Rescued Things
Since GreatestJournal went and self-destructed on me, I'm going to copy-paste and save stuff. For Posterity.
Tell me of a fandom you know I know of and I'll tell you...
1. The first character I first fell in love with
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't
4. The character I love that everyone else hates
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer
6. The character I would shag anytime
7. The character I'd want to be like
8. The character I'd slap
9. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise
Melvin Frohike stared suspiciously at the thing on his computer desk. It was round and orange, and grinning a hideous grin. He was fairly sure that anything destined for the same fate as this orange thing shouldn't be grinning like that.
"Oi, Byers," he called. "Are you sure this is the bag Mulder gave you?"
"Yep," Byers called back, from one of the inner sanctums of the Lone Gunmen HQ. "He said Will likes it. Here, how do I look?"
Frohike left his perusal of the orange pumpkin bag to examine Byers critically. "You don't look any different than you usually do. I thought you were going to wear a costume."
Byers rolled his eyes. "I am wearing a costume, Hickey. I'm a bureaucrat. Note the bow tie."
"So...I should be a computer geek then?"
"Shut up."
"Stop arguing, you two, and tell me how I look." Ringo Langly emerged from a different room, dressed in...pink.
Frohike stared.
Langly stared back, defiantly. "What?"
"Langly..." Byers managed, in a strangled voice. "Drag...isn't you."
"You don't think so?" Langly turned in a circle. Frohike decided he didn't even want to know where his compatriot had gotten the heels. Or the sequins. "I thought the bows..."
"Definitely not."
Langly sighed. "Ah, well. Back to the drawing board." He sashayed back into his room.
Byers looked over at Frohike. "I suggest we have a couple of beers and never speak of this again."
Frohike nodded a hearty agreement.
Someone knocked on the door just then. Frohike was pretty sure he knew who it was, but went through the usual routine anyway. "Lone Gunmen Headquarters. Friend or foe?"
"You know who it is, Frohike. Open the door."
"Friend or foe?" he insisted.
A sigh. "Friend. Password Spooky."
Frohike opened the door and smiled beatifically at an annoyed Mulder. "Welcome to the inner sanctum. Did you bring the sprog?"
"Kindly stop referring to Will as a sprog," Mulder said. "Of course I brought him. He wanted to climb the stairs by himself. Although I'm beginning to think this is a bad idea."
"Where is he then?" Byers asked, over Frohike's shoulder. Mulder blinked at him.
"I thought you three were going to dress up."
Byers scowled. "I am dressed up. I already went over this with Hickey."
Just then, Will toddled up the stairs and grinned at his "uncles." He was so occupied in enthralling all three men with his smile that he tripped over the green tail of his costume, and ended up clinging to his father's pants to stay upright. The grin stayed firmly in place.
"Er...Mulder..." Byers began. "I know I'm not really one to talk about costumes, but..."
"Scully insisted," Mulder said, in a long-suffering tone. "She saw it, and couldn't stop laughing, and insisted we should get it for Will. That's the last time I let her seduce me into doing something against my better judgement."
Frohike ignored the both of them and squatted down to get on Will's level. "Who's a cute kid, then? You are! Yeah, you are! He's got his mother's smile," he added, in a general upward direction.
"Really? Scully says he's got my smile," Mulder said, demonstrating. Frohike looked critically back and forth between father and son, then shook his head.
"Nope. Definitely her smile. I've seen you both in green and I can tell."
"When was I in...oh. Oh." Mulder flushed. "Dammit, Hickey, you said you wouldn't tell anyone about that!"
"I didn't, either," he countered. "Unless Byers should get curious and be smart enough to get me drunk."
"Not while you're babysitting!" Byers and Mulder said, in unison. Frohike grinned.
Mulder glanced at his watch, then, and added, "I've got to go, anyway. Take good care of Will, don't let him eat too much candy, put him to bed at eight-thirty and Scully and I will pick him up at about ten. See you!" He took off down the stairs.
