Liss

still_mourning_polites on ao3

[epic-writing]

Words of Love

Love comes in different forms and wears different faces.

The ancient Greeks had words to express that, and the captains of the Epic Writing Server have selected a few of them as prompts for the week leading up to Valentine's Day. May these prompts inspire you to create your own portrayals of that love - whether it's for the characters in Greek mythology or another fandom!

You can add your works to our collection on ao3 by claiming the prompts here:

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/epic_writing/requests

Edit: There has been a slight change of plans regarding the 7th point of the rules, that being that the repost would no longer have to happen on the day of the given prompt, so being late would no longer make any difference

[epic-writing]

A fic about how after Ajax' death, Teucer decided to leave. He gets home faster and it has ramifications in the long run 👀

Submitted by @midnightlighthowlite

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[still-mourning-polites]

This is fantastic!

[v-yun]

Decided to tweak this one just a tiiiiny bit, I wonder if you can notice 👀

Old post

[epic-writing]

Our gorgeous server icon was made by the wonderful Captain Lu aka @v-yun

[still-mourning-polites]

This is a painting I did, which served as inspiration for our logo. I really love what @v-yun made of it!

[epic-writing]

Our current server banner was made by Lena, aka @the-infamous-odysseus

Featuring Tunguszka as a dragon, our very own Captain Telos as a barn owl, a typo that happened on the server, and a detective winion in reference to the murder mystery we captains organised one Halloween.

[epic-writing]

A compilation of EPIC and Odyssey AUs and one shots by @v-yun

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

To our dear crew, please feel free to submit your works for us to post, we'd be happy to feature your art here on our blog <3

[epic-writing]

You'd Have Done The Same

By Laura Hill aka @daughterofthemuse

A fic about Odysseus' sister, Ctimene, waiting for her brother and husband to come home.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62842205

Read You'd Have Done The Same from the story Mythological Moments by LauraAravisHill (Laura Hill) with 34 reads. epicth...

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Injuries

✧ Broken ribs suck. You don’t just “walk it off.” Breathing hurts. Laughing hurts. Existing hurts. Characters with rib injuries won’t be doing heroic sprints.

✧ Concussions aren’t instant naps. Dazed vision, nausea, dizziness, maybe even personality changes, but they’re not going to collapse neatly like in the movies.

✧ Blood loss is sneaky. It’s not just about dramatic pools of blood. It’s dizziness, confusion, and the body getting cold as circulation tanks.

✧ Adrenaline lies. Someone can take a serious injury and not feel it until the fight’s over. That “I didn’t realize I was bleeding until later” trope? Very real.

✧ Twisted ankles are brutal. One bad step and suddenly running is off the table. Even walking hurts like hell. Perfect way to ground a chase scene.

✧ Burns linger. Even small burns hurt more than most people expect. Blisters, infection risk, constant pain, it’s not just a cool scar later.

✧ Dislocated shoulders = useless arm. Characters can’t keep swinging a sword or firing a gun. They’re basically fighting one-armed until it’s fixed.

✧ Shock is a thing. Pale skin, trembling, rapid heartbeat, and eventually disorientation. A character might not even realize how bad their wound is.

✧ Stitches aren’t magic. Getting sewn up is painful and recovery takes time. They’re not instantly battle-ready after a needle and thread.

✧ Scars tell stories. Some fade, some don’t. Some stay sensitive forever. Don’t forget the aftermath when the wound becomes part of the character.

[blended-ice]

Finished making my new phone background. Dimensions are for iphone SE3

[wayba3]

Bro is getting out of there noooo problamo, he's easy he's gooood no problem

[propussyslayer]

[sounddesignerjeans-deactivated2]

I wish kinky sex ed wasn't so stigmatized even among left-leaning "sex positive" circles. Everyone's all "uwu I'm a sub I'll do anything you ask" okay mommy wants you to read The New Bottoming Book so you learn how to sub without hurting yourself since your sex ed up to this point is porn and your ex boyfriend Jared who liked to choke you incorrectly

[sounddesignerjeans-deactivated2]

I’m so glad you asked! Let me list off what I’ve got for you:

Books I personally recommend:

- The New Topping Book and The New Bottoming Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy

If you’re having kinky sex at all, you need to read at least one of these two books. Point blank. They’ll teach you the very basics of negotiating properly (which is critical!), and help you identify what you are and aren’t into.

- Mindfucking Mindfully, by Sir Ezra Where this book really shines isn’t actually in helping you “mindfuck” people, it’s in taking a close look at how to do so ethically. It’s a great answer to the question “how do I get someone to consent to something and still surprise and shock them with it?”

- Real Service by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny This is a slightly niche pick but there simply isn’t a better book on the subject. It’s written from a 24/7 M/s perspective, which is not what I do, but the book itself is an indispensable guide to giving and receiving service. The phrase “if the Master doesn’t want it, it isn’t service” will be burned into my psyche for quite some time. I love this book a lot. Maybe my favorite out of all of these.

- Enough To Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation, by Princess Kali This one’s high on my reading list; I’ve heard it recommended by a number of people whose opinions on these things I trust.

- Pretty Much Anything Midori Has Ever Done Midori is a great resource for this stuff - I haven’t personally read much of her work, but she’s a well known sex educator and great at what she does. She’s known for bondage, but has a lot of range beyond that.

