#dean hammer

[eelhound]

"There is, it is generally agreed, nothing in the [Iliad] that corresponds to a contemporary notion of rights as abstract principles. Rather, the closest Homeric term to rights is themis, which is understood as orally transmitted custom or tradition that is applied to particular, concrete cases...

Though themis is associated with a cosmic order, themis is not a statement of divine right, nor is it simply the prerogative of the king, as Benveniste (1973.382) suggests, as well. Rather, we see evidence of themis as extending into a set of political relationships within the community. Nestor will provide an important statement of the reciprocal set of obligations between the king and the people (laos) when he says to Agamemnon that 'Zeus has given into your hand / the sceptre and right of judgment (themistas), to be king over the people. / It is yours therefore to speak a word, yours also to listen, / and grant the right to another also, when his spirit stirs him / to speak for our good (agathon). All shall be yours when you lead (archêi) the way' (9.98-102).

In this case, leadership is based not simply on the power to command (kratos), as Agamemnon seems to suggest, but on the creation of a political space in which others may speak for the good of the community. It is a right that Diomedes, too, seems to regularize, as he phrases his sentence with an unconditional 'is': 'as is my right, lord, in this assembly' (hê themis estin, anax, agorêi) (9.33). There appear other explicit associations of themis to the assembly of the people. Patroklos, for example, is depicted as running toward the ships 'where the Achaians had their assembly (agorê) and dealt out themis' (II. 11.806-7). We see portrayed an unhealthy politics, as well, as Zeus is portrayed as punishing those who 'in violent assembly (agorêi) ... pass themistas that are crooked' (II. 16.387)."...

[Therefore,] more than just raising an individual grievance, Achilles, as we have seen, opens up the customary basis of Agamemnon's authority, namely, that of wealth and inheritance. It is a claim to kingship made by Agamemnon, and supported by Nestor. And it is an attack on the very foundation of the king's power, as Agamemnon recognizes immediately.

What comes out of this confrontation is a challenge to the notion of themis as a king's prerogative but what emerges, ultimately, is a notion of themis that is tied more explicitly to a set of relationships within a public space. For Agamemnon, in this opening dispute, themis is inseparable from one's might. So Agamemnon tells Achilles that he will take Briseis so 'that you may learn well / how much greater I am than you, and another man may shrink back / from likening himself to me and contending against me' (1.185-7). The consequence of this notion of themis is that the king is never able to separate his private desires from public claims to the distribution of resources. So, in responding to Achilles, Agamemnon claims that the Achaians must either give him a 'new prize / chosen according to my desire' or 'if they will not give me one I myself shall take her, / your own prize, or that of [Ajax], or that of Odysseus' (II. 1.135-8).

We see in the funeral games a departure from this notion of distribution as an act of largesse. Achilles sets the context for this transformation by making the question of themis a public one. By doing this, the question of distribution, contrary to the suggestions of Finley (1979.80-1, 110) and Edmunds (1989.28), is an issue of 'political justice.' And to that extent, disputes about distribution are taken before the community — whether in the active role of counselors (as in the shield) or leaders (23.573) or in the role of observation as one swears to Zeus before the whole people."

- Dean Hammer, from "The Politics of the 'Iliad.'" The Classical Journal, vol. 94, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1–30. JSTOR.

[katherinehoughtoncastle47]

5.19 - HAMMER OF THE GODS

[tiktaalic]

can you imagine learning to perform gender from dean winchester. this happened to my buddy castiel

THIS HAPPENED TO MY BUDDY CASTIEL !!!

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean Winchester every day -- 101/326

Supernatural 5x19//Hammer of the Gods

[angelsdean]

DEAN grabs his jacket and keys and starts for the door. SAM Dean, where're you going? DEAN I'm going to go get a drink. Alone.

*in sam's mind* oh no, there he goes again, using alcohol to #cope with his feelings instead of tALkINg to mE

reality: dean just says that to get sam off his back and then....continues working the case

[blacknidstang]

Demon Dean you were everything to me. you deserved you whole season, you deserved brutalizing your baby brother verbally and physically and sexually all the while looking stunning as the most gorgeous motherfucker, you deserved letting out every untold sick twist inside Dean, let his anger toward Sam, toward his family, toward the world flooding out until you wouldn't care. Oh demon dean you were like a bright shining falling star through the sky only to burn away too soon

[sammygender]

sam winchester / “black hair” - alex g

[lambmotifz]

am i the only one who doesn’t like normal/regular wincest au

because all the supernatural storylines are the main factor that makes their dynamic so special. wincest without horror elements just. isn’t wincest

[firsthandforgery]

20 years of the Venture Bros 💀

[chenouttachen]

starting to get concerned about the amount of blunt force trauma to the head babe is amassing

[ohanny]

first in the series of unhinged character portraits....

... dean!