Will waved to his father, yelled something in a private, two-year-old language that could have been "Bye-bye!" and grabbed Frohike's glasses.
Just then, Langley walked out of the bathroom, wearing all black. "Are you happy now? I'm a CIA agent."
"You're dressing up as the most evil and heinous force of the twentieth century?"
"Best I could do in five minutes, since you guys vetoed the dress. Did I just hear Mulder leave?"
"Yep." Frohike grabbed his glasses away from Will, picked the kid up and stood up. "Check it out."
Langley stared.
"That's worse than me in drag," he said, at last. "I take it Scully insisted."
"Yeah," Byers said, and grinned. "Or so Mulder says. I bet he picked it out. It suits his sense of humor."
Langley shook his head. "I dunno. He's a little touchy on the subject."
Will gurgled something that could have been "trick or treat" and reached for the pumpkin bag. Frohike handed it to him, and looked at the other Gunmen. "I can take a hint, guys, how about you?"
"Yeah, let's go, before Langley decides lace would be just the thing," Byers said. "Don't forget to lock the door.
Off they went, into the night, a buearocrat, a biker dude, a secret agent, and a baby, dressed as a little green man.
Jockeykid2 (7:47:06 PM): You know who Helen is, right?
GG Crono 4 (7:47:12 PM): 'Course.
Jockeykid2 (7:47:24 PM): K. And you know who Menelaus and Agamemnon and Cassandra are?
Jockeykid2 (7:48:02 PM): Because I can go through the whole myth if necessary. It's not really important, but I like blathering about mythology.
GG Crono 4 (7:48:11 PM): What a coincidence!
GG Crono 4 (7:48:19 PM): I like being blathered to about mythology!
Jockeykid2 (7:48:23 PM): Okay! Shall I blather?
GG Crono 4 (7:48:59 PM): Blather on!
Jockeykid2 (7:49:19 PM): Let's start at the very beginning, and that is with Zeus being his usual self, ie, raping someone in the form of an animal. In this case, Leda and a swan respectively. Now, you may wonder how it is possible for a swan to rape anyone. The answer is, how the hell should I know?
GG Crono 4 (7:51:02 PM): ...
GG Crono 4 (7:51:06 PM): Don't swans, like,
GG Crono 4 (7:51:08 PM): Not have penes?
Jockeykid2 (7:51:21 PM): How the hell should I know? He's Zeus.
GG Crono 4 (7:51:23 PM): ...
GG Crono 4 (7:51:26 PM): Right.
GG Crono 4 (7:51:34 PM): And this queen birthed eggs.
Jockeykid2 (7:51:40 PM): Anyway, so Leda, who we don't really care about, has four babies. Castor and Pollux we don't care about really. Clytemenstra and Helen are the other two.
Jockeykid2 (7:51:43 PM): Yes.
GG Crono 4 (7:51:43 PM): That hatched into the heroes Castor and Pollux and into Helen.
Jockeykid2 (7:51:46 PM): Yes.
Jockeykid2 (7:51:49 PM): And Clytemenstra.
GG Crono 4 (7:51:57 PM): Who seems to be a footnote.
GG Crono 4 (7:52:01 PM): More than anything else.
Jockeykid2 (7:52:02 PM): Oh, no she's not.
Jockeykid2 (7:52:10 PM): More like an ax-note.
Jockeykid2 (7:52:15 PM): We'll get to that.
GG Crono 4 (7:52:24 PM): ...mmhm.
Jockeykid2 (7:53:01 PM): So Clytemenstra marries Agamemnon, King of the Greeks. *fanfare* There's a big fight over who gets to marry Helen, which is ended by the Oath of the Horse, which Odysseus comes up with, therefore he gets to marry Penelope, Helen's cousin. They are the only happily married Greek couple in this whole damn myth.
Jockeykid2 (7:53:31 PM): Meanwhile, in Troy...
GG Crono 4 (7:53:34 PM): I think they're
GG Crono 4 (7:53:40 PM): The only happily married greek couple period.
