Khairete! (Hail! Hello! Well met! with plural address in case more of you than my writer read this!)

My AO3 name is AlexSeanchai, and let me reassure you at the jump that optional details are optional.

I should advise you up front that I am a Hellenic polytheist, ancestor worshipper, and animist, and I am really hoping to see, anywhere it might come up, respect for my religious beliefs. (Yes, I'm skewing my requests in favor of the mythology underlying Hellenic polytheism. To me that's half of what this myths, folklore, and fairytales exchange is for!) This hope is an optional detail, but I want to highlight the DNW of "Disrespect to my religious beliefs".

I should also advise you up front that I am a queer trans feminist and disability activist standing firmly in opposition to fascism, capitalism, and white supremacy, and I am really hoping to see stories that dance to that tune. This hope is an optional detail (and also modern politics aren't necessarily relevant to the story you're writing at all, I observe), but I want to highlight the DNW of "Disrespectful treatment of [insert marginalized group here]."

Please do not take the extent to which I discuss any canon as indication of any sort of preference as to which canon I receive.

I am explicitly open to crossovers between my requests. I am also explicitly welcoming, if you are writing one of my Greek myth requests, inclusion of figures of Greek myth who are not nominated characters in the story you matched on or are looking to treat. (Focus on the nominated character(s), obviously! But, for instance, Hephaistos is a pretty significant presence in Pandora's story in Theogony, and I declined to nominate Him because I had limited character slots, and His absence in your Pandora story won't disappoint me but His presence will make me happy.)

I am totally here for art treats, poetry treats (or poetry full assignment if you are nuts like me—for srs I'm nuts), and interactive and/or choose-your-own-adventure fiction. Also genderbending, racebending, queer headcanons, trans and genderqueer headcanons, neurodivergent headcanons, and other flavors of respectful representation of marginalized people. Also AUs generally, with special highlight to what synecdochic refers to as the Ten Minutes AU, and special highlight to setting-change AUs (including but not limited to modern library, modern coffee shop, Library of Alexandria, Jonathan's Coffee-House...). (That said, don't take my examples of setting-change AUs as particular suggestions unless you want to! Though a Library of Alexandria AU or a Jonathan's Coffee-House AU of any of my requested stories would be fucking awesome, actually...)

———

Likes: FEMSLASH. GEN. Het centering and empowering the woman. Polyamory. Ladies being awesome. People of color being awesome. Queer people being awesome. Trans and genderqueer people being awesome. People of minority religions (especially polytheists, ancestor worshippers, and animists) being awesome. Disabled people being awesome. Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people being awesome. Mentally ill people being awesome. Competence kink. Nonperfect people having nonperfect relationships (whether familial, platonic, romantic, or sexual) but all parties are good people trying to make the relationship work as best they know how. Ordinary people caught in extraordinary events. Worldbuilding!

Likes if you're leaning porny: vanilla is a lovely thing but also there's bondage, body modification, endurance, nipple play (okay, really breast play, but kink_wiki doesn't have a tag for that), sensation play, temperature play, impact play with the emphasis on play, toys toys toys, soft sensuous things, and writing.

Dislikes: Underage sexual activity. Non-consensual sexual activity and anything that contributes to rape culture. Anything that sets off my embarrassment squick—avoid public humiliation, for instance. Anything sexy involving eating or excreting (though if you want to write food porn in the sense of conveying what a tasty meal the characters are having, go to town). Disrespectful treatment of polytheism, ancestor worship, and/or animism. Disrespectful treatment of [insert marginalized group here]. Magically healed disability. "Idiot ball" (which trope needs a less ableist name). Cross-generational sexual and/or romantic relationships, though if an involved character does not, in my head, have an age, then it won't bother me as long as all the involved characters are clearly adult. (Deities don't have ages. Just flat out don't. Or rather, since They can appear as any age They like...just not as a child to someone They're in a sexual and/or romantic relationship with, please!)

