#Five parallels to the odyssey

[deliriiuumm]

how terribly on brand for five to quote homer’s odyssey to reggie the first time they meet in the 60s. the odyssey, a story abt a man who spent years going on heroic quests and finding his way home

[evilios]

What do you think of the new Epic saga?

Hi, hon! 🌻

I appreciate you letting me Epic rant on the main, I'll keep it under the cut for my dear mutuals and followers' mental stability (some spoilers):

I should say: I separate Epic from Homeric texts. If it was loosely based on the Odyssey back in the Troy Saga, it's entirely its own thing now. Which is not bad! It's just different and it handles its own questions and problems.

Overall, I think it was good. It has its downsides (a little below on that) but I do like the hard work put into the musical. It's not exactly easy to put events of hundreds upon hundreds lines of an epic poem into five songs, so I'm not harsh on it.

I presume that everything Jorge showed on the livestream is what is more or less firmly canon within his musical (visually and lore wise) so with that in mind:

I think he nailed Telemachus. I love this boy, he's my everything. He's young, sweet, protective, he's just lovely. Legendary was my favorite when it existed in snippets and cut videos, it is still one of my favorite songs. The "I want" songs are always fun and Telemachus is very much a Disney prince singing from his magical tower. It's fun!

I see what Jorge did with Antinous being older than Telemachus in the musical which is, well, he had to sacrifice something. I'm guessing letting a guy around Telemachus' age sing about planning to wife up his mom would be weird. But! The only reason I'm bringing it up is that the potential ship dynamic/chemistry between epic Telemachus and Antinous would have been insane if they were around the same age. But, again, I understand the change.

Antinous' voice is also everything.

I like Telemachus' dynamic with Athena in the musical. It's a little closer than in the epics, a little more lighthearted. He doesn't really know about the weight on her shoulders but he's hospitable, sweet, and kind. We'll be Fine is a good song.

This is overall an "Athena's character development arc" saga to me. I see she's repeatedly mirrored to Odysseus, regretting her decisions/being too harsh and all. Jorge can't stop making parallels but! I'm a slut for parallel plotlines, so I like that. Myth Odysseus' usual mirror is Agamemnon but... he doesn't really fully exist in the realm of the musical so I see why they picked Athena, it's an interesting choice.

I could be Calypso's love in paradise 😔

No like she's so pretty. I know she's morally questionable (modernity-wise) but. She is so pretty. Her hair is so pretty. She's so bubbly, I'm so obsessed with her.

I don't think the clock-reverse thing needed to be in her song, it kind of messes with the tempo. I can see how it will work out on stage if Epic is ever in theater, but I'm still 50/50 about that part. Overall, Love in Paradise is catchy as hell!

From the visuals Jorge showed, I assume Calypso was physically close to Odysseus in this version too. Which, coupled with Athena claiming he never cheated, brings me to two different thoughts: a). They were physically close but he didn't have intimacy with her b). Athena does not consider forced intimacy cheating and I'm definitely for the second one, Odysseus' S/A is important.

God Games... torn on this one. A bit too short to my liking BUT will work out on stage. I can see how you could use stage lights + physical space to reconstruct it. Song length wouldn't matter as much.

I love short haired dark haired Apollo, it's like Jorge requested his version of the God to be distinct. His argument also IS SO UNSERIOUS. Like he's there only because Daddy asked him isn't he.

I'm glad Helios' cattle was not brought up as some people expected (and as I feared), Jorge knows his source material.

Hephaestus is absolutely too sweet for this world. I'm not sure if his bit with loyalty is about Hera myth or Aphrodite myth or something else... but it was sweet.

Aphrodite can have my heart on a plate. Fully. I don't care. Her bit is my favorite + I love that she's more pissed off about Odysseus "betraying" familial love rather than blaming him for, idk, potentially sleeping with Calypso or something.

Ares has an amazing voice though I keep wondering about his point. We know Odysseus didn't fight Scylla because a). There's no point in fighting Scylla b). He was planning to betray his crew. A part of me wants to think Ares is pissed because he sacrificed his comrades instead of fighting for them, it is cowardly.

I like their little fighting sequence, really shows Athena's ready to throw down in a fight if needed.

Hera is gorgeous stunning show stopping etc. I like her bit, it's not really serious, like Apollo's, but I don't see why it would be. Odysseus isn't really her business and he is a notable hero, she doesn't need to test him as one. But she needs to test him as a husband! Which is lovely.

Zeus would never hurt Athena I refuse to believe that part /lh

Overall? It's good. A bit clunky/compressed but good. Thunder one is still my favorite but the Athena Saga was good, gave my girl some more depth.

[vorthosjay]

Are there parallel or alternate universes in Magic? Such as...

- Ravnica-2 where each guild is a 3-color combination

- Theros-3 where gods are artifacts

- Jace (from Vryn-5) and Jace (from Vryn-7) meet each other

Planes can have alternate universes, yes, but it's not common. The three planes we know have them, or had them, are Dominaria, Rabiah, and Tarkir.

Dominaria's you can see in the set Planar Chaos, there's one where Mirri strikes down Selenia instead of Crovax, one where the Odyssey legends are color shifted, one with different primeval dragons with the wedge colors instead of shards, one where Serra was obsessed with Sphinxes instead of angels, that kind of thing. It's possible these are all the same AU, I'm only listing them as different, we don't have more stories about them than the basics. In the Planar Chaos novel we also see "Ice Age Phyrexians" but don't learn more about them.

Rabiah is refracted 1,001 times, which in the diegetic reason there are no legends in the set. Each refraction is different in some way, although it's not really explored much except in Taysir's backstory for the five versions of him that fused.

Tarkir is more recent, but we've see the Khans timeline, which doesn't exist anymore.

