#City of Achilles

[somepinkthing]

"Hector was a good man" "diomedes was an honorable man" BZZZT WRONG. Diomedes was there to steal, burn, and wage war same as the next person. In fact, he was pretty adamant about it. Hector had no issue with the greek's actions, merely that they were directed at him—I mean look at what he wanted to do with patroclus's body, only to then cite respect for funeral rites when it was his own turn to die. Hector also owned slaves within his own city walls—people that he likely took from their homes during troy's own conquests. All that seperated him and the greek warriors was which side they were on.

The Iliad isn't a story about morally upstanding men. Sure, it has men who have honor and perform honorable acts, but these are not good samaritans. It's is a story about war and grief and the real victims of fights between so-called-honorable men and gods. The urge to find a "good guy" in this story is wasted. Hector doesn't have to be morally good just because achilles isn't. Troy didn't lose because they were more or less evil than the greeks. It all just. Is. Because of fate? Because the gods said so? Because people will always make disastrous mistakes and it will always end up biting not only them, but everyone else around them? Who knows? In the end though, doesn't it all feel so pointless in the face of the endless amounts of grief and destruction that war leaves behind? Maybe that's the whole point

[vulcan-spicetea]

SPIRK TOS: Soulmates

Star Trek: City on the Edge of Forever/ Madeline Miller/ Emily Bronte/ Madeline Miller/ Anne Carson (translator)/ Madeline Miller/ Madeline Miller

Inspired by this post.

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[kyxhiin]

req by @moonlightcycle571 !!

In one mission the justice league needed to be close-nit but widespread at the same time, and comms were compromised at the place their mission was set in. Batman had the idea to ask John Constantine about any spells that links multiple people's minds together. Everyone's gonna be okay with this cause y'know they know each and others Identities and stuff except for..

Captain Marvel. To escape the fate of telling the JL about his identity he made then believe he was an ageless God who was magic incarnate, it is believable cause it was shown that there's paintings about the suit even dating back to the stone age.

Billy who's just freaking out had to agree to it cause it would've been VERY suspicious if he didn't, but he thought as long as he stayed in the captain Marvel form everything would've been alright..

There they were. Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, The flash, Green Lantern, Plastic man (For whatever reason), and.. Billy well in the hero form of course. Stood in a room as the chain-smoking exorcist casted some sort of magic thing that will bind their minds together. And it finally happened, they could each here eachothers own thoughts and stuff.

Plastic man: Hey? Who's voice is that??

Crap. He didn't think about the heavenly twitch cha- no, the God's voices.

Flash: ...Is there a little kid in here, what does he mean by God's?

Zeus: !!! They can hear our voices..

A series of gods jumbled into surprise and started to talk, talk ALOT filling up most of their minds.

And that started a chain reaction with the JL they all started questioning each other, Luckily no one payed attention to Captain who put on his best confused face.

Wonderwoman seemed to be in deep thought.. Why was that voice sound so familiar???

Captain, No Billy was now trying to suppress the God's thoughts, he went into a slight panic abut his identity trying not to think of himself. But you know what happens if you don't wanna think about something? You think about it.

Superman: Who's imagining a young boy right now?

Plastic man: Hm.. Isn't that the Fawcett whizz kid? With the radio show? Wait Captain do you have an interview with him later on?

Captain Marvel changing his thoughts "voice" into his hero persona's ones.

Captain: Oh.. Yeah, yeah definitely. I'm just so excited..

Green Lantern: Hey.. Didn't you appear as a guest last time? How come your appearing again?? This is unfair..

Batman: This is not the point. Captain, do you know where the 5 *He closely listened in to his thoughts* no.. 6 new voices come from? (He most definitely knows about Billy's secret identity one way or another.)

Captain Marvel: Haha no..

(Part 1 of 2!)

