Pelion, with all its woods (1/2)

[whit_merule]

Pelion, with all its woods.
a March-Stalkers Mighty extra

Proud of their strength, and more than mortal size
The gods they challenge, and affect the skies:
Heaved on Olympus tottering Ossa stood;
On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood.
Homer’s Odyssey, trans. Alexander Pope. (Book IX.)

Written for the Sabriel mini-bang, 2012. Artwork by machidieles.

Comments

[auroramama]

That's... if I weren't already married, I'd want to marry this story. Run away and get married and have little drabbles with it

[whit_merule]

Have you read the last chapter of MSM yet? I just unlocked it about half an hour ago. :) Some of the interaction probably follows nicely after this! He does need something like Sam, and Sam is determined that he'll have it, one way or another. Because Sam is stubborn. And has puppy-dog eyes.

(Would the drabble babies grow up? Would you dress them in practical clothes for everyday use and purple-prose ones for when they wanted to be pretty? Would you help them grow into big bangs, and wave them off into the world when the time came?)

I don't know but I rather love this Gabriel too! He just happened, really. And being part of a larger story does help, obviously, because I've had more time to get to know him and know his reactions and history and so on. And poor Castiel, in the second half of this timestamp, is still being painfully disillusioned and painfully insistent here because he just doesn't get why his big brother isn't his adoration-worthy big brother who can fix everything anymore...

[auroramama]

As you see, it took me several hours to finish MSM, and it was terrifically satisfying. Though I can never get enough Sam/Gabriel. And yes, Sam-level stubbornness and irresistability is what's needed, and Gabriel is already aware of that on some level, so he doesn't even get to ask himself how in the world he became entangled with Sam Winchester of all beings. Not unless he wants to risk knowing the answer. Poor dear, Gabriel is trying very hard to do several things at the same time, or almost the same time, and Sam is almost unnaturally good at riding it out. Preposterously desirable.

Caught one homonym while reading this aloud: "stiff veins of feathers" should be vanes.

I can see the drabble babies so clearly now! What's the prose style equivalent of a mackintosh and wellies? I'd love to help them grow into BBs, but I'd probably be the overprotective type. I haven't let so much as a paragraph of fiction out of my sight in years.

[whit_merule]

Eep, how embarrassing! *smites the veins viciously*

Hm. Maybe something like a Dick King-Smith book? (He's the one who wrote the Sheep Pig, which became the movie Babe, and other similar children's 'novels'.)

(Mmm. Sam riding it out. Until Gabriel's too exhausted to object anymore and they just curl up together and cuddle but Sam won't stop lyign on top of him just in case he tries to run away.)

[auroramama]

Posted before I meant to *again*! I wanted to say that this Gabriel seemed to have echoes of the actor's other roles, including of course the personas he uses to entertain fans, but also including Band of Brothers. Which is a neat trick because I've never seen an episode of it. But I've seen lots of pictures, and your Gabriel has the eyes of a soldier.

[whit_merule]

Okay, that's interesting, because I've never seen BoB either. But I obviously must have managed to capture something about RSJ that he carried over into that. :)

[auroramama]

I think it shows up more than once, that shadow that says a character hasn't forgotten any of the things he's pretending don't exist. He's been through that moment when a jester encounters something that can't be turned aside with a laugh. (There's one such in Alexias' patrol in =The Last of the Wine=, and I can never read that passage now without seeing Gabriel's face when Lucifer has stabbed him. It's not supposed to happen this way.)

In real life, I'm the sort of earnest, confiding person who doesn't dare mingle with tricksters and doesn't usually want to, and that goes double for tricksters with battle damage (it's red flags! It's a parade!) Even in fiction, smug tricksters whose facade remains intact don't generally delight me. But Gabriel? Catnip. I hate to leave your characters' company.

[arora_kayd]

They're so cute and little!

[whit_merule]

... every time someone comments on this post I start fretting that they haven't noticed there's a second post to this story. :( DAMN YOU LJ AND YOUR POST LIMITS this never happens on AO3 and dreamwidth. :(

Cute and little and angsty!

[falcytan_dream]

FINALLY got time to read this, and I just had stop and say that (first, I'm angry at you for using Alexander Pope's translation, but on the other hand, I'm just generally happy that you used a Homer quote, and) so far I'm completely in love with this. I almost never stray out of Dean/Castiel, and when I do, well, let's just say they don't suck me in like this has.

So now I'm gonna go read the next part so I can leave a longer version of how much I love this after finishing it in all its glory!

[whit_merule]

Pope was a deliberate choice, actually, specifically for what he did with this line. :) So far as I'm concerned it's not Homer translation, it's Pope poetry, which relieves him of much of the guilt for certain liberalities. Thank you for giving Sabriel a chance!

[falcytan_dream]

LOL that's a good way of thinking of it. I just remember in my Epic class comparing the translations of several different translators and reading and going "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH", but then I was looking for translation, not poetry. xP

[whit_merule]

Exactly. :) And he, like Dryden with his translation of the Aeneid (and of some of Chaucer), lived in a generation where a translation was expected to be embellished, poeticised, and altered a little to be more in line with the morals/mores of the day. And, of course, in which he could expect most of his important audience, his classically educated friends, to read the original without his help. The translation is more of a 'see, I can take on Homer/Virgil and make my own thing of it' than 'don't look at me, the translator is doing his best to be invisible here'. It was only later on that we post-empiricists began to expect the translator to be some transparent conduit for the great majestic author - which is precisely why translations like Pope's are often much more gratifying to read, because the more careful and less creative you feel you're allowed to be, the less rich and compelling, as a rule, your finished product ends up. This is also why I prefer Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to any of the more