[smilesrobotlover]

Odyssey notes I took while reading the odyssey since I finished it!:

Imagine surviving the sea, monsters, and curses, and how you die is by breaking your neck LMAO. I guess that’s the nicest way to die compared to the others I guess 💀

Odysseus seeing his mom in the underworld nearly brought me to TEARS HE COULDNT HUG HER AUGHHUFHFHFJHFJ

Dang Scylla is pretty terrifying. Poor Odysseus, couldn’t save his men :c

Can the men listen to Odysseus, for FIVE SECONDS

he probably needed that sleep so bad.

Also those mfs just left him 💀

POSEIDON NEEDS TO COOL HIS TITS!!! HIS GRUDGE AGAINST ODYSSEUS IS GETTING OLD!!!! Bro was gone for like, 17-20 years and he lost everyone, almost died, and was prisoner to Calypso for 7 years. Leave him alone dawg

The freaking fact that Odysseus couldn’t recognize Ithaca and just assumed that he was on an island of monsters or somethin makes me so sad bruh. He’s been through so much that he just can’t accept that he’s back home. Even when Athena herself telling him he’s home he JUST can’t believe it. This man needs so much therapy omg

How did homie come up with that elaborate backstory under his disguise??? Why is Odysseus so extra???

Also that fake backstory kinda paralleled his own. Very loosely but it’s neat.

I bet it was so hard not to sob right in front of Telemachus as soon as he saw him. Odysseus was using all his strength to fight against the tears.

Also Odysseus and Telemachus reuniting also nearly brought me to tears. I am not ok

“On hearing this Telemachus smiled to his father, but so that Eumaeus could not see him.” PLEASE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH AKSHDKSBSKSBSK

“Penelope came out of her room looking like Diana or Venus, and wept as she flung her arms around her son. She kissed his forehead and both his beautiful eyes, “Light of my eyes,” she cried as she spoke fondly to him” 🥺🥺🥺🥺 this is making me touch starved lmao. Oh to have everyone kiss my head and shoulders when I return home. Also love seeing momma Penelope

Penelope 🤝 Odysseus

Crying a lot

“As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the other side of the yard, he dashed a tear from his eyes without Eymaeus seeing it…” WHAT IF I CRIIIIIIIIIEEEEED 😭😭😭😭 HIS DOGGO

NOOOO ARGOS!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭 he died as soon as he saw Odysseus. He was able to see him one last time. I am unwell

“As she spoke Telemachus sneezed so loudly that the whole house resounded with it” THAT IS THE MOST RANDIM THING TO ADD IN THERE HSKDBSKSBSK. It’s so cute tho 😭😭😭 oh Telemachus you’re Adorable. And his momma laughed. Aww.

Nvm Telemachus’s sneeze was apparently an omen that the suitors will die lmao. This story just has things Happen

Telemachus: *sneezes*

Penelope: this is a sign that the suitors will die

Eymaeus: what

Odysseus has THUNDER THIGHS

“This was what she said, and Odysseus was glad when he heard her trying to get presents out of the suitors, and flattering them with fair words which he knew she did not mean.” HE LOVES HIS WIFE!!!!

“…I believe the light had not been coming from the torches, but from his own head—for his hair is all gone, every bit of it.”

Did this mf just make a bald joke 💀

Me and my homies hate the maids and suitors

Also Penelope rocks. Deceiving everyone cuz she doesn’t want to get married to those douche bags. Pop off queen. Poor lady, forced to get married :((

Odysseus trying not to cry upon talking to his wife after years 😭😭😭 that dude is TOUGH

Odysseus: oh yeah, I met Odysseus. He was wearing fancy clothes and was hot af.

Odysseus is trying so hard to convince Penelope that he’s coming home. Ough… sweet man

Ok so Odysseus was officially gone for 20 years. Ok Coolio. Yikes

Bro went on a huge tangent about the boar. It’s neat to hear about but sheesh.

Penelope had a dream that explicitly told her that Odysseus was coming home to kill the suitors and she’s like “can you interpret it for me?” I assume she’s trying to mess with Odysseus, cuz even tho he’s in disguise, she’s sensing something with him.

Oh she knows Odysseus is somewhere. Why is she setting up a tournament that only Odysseus could do now?? She knows…. She knows….

Book XX: Odysseus cannot sleep. What else is new?

Odysseus’s name meaning anger is starting to make sense now that he’s home and wanting to murder people out of anger. I guess the fact that he pisses everyone off to is also an indicator of that 💀

Oh the Odysseus and Penelope parallel augh

Odysseus is just brooding all the time huh

I like the idea that Telemachus is very timid and soft spoken. Everytime he speaks against the suitors they’re always surprised; now that he’s older with Athena and his father by his side, he’s beginning to break out of this shell and become more bold. It’s neat for his character. wonder how he’d feel about himself compared to his lion-hearted father

Telemachus is sooo cuuuuute he tried to do that trial for his momma… he was so excited too. My son

Love how Odysseus is absolutely JACKED. Just super strong. An absolute tank. Love him

“Eurymachus,” Penelope answered, “people who persist in eating up the estate of a great chieftain and dishonoring his house must not expect others to think well of them.” EAT EM UP PENELOPE!

I FREAKING LOVE THE ARROW SCENE. GO ODYSSEUS GO

I guess people in Ancient Greek times just killed each other without any thought lmao. I have a feeling that it’s less about the law and more about the revenge that would fall upon you if you killed someone. It was satisfying to read the suitors and maids die tho. Heck yeah

Athena is a great wing man. Just making Ody hot and godlike

Love Penelope testing Odysseus to make sure it was him. Very good. She’s a very cunning women indeed

OUGHHHH THEYRE HUGGING HDBSBSKSBSKSBSKSBSSKSBKWKW 😭😭😭😭

Gosh. The love and chemistry between Odysseus and Penelope is so strong, even tho they’re barely together in the story. Like, it’s interesting to hear how much love they poured into each other that night, (especially compared to Circe and Calypso. Odysseus clearly did not love them.) and then they talked and explained their times away from each other. Augh they’re so in love 😭😭😭

