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thegeminisage · 2 years

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WAIT HI I'M BACK BECAUSE I REMEMBERED MY FAVORITE CONTROL QUOTE it's not a spoiler, I promise, its just npc dialogue

so I was in the hub area after I unlocked it, just wandering around and listening to the NPCs and I hear one of them say, with SO much confidence:

"The world's not round or flat, it's clearly a non-euclidean rhombus."

and I'm still losing my shit over this, they said it with SO MUCH confidence and Im just like. WHO SAID THIS. YOU ARE RESEARCHERS. WHO BELIEVES THE WORLD IS A FUCKING RHOMBUS

anyways, whenever you get it, I hope you have fun! Emily Pope is the best, I think you'll like Raya. I had mixed feelings on her but she's cool, she doesn't show up much though.

oh, you can replay specific chapters too! i follow you, so whenever you get it and if you liveblog it, I'm gonna come back when you're near a specific part near the end-ish and tell you to have fun there! not in a "this is a hard part, good luck" way, it's one of my favorite parts and I think I'll go replay it today because it was fun and the music during it is GREAT

ALSO there are 3 outfits that are preorder only (2 of them are ps4 "only") but you can unlock them all on pc anyways with a mod on nexusmods, i did that, I like the Astral Diver one, Jesse's hair looks great. i like the Asynchronous Suit you can unlock after a mission. actually all the outfits are good but DON'T look them up, one is a spoiler!

anyways, I will be buying Deathloop to see if I like it today, probably will.

actually wait, does it have stealth portions? this doesn't change whether I'll buy it (probably) but I'm not very good at them 😖

this got kind of long, my bad. uh have a good day!!!

HIII AGAIN BESTIE sorry i took so long to answer :( i was really busy and then lacked the brain cells to socialize normally for a little while

deathloop DOES have stealth sections but not like. so the way it's designed is kind of sandboxy, there's 1000 ways to do any given task, so if you're bad at stealth you can do a guns-blazing approach. i am also bad at stealth!! so while it wsa pretty forgiving at not seeing me sometimes when i should have been seen (most of the time...more on that in a sec) i also usually didn't HAVE to do stealth if i was getting too frustrated with it. this is all to do with your abilities

so like, you have only a handful of abilities but they're very diverse - one lets you turn completely invisiible temporarily. VERY invaluable on missions where i can't stop getting caught. another boosts both your attack and defense temporarily making you nearly invisible, which is good for situations where you're just like "fuck it" & wanna mow down everyone. you can only equip 2 at once and there's like 5 total i think so you have to pick and choose (and i always kept the one on that's the deathloop version of "blink," the teleportation power from dishonored, so for me i really only picked 1 at a time). but imo that's part of the strategizing fun part! it's a thing where you might die a lot, but as with all timeloops, the more you do it, the more you Learn it, and the further your mastery of it progresses (plus you get to die three times before you get a game over, so to speak, so again, it's pretty forgiving - i think w/ difficulty settings you may even be able to increase that number?!). but yeah it's a lot like undertael boss fights in that way, if you've ever played that - or the way you do levels in celeste if you've ever played THAT. the mastery comes in repetition and when you can FEEL yourself getting better at every attempt it's actually quite addictive and satisfying

there is one mission that requires near-perfect stealth or you essentially die instantly, and the boss at the end of that mission has the invincibility slab so you can't just snipe her, or go in with your own invincibility on to try and take her out before she can instadeath you. you HAVE to stealth it. this one drove me INSANE it took me almost twenty tries (of dying 3x each) to get before i finally went out and got the invisibility thing to get it done, and it's really the only part of the game i truly disliked. once i finally got it i feel like i could do it again if i needed to, so it's not different from the rest of the game in that respect, it just wasn't...fun and i wouldn't WANT to do it again. THAT SAID that mission is really the only time i struggled with my lack of stealth skills, and with ~20 tries under my belt i can and will definitely advise you if you find you get to that mission and it's making you want to throw your controller at the wall. although you SHOULD be fine mostly and wouldn't it be funny if you came back like "hi liz i defeated fia on the first try"

anywa ygod the mods for control sound SO good and this is always my problem like. if i play on console i can take clips but i can't mod. and if i play on pc i can mod but not take clips. i wish there was an automatic clip-taker for pc bc it's one of my favorite parts about gaming!!!!!! geez someone get on that. i would have posted soooo many good deathloop clips for you all

also the thing about the rhombus made me SCREAM girl gn what the hell are you on. a rhombus!! control sounds so fun ik one day when i get around to it ill have a great time ty for telling me about it <3

