#give us that house of atreus energy!

[nimiana]

i am. obsessed with the way gortash keeps the circle of trauma and abuse rolling. babygirl you keep your parents lobotomised and forced to repeat they love you. they try to poison you. you keep crawling back home anyway. you retrace your parents footsteps into your childhood and repeat what's been done to you tenfold. your parents say they are proud of you. they say you deserved it. you keep crawling back home anyway.

[the-broken-truth]

Heeeeeey, I just got to think about Loki and Angrboda’s daughter, Hel. Do you have some headcanons about her? Like appearance, personality, hobbies, her relationship with others and her name besides Hel (like Atreus that is also known as Loki).

It would be funny if Angrboda and Loki names her Melinöe. What do you think Hel’s relationship with Björn, Revna and her paternal cousins be like?

Broken Truth (Reads the ask): A Headcanon about Hel/Melinöe? That sounds like a challenge to me, my friend. Now, let the words weave together.

Life in Jotunheim was rather dull for Atreus - or Loki of the Jotunn, as the Asgard knew him - and his wife, Angrboda; Loki would plot to get his siblings back under the claws of his father and himself but that stopped one day when Angrboda came to him with her hand on her stomach and announced to him that she was expecting their child. Loki didn't know what to think - he would be a father and have a family. He decided to place his plans on hold and focus on the baby that his loving wife was carrying.

Time ticked on, and Loki made a room in the house for the new baby and built all the furniture himself, such to Angrboda's joy - she was pleased to see him focusing his energy on something that wasn't his wayward siblings. He became rather protective of Angrboda, as did Fenrir and Jörmungandr, they would make sure to keep Angrboda in their sights and aid her with anything that she needed so she wouldn't have to strain herself and harm the baby in any way.

Then the night came, Angrboda's water broke, and she went into Labor. Loki called upon the All-Mother, Freya, who came to the Realm of the Giants to safely deliver the baby. After much pushing, screaming, swearing, and hand-holding, a caramel-skinned infant was brown with eyes as blue and deep as the ocean with a head of black hair with tannish highlights was born. Freya cleaned her off before wrapping her in the blanket that Loki had prepared for her before handing her to her panting mother and awaiting father. Angrboda held the infant with loving and tender care before kissing her on the forehead, making the infant giggle. She was beautiful and both parents agreed. When the topic of names came up from Freya, Loki stated that he wanted her to have 2 names: A Midgard Name and a Jotunn Name. When Loki picked the Midgard name 'Melinöe', Angrboda picked the Jotunn Name 'Hel'. Neither of them questioned the other, just enjoyed their time as a family.

The sands of time moved on and Melinöe grew into a rather adventurous child - riding on Fenrir's back, climbing the cliffs of the realm, reading, writing, and sometimes Loki caught her singing to the World Serpent as he slept under the waves. When she was 7 years old, her magi awakened and Angrboda taught her how to control it along with Kratos teaching her how to use a bow and arrow; he was hoping he would leave her his axe but she didn't like it too much.

One day, Hel noticed her father walking out of the house and going somewhere and decided to follow him, only to see him coming to a village and facing off again the leader of the village - a woman with firey hair - and a man with scars all over his body but the most noticeable were the 3 claw marks on his face. Hel listened to her father demand the man - Björn - to return to him and her grandfather but the man turned into a giant bear and roared at her father; he was alone and ran away but Hel looked at the bear and woman before watching 3 children running to them. Two males and a female; their children, perhaps? Hel wanted to walk out of the bushes and introduce herself but she was scared. They didn't like her father, how would they feel about her? Hel decided to return home that day and think about how to approach her other side of the family.

It would be on the day Hel was 13 years old that he decided to introduce herself to her cousins - it was rough, considering they didn't like her father but the middle child - Modi - told his siblings to give her a chance. Magni - the Oldest - was skeptical as was the female - Faye - but Modi was kind and open to welcoming Hel as his cousin. The 4 cousins talked about their days, and sparring matches, Hel would tell them about her life with her parents and her wish to get to know the siblings her father is so obsessed with. Magni offered to introduce Hel to his father and mother but Faye was against it; she didn't want Hel to get hurt. Hel offered to introduce herself as Melinöe and the 3 of them returned to Great Bear Village and began speaking to the Village Head - Astrid - when Bjorn arrived with his twin sister - Revna. Revna looked at the child and her eyes narrowed, causing Hel to hide behind Modi. Modi explained who Melinöe was and begged hnis family to give her a chance. She wasn't her father and hse shouldn't be blamed for his mistakes. Bjorn and Revna looked at each other and nodded before looking at the girl. "We shall give you a chance for odi speaks the truth. You aren't your father and shouldn't be blamed for his mistake."

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

I was tagged by the coolest tumblrina @wvnjo to answer this ask game. Each time your personal tags show up on my dash, i think about how much someone as full of energy and ambition like you deserves to reach her life goals. I can't be more than a groupie who is cheering for you from the side, but i'm doing it with all my heart. 💗

Name: Imane

Sign: Lion sun, Taurus moon, Capricorn rising,

Height: 1,58m

Time: 18:45

Birthday: july 27th

Favourite bands/artists (the ones i always returned to in difficult times): Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté, Fayruz, Umm Kulthum, Cesaria Evora, Médine,  Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and so many more

Last movie: US by Jordan Peele

Last show: Severance (an instant favourite: series that mix sci-fi/political concept+ philosophical/metaphysical questions about the nature of identity+ impossible love stories will always have a special place in my heart)

When I created this blog: I think in 2011 but it's not my first blog on Tumblr

What I post: What my mood dictates me. I see my blog as kind of stream of consciouness created to calm and to relax. I reblog quasi exclusively (since i have no talent) all sort of arts (photography of nature, architecture, paintings, poetry, music, gifs of films) and sometimes current news about the world (Palestine), but in a specific order because my brain needs a visual/aesthetic connection to what i reblog and more importantly an invented (by me) narrative continuity between the posts. That's why i don't reblog immediately what i like or bookmark. I search/create in my mind the stories that gives sense to me to the flow of the pics/gifs i pick.