Odysseus just tell your father that you’re home why are you LIKE THIS

WHY ARE YOU MAKING UP ANOTHER ELABORATE BACKSTORY JUST TELL HIM WHO YOU ARE

Dang, that was an abrupt ending. But why did Athena like… tell Odysseus’s father to kill the guy and then told them not to kill each other lmao. Idk. But overall yay. Interesting how Odysseus didn’t listen at first. I think he’s truly changed since his adventure

Something I noticed was that Odysseus was probably a very happy and joyful man. He had family and friends, a wife and a newborn son. He treated everyone fairly and with kindness and everyone adored him for it. But after his adventure, he seemed far more somber and angry. Sad change of character, but ultimately he didn’t change too much. I love him. I enjoyed that WAAYYYY more than I thought I would. Sure the writing was different than what I was used to—there was so much yapping and tangents and metaphors—but it wasn’t impossible to follow! I’ve read difficult stories from Shakespeare to scriptures and this was an overall easy read. The culture of Ancient Greece is very…. Strange to me, but it’s always neat to see differences in cultures, no matter how uncomfy it makes me feel. Love how both Odysseus and Penelope remained faithful to each other and cried over each other a lot. They got married for a reason <3 and Telemachus my son. He’s so precious. Good good story I enjoyed that a lot

[grandhotelabyss]

How the fuck can Homer be so good, and yet so close to being the very first thing we have? Like how can literature come almost straight out the gate with what is still an arguable top five artwork, across all media? (I know we had a couple of technically literate civilisations like that, but nothing as literary as to be comparable to Homer!) It feels almost like Homer is somehow an ancient psy-op by Athens, they backdated him somehow to boost their reputation lol

I don't think we really know, but I assume the body of oral tales at the basis of the Homeric epics were put into writing by a fairly literate civilization. The complex structure of The Odyssey, with its two parallel plots converging into a single timeline in the final third, seems to me to have to be the product of literacy and the type of recursive memory literacy encourages. The Odyssey is already a kind of meta and ironic Ulysses to whatever primordial lore it's based on, or so I surmise.

[nietzschey]

Complete Works

Franz Kafka

Before the Law

An Imperial Message

Description of a Struggle

Wedding Preparations in the Country

In the Penal Colony

The Judgement

The Metamorphosis

The Village Schoolmaster

Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor

The Warden of the Tomb

- Continue when read

Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov

Crime and Punishment

Demons

- All works

Agatha Christie

- All works

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

- All works

Philosophers:

Nietzsche

The Birth of Tragedy

The Gay Science

The Genealogy of Morals

The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ: Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer

Thus Spoken Zarathustra

Beyond Good and Evil

God is Dead. God Remains Dead. And We Have Killed Him.

Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Representation

The Wisdom of Life

The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics

Studies in Pessimism

Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus

The Stranger

The Fall

The Plague

The Rebel

The First Man

Between Hell and Reason

Kant

Introduction to Logic

Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Critique of Pure Reason

Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason

Dreams of a Spirit-Seer

What is Enlightenment?

Hegel

Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics

Phenomenology of Spirit

Absolute Spirit

Science of Logic

Lectures on the Philosophy of History

William James

The Principles of Psychology

The Varieties of Religious Experience

Essays in Radical Empiricism

Philosophies

Moral Nihilism

The Moral Fool

The Evolution of Morality

Ethics of Ambiguity

Beyond Morality

Essays in Moral Skepticism

Abolishing Morality

Morality: The Final Delusion?

Metaphysical Nihilism

The Overcoming of Metaphysics

Metaphysics and Nihilism

Existential Nihilism

Existentialism is a Humanism

Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre

Macbeth

Being and Nothingness

Political Nihilism

An Introduction to Political Philosophy

Political Philosophy: Responding to the Challenge of Positivism and Historicism

Positive Nihilism

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

A Tale for the Time Being

John Dies at the End

Epistemological Nihilism

Nihilism's Epistemology, Ontology, and Its God

Absurdism

The Trial

Nausea

Slaughterhouse Five

Waiting for Godot

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Fatalism

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Wide Sargasso Sea

No Longer Human

Sapiens

Cat’s Cradle

Antinatalism

The Denial of Death

The Human Predicament

Every Cradle a Grave

Better Never to Have Been - The Harm of Coming into Existence

Misc.

Medieval Philosophy

Classics

The Catcher in the Rye

The Grapes of Wrath

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Great Gatsby

The Crucible

The Bell Jar

The Yellow Wallpaper

A Clockwork Orange

A Room of One's Own

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Thousand and One Nights

Of Mice and Men

As I Lay Dying

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Where the Red Fern Grows

Flowers for Algernon

Lolita

Lord of the Flies

Wuthering Heights

Moby Dick

Little Women

Death of a Salesman

Beloved

Don Quixote

Diary of a Madman

Jane Eyre

Pride and Prejudice

I, Robot

Catch 22

Religious

The Apocrypha

The Summa Theologica

The Divine Comedy

The Epic of Gilgamesh

City of God

Angelology

The Occult

Books to reread

The Odyssey

The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Scarlet Letter

The Time Machine

The Invisible Man

The Secret Garden

To Kill a Mockingbird

Ten Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Alice in Wonderland

Gulliver's Travels

Dracula

Frankenstein

Books I’ve completed

The Screwtape Letters

The Art of War

Animal Farm

Fahrenheit 451

1984

[mothmage]

20 Qs for fic writers

Tagged by @monstersinthecosmos , thank you!!!