#liz answers asks #liz plays deathloop #anonymous #i feel like u deserve a tag so:#dl anon #sorry this got long

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okimargarvez · 5 years

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ABYSS- the Supreme sacrifice - Chapter 1

Original title: Abisso- il supremo sacrificio.

Prompt: mother’s love, kidnapping, distress, tragedy.

Warnings: mention of Character’ Death and rape, O.C..

Genre: angst, drama, action, romantic, family, friendship.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez, Derek Morgan, Savannah Hayes, O.C.

Pairing: Garvez, Morcia.

Note: multichapter.

Legend: 😘👓🔦🎈⚰.

Song mentioned: none.

Abyss- Masterlist

GARVEZ STORIES

Note: this is my real first Garvez (but even Morcia) fanfic. The song Slipped away by Avril Lavigne inspired me for the plot and the final. It’s a hard story, I talked about weighty topics, it’s not fluffy at all. If you think it’s better if I don’t post it here, please, tell me.

Chapter 1

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. (Honoré de Balzac)

1- The germ

Every fiber of her body vibrates to that tenuous thought, but the woman is expert in pushing it away.

-Someone is very thoughtful tonight.- a voice says behind her, that causes a slight jolt.

-Ha ha, very funny.- she turns to him and smiles. It still seems impossible to think that only a few months before (well, a year now) she couldn’t even look at him in the face, because the calienti Latin traits were replaced by equally fascinating features, but much more painful. Too many similarities, if one was busy to see them. Both were handsome men, for whom all women dizzy and immediately stopped doing what occupied them at the time of the apparition, regardless of the importance of it. Both had something exotic and tasty.

And both (but this she can’t know) are attracted to her, an attraction that must be understood in the absolute sense of the term: an interest that, for someone, can lead to a deeper bond.

Something very similar is passing into the mind of the special agent Luke Alvez as he examines every detail of the woman in front of him. Blonde hair, slightly wavy, glasses that cover those spheres that are a direct mirror of her soul.

Derek is what he can read, printed in indelible characters. Derek Morgan, still present as a shadow that oppresses him, hides him. And he feels exactly like the second wife told by Hitchcock in Rebecca, so crushed by the first that she can’t even afford her own name, nor own personality. It wasn’t the first time he had to replace someone, indeed. Since he was a child he had been used to constant change, to the impossibility of making real friends, knowing full well that it would not last. Yet this had allowed him to have an elastic character, had developed in him an innate ability to forge relationships with people, at first glance, without too many turns of words and this had returned very useful in his work. So he had drawn the best from an unfavorable circumstance, which very often created children, then boys and then adults, unable to forge ties, to the constant search for a fixed point, which at the time when they lost it went into crisis and could become (also) serial killers like those who had to chase.

All this explained perfectly his attitude when, a year ago, he had been easily received by the whole team, consisting of a mix of different members, a super smart young boy, a blonde and a brunette (both not bad) that knows what they’re doing in more senses, a veteran and writer, a man with a severe appearance (it still hurts to think of him, although he has hardly had time to become attached to the big boss) which was then added an old acquaintance, a brunette also interesting… in short, a beautiful variety that seemed to work as a Swiss mechanism, each had own place and made available their qualities and skills for the success of the mission, everyone seemed aware of the value of each other… yet despite having just lost a gear, they hadn’t shown particular anxiety in welcoming a new member. Everybody but one, the one that had immediately been more apart (although later, soon enough, he would have discovered that it was not a typical attitude of the girl in question): a shapely blonde in all the right places, quite eccentric in the way of dressing and also to furnish her own den. The computer technician Penelope Garcia. When he showed up she had barely looked at him and he, slightly aware of his charm, was disappointed. Even the other blonde, JJ, who wears wedding ring and as he would have learned later was busy, didn’t miss the opportunity to give him a look not really friendly, even if Luke had appeared more like a kind of verification to admission. Penelope had shaken his hand with difficulty and then had run out; during the discussion of the cases she did everything (in a way too obvious) to avoid being near him and when she was sending information while they were outside, never called his number.