Jockeykid2 (7:53:51 PM): Probably. They actually love each other, bizarrely enough.
GG Crono 4 (7:53:57 PM): What a novel concept!
Jockeykid2 (7:54:48 PM): So. On the other side of the pond, Priam, who already has forty-nine sons, is getting another one from his queen, Hecube. Hecube has a dream that the child she will give birth to is a torch who will set fire to all of Troy. Priam then decides to expose the child and kill it.
GG Crono 4 (7:55:09 PM): How 'bout that.
Jockeykid2 (7:55:56 PM): Now, this didn't work with Oedipus, and it didn't work with Paris either. He gets raised by a goatherd. When he's eighteen or so, he's screwing a nymph named Oenene, I think, who tells him that she thinks he's not going to come back. Paris scoffs, then has to award the golden apple.
Jockeykid2 (7:56:11 PM): Oenene will come back to haunt him eventually.
GG Crono 4 (7:56:25 PM): Ah, I know the golden apple story.
GG Crono 4 (7:56:31 PM): To be given to the most beautiful.
Jockeykid2 (7:56:34 PM): Yep.
GG Crono 4 (7:56:34 PM): Let's see...
GG Crono 4 (7:57:00 PM): Athena offered him endless wisdom, Hera offered him his own country, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world.
Jockeykid2 (7:57:17 PM): Yep. And Paris, being a horny eighteen-year-old, chose predicatibly.
GG Crono 4 (7:57:22 PM): Duh.
GG Crono 4 (7:57:29 PM): Also, I dig Athena. She's badass.
Jockeykid2 (7:57:33 PM): She is badass.
Jockeykid2 (7:57:42 PM): She's my favorite goddess, her and Amphitrite.
GG Crono 4 (7:57:50 PM): Not familiar with her.
Jockeykid2 (7:57:59 PM): Posiedon's wife. Sweetheart.
Jockeykid2 (7:58:05 PM): She's the goddess of dolphins, I believe.
GG Crono 4 (7:58:10 PM): Awwww.
GG Crono 4 (7:58:17 PM): Posiden's kind of a dick, though.
Jockeykid2 (7:58:24 PM): He is, yeah.
Jockeykid2 (7:58:29 PM): Not as much of a dick as Zeus is.
GG Crono 4 (7:58:33 PM): Point.
GG Crono 4 (7:58:35 PM): Gods are dicks.
GG Crono 4 (7:58:37 PM): Except for...
GG Crono 4 (7:58:40 PM): Bacchus?
GG Crono 4 (7:58:47 PM): He's cool. Beacause he's the god of booze.
Jockeykid2 (7:58:53 PM): Dionyses. Bacchus is his Roman name. And possibly Hades.
GG Crono 4 (7:59:00 PM): Ironic, that.
Jockeykid2 (7:59:02 PM): Both of them, curiously enough, are faithful husbands.
GG Crono 4 (7:59:29 PM): Hades was actually pretty decent, relatively speaking.
GG Crono 4 (7:59:34 PM): He was content to do his thing.
Jockeykid2 (7:59:38 PM): Yep. Except for that whole kidnapping thing.
GG Crono 4 (7:59:58 PM): Are they
still on that?
GG Crono 4 (8:00:03 PM): Sheesh, live and let live.
Jockeykid2 (8:00:27 PM): *grin* Actually, Persephone fell in love with him, according to some myths, and argued against her mother.
Jockeykid2 (8:01:14 PM): ANYWAY.
Jockeykid2 (8:01:17 PM): Back to Paris.
Jockeykid2 (8:01:40 PM): It is.
Jockeykid2 (8:02:28 PM): His foster father's best bull gets taken by King Priam to be the sacrifice for the games. What games, I don't know. They're just games. So Paris trots off to Troy to win back the bull, participates in all these games and wins, gets in a scrap with his brothers and gets revealed to be OMG the long-lost son. He is welcomed back with open arms. Nobody seems to remember the dream.
GG Crono 4 (8:02:57 PM): Awww.