———

Arachne (Metamorphoses - Ovid)
Arachne, Athena, The Nymphs
Ovid's Metamorphoses Book VI

sweet mother I cannot work the loom
I am broken with longing for a boy by slender Aphrodite

—If Not, Winter: Sappho tr. Anne Carson (#102)

—

Yet there are three hearts that [Aphrodite] cannot bend nor yet ensnare. First is the daughter of Zeus who holds the aegis, bright-eyed Athene; for she has no pleasure in the deeds of golden Aphrodite, but delights in wars and in the work of Ares, in strifes and battles and in preparing famous crafts. She first taught earthly craftsmen to make chariots of war and cars variously wrought with bronze, and she, too, teaches tender maidens in the house and puts knowledge of goodly arts in each one's mind.

—Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White

—

Watch on YouTube

—"The Goddess and the Weaver": Spiral Dance

It seems obvious that this Sappho fragment is not in reference to Arachne (whose mother, after all, is dead; whose story includes no male figures at all, except her father the maker of purple dye, and the Gods and heroic men whom Arachne and Athena depict on their respective tapestries). Nor to Athena, famously a virgin. (Refer also to "Erasing Athena, Effacing Hestia", an essay I wrote touching on the topic of Athena's gender and sexuality, which was published in Invisible 3 ed. Hines and Mohanraj, June 2017.) But perhaps something of similar import to this Sappho fragment is woven through Arachne's story?

The nymphs of the fountains, shades, and hills, of the vineyards and the streams, who watched enthralled (and, quite possibly, chattered amongst themselves and with Arachne) as Arachne wove, who worshipped Athena immediately upon Her revealing Herself to Arachne, who (presumably) watched the weaving contest and admired both tapestries—what were they thinking and feeling and doing throughout?

"The Goddess and the Weaver" is a song I find particularly intriguing and compelling, and listen to often:

and as Arachnea sits and weaves upon her web
she casts her mind back and she remembers when
she told the story of the Gods that rule
in all their mystery and how she told it true

Arachne's tapestry told the truth. One of the scenes Ovid describes Arachne weaving is Zeus and Europa, with Zeus in the form of a bull; Ovid has already told this story in Metamorphoses Book II, where Arachne appears in Book VI. It is only that the truths Arachne tells of "heav'nly guilt" are embarrassing—at best—to the Gods! And Athena is a Goddess of justice, and—it follows—of truth. Why Athena's fury? Why Arachne's punishment? Why, especially, when "[Arachne's tapestry] the bright Goddess [Athena] passionately mov'd, / With envy saw, yet inwardly approv'd"? (Emphasis mine.)

There are a couple different versions of Arachne's story previously listed on Wikipedia; the current version of the article as of 2018 Jan 21 includes neither, on the basis that James Baldwin's Old Greek Stories is a poor source for the story told under the "Athena wins" subsection, and no sources at all could be found for the story told under the "Arachne wins but hangs herself" subsection. If you want to go either of these routes instead of Ovid's, though, or incorporate elements of those interpretations into your Ovid-based story, that's fine by me.

Do look up other translations of Ovid? For example, the Garth/Dryden/etc translation at classics.mit.edu specifies the herb whose juice Athena used to transform Arachne is "baneful aconite", but the More translation at theoi.com says "herbs of Hecate"—which translation invites the question of how Athena got some of Hecate's herbs and magical knowledge (a question that your story could certainly explore!), where the Garth translation doesn't ask.

Fiber arts are so central to Arachne's story—AU the tale to your heart's content, but include the fiber arts! Not necessarily the same fiber arts—Arachne knitting or crocheting or embroidering a scene instead of weaving it would delight me no end—but definitely fiber arts. (Dyeing fiber is totally a fiber art, too, and there's room to argue that the production of cotton, flax, wool, et al are fiber arts as well.)

———

Niobe (Metamorphoses - Ovid)
Niobe, Artemis, Leto, Niobe's Daughters
Ovid's Metamorphoses Book VI

Leto and Niobe were beloved friends

—If Not, Winter: Sappho tr. Anne Carson (#142)

And yet Niobe's offense was to declare herself a Goddess superior by far to Leto, Titan and mother of Gods—because Niobe was real and Leto "founded meerly [sic] on report". Why? Sappho and Ovid have quite a bit of tension here! Explore that. Explore Niobe's thoughts, and Leto's.

