#Achilles Answers

[derelictheretic]

It’s almost November! Time for a fresh round of OC questions. For two kiddos of your choice:

They’re invited to an ugly-sweater party. What sweater are they wearing?

Would they rather go to a pumpkin patch or pick apples? Are they the type to bake pies with what they collect?

They’re caught unexpectedly under the mistletoe… with their crush. What do they do?

Late reply because I have not been on tumblr lately, thank you for these questions tho they were super fun to think about !! I decided to answer them via doodles for Charmeine and Caleb! <333

It was so hard thinking of ugly sweaters for them but after giving up on Google I just thought about what they both like and Charmeine would love dog memes and Caleb is a gamer boy at heart. I also do believe 110% they would bake pumpkin and apple pies with their hauls, the apple supply will dwindle a lot more on the way home though!

The crush question is so fun because I have thought about Charmeine and Caleb's puppy love phases sooooo often, Caleb's first crush is a Hope County boy who loves rugby and Charmeine's is Jamie Boshaw, who she has much better luck romancing in their teens than Caleb does with his crush; mainly because he moves away.

[mogaiadjacent]

Gross bi "lesbians" aren't allowed to like Smith's songs

sorry my Spotify wrapped says otherwise ❤️

[o-fantome]

Welcome back homie

(This is magenta/whatever the fuck yeah i changed my url like 5 times in the past year shhhhhh)

hello homie i am here to spread raoul propaganda

[jules-ln]

Me grabbing somebody by the shoulders and shaking them back and forth:

No, you don't understand, don't just focus on Patroclus as an aggressive warrior please, he was a complex character. Him being a healer was as important as him being a warrior

Don't let your irrational hate for a certain media blind you. he was a kind man, he was so kind even the horses loved him, ok?

He was a warrior, he was horrible in battle but he knew mercy and compassion outside of it

he was a kid that killed another kid, he was the only one to console Briseis, he was equal to Ares, he had 9 dogs, he entered a berserk state, he died alone

He could've have a peaceful life, he didn’t have to be another young man lost in war

Reducing him to just another aggressive warrior is as bad if not worse than making him a meek healer

Stop overglorifying violence, that's the point of the iliad don't you see? He was such an excellent warrior but that didn't save him from the horrors of war because nobody is safe from it and Glory is paid with blood of heroes and the grief of the innocent

PLEASEEEEE

[stain-is-the-name]

could you sketch Patrochilles?

Originally misunderstood and I had just drawn Patroclus, but here its the them o7

[spineless-lobster]

Do you think their periods ever synched up

[cvmcicle]

COWBOY PATROCHILLES please :3

i can't tell if this is just one person or if there's genuinely a whole community desperate for cowboy patrochilles content

brokeback mountain play redraw, god bless, goodnight

[canisalbus]

I hope Machete gets to welcome Vasco to heaven once he dies. Like the end of titanic lol

.

[wolficake]

Am I the only one who wishes Jay had started with The Iliad instead of The Odyssey? But at the same time, part of me feels like Epic: The Musical wouldn't have gotten nearly as popular as it has if he did, so I'm actually very conflicted.

🥺 I don't even know if he plans on doing The Iliad.

😭 I want to see my sweet bby boy, my beautiful son, my darling sweet baby angel so badly, Jay, pls, I will give you my entire life if you give me my Achilles.

[betweenblackberrybranches]

I keep doodleing these guys at work😔😔

They be bouncing around my headdd

[ohnoitstbskyen]

How I found you was, someone on Tumblr mentioned your Hades LP to the tune of “this guy went into this long rant about how you can’t put modern sexuality labels onto ancient people, yadda yadda yadda, and then he wrapped it up with ‘That said, Achilles was extremely gay’” and I looked you up because I decided I wanted that energy in my life. It was a good choice.

Historian Brain: applying modern labels and conceptions of gender and sexuality to people from ancient history is fraught and problematic. It imposes a modern lens on the past which obscures the true complexity of their identities and the complex ways in which people's emotional and sexual selves have had to navigate culture through the ages.

Bring Achilles forward in time to the modern day and we don't even know if he would identify as a man, much less with any of our categorizations of sexual and romantic attraction. Gender and sexuality are labels we apply to complex human experiences and those labels are always to one extent or another socially negotiated and unavoidably reductive. They must be refined and re-invented continuously to reflect our reality, and that process works backwards in time as well.

The existence of queerness in history should be explored and indeed highlighted, because history writing suffers from a long tendency of systemic queer erasure, but that spotlight should emphasize the historical complexity and fluidity of our identities. It is as problematic and inaccurate to label Achilles gay as it would be to call him a libertarian or hold him up as a model of masculinity in a modern context. Such inaccuracies should be avoided and critiqued appropriately in scholarly writing. Our past deserves to be understood in terms as nuanced and complicated as our present.

