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lamialamia · 9 months

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hai!!! are there any sledgefu fanfics or writers u could rec to me?

Anon I'm so sorry it took me so long to get to this. I was swamped with exams and deadlines and traveling. But gosh. I GOT CHU. I got recs!!!

This got insanely long so I'm putting a read more

Fanfic - Canon-verse (no AU)

Sleep Aid by someonesgrlbomb. Gosh. Okay. We all know the weird, fucked up bond between Sledge and Snafu is so interesting. They are traumatized young men who are wrestling with their humanity in hellish conditions. And this fic is one amazing look into this bond.

C’est ta main dans ma main doucement oubliée. by ijustlookatpictures. This one is heartbreaking. Not healthy in the slightest. But if you want to be devastated, this fic is for you.

I do my best because I'm counting on you counting on me by ijustlookatpictures. A groundhog day AU set in the war so I still put it here. I love this fic for its Snafu's voice. Trust me, Snafu is a tough character to write for because he is a layered bastard who has so much going for him. I re-read this fic like once every few months.

As It Was by SJtrinity. Possibly one of the best post-war fics for sledgefu out there. This fic might be formatted a little weird on Ao3 but trust me, it's worth it. Sledge and Snafu's road to a happy endings isn't easy or simple and this fic makes them earn their happy endings (even after surviving a war). READ THIS FIC PLEASE. I'M ON MY KNEES BEGGING YOU.

i’m the diode, you’re the kerosene by getmean. This imo is one of the required reading sledgefu fics. I mean, I would say that about any of getmean's fic but yeah. Realistic about PTSD but so perfectly balance with the slow-burn romance we all crave. Simply magnificent.

an angel like a memory by starblessed. Another incredible fic that nailed Snafu's voice.

gone but not entirely by marinersapptcomplex. Angst for the ages. Sledgefu is treasure trove of angst and in the right hand, it would fuck you up. Because this fic fucked me up. It's so good and deserve thousand of kudos.

The Boy and the Magpie by harin91. Oh this is a special sledgefu fic. It moved me to tears. It showed but never told. It got me craving for all the pretty jewels and lost loves and fairy-tale dreamings one could possibly have. If I think about this fic too much I might lost it.

Come Take Me Home Again by ThrillingDetectiveTales. Ehehhe, very sexy and very cute and made me giggle every time I re-read this.

Let Me Know The Way by bearkare. Epistolary story telling is no small task to pull off. Something which was done here so good it felt like I actually get to step into the characters' heads and dive into their inner turmoil. Another fic that takes the slow road to Sledgefu's happy ending. Love every word of this.

a collection of fragmented thoughts that were never written and never sent by canimo. Underrated. So fucking underrated. All the angst, and well, sledgefu have a tendency in many fic to not end happily at all. They are after all two very different people and with everything that happened, no matter how much love they might share, it isn't easy.

I Was Fixed on Your Hand of Gold by Cinderscream. Another epistolary fic that amazed me with the ease of how they manage to make story unfold within the limited confinement of letter writing. Love this one to bits.

friends who share your past by kinnoth. Once in a while, you had to let your OTP be toxic and unhealthy and unable to communicate and lead them to their downfall. Yeah.

fill in the holes you've made by foreignconstellations. Relationships are complicated. This one managed to capture that in just 2.5k words, which I absolutely can not comprehend.

Sweet Water, Wash Me Down by modernature. Atmospheric and very gripping. Amazing world building where the world felt alive and wriggling and squirming in the best possible way.

Leave your baggage here by malmanagement. Sometimes, we needed a groundhog day AU to make stubborn idiots understands.

Fanfic - AU:

got a fire but you just can't use it by getmean. I binged this instead of sleeping. Worth it.

catch it down in new orleans by starblessed. This is one of my comfort fics of all time. It's so funny and so charming. Never failed to lift me out of a bad mood.

Unknown Number by harin91. In which our favorite idiots tried long distance and it is endlessly entertaining.

lest we fall into the dark by gingerwerk. Oh everything about this AU is incredible. The slowburn is so good I wish I can lost my memory to read this again completely fresh.

Oh! Darling by Anonymous. I waited years for this fic to finally finish. I screamed when I saw the final update. Sexy and lovely. Can not recommend this fic enough.