If she had seemed a shy girl, he might have thought the opposite of what had been ruminating for months, or rather that the tech had a crush to the new guy. But he was not so stupid and then he had seen her with the others, even if almost practically hidden and the attitude was quite different from what she had with him. She laughed, joked, always smiled, made fun of them by calling them with affectionate nicknames and others that probably only they knew. Even Hotch didn’t seem to be immune to the rite and was called “boss” with militaristic meaning. In addition, avoid him didn’t consist in keeping her eyes down when they crossed mistakenly in the corridor together, indeed, the few times that their eyes met, Penelope was never the one who lowered gaze first, but her expression suggested a kind of hate, what hate couldn’t be because this feeling takes time to bloom like love, rather we could talk about unjustified antipathy.

Or at least it remained until he had decided to ask the remaining members of the profiler section of the BAU. Unexpectedly, it was the last arrival, Emily, to put an end to his “sufferings”, explaining that she wasn’t angry with him, that he could also be the pope, the president of the United States or even David Bowie (he would have understood those things only later), in any case Penelope hated his role or rather the fact that he had taken that role, that place, or that which was until recently of Derek Morgan. From here she had begun to tell a series of memories, interspersed with anecdotes of others, who in the meantime had added since there were no cases to examine. Fortunately, Agent Garcia was home sick. From the various fragments, Luke had painstakingly made a global picture and finally understood everything. Agent Morgan had been “the hero” par excellence, especially for Penelope. He had climbed into an ambulance and risked blow up to save the lives of many people, including his colleagues; he was able to overcome a personal trauma not unimportant (but what kind they hadn’t absolutely wanted to tell him) and derive the strength to continue his work. But above all, he had always worried about his “baby girl” (epithet that first made him turn up his nose), he had tried to protect from the evils that they fought together. At this point it had seemed obvious to him asking how long they had been together and everyone had looked at him with shocked faces, before bursting out laughing. -Never.- JJ had finally answered, and then she had added more quietly -at least not officially.- he had thus come to know the epilogue of the idyll: Morgan had found a woman who had put an end to his being a playboy, a wife and he had settled down, creating a new life, then his wife had been kidnapped and he had decided that his family would no more be been put at risk by his job. End.

From that moment it was him who had stopped try to have a friendly relationship with Penelope, because now that he knew, he had absolutely no idea how to exploit the information in his possession. In other words, the thought that she had avoided him through no fault of his own, but because she was obsessed with the idea of someone who was no longer, it was something too difficult to overcome. The Fate, however, was put in the middle and so, to make it short, they had found themselves in a situation where there was no way to avoid each other and in the end, after spending an hour exchanging secret and challenging looks, Luke had exploded and told her that he had never intended to replace her marvelous Derek Morgan, so he had headed for the exit, contravening Prentiss’s orders, which became after the death of Hotch the new chief of the unit, since Rossi had refused and JJ or Spencer didn’t seem suitable. Penelope had taken a little too many seconds to get out of the catalepsy she had fallen into, but then, just in time, she had managed to come back to life to stop him. And she had simply apologized for behaving so unjustly with him. She hadn’t cried, nor begged him. In a calm voice, she limited himself to explaining the situation to him (unaware that he already knew the plot) and then she had kept silent, probably waiting for him to let off steam, telling her who knows what. Instead, Luke gave her a quiet smile and gently touched her shoulder in a friendly gesture, and then said, -Let’s do what we came here to do.-

From that time there were no more real problems between them. Their relationship had grown to the point of turning in mutual trust, even though she always seemed distant when they met out of work context, as if she were afraid of going too far … without either of them really knowing where they wanted to go. Every now and then, Luke had the impression that Penelope didn’t see him but his predecessor because it was painting on her face a strange expression of joyous melancholy, where the sad component eventually prevailed. And he couldn’t help but wait for her to return to the real world.