Last thing I googled: Algeria

Other blogs: Fandom blogs. It's pure nostalgia for my childhood favourite tv shows.

Do I get asks: Very rarely. That's why i rarely post personal thoughts. I think most of my followers prefer this blog to speak for itself, without additional thoughts...

Following: I don't get this one. Am i is supposed to say how many people i follow or who i follow?

Average hours of sleep: usually 6-8h. I can't have less: i'm too old to endure sleepless nights anymore.

Instruments: None

What I’m wearing: A cute blue dress i received as a gift from my mother who just came back from her holidays in Algeria.

Dream job: Quoting my muse @wvnjo "I don’t dream of labour". I studied law and worked in the field for years because i have a strong sense of justice. I loved to defend people but lost a lot of my illusions, so i quit. These days, i daydream of some activity, (not necessarily a job, volunteering would be very okay), with children: helping in a children library (i love to share books and stories with children) or teaching some after classes lessons to children of primary schools.

Nationality: algerian the only one that matters in my heart and forever. I have been born, raised and lived my entire life en France. I have the french citizenship but i don't feel i belong here. If my health condition was better, i would pobrably try to leave France.

Favourite songs (currently, it changes all the time): Sun May Shine by Tamino, all because my favourite music librarian @wvnjo rebloggged it and got me hooked. it's so melancholic and so soft at the same time, i think i will never be not haunted by Tamino's voice (and the notes of arab influence in his music certainly helped a lot).

Last book I read: The Willow Tree by Hubert Selby Jr. A very powerful modern story on revenge, grief and forgiveness about a young black american boy whose life is shattered when his hispanic girlfriend and him are attacked by a street gang enraged by the fact they are a racially mixed couple. I loved how the author used such a musical and poetic language to tell a a seemingly hopeless and dark tale, until grace comes from an unexpected place and enlightens again life.

3 fictional universes: Middle Earth. Battlestar Galactica. All poems and plays related to the House of Atreus: The Illiad, The Odyssey and The Oresteia.

Tagging all my mutuals and everyone who feel inspired by this ask game.

[littlesparklight]

Cruelties of the Heart

I

It wasn't the glittering pressure of Iris that woke Menelaos up. Rather it was Knossia stirring from under his arm, slipping out of the bed with a whispered 'wake up, my lord', sliding out of the room with a bow to Iris while she dressed and Menelaos had barely sat up. He looked from the nymph, escaping out and certainly about to disappear into her fountain again, then to the goddess, near touching the roof where she stood in the middle of the room, her golden wings shedding a light all of their own and enhancing the morning's rose-gold light that fell in through the windows.

Menelaos shook his head, not awake enough, not quite quick enough, to even begin to guess why a goddess should come here to Crete to see him. Unless this was about Helen, for Helen was the daughter of Zeus, and the king of gods and men would surely be concerned about his mortal daughter's welfare if something should've happened.

"Has something happened to Helen?" Menelaos spoke through the too-thick beat of his heart that had taken up space in his mouth, hand frozen partway through his distracted comb-through of his hair with a hand. His hair was not important, if Helen was in danger.

"Son of Atreus, honoured husband to Helen, daughter of the dark-misted son of Kronos; up and back to your ships. Light-footed, radiant Aphrodite has stolen through your house, uniting Paris and Helen. Your guest took your wife with him as he left in the night, and Helen went with him, the sanctity of your marriage bed despoiled."

Silence rung beyond the echo of Iris' words, hanging there with damning weight even as the goddess herself disappeared out the window with a rainbow shimmer. There was a weight on Menelaos' heart, an ache in his gut, and hot, liquid weight flooded him as soon as the silence settled, the goddess' presence no longer pushing all air away from her.

Helen wouldn't.

Helen - had looked at Alexander of Troy with stolen, wide-eyed glances, lips pressed thin even before she knew he'd spied her looking. Helen had taken the gifts Alexander had offered her with a comely little blush to her cheeks, yes, but with all due decorum. Helen had wondered aloud, in the privacy of their rooms, as to the beauty of their foreign guest. Had teased him - he'd thought - if the effect of Alexander passing through the corridors of the palace, leaving sighs in his wake, was any similar to the effect she left in her passing, however small such a similarity could be.

Perhaps it hadn't been teasing. Perhaps it had been Helen confessing to more than understanding of the effect she could have by watching someone else. Perhaps it had been Helen confessing she was as affected by such beauty as the rest of the world was to hers, but carrying it she could hardly fall in love with herself.

Menelaos stared down at his trembling hands, slowly tightened them into fists, and ignored how his vision blurred.

Helen wouldn't.

Except he'd left her alone, because he'd trusted her, and who trusted the beauty of one's wife to other men? Who trusted the beauty of a man such as Alexander?

Collapsing back, Menelaos didn't even flinch as his head met the wall, and clutched his face, biting down on any embarrassing noise. Anger might come later; at the moment he was too heavy for anger, too weighted by tears for the insult to spur him to any action at all. He couldn't move, sorrow and dull, echoing pain carving chains straight out of his heart and keeping him on the bed. He should get up, but the enormity of both his own emotions and the situation kept him there, unable to decide what to do.

It wasn't until the door opened and Agamemnon stepped in that Menelaos realized he'd sat there for hours - the sun had long since passed from shy morning light that lit up his borrowed room into afternoon heaviness that threw the room in shadows.

"Menelaos---" His brother paused, staring at him. The shadows made him huge, taller and broader than he was, more similar to the towering, unpleasant ghost of their father, especially with that scowl on his face. It immediately eased up into a soft-mouthed breath drawn as Menelaos found the strength to drop his hands and meet Agamemnon's dark-eyed gaze. His brother crossed the floor in three steps, hovering now, as a thick-maned lion hovers over his young cubs daring a trip out of the lair their mother has kept them in, to drink from a sweet, cold pool and for the first time exposed to the dangers of the open sky and shielding grass, which could yet hide dangers. "What's paining you? Sitting here in the darkness - what news could you even have received when no herald or messenger has come past Idomeneus' hall?"