Author:

getmean. Well you can't mention sledgefu without this author. No matter what their fics deliver. I aspire to write as good as them one day.

SJtrinity. I don't know what to say about this author because... my english could never measure my awe and love for their works

starblessed. You saw how many times I rec their fics? Yeah. Read everything this author write please.

Stolperzunge. I love them and their works. I could write a love letter here but I don't wanna be cringe.

bearkare. ANything written by this author made me feral <3 <3 <3

Honorable mention: eugeneshelton whose sledgefu fics gave me diabetes, and endlessly inspire me with his sledgefu ideas :*

#fic rec #sledgefu #ok i admit these are my bookmarked fics on Ao3 so anon you can just use that one #but tumblr-only peeps use this #the pacific

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beautifulterriblequeen · 3 years

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"I have done it." - a TSOA Thetis meta

So I've been listening to the audiobook of The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller, for the past week or so, and I just finished the last 3 hours yesterday all in one go because I physically could not do anything else until I reached the end (except cry. I cried. a lot.)

I have two quick thoughts and then I'm going to Muse Deeply And Ramblingly about Thetis, Achilles' mom.

First off, The Song of Achilles is fanfiction. It is, obviously and patently so (at least to my eyes), and considering Madeline Miller's credentials (BA and MA in Classics), I assume that this literary framing was selected entirely and deliberately on purpose, in accordance with longstanding historical traditions. And I love and support her for this. It's amazing, it's brilliant, it's clever, and reading the one-star reviews for her book from people who don't understand this angle and are Affronted™ is some of the best evidence for its fanfic-ness. And also quite entertaining.

Secondly, absolutely mad props to the narrator, Frazer Douglas, who is more than capable of Doing All The Voices and makes everyone genuinely come to life with his voice alone. His soft British accent goes in a jaw-droppingly wide range of directions to cover everyone from the Thor-like Achilles to the breathy Briseis to the absolute death-metal guitar string screech of Thetis. I even heard an Aussie accent for one character, and another had a nearly undetectable Scottish accent that got thicker when he got upset. This man is just a delight.

If you have 11 hours to spare, give it a listen (it's just out there on YT). It's worth it for Frazer Douglas's voice alone, but you also get an epic tragic romance full of war and family drama and sad gay boys who would do anything for each other - and they do, repeatedly.

Alright, Thetis. Haven't been able to stop thinking about her all night/morning, so I need to write it out and see where I'm at. I'll do a cut for spoilers and cw stuff, because her story is uhhh, not happy.

spoilers for TSOA, going all the way to the end

cw: discussion of sexual assault, trauma, sociopathy, bigotry, manipulation of children

Thetis is a sea nymph, a goddess, who's just minding her damn business when this mortal dude named Peleus tackles her on the beach one day, using tips he got for how to catch himself a goddess-wife, because bros are pals like that for each other I guess. He assaults her, and the gods tell her she has to stay with him for a year because uhhh conquest and male rights, I guess. Sure. Thanks, guys, you're fab, love your system, so wholesome, very family oriented-

ohh I'm salty in here, wow who could have preDICTED

SO. So she grits her teeth and does her damned duty and stays for a year, and bears him Achilles, half-mortal, half-god.

A golden son with golden hair. Her hair is long and black like sea wrack. He does not look like her.

He can sing like an angel and play the lyre. She speaks with the sound of tumbling stones in the waves. He does not sound like her.

She got turned into an oven, a vessel, to create this kid. She's very salty about it, even for a sea nymph, and rightfully so. Lost a year of her life to this mortal asshole who just wanted to bone a goddess, and the product of that attack doesn't resemble her at all - only him. Only the mortal piece of shit who attacked her on the beach.

She shows up for events, she comes in like the estranged mom at a family reunion, gritting her teeth, speaking to no one, leaving as soon as she can. The only reason she bothers, is for Achilles - or is it?

Is it really? Does she love her son, or does she just hate his father more?

The book is told from Patroclus' perspective, as the boy who gets a crush on the godlike Achilles, and who is despised by his crush's mom. The layers of Patroclus' youth and perspective as a new and confused suitor really help to obscure Thetis' motives further. He doesn't know her, and he's actively trying to avoid her, or at least avoid angering her. And the best way to do that seems to be to stay out of her sight.