[daily-uquiz]

*crying*

[mylittleversaille]

Every day I see more and more pop myth takes that make me want to pull my eyelashes out. No, Ares was not a protector of women. No, Aphrodite was not a war goddess (and you know what, being the goddess of sex and lust and beaut is okay!). No, Hera is not an irredeemable villain. No, Zeus is not evil incarnate. No Achilles isn’t without fault or some ‘gay softboi’ icon (he’s literally presented in the Iliad as someone who is proud to a fault. You’re supposed to recognize that he’s selfish and arrogant). No, Demeter was not an overbearing mother nor was Hades some sort of misunderstood, brooding knight in shining armour. Medea is allowed to commit heinous crimes and still be a sympathetic character. Jason… deserves all the hate he gets, respectfully.

Off the top of my head, I think Helen is one of the few people who gets complex, interesting characterization in modern retellings and discourse, ironically enough. She’s allowed to be vain and aware of her own beauty while also often having a great deal of agency. At the same time, she is frequently depicted as both victim and as offender. She’s allowed to want to be in Troy, but also to miss her husband and daughter.

Some days I feel like I could write essays about pop mythology and the way people reduce mythological figures to one dimensional caricatures. And how these retellings are never as progressive as people think, fixing some issues but exacerbating others. I do think retellings end up being an excellent resource for identifying what social issues bother us and how we would like to address them.

For example, we see a lot of feminist retellings that want to show women as capable of the same things as men, and in so doing they reject or deride their own femininity. But a retelling that is ultimately saying that masculinity is more interesting or valuable than femininity isn’t a truly feminist retelling, but it does show us that our society struggles to find femininity compatible with strength or courage.

[ellilyre]

Andromache should've killed Achilles

[semioticapocalypse]

Achille Darnis. La Berge Inondée (The Flooded Bank). 1897

Follow my new AI-related project «Collective memories»

[hvmator]

VERI DEI INIURIA

[krowiathemythologynerd]

PART 2!

I need some suggestions for part 3 help

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Book names + authors under the cut

Patroclus/Achilles- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Alec Lightwood/Magnus Bane- The Shadowhunter Chronicles by Cassandra Clare

[singomusesofwhatever]

something something the illiad shows us the losses communities takes in order to support great men and that's why it's the end of the age of heros to show hey this is why we don't have them anymore as they transfer from mythic history to contemporary history something something

[callisteios]

I’ve had such a strong urge to write an Iliad au where Helen gets turned into a vampire pre Troy but I have actual things to write so that’s probably never happening



My main thoughts:

Menelaus doesn’t know, part of the reason she goes with Paris is the guilt at her hidden identity

Most things stay the same despite what the reader and Helen may think. Vampirism isn’t a cure all for the human condition

Helen scours the battlefields at night to eat, looking for the wounded and slowly dying. Twice over feels the guilt for this war, these men have died for her and now she violates them even in death

Cassandra of course let’s slip she’s seen Helen gorging herself on the blood of Greeks and trojans alike. Everyone thinks it’s a very heavy handed metaphor

The only people she turns in Troy are polyxena and Andromache. This doesn’t stop P’s eventual suicide. Eternal life changes nothing

This means that in all versions Andromache gets to witness first hectors and then astyanax’s death and has to live through whatever comes afterwards

But this time at least she isn’t bound by slavery. She flees from her captors as soon as they’ve left Troy

Helen kills Paris at some point during the war probably - unless Aphrodite stops her - in a gory expression of her repressed hatred of herself taken out on the manifestation of all her bad decisions

She probably kills deiphobus too. Just for fun

during Odysseus’ break in to Troy she offers the curse to him. Him accepting would make the odyssey a fun new thing

[fangirlsovertoomanythings]

I finished reading The Illiad. What am I supposed to do, pick up another book?

[fidgetspringer-art]

The first time Noah met Achilles he got chased into the back of a livestock trailer because Achilles wanted to give him a sniff.

[pinketine]

Reading the Illiad and someone explain to me what the hell Achilles has against Andromache. He kills her father, kills seven brothers, ransoms off her mother (only for her to die as well) AND kills her husband. At some point is really has to be personal because there ain't no way. But gods forbid someone kill Patroclus nobody has ever felt such heartbreak ever. Ever. If that isn't bad enough his son then brutally kills her child like was it genetic. Nobody was out here having an awful time like women in the Illiad but god damn Andromache did not get a single break and we should acknowledge that more.