Artemis is a Goddess protecting infants, girls, and pregnant people, especially in the act of childbirth. Niobe, consequently, as mother to fourteen children—and consider the infant mortality rate as of the setting of this story! Fourteen surviving children; how many pregnancies did Niobe have that she lost? how many children did she lose in infancy?—well, if Leto is only rumors and hearsay to Niobe, Artemis is probably no more solid a figure!

But Artemis is certainly one of the Goddesses to Whom women in childbirth in that place and time called out for protection. She was often invoked, ten or perhaps seven days after the birth (if the infant lived that long), at the Dekatê, when the infant was first named. When a young woman—let's be honest, here: in most cases a teenage girl—married (which event marked her transition from girlhood to womanhood), early in the sequence of wedding rites, she made sacrifices to Artemis—dolls, items of child-style clothing—to appease the virgin Goddess before the bride gave up her own virginity. (Drew Campbell's Old Stones, New Temples separates the two rites of coming-of-age and marriage for modern observance, because many women do not marry at all, more women have sex before marrying, and typically anyone who marries has attained legal adulthood before marrying.) Niobe had fourteen surviving children, of whom seven were daughters; good odds that at least the oldest daughter was a married woman! And the unmarried daughters were certainly under Artemis's protection! [¹] What was Artemis thinking and feeling throughout?

What did the daughters think of all this? Might one or more of them, by demonstrating her own piety, survive?

———

Metis (Theogony - Hesiod)
Metis, Athena, Zeus, Second Child of Metis and Zeus
Hesiod's Theogony

I begin to sing of Pallas Athene, the glorious goddess, bright-eyed, inventive, unbending of heart, pure virgin, saviour of cities, courageous, Tritogeneia. From his awful head wise Zeus himself bare her arrayed in warlike arms of flashing gold, and awe seized all the gods as they gazed. But Athena sprang quickly from the immortal head and stood before Zeus who holds the aegis, shaking a sharp spear: great Olympus began to reel horribly at the might of the bright-eyed goddess, and earth round about cried fearfully, and the sea was moved and tossed with dark waves, while foam burst forth suddenly: the bright Son of Hyperion stopped his swift-footed horses a long while, until the maiden Pallas Athene had stripped the heavenly armour from her immortal shoulders. And wise Zeus was glad. And so hail to you, daughter of Zeus who holds the aegis! Now I will remember you and another song as well.

—Homeric Hymn 28 to Athena, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White

—

[Ouranos, with no predecessor, became the first divine king. Kronos, having overthrown His father Ouranos, became the second divine king. Zeus, having overthrown His father Kronos, became the third divine king.]
Yet, Zeus Basileus reigns over Olympos still, with Hera at his side.
None have overthrown him, despite his many children.
Why is there no fourth divine king?

[...]

Why not wise Athena, who was born of Zeus's mind?
With wisdom and justice, surely her kingdom would be renowned.
Perhaps it is because a ruler must be able to rely on good council.
Athena would feel more at home advising than wearing the crown.
Thus, Athena would not overthrow the third divine king.

So is that the way Zeus still rules over Olympos?
Are his heirs too distracted to seek the throne?
Perhaps. But maybe it is simpler, and more noble.

Perhaps Zeus rules still because his children are free,
Free to seek their own desires and destinies.
Free to be who they are and find their way in the world.
Blessed with a father who loves and accepts them.
Why seek a fourth king, when the third is so great?

—"On Children and Succession": Jason Ross Inczauskis, From Cave to Sky

—

Athena is often incorrectly described as having been born of Zeus alone, with no mother. In fact, she was born of Metis, who Zeus impregnated before learning--from Prometheus, who delayed telling him until he had impregnated her--that she was fated to bear a son greater than his father. Zeus devoured Metis whole--like his father Kronos, who had devoured his young to keep them from overthrowing him--but she gave birth to him inside his head, and Hephaestus had to break Zeus's head open to release her.

The fact that her birth involved the (temporary) decapitation of Zeus--Zeus's father and grandfather were deposed by decapitation and castration--as well as the fact that the Homeric hymn depicting her birth presents her as born fully armed, causing earthquakes, and causing all the gods, including Zeus, to shake where they stood, until she took off her armor, leads me to an interesting suspicion.