So, early on, it's hard to tell what Thetis is thinking. But in retrospect, I think she was primarily out for revenge on Peleus. She comes to see Achilles rarely, but she does tell him about prophecies and plans. She wants him to become a full god.

If he's 100% god, see, then there won't be any trace of his manipulative, gross, mortal father in him anymore. He will be fully hers. She's trying to cleanse her child of the taint of his father's mortality, because she feels tainted by it still. Elevate her son to godhood, and Peleus ceases to be relevant.

The gods are immortal, generally, and mortals come and go like the tide. They're not really important, and they blend together. One is as good - or as bad - as another. Until a specific mortal grabs Thetis on the beach, that is. That one mortal, oho boy, he made sure she remembered his face, but in the stupidest way possible. She just quietly decided to block him from the acclaim and renown that his son might fetch for him, by removing him from his son's system and making Achilles 100% god.

The Greeks had a lot of names and nicknames for each other, and a common one was the patronymic. For Achilles, he was called "Pelides", meaning "son of Peleus". It was a part of his identity.

So. Everything she does in the book, before Achilles falls in battle at Troy, is aimed not truly at elevating her son for his own sake, but at destroying every bit of mortality in him, because she hates Peleus - and by extension, she hates all mortal men. Because, again, they're all the same to her.

There is no "Thetis" in "Pelides." Peleus just waltzing in here, taking what he wants, and getting immortalized in his demigod son's nickname?

Thetis: I THINK THE FUCK NOT

And that includes Patroclus. This kid shows up, playing nice to her son, and all she sees is another mortal man with designs on his mind. She's wrong, of course. Can't see past her trauma and rage. So she actively tries to split them apart, to drive wedges, to threaten, intimidate, insult. She isn't subtle, either. She is very blunt.

And there is a sort of patience to her actions. She could kill Patroclus anytime she wanted to. But she doesn't need to kill him - he's mortal already. And killing him would anger Achilles, her weapon of choice against mortal men. She wants her plan to go smooth. It's not about Achilles, yet. It's still about Peleus.

This gets pretty ugly when Thetis kidnaps Achilles right out of bed with Patroclus one night, after no doubt listening in with her powers and hearing Achilles say that if Patroclus' oath forces him to war, then Achilles will go with him. She spirits him away to an island kingdom and makes him marry and sleep with Deidameia, the overweening princess there.

Her motive, as stated later, is to keep Achilles from going to war, since that is where he is fated to die, and she has Other Plans. But the marriage really didn't need to happen for him to remain hidden. In fact, that's what trips her up when Patroclus finally learns where Achilles was taken: Deidameia's proprietary attitude over him when he bolts from the dancing girls where he's in disguise and runs straight to Patroclus. That, and her spoiled rich girl attitude through all the scenes that follow.

Thetis why.

She's trying to do too many things at once, and so she ends up not quite accomplishing any of them. She can't hide Achilles very well because Patroclus truly loves him and looks until he finds him. She can't scrape Patroclus off of Achilles' heart, either, because Achilles truly loves him, too.

And then there's the horrible reenactment of her own assault, which she foists on her son. Achilles doesn't want to sleep with Deidameia but Thetis bribes him by promising to tell Patroclus where he is. And then she doesn't. It's not quite the same as Peleus' assault on her, but it's still very horrible. Achilles doesn't want this, and she forces the situation anyway.

Way to learn from the past, Thetis. Oh, wait, no no, that's not what's happening - or is it? There's a little wiggle room here, where she doesn't force force Achilles, as she was forced. She uses a different technique. Her choices are still terrible and cruel, and she is still mostly thinking about herself. She's telling herself "I'm not like them, I won't do that to someone," and she doesn't, but she does something so similar and horrible that many people would see the two manipulations as effectively the same.

Don't tell Thetis that, though. She's trying very hard not to be her demons, and she'd take that feedback poorly. Unfortunately, she still has a very long way to go. Gods don't learn things quickly.

She shows up years into the siege of Troy to drop the prophecy bomb about "the best of the Myrmidons will be dead in two years, but Achilles will live," and Achilles and Patroclus literally sit around and try to guess who that could possibly be.

It's Patroclus, has to be, obviously, but these boys are so battle-focused that they don't consider that a soft dude who spends his time in the healers' tents to be the best of them all. War is all they've known, for ten years now, almost half their lives, and basically all of their romantic relationship.