As in this exact moment.

-Penelope… are you there ?- he doesn’t call her with any particular appellation, even if sometimes he would like to. He’s afraid of what might happen, although they’ve known each other for over a year, and she once told him she’d talked to Derek, about his life in Chicago, his baby, apparently as if she had overcome her “problem”. But the reality is very different, and Luke knows it.

-Sorry…. I was thinking of something that I dreamed the other night…- seeing a strange nuance in the expression of him, she hastens to specify -not of that kind, maniac!- and she lets away a laugh that only some time ago she would never have had the courage to do, as if Derek had taken away from her the right to be happy without him. -It’s a fairly recurring dream, but nothing classic, like falling to infinity… it’s about- and as soon as Luke catches her expression he understands that she’s about to tell him something important, so he becomes more careful and involuntarily even closer. -A sudden awakening, I’m anguished, I feel that there is something wrong, but without knowing what it’s, then a sudden idea illuminates me. Where are my parents? Inside of me I know the answer and yet pass a few but still very long minutes before I can remember that it’s useless to get excited and wait for them, because they are… dead, when I was eighteen… I told you that already, or not?- he, who was absorbed and completely absorbed by her evocative ability, emerges from the water and shakes his head. -Ah…- moment of embarrassment. -There often happens to me to have… this nightmare, the worst thing are those seconds when I haven’t yet realized the truth, because combined with the anxiety of expectation, there is indissolubly a damn and useless hope… sorry, sorry if I have harassed you with this story… you’ll be tired, you just came back from an intense case … – he is about to reply that she has been engaged in it, but then he lets it go.

-Don’t apologize. I’m interested.- he would say I’m interested in you, but for now he only allowed himself to look at her closely, but not too much. Foreshortening.

The acute shrill breaks the apparent quiet of the evening.

-Love, could you go?- what at first glance would seem a classic and quiet phrase, conceals hidden subtests, which only a trained ear can grasp. The man snorts and, knowing he isn’t seen, unleashes his frustration on the cards he was previously filling out, throwing them into the air, while aware that he’ll have to fix everything on his return. But the momentary euphoria in doing a wrong act repays the further future effort. When he reaches the object of the call, it’s visible only a warm smile on his face.

-Hello, little one, Daddy’s love, how are you?- that little creature so defenseless is also his merit, but is still hard to convincing himself. Another cry, this time female, destroys the atmosphere of mild tranquility that had been created. He snorts again, then tries to pretend nothing is happened, but it seems that tonight nothing wants to give him respite.

-Derek! It’s your phone, could you come and pick up the phone?- he goes quickly towards the voice, throwing a last glance at the bundle wrapped in blankets. He doesn’t even imagine that a ghost of the past (yet still so present, although he has tried in vain to deny it) is going to make it shake forcefully. He takes the device from his wife’s hands and responds in his classic way.

-Morgan.- there is a moment of silence before he hears someone speak from the other end of the line.

-Derek, I… I hope not to bother you…- he is about to interrupt her. Emily. It’s not like her call so late, without a reason… And he immediately realizes everything. Even before the woman can pronounce what he fears. -I… I would not ask you if it wasn’t really necessary. You should… be able to come here… to Quantico.-

-Why?- he finally manages to ask.