The common assumption is that Zeus got lucky and Metis's first and only child was a daughter, not the son who would overthrow his father. However, I suspect that Athena is intersex and non-binary and, in a patriarchal and binarist society, able to choose either gender role as it suits her. By taking off her armor, she announced an intent to live as a woman for now, posing no threat to Zeus and, in fact, becoming his favorite child. However, she holds over him the threat that she could choose to live as a man and depose him, as she is fated to do, if he oversteps acceptable behavior.

This, I think, explains Zeus's favoritism toward Athena, and his willingness to trust her with the Aegis. He knows that she alone among the gods can overthrow him, and so he wants to stay on her best side and doesn't need to fear her taking advantage of him: if she chooses to overthrow him it will be open rebellion, not deception and treason.

—"Queering the Hellenic Goddesses": child_of_the_air

Obviously if you want to stick with Hesiod's text by way of canon, that's fine, that's awesome. But if you want to incorporate Homeric Hymn 28, that's even better.

child_of_the_air's interpretation fascinates me. "Erasing Athena, Effacing Hestia", an essay I wrote rather before encountering child_of_the_air's thoughts, contains my similar thoughts as published in Invisible 3 ed. Hines and Mohanraj, June 2017.

If you want to retell Metis's story and the beginning of Athena's using my interpretation in Invisible 3, or child_of_the_air's in "Queering the Hellenic Goddesses", or Jason Ross Inczauskis's in "On Children and Succession", that would be positively delightful.

...there is obviously some tension betweenchild_of_the_air's interpretation and Inczauskis's! By all means feel free to explore that! Go AU if that makes you happy!

Metis, it must be noted, was a major player in Zeus's overthrow of Kronos and rescue of His siblings from Kronos's belly. Feel free to pull in that bit of the Theogony.

I am also more than here for an AU where Second Child of Metis and Zeus—an unnamed young God[dess] because this child was never conceived and thus their existence is counterfactual, almost inherently AU; Hesiod describes them as [after Athena's birth, Metis] was to bear a son of overbearing spirit, king of gods and men, but Zeus swallowed Metis before Athena was born, so as to prevent that second child—

Okay, let's get my sentence structure under control. I am also more than here for an AU where Second Child of Metis and Zeus (who is please to have a name derived directly from Homeric Greek, if at all possible within your knowledge base and ability to Google shit) was born and did overthrow Zeus. Or was born and didn't overthrow Zeus, whether by choice or by loss in battle or—

Tell me about Metis. Tell me how Zeus romanced Her; how Zeus overwhelmed and swallowed Her, or persuaded Her to be swallowed. Tell me about Athena—what She thinks of Her absent mother; whether She ever talks to Metis with Zeus as intermediary. If we're assuming Gods aren't bound by linear time [²], does Athena ever visit the time before Her birth to speak to Metis directly?

———

Pandora (Theogony - Hesiod)
Pandora, Prometheus, Zeus, Athena
Hesiod's Theogony
Ctrl-F for 'Pandora' in that Theogony theoi.com page will get you nowhere, mind; she isn't named in the Evelyn-White translation. You get to Pandora's tale by finding the section heading "Prometheus". theoi.com's page entitled "Pandora" has more sources on her story, including various related to the jar thing for which she is more famous.

[Some] stories seem to indicate some antagonism between the gods and mortals: Hesiod tells of the Titan Prometheus stealing fire for the suffering humans on earth, who have been denied it by a jealous Zeus. In retribution, the gods create Pandora, the “beautiful evil” (kalon kakon, Theogony l. 585) whose curiosity leads to the unleashing of countless ills that plague humanity. (It has been rightly pointed out that Hesiod’s portrayal of Pandora is one of the most grossly misogynist passages of all Greek literature.)

—Old Stones, New Temples: Drew Campbell

Tell Pandora's story. (I refer you back to the about-me paragraph including the phrase "queer trans feminist".) Perhaps tell Pandora's point of view, or Athena's? What does Prometheus think of Pandora? What does Pandora think of Athena, or Zeus, or Hephaistos?