Person brain: they mixed their ashes in their fucking burial urns, that is the gayest thing I have ever heard in my fucking life

[ask-modern-patrochilles]

Happy Halloween! Did y’all do a family costume?

Achilles: Happy— late— Halloween!

Achilles: Penelope throws a little party every year so this year we were vampires and Max was a baby bat!

[mogaiadjacent]

Hello! I really appreciate your flag work a lot!

I was wondering would you be able to do a flag redesign for “neuroqueer” based on the purple chevron flag for the identity queer?

No worries if not! Thank you for your consideration!

(I attached the flag to this ask to hopefully be as clear as possible about which flag I mean!)

Hi! I can definitely do that! I can up with three separate designs, so feel free to choose from any of the ones I can up with

^ flag 1 (no img id as of now)

^ flag 2, (no img id as of now)

[o-fantome]

actually wait. can i convince u to watch a tv show (presuming u havent yet)

perhaps…..

[jules-ln]

Diomedes would've been the gay icon of the Iliad if it wasn't for the fact that what Achilles did was so gay, he hoarded the collective queer attention all for himself.

Like, Diomedes had what, a few scenes of homoerotic subtext with Odysseus and Sthenelus? That's great hun, but Achilles dragged a corpse around a city and then had his ashes mixed with those of his "best friend"

[katerinaaqu]

A question about visual arts this time

Do you have any favorite classics artwork(s) that is Iliad related? Like ancient potteries of Homeric heroes, mural arts, paintings during the medieval Europe, etc?

Oh my that is a very good question! There are so many pottery painting and murals of later years that portray so greatly the epic cycle that is so hard to choose!!! But I believe one of the old masters is definitely Exekias! As you remember from my small analysis on the preparation of Ajax suicide. He creates some amazing pasterpieces with the Iliad protagonists and he is very detailed in his style. See for example the famous depiction of Ajax and Achilles playing a board game:

His lines are very bold and his work is very detailed and not only that he includes even thematics that are lesser known such as the preparation of the suicide instead of the act itself or this board game that ellegedly happened in the middle of a battle. Of course we also have the so-called "Siren Painter" with the amazing depiction of Odysseus resisting the sirens songs from the Odyssey

But to focus more on Iliad as you requested (or the general aspects of the war) One of my favorites is definitely this Kylix that was drawn by a painter named Douris. here's an image of Odysseus approaching mourning Achilles (his arms are hanging from a wall which is a very interesting detail)

This Kylix involves the sharing of the arms of Achilles and the medalion in the middle depicts Odysseus handing over to Neoptolemous the arms of his father while holding a boetian-style shield instead of the well known shield of the homeric poems (and it is interesting given how most Neoptolemous depictions involve him killing Priam -he seems so innocent here doesn't he?!-):

A roman wallpainting from Pompeii is definitely one of my favorite Patroclus representations along with of course the infamous scene with him being taken care of by Achilles in a Kyllix

The fight over the body of patroclus in the black-figure style is also amazingly expressive:

The Berlin Painter has definitely one of the most expressive depictions of the battle between Achilles and Hector:

This depiction is around the neck of a crater, the figures are named and I loved how Hector is bleeding profoundly while untouched Achilles is going for the kil with his spear. Euphronius painter also has a very brutal scene of Achilles slaying Troilus:

An Amphora mostly black but for one red figure seems to be depicting Antilochus and is a really rare one from one I can tell!

I love how his long, wavy hair is arranged under the helmet and his obviously youthful appearance (he is a great source of inspiration for my Achilles and Antilochus story). I also love the Triptolemous Painter for making this depiction of the council of Achilles:

Not only do I love the cheeky pose Odysseus has; trying to transfer his ature through painting! Not only do we again see the arms of Achilles to the walls but also we have old Phoenix to the background with his hair tonred up with white color (thankfully rescued by passage of time) with his long hair thugged with the hair band and all!

Kleophades Painter has one of the most brutal scenes of the murder of Priam I have ever seen!

This seems to follow the line of the myth that Virgil speaks of in Aenead; Neoptolemus kills Astyanax before his grandrather before killing him too. In here he seems to have laid the dead baby to his knees and almost seems like either repeatedly stabbing him or beating him to death while Priam tries to shield his head. The baby also seems to have been repeatedly stabbed as well! And blood splattered everywhere!

For Diomedes this is definitely one of my favorites; the stealing of the horses with Odysseus

One can see his youthful appearance compared to Odysseus as they drive the horses away or the exchange of the weapons with Glaukus

I love his youthful appearnce and the thin features and yet the stout body to show his warrior status and the way he receives the shield with care in this, shows much on his personality really.

*

Oh there are so many different depictions by ancient art alone! I would be more than happy to elaborate further with specific images on specific heroes if you want on future reblogs because honestly the category is huge! Even scenes like geometric time paintings seem to be quoting Homer and either the funeral of Patroclus or Hector:

Thank you for the intriguing question! Made me remember many of these masterpieces!