-Garcia… Penelope was kidnapped.-

Here, exactly what I feared. How did I know it was about her? It’s… it’s been months since I can’t think about how strange it’s not to see her every morning, don’t joke with her on the phone. It’s more than a year that someone doesn’t call me chocolate thunder. I would have needed her so much, few months ago, since… it’s too hard to think about it. She would have helped me, she would have been able to say the right words… He doesn’t need Prentiss to talk to remember everything suddenly. Penelope has been kidnapped. My baby girl is in danger, right now she could be… I can’t even say it in my head. I have to… I have to pack, pack a bag, I have to tell Savannah… Savannah. -I’ll get there as fast as I can.- and put down the phone. The brunette woman stops doing what she was doing and turns to him.

-Derek, where you are going?-

-Savannah, Emily called me… Garcia has been kidnapped and they need me to go to Quantico.- he tries to use a tone as quiet as possible, while the wheels of his brain go to a thousand per hour, thinking about where it’s going to go.

-But you’re no longer part of the team, you’re not longer a federal. What do you have to do? - already feels the frustration make its way in the body of the woman he should most want.

-I still have some knowledge, I know some things that can help…- he sees anger rise to her eyes and finally explode.

-You don’t really know anything! You are no longer a profiler. Morgan, listen to me. If you go there I…- he has no more time to waste and certainly has no patience to gently convince his half of the need for his intervention. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t have the courage to say what he really feels, and he knows that she is aware, but he is convinced that until it’s pronounced aloud, that reality can’t be materialized.

-Do not say it.- he comes out more like a threat than the supplication he originally intended to express. -Savannah, I have to go.- a significant pause -I love you.- he lays a very quick kiss on her cheek. He feels a pain in his chest as he looks at her, but it’s not because he told a lie. Love is much more complicated than what one would like to believe. Much more stratified and complex.

________________________________

TAGS: @arses21434 @kathy5654 @martinab26 @reidskitty13 @jenf42 @gracieeelizabeth27 @silviajajaja @smalliemichelle99 @charchampagne14 @thinitta @myhollyhanna23 @garvezz @shyladystudentfan @cosmicmelaninflower @avengerquake123vanuusims @inlovewithgarvaz @the-ellen-stuff

#garvez #morcia #criminal minds #cm #penelope garcia #luke alvez #derek morgan #savannah hayes #BAU team #penelope x luke #luke x penelope #garcia x alvez #alvez x garcia #derek x penelope #penelope x derek #morgan x garcia #garcia x morgan #please read the warnings

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britneyshakespeare · 5 years

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thanks nancy @pavlovers for tagging me 💖✨🤧 now i get to talk to myself which is my favorite thing ever

rules– answer 21 questions and then tag 21 people who you want to get to know better

nickname(s): a couple, but i wish i had more epithets. the mysterious one. (the bi ace poetess)

zodiac sign: i blow in my tissue more personal information than this

height: 5′7

last movie I saw: uh i dont know but i got a bad movie night coming up w a bunch of my new College Friends (i became cool recently but only w a bunch of white improv guys so it’s... small prize i guess) and we’re gonna watch the room and a bunch of other shitfests like that. it’ll be. fun. two of them own matching tommy wiseau boxers. i hate to say it but i looked it up after and

they’re kinda stylish.

last thing I googled: well, now it’s tommy wiseau boxers.

favourite musician: 💖💗💕💞💞✨ MARiANNE ✨💞💞💕💗💖 FAITHFULL 🐇🌸🌷😘😍😸 BARONESS VON SACHER-MASOCH 😸😍😘🌷🌸🐇

song stuck in my head: i was talking to kaily in the car on the way to barnes & noble, and i said something about DNCE’s cover of Do Ya Think I’m Sexy with Rod Stewart, and then when i was waiting in line to pay, it came on in the store. DNCE’s cover of Do Ya Think I’m Sexy with Rod Stewart.

other blogs: follow @creatediana if you want my body and if you think i’m sexy (come on sugar tell me so)

following: 839

followers: 2885

do I get asks: yeah a little. little asks. very small ones.