"Gods need not use stairs and doors, Agamemnon," Menelaos said, finding some thread of wryness, his mouth following a stumbling step behind but not quite managing a smile to match his tone. "Storm-footed Iris, messenger of Zeus, came to me."

He closed his eyes, gritting his jaw until he could speak, for where there'd been tears there was now a flare of white-hot rage.

"Alexander of Troy left with my wife in the night, stealing my marriage bed of its precious contents and robbing my house of its greatest jewel." Reaching out blindly, he didn't need to fumble for Agamemnon's hand to close about his. "Agamemnon--- what do I do?"

He knew what he wanted to do, but the idea was vast, and though the threat itself might - should, surely - be enough to threaten Troy to give up its stolen loot, if it didn't, the price could be high. It seemed a terrible thing to ask of the sons and lords of Achaea by his own authority.

"There was an oath sworn," Agamemnon growled, his voice as if that of the Thunderer himself, "we call on it. I won't have you disrespected this way, dear Menelaos."

II

They were finally to do this.

Finally, after the wrong city, after being scattered and remustering over five years, and quietly, full of useless, gentle hope, Menelaos hoped that these five years were part of the ten Kalkhas had interpreted that the war would last for. It could be, couldn't it? Why shouldn't it? They might not have been engaged in armed combat for more than that assault on Mysia, limping back to try and find their way and then scattered by the storm, but it was one link in the chain, a part of the war, as disappointing and empty as it'd been.

This time there would be no further disappointments, no further derailments. Odysseus had gotten Achilles off from where he'd ended up on Skyros, and Telephus would be showing the way; they were all gathered, it was only a question of setting off in the morning.

So, for today, there was celebratory hunting, and Menelaos found himself smiling as he had little energy to do lately when Agamemnon's spear was the one to take down the deer they'd been chasing.

"Better than the virgin huntress herself, wouldn't you say?" Agamemnon proclaimed, his voice ringing with giddy pleasure of success and rustling the leaves of the trees around them, proud as any young boy being given the chance to take down his first quarry, the older hunters stepping back to allow him his first taste of glory and experience.

Menelaos choked on his breath, hidden underneath the laughter around them. Cold punched his chest, seized his tongue and froze it still, even as lava bubbled up, scalding his stilled tongue with the need to speak, to shout at his brother. He glanced around, but all the men present - Nestor still in his tent in the Pylosian contingent's camp, too old to comfortably keep up with the rest of them and not deprive them of all but the most unworthy, old or diseased quarry - were laughing, thoughtless with success, with the coming riches and renown to be gained.

All but Odysseus, standing at the fringe, rubbing his chin and jaw.

Briefly, their eyes met, and Menelaos wondered, considering Odysseus' reluctance during the first muster, if he wasn't pleased. If so, it wasn't visible on his face, and Menelaos could only marvel at the man's ability to keep himself contained. They broke their gaze to look up as a disturbing wind made the branches dance, scraping against each other like a harpist only the Receiver of Many would employ at his grim court.

In the distance, clouds towered up and the winds were soon tearing at both clothes and hair, driving the grass flat and threatening to pitch them all to the ground.

III

The tent was silent save for Menelaos pacing with a particularly pinched expression on his face Agamemnon well-recognized and wasn't much in the mood for.

His little brother's temper was rarely roused, but when it did so it could be fierce and take little heed of others - and most often it rose against Agamemnon himself, despite how quiescent Menelaos was at the best of times, despite how hard he worked to keep his younger brother satisfied and safe and unharmed. Sometimes, Menelaos could be the worst sort of dog.

"I'm not sacrificing my own daughter," Agamemnon snapped, staring at his hands. Hands a goddess would have him murder his own beloved, oldest daughter for. That he hand this task, this foul thing, over to someone else was as unthinkable as doing it at all. If it should happen, he would do it himself, but it wasn't going to happen. But if it didn't happen, then their name would be left besmirched, his brother's home and person insulted and left to be laughed at, and the glory and gain to be won, surely beyond counting, lost.

To be sure, leaving your wife with an unknown guest in your halls was reckless and foolish, too trusting of both strange man and beloved wife, but Alexander of Troy had been a guest - it was unconscionable that he should then repay his host the way he had. More than that, the host had been Menelaos, his little brother. The memory of coming into the room Idomeneus had given Menelaos and seeing him on the bed as if all life and vitality had left him still hurt.

"I didn't say you should," Menelaos growled, whirling around but pausing in his pacing to stare at Agamemnon from across the tent, brown eyes ablaze and the light from the lamps catching bloody in his pale, red-blond hair. "Blessed gods, brother, what do you take me for? There has been enough death in this house, I wouldn't ask any more of you!"

Slowly, Agamemnon tightened his hands into fists, though that didn't so much hide the tremble in them as subsume it, setting his very blood to vibrating, his veins pulsing in answer until his skin was buzzing from fingertips to armpit. Menelaos wasn't lying, of course. He didn't want Agamemnon hurt, or to hurt him, both for perfectly normal, brotherly reasons as well as to hold the darkness that always lurked at bay, fangs bloody in the dark, waiting. But there was, still, an edge to his words, in his voice, like a knife hidden under the well-appointed, beautiful dress of a woman plotting as only women could, resorting to subterfuge for that was both their nature and their need.

"And yet you have more. Out with it."

They stared at each other for a beat, a pulse jumping in Agamemnon's jaw to match the one at Menelaos' temple, and then his little brother grit his teeth, usually so very warm eyes narrowing. There was a time those eyes had looked at him with nothing but beseeching need, searching him out for every little bruise that tender heart had suffered, knowing not the worser pains Agamemnon had gone to lengths to shield him from. Maybe if he had refused to help his brother in winning Helen and redirected him towards another potential wife, they wouldn't be here. On the other hand, what was the chances no one at all wouldn't have tried what Alexander of Troy had, even if Helen would have been married to Achilles?