Hesiod says "when he [probably Zeus, possibly Hephaistos] had made the beautiful evil [Pandora] to be the price for the blessing", where 'blessing' refers either to the fire Prometheus stole for humanity or to Prometheus's trick with the bones-skin-fat-and-one-good-beef-cut versus most of the meat of a sacrificed ox; what was Zeus thinking, and why? And—and please note the rest of this paragraph is getting into religious questions more than what one might describe as character and plot questions—why has Zeus permitted humanity to keep fire? Why do the Gods abide by what They agreed to with Prometheus's said trick—why do They accept as offerings small portions and inedible portions and permit Their worshippers to feast on the bulk of the sacrifice, when They know Prometheus tricked them into agreeing to that division? And how does that cohere with the generally felt religious obligation to offer one's best to one's Gods?

Does Pandora visit her husband on the mountaintop, or stay there with him? If so, is she ever present when the eagle comes? I am more interested (as might be obvious from the name under which I nominated the story, if perhaps less obvious in the preceding paragraph!) in Pandora than Prometheus, but—

Tell Pandora's story as though someone other than the ragingly misogynistic Hesiod wrote it.

———

The Tale of Taliesin
Ceridwen, Morfran, Taliesin
Mabinogion

—

Why did Ceridwen set Gwion Bach, not Morfran, to stirring the cauldron in which she was brewing a wisdom potion meant for Morfran? Surely she knew boiling liquids have been known to splash out of the pot? Surely that was not the first time it boiled over? What happened to Gwion Bach any previous times that the liquid splashed and he (or she! genderswap is glorious!) sucked on the burn? Why was Ceridwen so determined to destroy Gwion Bach after he drank the three drops of wisdom—and did her feelings toward Gwion Bach change when she bore Gwion Bach reborn as Taliesin? How did Morfran react to any and every part of this? What was Gwion Bach | Taliesin feeling throughout?

Does this relate in any way to the story of Cadair Idris, in which anyone who sleeps a night on the mountaintop wakes dead, mad, or a poet?

———

De vilde Svaner | The Wild Swans - Hans Christian Andersen
Brothers, Youngest Brother, Elisa
Hans Christian Andersen

Writing is dangerous because we are afraid of what the writing reveals: the fears, the angers, the strengths of a woman under a triple or quadruple oppression. Yet in that very act lies our survival because a woman who writes has power. And a woman with power is feared.

—Gloria Anzaldúa, "Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To Third World Women Writers", This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color ed. Moraga & Anzaldúa

Elisa is voiceless for the duration of her attempt to free her siblings (who are please not to be all brothers, thank you). She is quite literally silenced, for fear of the power of her words. Because words are powerful—pens and swords, you know? Who fears Elisa's voice? Who cast the spell on Elisa's siblings such that they could only be freed by her silence and her long hard work with several different fibercrafts? (Note parallels and contrasts with Arachne, if you're thinking crossover.) What has Elisa been saying to make her voice so dangerous—or is it only that a woman who speaks is dangerous?

Does Elisa write? Dare she?

Recontextualizing the story in a polytheist/ancestor-worshipping/animist/magical, not Christian-and-afraid-of-witchcraft, setting: how does the plot change?

———

Rumpelstilzchen | Rumpelstiltskin (Fairy Tale)
Miller's Daughter
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

This request is an explicit exception to the non-con DNW, because what I want here is a story that explores the miller's daughter's reactions. In the original text, she has very little agency—the only thing Miss Miller does of her own volition, and even that is under severe duress because her child's life is at risk, is send a messenger to seek out names. Explore all of that. Darkfic would be awesome.

Also awesome would be an AU where Miss Miller acts, rather than reacting to others compelling her. And what is the political situation in this country that its king happens to be conversing with Miss Miller's braggart father, and there seem to be no objections raised to the king marrying Miss Miller? What if Rumpelstiltskin is acting on behalf of a political ally, or enemy, of the king's?

———

Thomas the Rhymer (Traditional Ballad)
Thomas, The Queen of Elfland
Francis James Child



Here I would positively love genderswapping Thomas in any manner whatsoever. Maybe he's trans, maybe she's trans, maybe they're genderqueer, maybe she's cis and always was. But leaving him assumed cis is unobjectionable. Femslash is great here and so is het, but also so is gen.

