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The tension is high on Mount Olympus! The Gods are unhappy, and in an effort to prevent mutiny, Zeus organizes a mass-mailing of anonymous letters to Dear Abbycus in the hopes of soothing spirits. Here’s the first batch:
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Dear Abbycus,
I’m married to a man of considerable religious and social importance. He tends to be very just and has a knack for creating order out of chaos, admirable qualities. However, he also happens to be an insensitive jerk that sleeps around with – and impregnates – any woman who catches his eye. I have tried absolutely everything to get him to stop, short of castrating him and casting his genitals into the ocean, but nothing has worked. In what I consider to be an amazing show of tolerance, I’ve even allowed one of his lovers to stay with us in our home. Nothing! Not even a thank you! I’m completely at a loss. I don’t know what to do. Can you help me?
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Dear Abbycus,
My problem is this: I’m afraid I might be an alcoholic. I think this might be a result of my unfortunate past. Sadly, I spent most of my childhood disguised a girl being raised by distant friends of the family to avoid being murdered or otherwise harmed. I had very little contact with my father, a very important figure in many respects, and none with my mother, as she had died before my birth (don’t ask). I discovered alcohol in my teenage years, after my first love was gored to death by an enraged bull, and haven’t looked back since. This in itself wouldn’t be that bad, but I fear I’m dragging down all my friends with me into a life of alcohol-induced debauchery. I came back home from many years of crazed wanderings in the hopes of escaping them and saving them from my bad influence, but they followed me! I’m very frightened of telling them that I don’t want to fraternize with them any longer, for they are very volatile and just as likely to accept this as to tear me limb from limb in a terrifying display of vicious savagery. What should I do?
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Dear Abbycus,
My boss is a tyrant! He makes me do everything for him; I run his errands, deliver his messages… I can’t take it anymore! I don’t want to be his lackey for the rest of eternity. I’ll admit that I wanted a place in the upper reaches of the society he heads from the day I was born and did all kinds of things to get here, but I had never anticipated this! I’d love nothing more than to tell him to do it himself, but I don’t want him to, say, chain me to a rock at the mercy of a vulture. In fact, the only upside to my job is that I get to travel a lot and meet lots of interesting – to say the least – people, even though the places I go and the people I run into aren’t always extremely appealing. What do you think I should do? I’m a talented guy, motivated, self-starting, and resourceful – give me a tortoise and, bam! there’s a lyre. Maybe I could branch out on my own. Would that be wise?
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Dear Abbycus,
My wife is cheating on me. I suppose this is to be expected, after all, since I’m a crippled menial worker and she’s a gorgeous sex-symbol, but still! I caught her and her lover, a brawny, brainless hulk, in bed once, but failed to elicit any sympathy from my so-called friends. Frankly, I’m convinced that any one of them would give anything to sleep with my wife, and rather than make me proud, it scares me to no end. I’m afraid that my marriage is going to fall apart. What should I do?
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Dear Abbycus,
All my life, I’ve suffered from unrequited love (except in one instance, but that also turned out badly and truly is another story…). People seem willing to go to great distances to avoid my advances. The sting of these repetitive rejections is turning me into a distant, aloof being. What’s worse is that my friends, family and multitudinous followers don’t seem to realize that beneath the impassive façade and beautiful stature lays a bleeding heart. Unfortunately, I feel that it’s become impossible for me to reveal these feelings to them, because it’s gotten to a point where I’m widely recognized as a paradigm of rationality, lack of emotion and self-control. What must I do? I can’t go on like this much longer. But can I risk disappointing the masses?
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Dear Abbycus,
A while back, on the, uh, incapacitation of my father, my brothers and I divided up his estate, so to speak. For reasons beyond me, I ended up with the short end of the stick. I accepted this without complaint, but I’m beginning to see how badly I was cheated. Because of my social standing now, people have begun to fear me and are associating me with things I would, under normal circumstances, avoid. This has also prevented me from meeting any interesting women, and even then I would be hard-pressed to find a way of getting them to my domain – short of kidnapping them – because it’s so unappealing. So all in all, while my brothers live the high life, I needlessly fester away, removed from all things pleasant. How can I remedy this situation?
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A/N Well, that’s the first batch, and I hope they made sense… LoL. More to come, and possibly Dear Abbycus’ responses. Let me know if you figure out which letter is from which god/dess.