"I will not ask you, and I won't demand it, but I wouldn't even have to if you hadn't opened your mouth! What were you thinking! A deer in her own sanctuary, and even if not, you claimed yourself better than one of the Deathless Ones instead of thanking her for the kill, and now I should be left with nothing but ruin and laughter, completely aside from not knowing what I'm leaving Helen to?"

"From what you told me of him, that boy could not force her if he so went to her bed when she would be sleeping and could put up no resistance." This was not acknowledging the real source of Menelaos' anger, but Agamemnon felt little desire to admit to it. Of course, he could not sit there and watch his little brother flinch as if he'd slapped him, looking away and seeming to collapse in on himself.

"Helen wouldn't have gone willingly," Menelaos whispered, hands tremblingly tight in fists at his sides, and Agamemnon bit down on the next few words, knowing Menelaos knew she must have, for he'd accused her of that to Agamemnon himself on the way to Sparta from Crete, furious and hurt for a blazingly glorious moment. The problem was Menelaos' anger could never quite be sustained for long whenever it was roused, and now he had retreated into soft-hearted pain and the security of insisting the ridiculous, woman-mad pretty boy had forced Helen from Sparta and to the ships.

Grunting, Agamemnon drew breath to - redirect the conversation, if not apologize, but Menelaos got there before him, and he should probably have expected the shape of the retaliation.

"What do you care for, in the end? For me, at all, when you insult a goddess just as we are about to set off, my grief finally to be assuaged, and you're unwilling to repay her the respect you lost her, even as cruel as her demand is? Or only for wealth and glory, which can be easily discarded at the slightest opposition, considering the wealth of Mycenae? If this was about wealth and renown, you know I wouldn't be here, and I would be urging you against the whole of the gathered sons of Argos and the Danaans if they were the ones howling for your daughter's blood for favourable winds to win them their promised glo---!"

"So you would have me sacrifice my daughter for you? One half of my heart for the other?" Agamemnon bellowed, surging to his feet, and knowing not what hurt more - that he might be considering it exactly for that, or that Menelaos was leveraging himself this way.

"No!"

It wasn't much of a consolation that Menelaos seemed horrified, even when that had been exactly what he'd implied in his anger. Choking on something hot and wet, Agamemnon halted in his advance, but Menelaos came to meet him, clutching his arms and now meeting his eyes unflinchingly. If Agamemnon only could do the same, but he was staring over the top of Menelaos' head, the lush, soft tumble of half-wavy hair still in disarray from their walk here through the rising storm winds. He hadn't noticed he was shaking, and not just his hands.

"I would rather we not be here at all, Agamemnon. I would rather not be responsible for the lives of all these men, young and seasoned both, rather not be the reason they're here, and the deaths that will come of this already pains me." Menelaos grimaced, jaw, lips, tight, which hid the briefest of trembles to his usually soft mouth. Agamemnon couldn't remember when he last saw his little brother smile, and something hurt within. It was far too reminiscent of when they were younger, when Menelaos had been slender as a whip and creeping quietly around, tense as a fawn walking out into the open for the first time, following its mother but fearing any nearby hidden wolves and its sharp, slavering jaws, thirsty for tender flesh and young blood, so as to not arouse their father's anger. "And I don't want to see Iphigenia's blood on the altar, for the pleasure of cruel gods who care more for their Trojan sacrifices than the golden laws of hospitality the son of Kronos himself guards. But I can't just turn back, either. What sort of man would I be, then, to neither defend my wife or punish the crime, to let a far lesser man take something so precious from me, away from Achaea and Sparta itself, where Helen belongs?"

Menelaos closed his eyes, shaking his head. "And I know the chance she left unwillingly is slim, but if there was even the barest of risks of that, how could I leave her to suffer continually at the hands of the man who stole her?"

When he opened his eyes again, Menelaos was stiff as he squeezed Agamemnon's arms and said nothing more, merely watched him with a tense, dark look that had become far too familiar in the last five years. Even the slave woman he'd gone to pains to find for his brother had not ever stirred even the smallest edge of Menelaos' usual smile, though she did delight him, he knew. And if they - he - did nothing, how long could he expect Menelaos to be respected on Sparta's throne? How long until he would have to field disrespect against both of their thrones, against his brother personally? He did not want to see him in more pain, but Iphigenia...

Agamemnon's heart quavered, and he lurched forward, clutching Menelaos to himself, and if there was a wounded noise that escaped him, at least it was hidden in his brother's hair.

"My daughter. How can she ask for my daughter, even if she kills women, young and old, at whim?" Agamemnon groaned, but could not deny Artemis had a right to her recompense, as little as he was going to admit it. The words had been said, and he had been the one to say them, and he couldn't imagine disbanding the army, as close to it as he'd been before Menelaos had shouted at him over the wind that they needed to talk things over. But talking things over had merely put his brother right in front of him, his brother who'd been grievously insulted and maltreated, his brother who Agamemnon was still furious to see losing both spark and smile since Helen had left.

"I don't know," Menelaos murmured, wrapping his arms around him. "I don't know."

His brother, and his daughter.

Agamemnon closed his eyes, but could not escape the memory of Iphigenia's glowing smile as she sang at dinner the evening before they set off for Aulis a second time, proud for her father, for the glory they were to win, respect rewon. His darling, sweet-faced Iphigenia, with her dark, curly hair and bright eyes, who'd liked to 'provoke' him into chasing her when she was younger, growling like the most ferocious of wolves and herself shrieking in horrified delight.

Agamemnon shook until he was still, digging bruises into Menelaos' shoulders, wetting his hair, and then he took a breath.

"We could put it to a vote," Menelaos offered, then, and eyes still closed, Agamemnon pulled back to shake his brother a little.

"I am not putting my daughter's life to a vote among the council. If I am doing this, I am doing it by my own decision, by my own hand, as it was my own words that landed us here. Nothing more, nothing less!"

His daughter, and his brother.

In the end, the decision, as heavy as it was, as cold as it made him, was, perhaps, foregone.