1. How many works do you have on A03? 31 (and a few anon, i think 2 or 3. idk, when i post a fic on anon i forget about it forever)

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 446,135

3. What fandoms do you write for? currently/primarily vc, iwtv (amc), star wars, and merlin (bbc)!

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? A Lovely Little Normal Life (which, honestly, kind of annoys me lol. i know it's just bc it's a huge fandom, but really? the stupid little 12k harry potter fic i wrote in two days is my most kudos? please...); Arthur Pendragon, Long May She Reign (forever pushing my lesbian genderswap agenda); The Face of God (les mis slightly canon divergent javert character study); The Odyssey of Recollection (amc iwtv s1 pov armand); Away From Stranger Tides (potc philip/syrena fic i started ages ago and never finished, lol)

5. Do you respond to comments? yes i love talking to people in comments!!!! i've made a lot of friends through comments!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? omg. umm. merthur fans don't know this yet bc i havent finished posting but it's arthur pendragon long may she reign (BUT it's part of a series, so it's literally fine). idk, i dont tend to write long fics that end angsty. but my angstiest fic in general is probably Hollow-Boned Boy (armand contemplating his human life in the early CoD era) or Vision of the Damned (daniel's turning from armand's pov)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? i love a happy ending!! my series Odysseus in White Silk is probably the happiest ending, and in such an undeserved way hahaha it's so very AU because i was sad after s1 of the show and just wanted them all (and armandaniel) to live happily ever after

8. Do you get hate on fics? i dont think i ever have, but i tend to read comments in good faith too, so maybe someone out there is annoyed that i interpreted their vague dislike comment as a genuine comment or something, idk. in general though, i'll say no

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes but i dont post that often, idk if there's a particular kind, but generally it tends to be a little rougher than is probably appropriate without discussion in real-life situations, but also very...idk my friend described it as very tender, like theyre very clearly in love. which is so funny considering that that kind of tenderness irl gives me fucking hives lmfao

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? oh wow, not in a long time. i do have a wip sitting around rn that's a crossover between london spy and cloud atlas, which is really crazy until you remember that ben whishaw is in both london spy and the cloud atlas movie lol. and cloud atlas is already about weird reincarnations and parallel worlds and stuff, so it isnt too out-there.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? i dont think so!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? yes!! The Face of God was translated into Korean by ao3 user Crescent919 !! i've had a few comments on other fics asking to translate for personal use (always yes, of course), but no one else has asked to share a translation publicly

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? no!! i've been thinking about it lately though

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? all-time? probably merlin/arthur from merlin (bbc). it's the whole fate-destiny-choice thing, it just compels me like nothing else

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? hmmm, i would like to finish Roswell -- well, kinda (agent carter farm girl / alien crash landing au) because i still have all the original notes and outlines and stuff. i also made a shitty conlang when i was first writing it, which is crazy lol. but it would need some pretty serious revisions, and i would definitely rewrite the first few chapters that i posted years ago. i just kind of lost the agent carter bug, but i might return to that fic if i ever get in the mood for it again.

16. What are your writing strengths? ooh, i'm not really sure! i get a lot of comments mentioning characters' voices and/or personalities, so i would say maybe that!!! i also feel that i'm fairly good at mimicking an author's writing style when i want to (notably, i do not mimic anne rice when writing vc fic, lol)

17. What are your writing weaknesses? editing for sure. i have at least a hundred fics sitting on my hard drive fully or almost-fully written that i just need to edit. but i would simply rather die than do all of that. it's also why my whole merlin fic got put on pause while i went down the vc rabbithole, because i just can't bring myself to go edit the next chapters lol

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? hmm, i think it's usually unnecessary and comes off as a bit silly. that said, i did do it once (maybe excessively) in Daniel Molloy, Time Bandit (1984 daniel ends up in 1794 theatre des vampires, it's more of a character study than a time travel fic) BUT, let me defend myself -- i did it because daniel doesnt understand french, it's his pov, and he's incredibly confused and distraught for most of the fic. i felt like the dialogue being in french conveyed this sort of "daniel does not belong in this time/place" vibes. but, also, my french is...a little rough. so i'm sure it's an annoying fic for french readers lmao

19. First fandom you wrote for? warriors cats, a million years ago hahahah

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? ok, i have three different answers for this. the fic i think is the best, objectively, in terms of writing and content: The Story of Dani [...] (r63 devil's minion from armand's pov, starting with lestat's house). the fic i am the proudest of, mostly because it was my first "big" fic (it's funny now, bc it's only 41k) and i feel like i grew a lot as a writer while working on it, and i'm still happy with it: The Face of God (les mis pov javert, character study from childhood). the fic i have the most fun with and think about almost 24/7: Arthur Pendragon, Long May She Reign (r63 merthur, canon divergence, this is like a 4-part series that's currently over 300k lmao)

no-pressure tagging: @aunteat @leslutdepointedulac @butchybats @graygiantess and anyone else who wants to!!

[deathlessathanasia]

"Within this theoretical framework, I focus on Athena and Hermes in the imaginative world of early Greek poetry and myth. Given that these two Olympians have no apparent similarities in character or realms of interest and function, nevertheless in Homer and the mythic tradition they display an unexpected degree of overlap. Here are some striking points of similarity.

1) In the Olympian Council that opens the Odyssey, Zeus decides to send Athena to Ithaca and Hermes to Ogygia in exactly parallel roles to stir father and son into action.

2) Both Athena and Hermes speed to these missions with winged sandals as their characteristic attribute”.

3) Both have the power to bestow invisibility on their favorites or to use invisibility strategically’. Thus there is a close parallel between Athena’s covering Odysseus with a mist of invisibility to guide him safely to Alkinoos and Arete in Odyssey 7, and Hermes’ making Priam invisible to guide him safely to Achilles in Iliad 24.

4) In Odyssey 10, a section of the narrative where Athena has dropped out of her role as Odysseus’ divine helper‘, Hermes intervenes in what is normally Athena's role to give the hero protection against Kirke’s powers”.

