrice she had refused him, and thrice he had returned, each time bearing gifts more rare and priceless than the last. And when Zeus, the king of the gods, had made it clear that she had no other choice but to submit to the man's advances, only then had Thetis finally accepted.

The wedding had been an extravagant affair, with every god, nymph and lesser spirit bringing gifts and paying their respects, wishing them every happiness—everyone, except for Eris, goddess of strife, who never received her invitation. She had been the one to plant discord among the three goddesses, and disagreements such as these never reach a happy ending. Not for anyone.

“Menelaus," Hermes continues, "much distressed by his queen's abduction, has already sought counsel with his brother Agamemnon. Night and day they have been talking, rumour has it, and not a few of those nights have been spent with the king of Sparta crying on his poor brother's shoulder," he adds with a mocking little laugh. "But not all of this time has been spent lamenting. Atreides are a proud and stubborn folk. It is said they are preparing—” 

“War,” Thetis whispers. “A war unlike anything mortals or gods have witnessed before.”

Silence falls among the sisters. They all look at each other uneasily, the full magnitude of the situation now dawning on them. After all, they all have sons and daughters, either in Greece or Troy, that might get caught in the crossfire. The waves fall quiet, not even the sea birds along the rocks making a sound.

Hermes clears his throat. 

“Yes. Well. You are not wrong about that,” the god says, evidently miffed that Thetis stole from him the pleasure of breaking the big news to them for the second time.

Tagging forth to (no pressure): @baejax-the-great @rowanisawriter @darlingpoppet @hekateinhell @babyrdie @glossc1 @supernova3space @tragediegh @iiktend to share some art or writing you're working on, as well as anyone else who'd like to grab a tag and do this!

[illumiru]

oh it was about titans dont worry

so I guess my question is how necessary do you think Dick being retconned to have been brainwashed by brother blood is (yes this is brought up by the titans 0 braincell brainwashing post :P)

Anyway I feel like there were some instances where he was definitely OOCly a jerk in that plotline, but also there was some conflict that he could have had without being brainwashed (I think at this stage in his character development, him having conflict with Kory over her feeling its okay to kill people is realistic, but also Woflman handled this in a terrible way).

I also feel like a lot of other characters were not necessarily at their best at this time like Donna was acting a bit weird and really on a hair trigger and seemed a lot more callous to the other titans than she normally does (blowing off looking for... whoever Garfield was looking for i already forget i think mento?) because terry needed help with a book.

So part of me feels kind of like it's "unfair" if dick's jerkiness is retconned out due to brainwashing when eveyrone was at a disastery time, part of me feels like if you want to keep his character interactiosn EXACTLY as they went down rather than rewriting some yeah he does need to have been brainwashed... so I'm curious your take as you've read a lot more titans than me

Okay, tbh, I found him being brainwashed this whole time to be absolutely hilarious so I like to keep it in. With it being a retcon, it just gets to me that in that sense nobody noticed it at all until it got really bad (ie him running off) because everyone else was doing their own thing. fhjbef

BUT, my take is that I think it's not that noticeable because the brainwashing was more like a suggestion than a total mind takeover. I think it just made his handle on his own anger less easier to control so he was more likely to seek out fights than withdraw when he normally would.

Otherwise, to me, it doesn't mean though the all the thoughts and feelings he had then weren't his own at all.

Brushing all of the conflicts he had during his brainwashing aside just because he was brainwashed is boring to me. They could have used this as an opportunity to like talk about whether or not the brainwashing actually revealed some honest feelings he had that he would have expressed in a more healthier manner normally perhaps.

Then, maybe work from there and actually talk about it. I think it would be at this point that I would have Dick and Kory take a longer break from each other. They could try dating other people around this time, who knows. (Okay, here's where I insert my agenda where dickjoey and starrae (or donnakory if terry is out of the picture) happens for a bit. Shhh)

Like yes, there were definitely times he acted out of the line but like even without it, I don't think Dick would react that well to some of the events that happened during this time either way.

Also for example, like with the Dick and Donna fight, I do think Dick was being an asshole with how he said it to Donna but that doesn't mean he wasn't somehow right about Donna either? I wish they talked about it afterwards.