* An attempt at using both the hints of variant traditional material where Agamemnon and Menelaos’ relationship isn’t as simple as the older brother eclipsing the younger and Menelaos giving way to Agamemnon in all things, but without turning Menelaos (or Agamemnon, for that matter) into some terrible villainised version of himself as seemed to have been popular to make of him in a number of plays. Also to deal with Agamemnon coming to the decision to sacrifice Iphigenia.

[roxaeri]

Look, it's fuckin over on AO3, too

Okay, I'm using this as a warm up to get away from the constant mindset of MDD. Sneak peek into Modern Mythos I guess?? I was going to write just a regular one shot but then this turned into War God Kratos and Trickster Atreus, so we all just have to live with it.

–

“Dad?”

“Atreus.”

“Why are we shoveling?” He stopped to watch his dad for a moment, looking back up to the house and feeling an phantom ache in his bones as he realizes how much they've done since coming outside this morning.

“Because there is snow covering the driveway.” Dad jokes and a long-ass driveway he normally appreciated—if it weren't for the fact that he has the stamina of a human adult. A sore point for any god, even if he is only thirteen.

“I mean, I see that. But we've been out here for hours. Why can't you just—melt the snow?”

“Because we live in a forest, Atreus.”

“That's not—Dad.”

“Atreus.” Kratos paused to look at him, face unchanging. “Have you not heard the myth where a red fox had their mouth and paws burnt by the sun? Or notice how the fox targets campers and hikers who use fire? Do not think I haven't noticed how they avoid me.”

“Alright, I get it. No fire. No melting the snow.” He looks away and starts shoveling again before his dad can realize with his dad senses that—just maybe—Atreus helps mess with those campers and hikers. Or how much it bugs him that his longtime friend can't stand his dad. And vice versa.

Atreus understands not wanting to upset the ruling spirit of the current territory they were settled in, especially since they've been friends practically since his birth. Even more so since the fox was a trickster, and his family couldn't see through their illusions like he could. He would help them more if he were able, but he was raised a god in plain-sight; he didn't have the instinct that came with weaving his own illusions for his own survival. Atreus couldn't create anything close to the visions that draped the entire forest.

With another huff, he leaned against his shovel. He also suspected that none of their snow blowers worked because of the creator of those illusions. But to this day, he has never found out why the trickster has issues with modern technology.

“We are halfway done, Atreus.”

“I know. I'm just,” Getting an idea, “Having a moment.”

Said idea probably isn't smart, considering that his dad doesn't seem to approve of him using any of his powers ever—but he's bored and suddenly feeling tired. Tricksters are lead by their desires, and he just wants the snow off the driveway. So he wiggles his fingers as he feels the intent bleed out of him.

At first, he doesn't see anything happen, but he's been outside all morning with the sun reflecting off the snowy landscape. So it takes him a moment to realize that the snow disturbed around his shovel is actually rolling away into snow pebbles.

His excitement allows him to feel the energy vibrating out from his core that he was too tired to feel before. Somehow, it helped to build his energy rather than exhaust him as it did with the rest of his family and their powers. Gathering it to himself, he held his hand out towards the pile of snow he should have been working on. There was resistance against his hand, as if he were actually touching the snow. Giving it a hard shove sent the snow, and himself, flying.

“Whoa!”

“Atreus?”

“I, uh,” He brushed the snow out of his face, “Tripped myself.”

“Hm.” Kratos' almost immediate acceptance of his answer makes Atreus wonder if he's getting better at lying to his dad, or if it tells him what his dad really thinks on his balance. Atreus knows he isn't the most graceful god out there—and he's seen tricksters both full of grace and ones unable to sit still without tripping themselves—but still.

Getting back up onto the pavement is a struggle, but once he's there, Atreus takes care not to forget that there's nothing actually holding him back. A couple of empty palm strikes against the air reminded him to stay focused. With his powers free, there's no telling what they might do if he let it get away from him. That thought makes him wonder how proud his dad would be of that if it weren't for his clashing genetics creating the space for weird powers.

As he's taking another break, after waving off his father, the sudden urge for mischief befalls him. And maybe it has to do with the fact that his dad's totally focused and his recent shenanigans with the other trickster kids at school that has him wanting to throw a snowball at the man to disturb the steady peace.

Shaking off the urge, he goes back to shoving the snow away. Atreus should probably ask to hang out with the other kids again before the urge to mess with his family grows to disastrous proportions. Calliope and his dad were still unable to tell what he might have shifted into to hide himself, but his mom had the unnatural sense of where and what he was exactly when she got too close.

At least, he intends to go back to finishing the job, but he comes out of his thoughts to see the arctic fox too late. A red eye winks at him before zipping over the snow towards his dad. Panicking and not thinking, his hand shoots out.

The snow around the fox bursts through the air, covering their escape but also blanketing his father.

“. . . Atreus.” Golden eyes land on him, narrowed and suspicious. Atreus can only wave, eyes catching the dizzying shift of his friend from arctic fox to red fox before disappearing. “What were you doing?”

“Uh, practicing?” Which isn't a lie.

“Doing what, exactly?”

“I'm tired, dad. My arms and my back are starting to hurt—and I've been doing proper posture or whatever it's called.” So maybe he has to compel himself to lie, the words falling off his tongue quite easily. Normally he would be scared of disappointment, but Atreus thinks he's made the shift into mischief mode thanks to the fox.

“And you're using your powers.”

“It's not—I don't know what it is,” Atreus used a finger to flick some snow away, in which case it rolled away in a ball, “But it doesn't make me tired like it does you or mom or Calliope.” Because their rules don't apply to him. That goes unspoken, but it's palpable. It always is.

“It's a bit of practice. Sungilah said it helps—with the power build and, you know . . . wanting to switch all the shaving cream in the store with whipped cream.” It's bullshit he's laying down for his dad. True and honest, because he really does want to switch the products and it was the advice his friend gave him the last time they met up. But it's still bullshit to hide the fact that the fox was messing with both him and his dad. Atreus doesn't want to add to their thirteen year long power struggle.

“And this advice came from Sungilah, and not Tokala, correct?”