amount of sleep: certainly enough

lucky numbers: i almost bought paradise lost by john milton when i was in barnes & noble and i was really tempted to, because i’m an early-modern english slut, but i’ve been in the middle of the knight’s tale (from chaucer’s canterbury tales) for weeks now in between a bunch of other reads. but you know, paradise lost is comparable to canterbury tales, because they’re both long english poems. but i’m rereading frankenstein by mary shelley for the first time since i was a SOPHOMORE IN HIGH SCHOOL (which references paradise lost and it’s quite thematically significant), and it’s really fascinating. and i haven’t read paradise lost in full, i feel like i HAVE to do that at some point. no, i don’t feel like it, i KNOW it. i do have to read milton. perhaps after i read more of the complete poems of alexander pope i got for christmas, i’m still in the pastorals, but really, i have so many volumes of poetry. most of which are cracked, because, like, no one just sits down and reads an entire volume of poetry in a couple of days like it’s a novel. yuck. no. you let it sit. i’ve been reading the complete poems of w. b. yeats for at least like a year and a half (serially. i’ve read random pieces here and there since 2016ish). and i like letting a poet’s works be a slow burn. but then again, most of my volumes ARE complete works. such as yeats, pope, rossetti, anne sexton. and others are collected but not complete, just highlights, like shelley, plath, tennyson. truly i don’t own many volumes which were meant to be read all together at once, which were published purposefully together and written in accord. but i do have canterbury tales, and the knight’s tale, that’s an especially long tale. it’s like, 2000+ lines. i can’t even tell you how many i’ve read. i started it as something i’d read between classes at college but i just finished finals on friday and don’t go back till september. and whenever i told myself i’d read something at school i typically didn’t, because when i have a free moment at school to really dig into a nice long-form reading, i’d just rather write something myself. i need to finish the knight’s tale before long, though, so i don’t forget everything about palamon and arcite and emily. i’m so silly for thinking i should’ve bought paradise lost. i’m so silly! i haven’t even finished canterbury tales. no, diana, you can buy paradise lost another day.

(what i did buy was two volumes of maya angelou & margaret atwood because i was feeling very modern poetry & very feminist. i prioritize Lady Literature always, i tell myself whenever i buy books that it’d be a disgrace if i put ALL of my money towards men—yuck!)

what I’m wearing: oh it’s a total Teacher Outfit.

dream job: siren perhaps. poet. unrealistically wealthy teacher. enjoyable and electrifying widow who lives in a big house w a private library and has regular wine and cheese tastings on the second floor, mingling with a bunch of intellectuals and dilettantes, all of whom have at least mild disregard for each other but come for the appearance of being a member of High Society.

dream trip: i don’t think much about visiting PLACES so much as EVENTS. i always think it’d be much better to travel through time than space. if i could take a vacation into, say, early victorian england and hang out w the bronte sisters. or if i could mingle amongst the preraphaelites and pose for rossetti or waterhouse. pop into the 60s and fiddle around a melody on some exotic instruments with brian jones. those kinds of fantasies amuse me more than going to just, places. patches of dirt. i don’t like dirt, i like art and people.

favourite food: i eat more chocolate than anything else. that’s barely an exaggeration.

instruments played: haven’t played much of anything in awhile, but i’m trained in guitar.

languages: english is the only language i feel so privileged as to say i can speak and write comfortably, but i can read/understand varying levels of spanish, french, latin.

favourite songs: poem 16 by catullus

just a little taste.

no actually that reminds me awhile ago i found some guy who made a bunch of catullus lines into a bad rap song and i love it.

random fact: my dogs are very very good & i love them.

aesthetic: i’m standing on a sidewalk i see w my eyeball watchin all these couples pass me by like that’s what i want china (that’s me) why did you break away like taiwan thinkin bout you every night like sleepin w the lights on

kay i’ll tag some buddies now whom i love @laurenthelyricist @sneez @bohemian-brian @captainweirdboots @mylittlehappy and you know. anyone else who sees this & wants to do it. just tag me i’ll be happy. :-)