To these instances from early epic we may add an example from a myth that is clearly very old: In the hero Perseus’ quest against the Gorgon, Athena and Hermes join forces as a pair of divine helpers, and are in a sense redundant‘. …

The first implication of these parallels is that some of the powers of Athena and Hermes are alternate and related versions of the same quality. For example, each god embodies the kind of clever intelligence or μῆτις that manifests itself in the clever ruse and the winning strategy. For Hermes this quality leans toward the ‘night-time’ realm of stealth and theft, cunning deception, and successful guidance to the underworld"”. while for Athena it leans toward the ‘day-time’ realm of good judgement, quick thinking, and successful guidance on the battlefield. While pulling in opposite directions, the two gods’ interests share a common center. Consider the qualities singled out for praise in Athena’s statement to Odysseus at Od. 13. 330 ff.: I can never abandon you, she says, for all your unfortunate state, because "you are so clever at speech, strong-minded, and intelligent", οὕνεκ᾽ ἐπητής ἐσσι Kal ἀγχίνοος καὶ ἐχέφρων.

These qualities come close to the very ones that distinguished Odysseus’ grandfather Autolykos as described at Od. 19. 395-398, 407-409; a man who used sharp practice (κλεπτοσύνη) and clever use of speech to gain advantage over everyone he met, so as to make himself strongly disliked by human society but a favorite of the god Hermes. It was Hermes who granted Autolykos these sharp qualities of mind (θεὸς δέ οἱ αὑτὸς ἔδωκεν ‘Eppeias) and who stood by him as his divine patron (ὁ δέ οἱ πρόφρων ἅμ᾽ ὀπήδει}, Thus each deity, Athena and Hermes, has followed and fostered the career of a favourite mortal who was an ideal embodiment of the qualities essential to that deity, and the mortals happen to be grandfather and grandson. They share a strong family resemblance in mental acuity, but the grandfather leans toward the negative and is therefore "hated by many" (πολλοῖσιν. ὀδυσσάμενος, 19. 407), while the grandson leans toward the positive, a greatly admired Achaean hero whose ‘shadow’ side, and the ‘odium’ it provokes, remain largely hidden, but frequently hinted at and hauntingly emblematic in the very name he bears (τῷ δ᾽ Ὀδυσεὺς ὄνομ᾽ ἔστω ἐπώνυμον) "ἢ Thus we have another parallel between Athena and Hermes to add to the five listed above: both are patrons of one member of the grandfather-grandson pair Autolykos-Odysseus, their patronage based on a shared interest in metis, the cunning use of intelligence. Yet we might say that much like Hesiod’s distinction between good eris and bad eris, these deities embody an intriguing distinction between good and bad metis: the first is the metis of successful campaigners, while the second is the metis of swindlers, equivalent to dolos."

- J. Russo, Athena and Hermes in Early Greek Poetry: Doubling and Complementarity, in Poesia e religione in Grecia. Studi in onore di G. Aurelio Privitera

[hidelias]

A bend in space-time Season 2 - [Chapter 17: Chapter 19: οἴκαδε]

[Chapter 17: Chapter 19: οἴκαδε] Links : AO3 - Wattpad - FFN

Summary: After the incident between Klaus and Lloyd, Rin takes refuge in the alleyway where she had arrived in 1961. There, Five finds her and talks to her about… "going home"

(…) I don't say anything, I keep my head in my arms, but that young, slightly nasal voice is easy to recognize. I'm not even surprised to find him here. How many times have I hoped to see him or the other Hargreeves in this brick-walled alley? This time, I don't tell myself that Five is a dream. I can feel the golden particles of his power, even with my eyelids closed. (…)

"I'm so lost, Five… I just… want to go back to where we belong".

These are words straight from my heart. I once told Allison that I'd always feel at home if I could collapse on the same couch as Klaus again. Tonight, I don't even feel like I can do that anymore. I hear Five sigh, then keep silent for a moment. And finally, as if he needed to recite those lines over and over again, he utters into the night:

"Tell me about a complicated man, muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost". I look up a little, my red eyes above my crossed arms. He speaks a few more words, which I can't properly hear, and then : "Where he went, who he met, and the pain he suffered in the storms at sea… and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home."

I don't know why, but his words instantly soothe me, as I identify them as coming from Homer's Odyssey. One of the few books I remember from my short time in high school. All of a sudden, my heart seems to calm down. Maybe it's because I feel a kind of parallel with our wanderings through space-time. Maybe because I believe that Five bears more responsibility than any of us, as if at the helm of the ship. And maybe… because there's this muted hope that - like Ulysses and despite all the ups and downs - one day we'll finally be able to go home for good.

(…)

↝↝↝↝ Read 'A bend in space-time' ↜↜↜↜ Full chapter : AO3 - Wattpad - FFN Season 1 complete : AO3 - Wattpad - FFN Season 2 in progress : AO3 - Wattpad - FFN

I chose to insert an OC - Rin - into the plot of The Umbrella Academy, appearing almost only in deleted scenes. This fic is not a self-insert nor a OC-centric fic : Rin exists to flesh out the canon characters, and the fic is mostly focusing on Klaus. Please read the introduction for more details ♡

Any comment will make my day! ♡

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

BABYMETAL Releases New Single 'Divine Attack'

Japanese pop-metal band BABYMETAL has released "Divine Attack", the first single from its upcoming concept album, "The Other One", due on March 23. The song is accompanied by an official visualizer, available to watch below.

Last year BABYMETAL was "sealed" from the world after a successful 10-year journey. In April 2022, "The Other One" restoration project began to recover the BABYMETAL we never knew existed within a virtual world called the Metalverse. A total of 10 songs have been discovered within "The Other One" restoration project, with each song representing a unique theme based on 10 separate parallel worlds that they have discovered.

One of the discovered 10 parallel worlds is "Cavalry", and "Divine Attack" centers around this theme. As if this song is a hint into the future, alluding to a cavalry preparing for their next battle, we can feel a new sense of power from not only the sound but also the lyrics that have been written by Su-Metal for the first time. In addition, the official visualizer includes never-before-seen cuts of the members from "The Other One" — Black Box — and conveys the power and dynamism of the song. Five pre-release digital singles will be available worldwide for download and streaming, each respectively scheduled to release in October, November, January, February, and March.