Jockeykid2 (8:03:25 PM): Except Cassandra, but ever since Apollo came on to her (he gave her the gift of prophecy. What the hell kind of thing is that to give a girl on the first date?) and she rejected him (possibly because of the aforesaid gift), nobody believes what she prophesises (Apollo's curse because she rejected him).
Jockeykid2 (8:03:30 PM): Apollo is a dick too.
GG Crono 4 (8:04:33 PM): Yes! ^.^
Jockeykid2 (8:08:35 PM): So Cassandra has her screaming fit, Priam essentially tells her to sit down, shut up and go to her room. Then Priam introduces Paris to his family, and there's a whole lot of backstory. "Blah blah Hercules pissed blah blah sacked Troy and killed my dad blah blah sold my sister Hesione blah blah go and get her back, Paris."
Jockeykid2 (8:09:13 PM): He also sends Hector, who is supercool, and Aeneas, who wants permission to marry Priam's daughter Creusa, and this is the only way he can get it.
Jockeykid2 (8:10:56 PM): So Hector and Paris go off on a jaunt to...somewhere, where Hesione is living, but stop at Sparta, where Menelaus and Helen are living.
GG Crono 4 (8:11:07 PM): Wheeee.
Jockeykid2 (8:12:33 PM): Paris, being the horny eighteen-year-old we all know and love, takes one look at Helen and starts to drool. Aphrodite makes good on her word and makes Helen fall in love with him. Paris and Helen screw like bunnies and then elope, leaving behind Helen's daughter Hermione (so Menelaus still had a right to the throne) and in some legends taking her son Nicodemus.
=Jockeykid2 (8:12:53 PM): Menelaus is off in Crete at the time for some unspecifed reason.
Jockeykid2 (8:13:26 PM): Hector and Aeneas grumble all the way back to Troy, when suddenly a burst of violent swearing is heard all around the Mediterrainian. Apparently Menelaus's hall has a really good echo.
GG Crono 4 (8:13:36 PM): XD
Jockeykid2 (8:18:47 PM): So the Oath of the Horse required everyone who wanted Helen's hand to swear that if her husband needed help, they'd go and help him.
Jockeykid2 (8:19:16 PM): Naturally, not many people were happy about this. In fact, only one person was happy about swearing that oath, and that was Menelaus.
Jockeykid2 (8:19:52 PM): But since Helen has eloped, Menelaus evokes the Oath of the Horse and everyone's greed and says they should go and fight Troy to get her back.
GG Crono 4 (8:20:12 PM): Maybe they could build a large wooden badger...
Jockeykid2 (8:20:28 PM): Agamemnon, King of the Greeks *fanfare* elects himself to lead the army, and everyone comes pretty easily because hey, we need to schmack those uppity Trojans because the damn condoms got named after them and not us.
Jockeykid2 (8:23:13 PM): Odysseus doesn't want to go. Technically, they can't make him. He never swore the Oath of the Horse and he never wanted to. But Agamemnon plans to blackmail him into coming. Odysseus pretends to be mad, enlisting the help of his lovely and intelligent wife Penelope.
GG Crono 4 (8:23:37 PM): *giggle*
Jockeykid2 (8:24:01 PM): Penelope explains in suitably dramatic fashion about how her husband has suddenly gone
mad and she has to survive all by
herself and her baby son will grow up without a
role model and she can't get any from a
madman, etc, etc.
GG Crono 4 (8:24:12 PM): ...
Jockeykid2 (8:25:19 PM): Agamemnon falls for it, one of his friends (Perimedes? I think? He doesn't matter) does not. Odysseus is currently plowing a field with an ox and a donkey and sowing the field with salt. Dude drops the baby in front of the plow.
GG Crono 4 (8:25:27 PM): ...
GG Crono 4 (8:25:31 PM): Dude plays mean.
Jockeykid2 (8:26:19 PM): Odysseus, being a good daddy, stops the blow, saves the baby, schmacks Dude, glares at everyone except baby and Penelope, and goes off on Agamemnon.