[eelhound]

"In thinking about what we mean by a 'political field,' it might be helpful to think about a 'battle-field.' A battlefield is defined not by particular boundaries but is constituted by the activity. The boundaries of the battlefield can expand and contract and the composition of the field can change as new groups enter and exit. That it is the activity that defines the boundaries of a political field, and not the field that defines the activity, is not altogether different from a later Greek conception that 'you yourselves, wherever you settle down, are a city already,' words of Nicias to his military troops, as reported by Thucydides.

There are a number of processes or activities that one might identify as political. These would include questions of authority and legitimacy, the exercise of persuasion and force, the emergence of demands or claims on the community, issues of conflict that threaten community organization, and ethical questions of our relationship, obligations, and responsibilities to others. These processes are not necessarily directed toward a functional equilibrium, but exist as 'a field of tensions' in which individuals are motivated by interest, by concerns with the public good, and by different outlooks on the goals of community life (Swartz, Turner, and Tuden 1966.8). It may well be that in the study of processes we encounter institutions. But these institutions should be regarded as an instance of political processes — a particular set of formalized relationships that emerge from, are constituted by, and continue to be altered through, political activity."

- Dean Hammer, from "The Politics of the 'Iliad.'" The Classical Journal, vol. 94, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1–30. JSTOR.

[maxwell-grant]

so with the show gone, what's your headcanon on the ventures's future? have the creators mentioned anything about it?

A few things in passing but not too much. Namely just that Dean is gonna lose his hair and that Hank will eventually step foot in Mars as an adventurer. I think Doc and Jackson said as much that they want to keep the door open for future stories in case they do get to come back, and that they'll always have new things they'll want to do, but anyway yes okay, post-show headcanons:

Doc burns through Jonas Jr's fortune and for the most part remains the same, but he eventually achieves a true breakthrough of his own: a permanent solution to hair loss. It comes with a few little side effect mutations but for the most part it does work and Doc is, reasonably pretty happy that for once he gets something to his name that he actually made and isn't something horrible done to him. "Reasonably happy" is as happy as Rusty is ever allowed to get, and he dies a few weeks later by something predictably stupid, like auto-erotic asphyxiation.

It's shitty, Dr Orpheus cries over it, but everyone kinda saw it coming.

Most of Doc's assets get seized and the boys actually don't get much, he forgot to put them in the will because he made it back when he still had the clone farm. Rusty's last wish is to be cremated so nobody gets to clone him, and for his ashes to be scattered at Spanakopita, which has become a big White Lotus-esque resort island since Doc's last visit, built by Giorgo almost entirely off the Venture fortune. On the boat ride to Spanakopita, (WHITE LOTUS SEASON 2 SPOILERS) Sgt Hatred dies exactly like Tanya did and nobody bothers to fish his body back up.

Eventually some Rusty clones will pop up over the years, one of which is gonna be on that offscreen Rusty that went on the Cleveland Time Machine adventure with Billy. Once they leave Rusty's science basement, Billy and Pete White will never make it to the big leagues, but they'll pretty much be together until the end, and they are gonna go on some real weird adventures, like freaky Doom Patrol stuff, St.Cloud is gonna get up to some shit in the future once he bumbles into becoming rich enough to warp space-time around him just by existing and turn into the world's first Level 100 antagonist by the least amount of effort humanly possible. Actually the whole world is gonna get a lot weirder in the future, when stuff like the cloning tech and anti-gravity music boxes bleed over into general public use.

At some point the Earth will be menaced by the return of General Treister, who has absorbed enough cosmic radiation to become Galactus (this one was mentioned in the artbook as something they'd play around with, if they ever brought Treister back). He will be stopped from devouring the planet by a joint effort between Hank Venture, the Guild and the OSI, and Hunter Gathers will sacrifice herself in the process, passing the OSI's leadership to Shore Leave, who will bring SPHINX back every few months just so he has an excuse to interject SPHINX! into sentences again for funsies. Brock essentially becomes the OSI's equivalent to Red Death: basically retired, but he goes on assignments a couple times per year or gets brought onboard for decision-making, some part of him actually does kinda like this life and he stands by the friends he's made in it. He keeps touch with the Ventures but for the most part he flies solo. At some point he will have enough illegitimate children across the world for them to start their own super spy group.

Hank becomes an adventurer, and for the most part he just remains Hank as always. He makes a lot of strange alliances all over the place, he doesn't resort as much to his entourage of personas but some still come up on occasion (the double life of Enrico Matassa is one for the history books), he reforms Shallow Gravy with Dermott (who is totally 100% getting kicked out of the OSI) and Gary and HELPeR and Scare Bear playing the triangle, for the most part he lives up to the idea of being more "Rusty Venture" than Rusty himself ever was and he becomes like the first major Venture adventurer who's not some kind of monster. He completely and totally blows out any chance at settling down into normalcy, but he lives an exciting life. 50/50 on him either dying young doing something incredibly stupid and careless, or somehow stumbling his way into full-blown Highlander immortality just as 21 foresaw.