#this ended up being more chaotic than expected #tag

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how2to18 · 6 years

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BY MY COUNT, we have seen 27 translations of Homer into English since 2000, so no one can say we languished for want of a new Odyssey. It’s all the more remarkable, then, that Emily Wilson is making her presence felt in so crowded a field. This she does with the full literary arsenal of our age. She tweets, she appears discreetly photographed and interviewed in The New York Times Magazine, and writes for The New Yorker. Her tweeting then becomes a topic in itself for The New Yorker and Bustle. She makes the rounds on two continents for readings and chats. Good for her! We classical scholars can only rejoice to see a colleague hit the big time. Of course, tweeting is an offensive weapon, and she has ruffled feathers by taking her predecessors to task for misogyny — while also tweeting footage of dreamy Mark Ruffalo reading her verse for some celebrity cachet. So let me anticipate the inevitable criticism with an observation: Emily Wilson is not breaking norms of behavior as the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English; she is fulfilling them. From the outset, our English translators have all been on the make. Take our founding father, George Chapman. His translation is surrounded by punchy commentary and wild claims, both for Homer’s genius and his own bona fides as a translator — to the extent of calling one critic an “envious windfucker” for suggesting he had not really read the Greek (the word refers to a type of kestrel, so maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds).

Chapman’s successors were reinventing the book business, effectively, with innovative schemes. John Ogilby made use of a clever subscription drive, getting wealthy aristocrats to pay for the illustrations (which he adorned with their crests) to help float his huge folio Homers and Virgil. Alexander Pope was the ultimate artist of the deal; his Homer made him one of the first people in history able to live off the proceeds of a literary translation. So before the critics dismiss Wilson for taking to Twitter and making the most of her moment, I say look to her predecessors and know that Chapman and Pope would definitely have had Twitter accounts. Translations have a way of finding new readerships, and if Wilson is actively responding to her readers and building a different audience for Homer, then she is doing the gods’ work and well deserves a silver bowl — maybe even a gleaming chariot — for her efforts.

“Tell me about a complicated man.” So this new Odyssey begins, and with this verse Wilson plants her flag of difference. It’s a line that introduces a fundamental ambivalence toward the epic’s hero, whom Renaissance translators strove to make a wise and stoic mirror of princes. Wilson dove into the meanings pooled in the keyword polytropon and swam up with “complicated,” the kind of euphemism you use to describe a person you once admired, but who has hurt you. It’s kind of a trilingual play on words, as “much turned/turning” shades into “folded up” (from Latin complicare) and comes out, “complicated” (we never really sense the physicality of our Latinate words, but the classicist learns to savor it). The funny thing is, though this verse complicates Odysseus’ stature, it greatly simplifies the syntax of Homer’s opening sentence, which includes a number of snaking clauses and actually ends on line five. But this single verse introduces both her take on the work’s hero and a poetics of reduction that she observes rather ruthlessly in order to make a poem that matches Homer’s line for line. That’s quite a challenge when rendering Homer’s dactylic hexameter (ranging from 12 to 17 syllables) into iambic pentameter (comprising 10 or 11 syllables), a meter that slips behind easily unless you toss things overboard. But Wilson would rather match the old bard verse for verse than allow herself the indulgences of past translators. The result is a lean, wiry Homer, shorn of his more ornamental features. In this she is consistent, even to a fault.

Take, for example, the moment we might imagine a female translator would relish: Penelope’s challenge of the bow contest to the suitors. Male translators in the past have made Penelope very much a queen in this moment — or as Pope says, a “matron, with majestic air.” Wilson’s Penelope is remarkably understated, sounding almost depressive by contrast.

She said,

“Now listen, lords. You keep on coming to this house every day, to eat and drink, wasting the wealth of someone who has been away too long. Your motives are no secret. You want to marry me. I am the prize. So I will set a contest. This great bow belonged to godlike King Odysseus.”

Contrast this with the high dudgeon of Robert Fitzgerald’s Penelope:

“My lords, hear me: Suitors indeed, you commandeered this house to feast and drink in, day and night, my husband being long gone, long out of mind. You found no justification for yourselves — none except your lust to marry me. Stand up, then: we now declare a contest for that prize.”