After BABYMETAL makes its official return on January 28 and January 29 of next year at Makuhari Messe International Exhibition Hall, they will also be joining Swedish metal band SABATON on their Europe tour in April 2023.

BABYMETAL was formed in 2010. Their mission was to unify the world through heavy metal by creating a fusion of heavy metal and the Japanese pop genre. Their music contains a stunning mix of electronic pop, a pinch of alternative and industrial rock, and is leveled up by fast-driven heavy metal. Their live shows are ground-breaking and epic visual as well as sound performances. BABYMETAL continued to travel the path of metal with the international release of their three albums, telling the story of the mighty Fox God and his brave metal warriors.

A book about the first ten years of BABYMETAL, "Bessatsu Kadokawa Souryoku Tokushuu", was released in Japan in October 2020. It contains a long interview with Su-metal and Moametal as well as never-before-heard stories from band producer Kobametal from BABYMETAL's decade-long history, photos taken from live shows, a discussion between Demon Kakka and Kobametal, and much more.

BABYMETAL's third studio album, "Metal Galaxy", came out in October 2019 via earMUSIC/Edel. The follow-up to 2016's "Metal Resistance" was based on the concept of "The Odyssey Of Metal Galaxy".

In 2018, BABYMETAL announced the departure of Yuimetal, who was formerly one of the members of the Japanese group's core trio. She exited the band, explaining in a statement that she would go on to pursue a solo career as Mizuno Yu.

[whatsonmedia]

Art Odyssey: Explore the World's 7 Best Exhibitions!

Embark on an artistic journey through 2024's most exciting exhibitions! Dive into immersive retrospectives and thought-provoking thematic explorations. Discover groundbreaking works and intriguing themes across continents. Join us for an unforgettable adventure in the world of contemporary art! M.F. Husain: The Rooted Nomad Where: Magazzini del Sale, Venice When: April 18 – November 24 Explore the captivating life and artistry of M.F. Husain, a trailblazer of Indian modernism, in this immersive exhibition running parallel to the Venice Biennale. Supported by prominent art collector Kiran Nadar, delve into Husain's innovative works that transcend cultural boundaries and explore themes of exile and identity. Website: The Rooted Nomad Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective Where: The Art Institute, Chicago When: April 20 – August 11 Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective at The Art Institute, Chicago Experience the groundbreaking art of Christina Ramberg, a key figure of the Chicago Imagists movement, in her first major retrospective in over three decades. Delve into Ramberg's thought-provoking paintings, which challenge societal norms and offer poignant reflections on femininity and power. Website: Christina Ramberg Anna Park: Look, Look Where: Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth When: April 20 – September 8 Anna Park: Look, Look at Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Uncover the thought-provoking commentary on media and reality in Anna Park's mesmerizing black-and-white drawings. Through her satirical style, Park sheds light on the illusions of fame and perception in contemporary culture, inviting viewers to question the narratives presented by the media. Website: Anna Park Figures on Earth & Beyond Where: Gallery 1957, London and Accra When: Through May 25 (London), late 2024 (Accra) Figures on Earth & Beyond at Gallery 1957, London and Accra Embark on a journey of interconnectedness with a diverse group of artists exploring themes of nature, belonging, and ecological change. From surreal collages to abstract cartographies, immerse yourself in artworks that challenge perspectives and evoke wonderment. Website: Figures on Earth & Beyond Thomas Nozkowski: Everything in the World Where: Pace Gallery, Manhattan When: Through April 20 Thomas Nozkowski: Everything in the World at Pace Gallery, Manhattan Celebrate the influential legacy of Thomas Nozkowski through a retrospective of his remarkable career. Explore his intimate yet powerful paintings, which defy artistic conventions and invite viewers to explore the depths of personal experience and perception. Website: Thomas Nozkowski The Last Caravaggio Where: National Gallery When: April 18 – July 21 Experience the dramatic works of Caravaggio in his possibly final masterpiece, "The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula." Immerse yourself in a world of darkness, violence, and passion in this captivating display of Renaissance artistry. Website: The Last Caravaggio Marina Abramović Retrospective Where: Stedelijk Museum When: March 16 – July 14 Marina Abramović Retrospective at Stedelijk Museum Journey through five decades of groundbreaking performance art with Marina Abramović's retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum. Engage with iconic works and live reperformances, offering a unique opportunity to participate in the transformative power of performance art. Website: Marina Abramović Read the full article

[dustedmagazine]

Ahmed Abdullah (with Louis Reyes Rivera) — A Strange Celestial Road (Blank Forms Editions)

In "A Strange Celestial Road" trumpeter, improviser, composer and band leader Ahmed Abdullah recounts his life in music, much of which was influenced and guided by his on-off membership in Sun Ra's Arkestra from 1975 till 1983, when Sun Ra left this planet. Co-written in plain and concise prose with renowned poet Louis Reyes Rivera, the book is a page-turner, compelling the reader onward through 581 pages of anecdotes spanning not just the Arkestra and Sun Ra, but offering a first-hand account of life in New York's Black avant-garde jazz community during the heady times following World War Two.

Abdullah was born 1946 in Harlem, where he spent his formative years and began playing trumpet there at the age of 13. By the early 1960s he was venturing into New York's jazz clubs, hearing virtually all the practitioners of where this music had been and where it was going. His first contact with Sun Ra and the Arkestra came in 1966 at a concert in Slugs' Saloon on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. The music impressed and startled the young Abdullah to such a degree that he went out right after the show and bought a copy of Sun Ra's latest record "We Travel the Spaceways."

In comparison to the wild concert he had just experienced at Slugs', Abdullah was initially so disappointed with the record that he went straight to the Arkestra's house on East Third Street to personally register his disapproval with Sun Ra. Abdullah told Sun Ra that he was expecting to hear more avant-garde music on Sun Ra's record, like in the Arkestra's performances at Slugs' or John Coltrane's "Ascension" record.  Sun Ra patiently listened to  Abdullah's critique then dismissed him with, "The music you're looking for is on this record. 'It's in there.' "  And closed the door in Abdullah's face. So began a long, complicated and, at times, fractious relationship with Sun Ra the person, his sounds, philosophy and a life that revolved more around the spiritual search for that unheard frequency than of any commonly accepted notions of success or accomplishment.