GG Crono 4 (8:26:55 PM): Rargh.
GG Crono 4 (8:27:10 PM): And this eventually leads to the Odyssey, right?
Jockeykid2 (8:27:18 PM): Agamemnon goes off right back. Eventually Odysseus gets talked into going, says goodbye to baby and wife, and trots off to war. There's a lot of finagling to get Achilles to join the army, and then they trot off to Troy.
GG Crono 4 (8:27:30 PM): he inadvertantly pisses off Posiedon on the way home and gets bum-fuck lost.
Jockeykid2 (8:27:42 PM): Yep. And that is the Odyssey in breif.
Jockeykid2 (8:27:45 PM): *brief.
GG Crono 4 (8:27:45 PM): Yaay, finagling.
Jockeykid2 (8:28:13 PM): Except there's a problem. Agamemnon promised to sacrifice the best thing born in his kingdom to Artemis, and he didn't (because it turned out to be his daughter. Don't make that kind of open-ended promise), and Artemis is pissed and holding back the winds.
GG Crono 4 (8:28:33 PM): This is why you don't make deals with gods.
GG Crono 4 (8:28:35 PM): They cheat.
Jockeykid2 (8:28:49 PM): So Agamemnon angsts a lot and finally sacrifices his daughter, Iphegenia, which precipitates his date with an axe. But we will get to that too.
GG Crono 4 (8:29:34 PM): Woo.
Jockeykid2 (8:29:46 PM): The winds rise, everyone's happy, they run off to war, swish-swish-blam-blam-Patrocles dies Hector dies Achilles dies Paris dies lots and lots of random extras die Trojan horse Troy gets burned to the ground yay yay rape loot kill etc.
GG Crono 4 (8:30:30 PM): ...
GG Crono 4 (8:30:33 PM): That,
GG Crono 4 (8:30:40 PM): Is the best description of the Trojan War,
GG Crono 4 (8:30:43 PM): That has EVER been penned.
Jockeykid2 (8:30:50 PM): ^.^ I try.
GG Crono 4 (8:31:01 PM): *gigglefit*
Jockeykid2 (8:31:10 PM): Everyone goes their seperate ways. Menelaus heads home with Helen in tow, Odysseus runs off and gets bum-fuck lost, Agamemnon, who has taken Cassandra for his concubine, heads home.
Jockeykid2 (8:31:48 PM): Now. Clytemenstra, his wife (remember her?), is none too pleased that he killed their daughter, and is REALLY not pleased that he expects her to welcome his very very pregnant concubine.
GG Crono 4 (8:32:05 PM): I can see how that might irk oneself.
Jockeykid2 (8:32:37 PM): Cassandra ain't happy about being a concubine, but it was the best bargain her brother could drive. See, her twin Helenus (who also has prophecy) helped Odysseus come up with the scheme to end the war, in return for him and Cassandra going free. Agamemnon changed it, but Cassandra at least is alive, unlike most of their family.
GG Crono 4 (8:33:15 PM): I s'pose that's the best she can hope for.
Jockeykid2 (8:33:52 PM): So Cassandra has a vision and realizes what Clytemenstra is going to do. She doesn't even try to warn Agamemnon. Clytemenstra gets her boy toy Aegisthes and kills Agamemnon with an axe. Now here's where it gets fuzzy.
GG Crono 4 (8:34:05 PM): ^_^
GG Crono 4 (8:34:06 PM): Fuzzy?
Jockeykid2 (8:35:36 PM): Yes. Some versions of the myth say Cassandra was killed by Clytemenstra as well. Some say that she escaped but later died in childbirth. I chose to believe the ones that say she escaped and went to join Helenus at his little new-Troy thing (Helenus married Andromache, by the way).
Jockeykid2 (8:35:40 PM): Only I delayed it a little.
GG Crono 4 (8:35:49 PM): Delayed?
Jockeykid2 (8:35:51 PM): And now you know sufficient myths to understand my story fragment.