That had him shivering. He's never really sure which one he's talking to at times—no one ever is except for Seung's dad—but he understands the concern.

“It was Sungilah. I'm positive.” As positive as he can get when it comes to tricksters who constantly shapeshift.

“Then you may practice your control if it helps.” Those words from his dad nearly sends him stumbling back off into the ditch, but he doesn't.

“Got it! Yeah, sure--” Atreus stops himself and takes a breath like Mimir told him should before continuing, “I can do it. And the driveway will be clean in no time!”

“You will take your time.” His dad emphasizes, waiting until Atreus agrees before going back to shoveling his half.

The kid almost launches himself into a tree at how excited he is to have his dad's permission to use his powers. It's rare and unexpected and he had been braced for a lecture. Atreus can feel the energy bouncing around inside him and vibrating just under his skin. It's ticklish and the only time it stops is when he pushes against the snow.

He's about as focused as his dad before he spots red fur in the distance before it blinks back into an invisible white against the landscape. The fox came back and that fact shoves his instincts into overdrive.

At least until he gets a snowball to the face. The sound solid and loud enough to attract his dad's attention again.

“Just a bit,” He stumbles trying to get wet snow out of his face, “I slipped. I’m good.” They must have brought up some snow from by the water. It was more slush than the ice flakes they were shoveling and he's sure his dad can tell the difference.

With a huff, he looks for the fox before a snowball goes flying in front of his face, scraping his nose. Atreus doesn’t even glance at his dad before whisking up something to launch back. It was messy and small before Sungilah whipped it back around to roll and explode in a silent poof of snow at his feet.

By then, he could see the strange shine of their fur against the glittering snow, which helped even out their quiet battle. Sungilah was the oldest of his generation of tricksters according to Mimir, one who was already recognized, and it showed. Especially when they grinned back at him after missing, only for Atreus to hear the hard smack of soaked snow against skin.

He doesn’t get the chance to look at his dad before he gets an icy wet smack in the face again.

“What are you--?” His dad doesn’t even get to finish his thought before a barrage of snowballs falls on them. With enough presence of mind, Atreus steals one or two to sling back at the fox.

He knows he shouldn’t find this situation fun, because his friend and his dad dislike each other, but he does. It's Chaos meeting the Void. A clash between a trickster born from Darkness and one of the most lethal War Gods to ever have lived.

It's a fucking snowball fight, and Atreus is living for it.

And maybe he's letting himself go more than he should. Atreus knows his dad won’t be happy about anything going down right now. Sungilah never restrained themselves to the extent he did. A good example being the fact that they used their powers with wild abandon and taunted said war god. Atreus would have included himself, but he only saw himself as a kid enjoying a high powered snowball war where he wasn’t the focus.

“Okay, how are you doing that?” Atreus asked once he hopped his way through the snow to hide behind a tree near the shape shifter.

“Doing what?” Sungilah jumped back, shifting onto two legs as a snowball exploded where their head was.

“That!” Atreus laughed, taking the time to toss his own. It was a lazy throw, weak and off due to the unfocused energy buzzing through him. “Getting him to play along?”

“Oh, it's easy. I use the power of annoyance and the fact that you're having fun, too.”

“That's bullshit.” Atreus didn’t curse out loud very often, but he said it so honestly that it sent the fox into a laughing fit. Enough to the point Atreus felt the need to defend them from his dad.

“Okay,” Sungilah gasped, flinging a hand out to send another wave at the older god, “So maybe your father's a little compelled. Never let it be said he doesn’t know what fun is—or this wouldn’t have worked. It'll go away when I go away. But for now—”

“We have fun!”

And it was. The more it went on, the easier it was for Atreus to focus and control how he crafted the snow. He suspected the exact moment his dad was no longer compelled by the trickster. Most likely happened when he realized Sungilah was actually teaching him during their snow-filled battle. It wasn’t to the point Atreus could create anything like his friend, but enough that he could form a large snowball about the size of a basketball and it would hold together. Several of those were launched right back at them, with his dad calling out instructions to dodge. It was stimulating training, and he wondered if the trickster planned for this or if it was his luck acting against theirs.

Atreus felt something barrel into him from the side, pushing over both him and Sungilah. Popping up from his imprint in the snow he saw a snow boulder hit a tree and fall apart.

“What--?” He saw a flicker by his dad that told him what was happening before a volley of snowballs came flying at the pair.

“Até!” Sungilah called out. A hearty laugh echoed around them.

“Don’t think I can’t find you, kit.” Sungilah's father said, perched in a tree. Atreus was reminded that a lot of their habits came from the elder trickster. “Oh, no you don't!” He dived for the fox, already transformed and attempting to dash away. Where Atreus knew neither he nor his dad could keep up, the trickster god was faster than his friend. Iktomi made the rules, even in a domain that didn’t belong to him.

Atreus was out of breath and freezing as he trampled through the snow to his dad. The other father and child pair were having a heated discussion in a language Atreus had no hope of learning.

“How are you feeling?” His dad asked when he was near. Gold eyes were sharp as they peered down at him, reflecting the glow of his own eyes.

“Better. Less . . . anxious, I guess.” Atreus wouldn’t say calm, but the energy inside him had evened out to the point where it no longer felt as if he would fall apart. He took a moment to turn away from the nearby family talk to see the driveway, covered in snow again due to Sungilah's burst attacks.

“You will now focus what energy you have left on clearing the rest of it, Atreus.”

Okay, that he understood. Atreus wanted to make up for joining in on the fun his dad was compelled to have. Being this far into his mom's wards should have kept his dad safe from something like this.

“Keep pelting him with snowballs until it's done!”

Atreus whirled around to look at the elder trickster in shock. His friend was pouting, tucked under his arm like an American football.

“A good idea, spider.”

“My thanks for making my child predictable, warboy!”

Again, Atreus knew he hadn't blinked at all, but the sudden disappearance of the pair made him feel as if he had.

He would have continued to think on that if not for the snowball that hit the side of his head.