This isn't to say that Abdullah's life reflected some altruistic approach to his craft and art. He had kids to feed, rent to pay and found himself in the fast-moving era of the 1960s where, for one brief moment, it seemed like real social change in America could be possible. These hopes came crashing down with the deaths of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the disarray of radical political engagement as the 1970s wore on into the wasteland of the 1980s, where Abdullah found himself challenged not just by drug dependency but, in the face of a public more interested in a kind of sanitized repertory jazz, rapidly narrowing horizons of economic opportunity for his music as well.

Going back to the beginning, it all started when out of the blue one morning in April 1975, Sun Ra phoned Abdullah to ask him about playing a gig at the legendary Brooklyn venue The East. This would mark the initiation into Abdullah's enduring odyssey with the Arkestra, appearing on over twenty-five releases and traveling with them to Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, through nearly every country in Europe and all across North America. Parallel to his activity with the Arkestra over the years, Abdullah also led his own groups, such as Abdullah, The Solomonic Unit, Diaspora and Ebonic Tones; or was a member of collective ensembles like the Melodic Art-Tet or The Group. The book reads like a who's who of avant-garde jazz. Practically anyone you've read about or heard a record from in this period from the early 1960s through the 1980s will make an appearance in Abdullah's telling. This alone makes the book an exceedingly valuable historical document.

Having seen Sun Ra with the Arkestra several times in the 1980s, I was particularly interested in hearing some inside information on the workings of this enigmatic group and its fabled leader. I'd read John F. Szwed's "Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra" but this left me with an even more heightened sense of outside looking in. Abdullah's autobiography will fill in many questions enthusiasts of Sun Ra's music may have been asking, giving not just intimate details of how Ra worked with his musicians and shaped the Arkestra's music, but first-hand accounts of Sun Ra the person, his philosophy and some of the more challenging sides of working in a group exclusively defined by its leader but internally thriving from the extremely complex social dynamics created by a large pool of incredibly gifted musicians, many of whom were utterly dependent on Sun Ra not just for their room and board, but in some cases their musical identities as well.

Abdullah was never a live-in member of the Arkestra, which often comes across in the book as a kind of cult or, at its most innocuous, a rambling and wild commune. Abdullah writes, "One had to be almost a nonperson in the Arkestra — except, of course, when one was called on to deliver improvisational episodes that spoke to one's individuality. This momentary visibility proved a major contradiction. That brilliance, revealed from time to time, was vigorously suppressed by Sun Ra in most other situations." And for Abdullah this was probably the main reason he kept the Arkestra at arm's length, choosing rather to work with them only when the schedule of his own groups allowed.

This side of Abdullah's life outside his work with Sun Ra provides an interesting counterpoint throughout the book, with much detailed information about New York's short-lived loft scene, of which Abdullah was one of the main players. As a musician myself, I could identify with much of Abdullah's never-ending ordeal involved in running one's own band: the booking, the rehearsals, the petty in-fighting between various micro-scenes, the struggle to get paid, to find a way of releasing recordings, to attract an audience, and to keep a relationship or family life somehow going outside of all this frantic activity. For non-musicians, the book will give a candid, and at times painful, insight into the life of a musician working very much on the fringes of society, experiencing just enough occasional glimpses of recognition or financial success to spur one on to the next stop down the road.

Added to all this is Abdullah's position as a Black American musician, which heaps on many other complexities and frames the music not just in the context of an artistic statement but as a means of self-determination in the face of a system which is unevenly stacked according to one's racial background. As such, "A Strange Celestial Road" is very much about the experience of being a Black person in America and in particular of Sun Ra's afrofuturist vision of a time and place where Black people would finally transcend a repressive social and political system by taking to the spaceways and proudly celebrating their culture in complete freedom.

Unfortunately, women do not seem to share equal footing in Abdullah's vision of self-realization and empowerment. Throughout the book they often make appearances as either objects of Abdullah's affection or as someone to work with in having his various musical projects managed. The only women musicians mentioned in the book are Gerri Allen, which Abdullah by chance hears one day practicing in a rehearsal room next to his, and Amina Claudine Meyers, who he only plays with because she's available and he needs to fill in for a musician who couldn't make a gig. I had to ask myself if the lack of interaction with women musicians was a product of Abdullah's relation with women in general or if this was just an accurate picture of the times. As in the Arkestra, women are only very occasionally included in Abdullah's groups, and then usually only as dancers, singers or reciters of poetry. The book scratches the surface of Sun Ra's sexuality and attitude towards women, but the reader will ultimately be left with more questions than answers in this regard.

As for Abdullah, he's very honest and forthcoming when it comes to, as Salim Washington so euphemistically refers to in his introduction, his poly-amorous lifestyle as a traveling musician. This is often framed in the intersectionality of being in relationships with White versus Black women, where the complex dynamics of race and class most acutely collide. Abdullah often frames these dalliances in the context of a spiritual search, whereby women are the key to some kind of epiphany in himself. This, quite frankly, didn't wash with me and was probably one aspect of the book which I found most distracting from the more fascinating and revealing accounts of working with Sun Ra and Abdullah's coming of age during one of the golden ages of jazz music.

When Sun Ra died in 1993 the Arkestra fell into acute disarray. Of his time with the group Abdullah writes, "The phrase used most often was follow the leader, which in itself was a good idea if there was a leader who knew where he was going, as Sun Ra did. Without Sunny, however, and with no one to replace him, there wasn't a snowball's hope in hell of really delivering the message of Sun Ra's music or moving on to a higher level of organization." This ultimately proved Abdullah's undoing with the Arkestra, which for a time imploded into a dysfunctional tug of war over who should represent the group and who had the legal rights to Sun Ra's estate and legacy. Though Abdullah would occasionally participate in concerts of a post-Ra Arkestra, he had for the most part moved on after Sun Ra's passing.