Why did the Queen of Elfland seek Thomas out? Why is Thomas called the Rhymer? What did Thomas gain, or lose, from the sojourn in Elfland? What did the Queen gain, or lose, from Thomas's sojourn in Elfland?

Elfland is so vastly different, and so vastly magical, a culture from what Thomas knows. Explore that, through either Thomas's or the Queen's eyes?

———

Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale)
Queen, Snow White
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm



Snow White spends far too much of the story simply reacting. Running. And being naïve. This is valid because she's textually seven when she becomes the most beautiful in all the land. Which, one, no, make her at least seventeen? And two, how about not? Give Snow agency. Give Snow power. Maybe even give Snow some of her stepmother's knowledge—the Queen patently knows something of magic, and maybe she's been teaching Snow, or was until she began to grow too jealous of Snow? What if the jealousy arises not (or not wholly) because Snow is growing beautiful, but because Snow is growing powerful? (Beauty is a form of power, in a kyriarchal world...) Maybe the dwarves teach Snow as well, in a vastly different style?

Don't forget dancing in the red-hot iron shoes! (Or do forget, if that makes you uncomfortable; it is one of my favorite elements of the Grimm text, but it is kind of gory and I do understand why people inevitably omit it in retellings.)

———

Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood - Brothers Grimm
Wolf, Grandmother, Woodcutter, Red Riding Hood
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

They'll speak of girls who met their fate
In shadows in the wood;
They'll say the woodsman came too late.
They never understood --

She cast her cloak and skin aside
She fought to claim her place.
It's true, the girl they speak of died;
She didn't leave a trace...

[...]

Blood burns like fire, and it always burns through.

—"The True Story Here", Seanan McGuire

Genderswapping the Wolf and the Woodcutter—and for that matter Grandmother and Red herself, though I prefer those two don't end up cis men—is awesome.

A lot of more recent Red Hood retellings play it as Red's sexual awakening. I am cool with this, conditional on she's at least seventeen and the Wolf or Woodcutter, as appropriate, isn't much older. McGuire's interpretation is more self-discovery. This is also awesome.

The crucial part to my mind is Red's agency. In Grimm, she has none, nor does Grandmother. Give her—give them both—strength and cunning. The Woodcutter may certainly remain involved in saving them from the Wolf—or the Wolf may not be who anyone needs saving from—but if any saving's to be done, Red, at least, should be driving the action.

This request is an explicit exception to the non-con DNW, if you choose to go that route. Here I want to see, in context of Red's sexual awakening with either the Woodcutter or the Wolf, an exploration of what consent is, what it means, and how someone who has never felt the need to regard others' consent as important learns to so regard. With the Wolf, how a predator-prey relationship becomes one of equals, or drives the predator to seek out a relationship of equals with someone they would before have considered prey but isn't someone they have victimized. The former option invites Red/Wolf, the latter Red/Woodcutter.

———

¹* My DNWs include "underage sexual activity", "cross-generational sexual and/or romantic relationships", and "anything that contributes to rape culture" for good reason. Yes, it is plausible and in fact likely, given the history of marriage and gender in ancient Greece, that Niobe herself and at least her oldest daughter married thirty-year-old men when they themselves were fourteen- to eighteen-year-old girls. In fact, Hesiod advises precisely that in Works and Days! Don't show it that way. No sex or marriage involving under-eighteens is to be stated or implied in my gift fics. And having a twelve-year age gap between a married couple doesn't hit cross-generational, exactly, and doesn't necessarily involve a significant power differential in the relationship (such as is today involved in every instance of the all-too-common scenario where an adult man coerces or cajoles a teenage girl into sex (or convinces her that only he can love her and only their having sex will show how much she loves him), often resulting in an unwanted pregnancy)—but it sure does tiptoe right up to both of those.

² It is likely safe to assume Gods are not bound by linear time. They can appear at any age They choose—see the Arachne story, for instance. Theogony alone, without reference to other sources, contains a contradiction: Zeus first married Metis, Who gave birth to Athena as the first of Zeus's children; Zeus married Hera last. Hera had some argument with Zeus and consequently bore Hephaistos without Zeus's intervention; in retaliation Zeus slept with Metis to conceive Athena! Oopsy, we seem to have stumbled into a paradox! —if we assume linear time.