“Hey—”

“The driveway, Atreus.”

Later, he walked into his mother's office, flinging himself on the carpet. Atreus was soaked head to toe and couldn’t find it in him to care about the hardwood.

“It's not fair dad has perfect aim with his bare hands.” He felt the heat of the fire on his hand, reaching out with his magic to pull the air towards himself.

“Honey, he's the Greek god of war who replaced Ares fair and square. He was a Spartan General. And he has ages of experience.” She had a placating smile on her face as she leaned forward on her desk to better see him on the floor. “You’re a thirteen year-old who just recently discovered he's a trickster.”

“I’m supposed to be Loki. A major trickster god.”

“Your father was once a mortal boy. You’re already far beyond what he was at your age.” His mom took in his appearance with a frown. “You will become what you wish to be given time and experience; But before that, you will go shower and change before even you catch a cold.”

“Okay.” He struggled to get up in his wet clothes, even with his mother's help. She didn’t mind it as she hugged him and kissed his head.

“And don’t be upset. Your father still has to clear the roads to city, and no doubt Sungilah will be lurking about. That experience should humble him and avenge your honor.” Those words and that grin on his mother's face had him laughing.

“Right.”

[national-theatre-scotland-blog]

Circles of tragedy and How To Act

Clare Finburgh, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent, responds to How To Act.

A circle. Anthony Nicholl, the “successful theatre director in his fifties” invited in Graham Eatough’s How to Act to give an acting masterclass, asks members of the audience to remove their shoes, which he then places centre-stage to form a circle. Nicholl marks out the circular space in which his participant, the young female actor Promise, will do improvisation exercises based on her own past.

According to Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy (1872), tragedy pulls “a living wall … around itself to close itself off entirely from the real world and maintain its ideal ground and its poetic freedom”.

[1]

Since its ancient Greek origins, tragedy has demarcated itself clearly as an art form distinct from the lives of the audience members watching it, a feature that the circle in How to Act recreates. In this, and in other respects, How to Act returns to the vast scope of the Classics. At the same time, How to Act expands classical tragedy in order to speak eloquently both to theatre today, and to politics today.In a number of respects How to Act, like the “prize-winning tragedians of ancient Athens” to which Nicholl refers, foregrounds its own status as art. Like a classical tragedy, How to Act features a chorus. The chorus self-consciously draws attention to the fact that what the audience is watching, is a piece of theatre. In addition, according to the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes, the chorus constitutes the very definition of tragedy, since it draws attention to the tragic dimension of the play by remarking on it.

[2]

How to Act differs, though, in that the members of an ancient chorus tend to pass judgement on the proceedings in the play, whereas Eatough’s chorus involves clapping and movement, which are performed in the circle. But in the extent to which ancient plays themselves featured song and dance,

How to Act does inherit from classical tragedy.Predating Nietzsche by over two millennia, the first theorisation of tragedy in theatre was provided by Aristotle, whose Poetics stated that the central tenet of tragedy must be one single, unified, clearly defined plot – what Nicholl in How to Act describes as “Proposition – dilemma – response. The fundamental building blocks of drama.” The circular space in which a tragedy is performed becomes a kind of boxing ring, a scene of combat in which conflicts are battled out until their final dénouement. Within the circle, the two conflicting worlds of Nicholl and Promise – male and female, European and African, older and younger, coloniser and colonised – clash. However, the plot in How to Act is far from straightforward. Eatough introduces a play-within-a-play device, where Promise, following Nicholl’s instructions, enters the circle and conducts drama exercises in which she enacts scenes from her childhood in her native Nigeria. When Promise reveals that Nicholl, who had formerly travelled to Nigeria to conduct research for his theatre practice, had no doubt had a brief affair with her mother, it is not clear if she is enacting a fiction, or whether she has actually come in search of the man who might be the father she never knew. Like the French author Jean Genet’s The Maids (1947), where two maids play at being a maid and her mistress; or indeed the most famous play-within-a-play of all, The Mousetrap in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599?), levels and layers of fiction in How to Act become entangled, as it is never quite certain on whose behalf the doubled characters speak. Like Shakespeare before them, generations of playwrights have abandoned the unity of an Aristotelian tragic plot in favour of multiple interweaving narratives. Indeed, the mid-twentieth-century German playwright, director and theatre theorist Bertolt Brecht, to whom I come presently, argues that today’s world is far too complex to be encapsulated in a singular dramatic plot:

Petroleum resists the five-act form; today’s catastrophes do not progress in a straight line but in cyclical crises; the ‘heroes’ change with the different phases, are interchangeable, etc.; the graph of people’s actions is complicated by abortive actions; fate is no longer a single coherent power; rather there are fields of force which can be seen radiating in opposite directions.[3]

“The truth is that theatre is dying and we all know it”, declares Nicholl in How to Act. 

Whereas Nietzsche entitled his major work The Birth of Tragedy, George Steiner in the twentieth century announced The Death of Tragedy (1961) – the name of his important study. Steiner argues, “tragic drama tells us that the spheres of reason, order, and justice are terribly limited and that no progress in our science or technical resources will enlarge their relevance”.

[4]

For Steiner and other Marxist theorists and theatre-makers, notably Brecht, the incontrovertible fate in tragedy is incompatible with a political commitment to the radical transformation of society: tragedy in art is anti-progressist because it reinforces political fatalism in life. It is important to note that Aritotle’s Poetics does not in actual fact mention fate, although ancient tragedies do often submit tragic heroes to their destiny. Sophocles’s Oedipus is the classic example: before his birth it was predicted that Oedipus would murder his father and marry his mother; and despite his and his parents’ lifelong efforts, this is precisely what takes place. The circle in Eatough’s How to Act thus denotes the inescapable circularity of fate.