- This Negotiations Worksheet from Bex Talks Sex This is what I default to using a lot of the time for negotiations. Forget BDSMtest, you don’t need that, it’s no good. Just look through this worksheet’s wordbank with your partner. Big fan especially of the “how do you want to feel?” section.

Books I can kind of recommend:

- The Ultimate Guide to Kink, edited by Tristan Taormino This book is weird. There’s a lot of good info for experienced players, but some of what’s written here skeeves me out. I think if I had a top that thought the way some of the tops in here think, they would not be topping me for long. But there’s some good techniques and so on to pick up that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I liked the distinction one of the authors makes between being sadistic in the sense of inflicting pain and being sadistic in the sense of doing something your sub doesn’t “enjoy.”

- The Ritual of Dominance and Submission, by David English Man, this book fucking sucks. The writing and editing are garbage, and the fear and protocol play described need way more careful negotiation than he ever lets on, let alone recommends. This is some 50 Shades bullshit. The only time I recommend this book is to tops like me who tend to be very affirming to their partners and need a guide on how to really scare them - when their partner consents and when you negotiate it, which this book sucks at teaching you. Really good content on fear, punishment, and protocol play, really terrible presentation of the topic though. Don’t read this if you don’t already know what you’re doing.

- Paradigms of Power, by Raven Kaldera I love this book. Great book. Very focused on 24/7 M/s play though, and, being an anthology, some chapters are better than others. If you can’t read something and pick out what is and isn’t for you, don’t bother. But some really great inspiration, and generally pretty well written. Big fan of the discussion of leather throughout the book.

Hope some of these are helpful for people ^-^ for the average person reading this I recommend New Bottoming/Topping, but they’re all important parts of my library and I’ve recommended all of them to friends at some point or another.

[sparklefartstheunicorn]

May I also suggest Hell on Wheels and Kneeling in Spirit by Raven Kaldera, d/s companion books that address kink with a disability. They're a should read for everyone, imo. You never know when you or a partner are going to have changes in your body that affect what you can physically do. Temporary illness/injury and even just age can affect your sex life.

[dogspouse]

I'd like to suggest Better Bondage for Every Body! It goes really in depth on anatomy, pain processing, self-tying, and has chapters specifically focusing on how to do rope bondage on/for someone who is disabled or has chronic pain, which was really important to me.

[friendlycoffeefiend]

reblogging specifically for these last additions bc I don't think I've ever seen resources for kink w/ disability

[olecap]

my diomedes design

[buggyyyyyyyyl]

Achilles wasn’t pure, Patroclus wasn’t pure, Odysseus wasn’t pure, Neo wasn’t pure, Telemachus wasn’t pure, Menelaus wasn’t pure, Perseus wasn’t pure, Aeneas wasn’t pure.

your hero’s weren’t inherently good nor evil, they were complex people who lived in a time period where the bad deeds of the times weren’t the same. The rules were different, the exceptions for men and women were different.

[still-mourning-polites]

Exactly. The way to do them justice is to make them inherently human.

[erostober]

Rules and more following soon! Oh, and we decided to combine it fluff, comfort, gore and whumptober :) feel free to go wild and interpret the prompts in the most broad sense that you see! if theres a prompt you like but isnt technicallyyyy on the list, you can stretch the prompt to make it fit to what you want! just tag everything right :)

[thhouseofblack]

sometimes I see diomedes art and I feel an instinctive maternal urge – like that's my son and I gave birth to him actually

[thhouseofblack]

I need everyone to understand that most of the female characters in greek mythology were absolutely childbrides – it's not a crime to portray them as such, because it's period accurate. Marriages of the time had substantial age gaps between husband and wife because a man's maturation was considered different from a woman's.

I'm not here to debate on the morality of it (because it's silly and stupid – of course child marriages are wrong) but it wasn't considered wrong by the standards of the time, in fact it was perfectly normal. People including that in the works is but a part and parcel of world-building.

It does not mean they're advocating for child marriages 😭

[still-mourning-polites]

I agree in principle, though I don't recall exact ages being mentioned in the Iliad or Odyssey. And I don't think there's enough archaeological evidence to make a definitive statement about historical accuracy, but I may well be wrong about that.

We have written records from classical antiquity, of course, mostly from Athens and Sparta (14-16 was typical for noble women, iirc). But even if customs were the same across Greece - which isn't necessarily the case - the stories we're talking about are set much earlier, and earlier doesn't necessarily mean that women got married even younger. In fact, I think the opposite may be true.

As far as I am aware, the age at which people get married usually correlates with life expectancy, and I imagine the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization would have had a long-term impact on marriage customs. People dying younger creates pressure to marry younger, but there's no pressure driving the change in the other direction, so that would be much, much slower, wouldn't it? So I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that women in Bronze Age Greece may have been a little older when they married.

But this is just a theory, and even if it's correct, I think we'd be talking late teens rather than mid teens. Seventeen is still quite young by modern standards, and I expect the men would have been quite a bit older, so OP's point still stands.

Besides, people write about other places and periods where we do have evidence that women typically married in their early teens. And then, of course, there are other topics like slavery and human sacrifice that are not particularly palatable but are explicitly mentioned in the Iliad.

OP is right: Including such things in fiction doesn't mean you're advocating for them, and ignoring them doesn't change the fact that they're a part of that world.