Plus, if I had it my way, this could be the gateway conversation about how much of a creep Terry is too and what Dick's true thoughts about Terry are. (While yes, they were seen sort of getting along sometimes, I really don't think Dick thought much of Terry at all. If he had any positive thoughts, I'm calling out that it's just Marv Wolfman's bs.)

hope this makes sense jhfbsje

edited: changed the part about donna, bc i meant that dick was right about some things he said about donna esp the part about being too concerned about helping terry write his stupid ass book

[isaacathom]

WBJ 11 - Language

Although I really enjoy conlanging stuff, it's difficult to retcon that sort of thing into an existing world. As such, there are no specific languages in Asavla that I could go in depth about! However, a variety of regions take their names from a cobbled mess of real world languages, which I thought might be nice.

Notably, Divinice and Stolisia aren't derived from anything non-english. Divinice is clearly just Divine with some country-etymology tweaking, with the inspiration being France! This is why the "original" Divinice was a small country called Divinitia, like how France used to be Francia waayyyyy back (Venice is another example of this). Due to this, Divinice takes a lot of cultural cues from France, and French would be default be its language, sort of! Stolisia was originally called Kysroa, which was a little boring and stopped making sense once I expanded on the rebellion that led to its founding. Its current name was bred from a 'phoneme smash', combining the sto- of 'stone' and the li- of 'light'. Sort of! The meaning isn't exact. I think in universe the meaning of Stolisia is something like 'country of the land of stone', or just 'land of stone'. A fun small element linguistically is that Stolisia is not pronounced the same way as Stolisi, which is an ethnic group native to the region. The final s in both is different! In Stolisi, its an 's' (ipa), whereas in Stolisia its 'ʃ'! So a shhh sound. Sto-li-ʃa, Sto-li-si. Something like that! The in universe etymology is…. Probably psuedo greek????? Stolisia's real world equivalent ethnicity and language is very loose due to its specific history. Maybe just think 'any language spoken in the greek empire under alexander the great' and you're on track for something! Nirvejan was inspired a lot by languages in the near east, such as Turkish and Azeri. Which might seem a little obvious, since Azeri is the language of the Azerbaijani people, and, well, the jan is there. In Nirvejan it’s a 'j' (ipa) sound, so like a yuh sound. Whereas Azerbaijan is a ʒ sound! The 'nirve' part was loosely derived from the Turkish 'zirve', meaning peak, in reference to mountains and such! Tsuliya was derived from Georgian 'datsuli', roughly meaning protected. I'm not sure what the reasoning WAS, exactly, but given it's super south and cold, perhaps it relates to how the harsh climate wards off invaders. Or how the Tsuliyan people (the Tsuli) want to defend the country! As for why its Tsuliya and not Tsulia? It just looked sorta better! I liked that. I seem to have lost my notes on Maleli, but it was definitely made using the phonemes from African languages like Swahili! Sounds like a mix of Mali, Swahili, and Malawi. Which I think it fun! ^v^ Santonia's name was a fun bit of evolution! See, they're located where Divinitia used to be, and were part of like, 6 different kingdoms and countries between Divinitia falling and Santonia gaining full independence and autonomy. Their name is meant to be derived from the meaning of Divinitia as the 'land of the divine'. But because of complications, taking it from Divine directly didn't work, and so it side stepped to derive from 'saint' instead. So it got it's name from 'santo', italian for saint! I wanted to ensure it was distinct from Divinice while still echoing that past. Another fun thing about Santonia is the difference in its composite cultures. It started broadly French due to Divinitia, but that was invaded by a neighbouring English country in 601. Not long later, an Irish country further north invaded the entirety of that land. This Irish Kingdom persisted until arouuund 800, I think, when due to succession, it merged with an italian kingdom to the south east. THAT composite that persisted intact until arouund 1040, where it collapsed. For the next two decades, the borders and government were really undefined, but eventually Santonia emerged, and there it has stayed! They're fun. The Kao Islands was another fun one relating to Divinice. See, the archipelago is large, and very culturally diverse! There's koreans, khmer, hindi, it’s a big asia party, I suppose! And I thought it would be kinda funny if it had a name that made no sense in one of these languages. Kao derives from kaoh, or uhhh កោះ in khmer, which just means Island. Which means that the Divinitians who finally gave it to a name just called it Island Islands! And I love that. It's stupid, but it's fun. So in summary, I only speak basic french and japanese and have noooo idea what's going on :p