Dean I think stays in New York full time and is another 50/50 on him: he's either gonna succeed in having a normal life, or he's becoming a villain, I'm taking the fandom side on this one, villain Dean is not the most exciting idea in the world but it has some legs to it and I can't see him being anything else if he's gotta be a part of that binary whether he likes it or not. In the former, I imagine he finishes college, maybe gets a degree in something lowkey, probably changes his name and settles down with somebody and stops answering most calls, basically makes it like Professor Van Helping in that his life is okay and that's just how he wants it. Villain Dean I think happens in largely a similar way to how it happened to Dr Girlfriend taking over the Guild: not something they wanted or planned to, but it's the best way to keep things stable and keep themselves afloat amidst the chaos that surrounds them whether they want it or not. Maybe he finally listens to King Crimson and it breaks his brain into mad science a bit, as it tends to do, or maybe he invokes his blood right to appoint himself Sovereign but otherwise keeps hands-free of the Guild, and only does it so the Guild leaves him alone and he can boss other villains into standing down. He's gonna have freaks in costume trying to get him for the rest of his life so, fuck it, when in Rome or something.

At some point in the very near future Mantilla takes over the Peril Partnership and guts it to make ARCH a real thing, and maybe in the future ARCH kinda replaces the Guild at the forefront of supervillain institutions, with the Guild having the final word in matters of diplomacy and the old guard and ARCH as the new high-tech face of things. She never succeeds in getting to be besties with Dr Girlfriend, but she does hit it off nicely with Sirena, who takes over after Wide Wale and fires basically everyone that was still around after the Morpho saga. The Order of the Triad actually does succeed in making it pretty big, with comparatively few players but some very powerful additions like Lila, Red Death's daughter, and some of Jefferson's old buddies. Definitely not Triana though, she's got better to do than run with her dad's crew. Somehow HELPeR winds up joining and gets married to the Pants Golem.

Gary is gonna keep on being Henchman 21 up until the moment The Monarch dies, at which point he might actually undergo another big transformation of the self and will probably just outright become a sidekick to the heroes. He's never going to truly be a hero or a villain himself, he gave those a try and he's pretty firmly the kind of guy that only comes to life when someone else tells him what to do, so I imagine he's gonna bounce around until he finds something he finds fulfilling, will probably go on plenty of adventures with Hank. Really by this point he's already an honorary Venture, with The Monarch out of the picture so goes the pretense. Sheila, I think she just runs the Guild for as long as she can, probably reformulates it into something more sustainable by the end of her run. Sheila's arc in the show is about her climbing the ranks and moving away from her role as a number two, and distancing herself more from The Monarch because of it, and she's not going back to her old life so I think she's just fully going to remain The Sovereign up until she gets too sick of it, possibly moves into politics at Radical Left's suggestion and hands the Guild off to Phantom Limb. Maybe even becomes President of the United States for a bit, if anyone in the cast is becoming president it's really gotta be her. Or maybe not since she's overqualified, but still, if she does, in the process she hands the Guild to Phantom Limb, who basically makes it a drinking buddies gentleman's club and is too retired and rich and old to care much about anything anymore.

The movie ends with a pretty firm statement that The Monarch is just going to keep on being The Monarch no matter what and that he will in fact never stop trying to arch Rusty, and he's had like a million chances to kill Doc by now and didn't seize any of them so really yes he will just keep doing this until one or both pass. And I'm definitely thinking Doc goes first, Malcolm is torn between celebrating and flipping the fuck out that Doc DARED to not let The Mighty Monarch kill him, and for a brief moment he's completely and totally unsure as to what the fuck is he going to do with his life. He's like this close to genuinely trying to turn his life around and try to be a Blue Morpho-esque hero again if only because he and Gary had some good times and, y'know by this point he hates the Guild more so than the OSI, but then the Rusty clones show up and, you know what, fine, I can work with this, THE SWEET RELEASE OF DEATH IS NO MATCH FOR THE ACID CUMSHOT OF VENGEANCE, DOCTOR VENTURE, MUUUHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! and then he crashes his new butterglider into a cliffside Wile E.Coyote style and he dies like two weeks into a new plan.

Gary cries, Sheila's heartbroken, but again, they and everyone totally saw this coming.

[spn-rewatch-ventzone]

The fact that Gabriel is also canonically Loki, leaves sooo many unanswered questions

[samwinjester]

What if Team Free Will were the Avengers?

[insanesonofabitch]

I fucking love crowstiel and their shenanigans in season 6 but also whenever I watch that scene with Dean finding out what they’ve been doing all along it just it fucking breaks my heart and when Dean asks “You in it with him? You’re with Crowley? You’re going after purgatory together?” the emphasis on the word “together” just fucks me up so bad and when and when Cas asks Dean “where were you when I needed to hear it?” HE WAS WITH LISA but Dean was like “I was there, where were you?” HE WAS WITH CROWLEY and AAARRGHRGGRHRGHRGGGGHRGGGRRHHH and the fact that they that they reused those lines word for word, bar for bar with an explicitly canon couple some seasons later????????? Like???????????