The Algerian playwright Kateb Yacine, many of whose works were written during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), named his tetralogy of tragedies, which was inspired by Aeschylus’sThe Oresteia, the Circle of Reprisals (1950s). In this series of plays, as in Aeschylus’s House of Atreus in the Oresteia, a closed circuit of violence, an ancestral cult of violence, reprisals, revenge, fatality and failure, become inevitabilities for all of Algeria’s population. Kateb writes:

For me, tragedy is driven by a circular movement and does not open out or uncoil except at an unexpected point in the spiral, like a spring. […] But this apparently closed circularity that starts and ends nowhere, is the exact image of every universe, poetic or real. […] Tragedy is created precisely to show where there is no way out, how we fight and play against the rules and the principles of “what should happen”, against conventions and appearances.[5]

This resignation to a doctrine of circular fate is illustrated when Promise in How to Act says:

It’s all been written for us hasn’t it? Sometime in the past. Before we met anyway. Before you met my mother even. None of it could have been any other way. You thought you could make a difference. Control things. Control the story. But it’s not yours to tell. You’re just a part of it. Like we all are. You’re just in it. Subject to it. It’s all been decided. Who we are. What we mean to each other. How this turns out. I was always going to find you. Come back to you. Like a curse. Show you who you really are. A liar. That’s how this ends. There’s no escape.

It is precisely this belief in the circle of fate and the absence of a possibility for escape from this circle, that has been rejected by Marxist playwrights and directors like Brecht.

Instead of submitting to a destiny of suffering, for Brecht, characters – and the audience – must seek to understand the reasons for suffering, and to redress the social and economic injustices that cause that suffering. Marxist cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, Brecht’s contemporary, explains how Brecht’s politics distinguish between simplicity and transparency. Simplicity denotes the defeatist acceptance of misery and resists challenge to the status quo: “That’s just the way it’s always been”; transparency, on the other hand, rejects the mystifications that lead society to believe that suffering is universal and eternal. Erwin Piscator, a Marxist dramaturg who was also contemporary to Brecht, summarizes how tragedy is the result not simply of fate, but of political and socio-economic circumstances:

What are the forces of destiny in our own epoch? What does this generation recognize as the fate which it accepts at its peril, which it must conquer if it is to survive? Economics and politics are our fate, and the result of both is society, the social fabric. And only by taking these three factors into account, either by affirming them or by fighting against them, will we bring our lives into contact with the “historical” aspect of the twentieth century.[6]

In How to Act, the causes of suffering on the African continent, notably in Nigeria, are given clear explanations by Promise. As Brecht highlights in the quotation to which I have already referred, “petroleum” is one of today’s most pressing and complex problems. Promise explains how, in spite of Nigeria’s vast oil wealth, it has been crippled by “debt to western governments and the World Bank.” In addition, she describes how “western oil companies” such as “Shell, Exon, Chevron and Total” have not only made many billions of dollars of profits out of Nigerian oil and gas and massively expanded the west’s consumption of energy and goods while their employees live on “less than a dollar a day”. In addition, these oil companies have committed human rights abuses by encouraging the Nigerian government to execute activists campaigning for social and environmental justice. These perspectives provided by the play engage directly with current geopolitics, since in June 2017 the widows of four of the nine activists extrajudicially executed in 1995 by the Nigerian government for campaigning against environmental damage caused by oil extraction in the Ogoni region of Nigeria, launched a civil case against Shell, accusing them of being complicit in the torture and killings of their husbands.[7] While inheriting from classical tragedy, How to Act conducts, in parallel, a typically Marxist analysis that seeks out the causes for suffering, rather than submitting to them. “[Y]our having everything depends on us having nothing.”, admonishes Promise.

In Theatre & Ethics, Nicholas Ridout defines ethics by posing the question, ‘Can we create a system according to which we will all know how to act?’

[8]

By admitting to the reasons for social, economic, gender and environmental injustices, we can strive towards an ethics of “how to act”, as the title of Eatough’s play suggests.

In some respects How to Act could be described as a postcolonial play, or at least a play that examines and exposes the afterburns of British colonial occupation in Nigeria. The Nigerian playwright and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, rather than dismissing tragedy outright, argues for the “socio-political question of the viability of a tragic view in a contemporary world”. For him, as he demonstrates in some of his great tragedies, notably Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), the theosophical school which would accept suffering and death as the natural order of things, and the Marxist school which insists that the historical reasons for human suffering must be explored, understood, and rectified, can indeed be encapsulated in the same play (1976: 48). Graham Eatough demonstrates, as Kateb Yacine and Wole Soyinka have done before him, and as authors such as the Lebanese-born Quebecan playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad continue to do today, that tragedy is an enduring form that can not only affirm the inevitability of suffering and injustice, but can also candidly expose the reversible reasons for that suffering. There are economic, social and political reasons for tragic suffering which must be comprehended and apprehended, in order to effect change. These artists replace circles with spirals, and spirals have an end.

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, London: Penguin, 1993, 37-8.

[2] Roland Barthes, “Pouvoirs de la tragédie antique” [1953], in Ecrits sur le théâtre, Paris: Seuil, 2002, p. 44.

[3] Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, trans. John Willett, London: Methuen, 2001, p. 30.

[4] Steiner, George. The Death of Tragedy. London: Faber & Faber, 1961, p. 88.

[5] Kateb Yacine, “Brecht, le théâtre vietnamien : 1958”, Le Poète comme un boxeur : Entretiens 1958-1989, Paris: Seuil, 1994, p. 158, my translation.

[6] Erwin Piscator, The Political Theatre [1929], trans. Hugh Rorrison, London: Methuen, 1980, p. 188.

[7] Rebecca Ratcliffe, Ogoni widows file civil writ accusing Shell of complicity in Nigeria killings, The Guardian, 29 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jun/29/ogoni-widows-file-civil-writ-accusing-shell-of-complicity-in-nigeria-killings.

[8] Nicholas Ridout, Theatre & Ethics, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009, p. 12.

HOW TO ACT Written and directed by Graham Eatough.

Internationally-renowned theatre director Anthony Nicholl has travelled the globe on a life-long quest to discover the true essence of theatre. Today he gives a masterclass.  Promise, an aspiring actress, has been hand-picked to participate. What unfolds between them forces Nicholl to question all of his assumptions about his life and art.

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