But I love how this isn't Thetis's prophecy, she's just spinning it. She delivers it to make sure that Achilles hears he can live without Patroclus (ahaha SPOILERS), but at the same time, its wording honors Patroclus as worthy and good! And Thetis can't give the part of the prophecy she likes without giving the part she hates. The part that says that a mortal man is as honorable as her son, the son she has been trying to erase mortality from. What kind of prophetic bullshit is this??

But it serves her ends, so she does it. And apparently the boys never figure it out, so in the end it's just as well.

But then, the unthinkable: Patroclus appeals to Achilles, begs him as his most beloved to hear him out, trying to help, and Achilles listens... softens... and loses Patroclus. The best of the Myrmidons. And promptly falls apart in rage and guilt and grief.

The prophecy said he'd live. It didn't say how well, nor how long. I wonder, because the book doesn't say, how Thetis handled this part. Seeing her son drowning in his grief, seeing him slay hero after hero while hoping only to perish and end his lonely suffering. Did it occur to her here, how different his reaction was to her furious daydreams about news that Peleus had died, or to killing him herself?

She would have screamed with riotous glee, and the shores would've been devastated by her chaotic power.

Achilles was those shores, and Patroclus' death was his ruin.

It must've baffled her, utterly utterly baffled her. He would not be swayed from his course, to die and end, and then to spend his eternity mingled with Patroclus.

I imagine Thetis went through a very slow, angry, reluctant series of baby steps as she struggled to understand: Why is my son different than me? Why can't he see what I see? Why does he think he wants something I despise? But, see, she must have. Very quietly, very mulishly - gods really are slow sometimes - because of where she got to at the very end.

But there's one more piece to Thetis's puzzle of trauma and guilt and grief and anger: Pyrrhus.

Pyrrhus was the nickname given to Neoptolemus, Achilles' only child, with Deidameia. It means "fiery", because he was a redhead. And he had a prophecy, too: Troy would never fall until he showed up to fight there. So he went, when he was apparently 12 years old!

The book takes time early on to show how skilled Achilles was at that age, thanks to his god blood, so there's a case to be made that Pyrrhus had the same boon in his veins - knowledgeable and skilled beyond his years.

This, however, does not go well for anyone, because of one tragic difference between Achilles and Pyrrhus:

Of the two god-blooded boys, only one of them was raised with Thetis' help. And it wasn't Achilles.

Imagine: You've stolen your son from his teenage lover's bed, manipulated him into taking a wife, and your plan to make him into a full god is going swimmingly - until said teenage lover shows up. Achilles bolts from his wife to the boy he calls "husband", your pick of wives starts shouting pettily about all the secret plans she was supposed to shut up about, and in the end, Achilles leaves for the war you were trying to keep him away from all along - with his preferred lover in tow. And you're left behind with this prissy pregnant bitch, her doddering kingly father, and the house of cards holding up your grand plans. What to do?

Start all over with the baby, of course.

Except now, possibly, Thetis is even angrier at humanity than she was before! Twelve years to shape a bright young hero's mind with every little consideration you never shared with Achilles, because now the anger burns hotter than the pain. Whether she meant to or not, I think Thetis turned Pyrrhus into a monster.

He's written very differently than pretty much every hero in the Greek epics. His flaws are not the common sort: greed, selfishness, fear, horniness, cowardice. Oh no. Pyrrhus' flaws are violent, knowing no bounds, honoring no conventions. He kills King Priam of Troy atop an altar - and in one historical version he does it by using a baby as a blunt weapon. He takes a queen as a slave, sacrifices a princess atop his father's tomb, steals another man's fiancée because he wants her for himself.

What a charmer. In TSOA he's first introduced to us as a snotty kid who genuinely believes he can do Anything Tee Emm. So, since he holds his father's honor above all else, he denies Patroclus' name being added to Achilles' monument and therefore traps Patroclus' soul there, preventing him from finding relief and rest in the afterlife, separating him from Achilles. Pyrrhus did that on purpose - of course he knows how that works.

What stands out to me is that Pyrrhus' targets are, notably, not other heroes. His father faces Hector, Penthesilea, Memnon, Troilus. Pyrrhus attacks an old king, a baby, women, the helpless.

Pyrrhus attacks people who are very, very mortal.