Fitzgerald’s Penelope is irritated and indignant, pointing out they are violating her husband’s space. Wilson’s in contrast only vaguely refers to a “someone” whose wealth is being wasted, though she is still very much attached to the house. Fitzgerald resorted to the plural of majesty for the contest’s big reveal; Wilson’s speaks in short sentences, with diamond clarity but little defiance. We have come a long way from Pope’s, “If I the prize, if me you seek to wife / Hear the conditions, and commence the strife.”

Epic blank verse is making a comeback recently, and to her credit Wilson knows how to craft her lines in the most flexible way, including a number of those ridiculously named “feminine” endings (an unstressed 11th syllable — this is only shocking if your notion of iambic pentameter comes from Pope and not Shakespeare, whose “To Be or Not to Be” starts with five 11-syllable lines in a row). But while her verse is traditional and flexible, her syntax is so clipped and terse at times she seems to be channeling Hemingway. Her sense of poetic diction is so austerely modern it’s as though she has jettisoned all the frippery from Homer’s argosy, paring it down to the frame. Perhaps it’s just as well — Odysseus only needed a raft to set out for Ithaca.

The result pitches between the ancient and modern as any translation must if it chooses to pursue the vitality of storytelling over the archeology of poetic form. Translating epic is, after all, a marathon, not a sprint; you have to be careful what you grab onto. Wilson’s verse may be traditional, but it contains an interesting variety of modern conveniences. Canapés and kebabs are now being served aboard Homer. Odysseus is a “scalawag.” Demeter has “cornrows in her hair” — anachronistically, if the metaphor is based on new-world maize; ironically, when we think she is an agricultural goddess.

Wilson shows humane concern about the status of slave women, though we might quibble that calling female slaves “girls” may not be not as enlightened as she thinks (to Homer they are women), nor is the suggestion that their escapades with Penelope’s suitors were things those men “made them do.” No one seems to believe this in the poem, including the other slaves, and Wilson has chucked the option of class rebellion in favor of a protective if bougie instinct to save their reputations. There’s a thread of philological justification for this, and she is right to tweet out no one actually refers to them as sluts and whores in Homer. But that strong language of past translations was focalized through Telemachus and Odysseus, not the narrator. The brutality of the women’s execution by mass hanging — sadly, perhaps the only thing Telemachus thinks up on his own — still speaks for itself: uppity slaves get lynched.

Wilson strives quietly at moments for striking imagery in order to deliver on epic’s “poetry” beyond the ticking of plot points. This typically occurs when she faces the dilemma of Homer’s formulaic lines, part of the repetitive boilerplate of traditional poetic diction that unnerves the translator; “rosy-fingered Dawn” and “winged words” are already clichés in English. Wilson responds with imagistic variations: “The early Dawn was born, her fingers bloomed,” “When vernal Dawn first touched the sky with flowers,” “When early Dawn, the newborn child with rosy hands, appeared.” Homer’s functional formularity thus becomes an occasion to wax lyrical, as if to turn the routine signposts of oral tradition into so many miniaturist paintings. This lyricization of epic may restore the poetry through the backdoor, but it reveals the tension between Homeric and modern notions of poetry. Again, Wilson has the virtue of consistency in her choices here. As a classics professor, an Englishwoman at home in the United States, a deep reader of English and American verse, Emily Wilson has come by her Homer honestly. Her poem has the stamp of a clear and consistent vision, and brings Odysseus home to us again — cunning, eloquent, murderous; in sum, complicated.

Richard H. Armstrong is author of A Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud and the Ancient World (Cornell University Press, 2005) and the forthcoming Theory and Theatricality: Classical Drama in the Age of Grand Hysteria (Oxford University Press), as well as the co-editor, with Alexandra Lianeri, of the forthcoming A Companion to the Translation of Greek and Latin Epic (Wiley-Blackwell).

The post Homer for Scalawags: Emily Wilson’s “Odyssey” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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