He's no coward. He was one of the warriors inside the Trojan Horse. But the way he's portrayed in TSOA, he really seems to have adopted a big, toxic Us vs Them superiority complex. Humanity is weak and bad and terrible, and the gods are strong and powerful. And strength is goodness, see, because with strength, you can make bad things not happen to you.

By making them happen to other people first.

That is what Pyrrhus goes out and does, over and over. He wreaks horrible death and disaster and he thinks that's just the way things go.

Which, karmically, it is, because eventually he goes too far, and someone finally kills him for his atrocities.

That karma echoes, too: Pyrrhus' doom came when he stole Orestes' bride, Hermione and assaulted her, and Orestes, son of Agamemnon, killed him for it.

What is Thetis to do with that?

She has created the monster she hates most, and he earned the fate she wished for the worst of humanity.

It's unclear how much time passes at the very end of the book, when Patroclus' soul is trapped at Achilles' monument. Perhaps it takes Thetis a long time to seek out her son's grave marker. Perhaps she goes there immediately. Either way, it's clear that, deep down, she understands: Achilles was, all along, the better man.

Part of what made him better than Pyrrhus was Patroclus. Part of what made Pyrrhus worse... was Thetis.

She didn't know Patroclus was trapped there, but once she does, she begins to talk to him, to ask him for memories. She has to ask, because she cannot visit the underworld, and Achilles is already entirely lost to her. She held herself away from Achilles all his life, from his humanity, from his very human relationship and loyalty, and so she didn't truly know him. She never wanted to know that side of him, his father's side of him. But she formed Pyrrhus without any humanity at all - and he became monstrous.

Perhaps she truly doesn't know what she did wrong. Perhaps she's just lost, adrift, having no weapons to stab humanity with anymore, and she's tired.

Perhaps asking to hear of her son from the man who loved him most is as close as a god can get to asking forgiveness.

And bless Patroclus for having, in those moments, enough humanity left in his soul to share the Achilles he knew, with the woman who should've loved them both. He's in torment, alone, unable to move on or reunite, and he has no hope of that changing, and the god he hates most in all the world has come to him. He is angry, he is fearless. And he chooses to be gentle anyway. To give her the softest truths of Achilles' life, to show her how very precious and human he was to him.

Two broken people, one dead, one immortal, finding a single moment together over a man who was both god and man. And because of their willingness and determination to keep reaching for something better, even in extremis, they both manage to find a little more humanity. For Patroclus, it is his last. For Thetis, her first.

She carves his name on the monument next to Achilles', marking and remembering him, and freeing his soul to join her son in the afterlife. She doesn't promise or claim the action. She does it silently, and tells him only when it is done, when it is unchangeable.

For a sea nymph, carving something in stone is a wildly powerful act. It is usually the act of centuries, of millennia, the slow grind of will. But Thetis, for once in her endless life, acts swiftly, on a mortal's timetable - as if honoring the short time that Patroclus had on the earth, and with her son.

She doesn't want to waste another moment - not of her time - but of theirs. Finally, there on the withering grass beside her son's memorial, she understands that her experience with mortal men is not a universal, that Achilles truly loved Patroclus, and that his love was pure and beautiful. That Patroclus adored Achilles, too, and never wished to possess him or control him, only to be allowed to remain at his side, no matter where in the wide world they might go.

No matter in any world, above or below.

She had tried to separate them in life, for her own vengeance. But with Patroclus' words in her mind, she could not in good conscience let them remain so in death. It would've been easy for any mortal to join them together again: a simple carving, a single word, and he would be free.

Easier still, then, for a goddess.

"I have done it."

Thetis did not deserve Peleus' attack. She did nothing to invite it. She struggled with rage and disgust for decades as a result. But the purity of the love between Patroclus, a mortal, and Achilles, a demigod, finally reached her heart, behind all its walls. Sometimes when we are hurt and cowering and lashing out at everyone around us, all we really want to hear is that, Yes, there is real love in the world, and it is beautiful and strong and unbreakable even by horror and betrayal and privation and death.

Love is stronger than the things that hurt us.

It's the end of the book, but it's the beginning of eternity for Achilles and Patroclus, and they get to spend it together because of her, despite all the cruelty and chaos she caused them before. So I hope it's the beginning of a new day for Thetis, too.

#the song of achilles #tsoa meta #thetis #wow guys i found some new bullshit #long post #achilles #patroclus

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