The strange celestial road taken by Ahmed Abdullah in this book has perhaps less to do with his time with Sun Ra, than the Arkestra as a kind of leitmotif running through Abdullah's life, shining like a beacon of inspiration and hope to persevere as a musician on the very edge of a culture where, against all odds, one in the end might succeed in forging an identity through resistance, self-determination and creative expression. Sun Ra's most famous dictum, "Space is the place," must surely refer to a place of light and freedom. And like Sun Ra, it would seem by the end of the book that Ahmed Abdullah has indeed made peace with the path his life has taken and finally found his place of universal light by traveling the spaceways.

Jason Kahn

[fire-and-swan]

Picking up from my previous post, let's jump into Episode 5 of a Starstruck Odyssey!

Live-blog of watching a battle episode is probably gonna be a little more spotty than the ones before, but we'll see.

Because yes, I can admit it, this is turning into a live blog. Blow by blow, here we go.

Surprised it took this long to suggest shifting the slug to another body.

Double nat ones. Always great when that happens (sarcastic). (Now I'm wondering, how many spare sets of dice do they travel with? Cos I know I have a few, but unless I'm running the game, I leave most of them home.)

Eleven hp total? Heck.

17.5 ft off the ground?! That's a jump and a half.

Save Gunnie from further damage, yes. Fewer expenses is better.

Why is it always Murph Brennan makes roll for arrival of NPCs? It made sense in FH, but now? Is this because of the running joke that is Murph's rolls, or just the cool parallel of it? (Especially since they need these folks to show up, just for a very different reason than the first time.)

Only in this game is taking the time, mid battle, to sort things out with your bank a good use of time.

If I had a penny for every time a D20 character took a moment mid battle to sort out their finances, I'd have two pennies. Which isn't bad, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

"In this galaxy, there's always less going on than meets the eye. Many people are coming after you, but they're not all coming after you all, and they don't all know the same stuff, and they don't all talk to each other. Information is currency, and you understand currency." That last sentence is gold. But I grabbed it in context because the crew have a lot of enemies, and if their enemies team up, they'll be in serious trouble.

#BeardsleyBlessed

When the party is more concerned about damage to a little flying scooter than the PC riding it. Barbarians rock, man.

Gunnie is baby? Gunnie can lose his legs. Oh, that is a weird mental image.

Nine of them at once! Yesss. Go Murph!

Banking in the Box! Surprisingly good move.

"I don't wanna fight you." "I don't wanna fight me either."

"Murph would've allowed it. He's a good dm." Murph's reaction, the moment before he gave in and agreed, would say otherwise.

Nat 20! These are the moments to save 20s for. And they got Brennan to kiss the die. Yeah, I wouldn't be rolling with that one in a desperate situation until I'm sure it'll behave.

"That's a pretty neat trick." "Oh, that was just a bonus action." I love the idea that some of these phrases are actually being used in universe, just by the sorts of people who move in particular circles.

Warfare Whitney is on the board! All we're missing now is Barry Nine (and someone with something against Riva), and we'll have the whole set.

Some parties toss halflings, here we toss mercs.

I wanna read that Hot Exit Binder. Sounds like it would be fascinating.

Five star review? Five Star Review!

Damn, that was fun. I had to split the episode in half to get through some other stuff, which was a shame, but eh *shrugs*. Between this and the previous episode they are seeding so many potential plot threads.

I'm starting to get the feeling that Brennan doesn't have a big-bad planned for this season, but rather four or five potential big-bads, with the final battle being determined by how the group play, and who they've already allied with/defeated by the time they get there. Which, if that's the direction this is going, would be cool.

[dwellordream]

“Helen's character in the Iliad has usually been taken at face value by scholars: they describe her rueful responses to Priam and Hector and her angry rejection of Paris and Aphrodite as sympathetic depictions, often without analyzing in any detail the ambiguous quality of these verbal exchanges. I suggest, in contrast, that in these exchanges 1) Helen's apparent tone often does not match her ultimate intention, and 2) the speech types she uses— which range from the mournful widow's to the flyting warrior's—are transposed from their usual contexts to form locutions unique to her. Helen is also significantly aware of her centrality to the narratives of others, manifesting a concern for reputation (kleos) that connects her to the Muses, the Sirens, and ultimately the poet, as a number of scholars have recognized.

In the Teichoscopia (//. 3.141-244), for example, when she is asked by Priam to name a warrior, Helen uses her identification of Agamemnon to frame an elegiac look at her own past, thus substituting her story for his. Her reply is not particularly suited to the context. In fact, it somewhat resembles in content Andromache's mournful speech in book 6, when the latter bewails her widow's fate to her living husband. Andromache's voice, however, is consistently grief-stricken, and her use of the mourner's topoi (e.g., lamenting family ties, dilation on the effect the death will have on one's life) coheres with her role as loyal wife. Helen's rueful self-reference instead mingles regret with an emphatic awareness of her own singular status. 

When Priam asks Helen to name Ajax, her identification moves quickly from his epithets to the Cretan leader Idomeneus, who as a guest-friend of Menelaus reminds her again of her own story, and she remarks on the absence of her brothers from the battlefield (3.234-42). She then conjectures that their absence can be explained by their fears of shame and reproach that are rightfully hers (3.242). Since she views the actions of others as dependent on her error and rues bitterly this damage to her reputation, Helen assigns herself the crucial role in others' stories, thereby giving voice to the blame tradition that the narrator avoids. Her sense of her public reputation is anomalous among the female figures in Homeric epic; kleos is rightfully the concern of the warrior, not of the warrior's prize. 

Like any good warrior (and unlike her paramour), she fears the insults of others (3.242, 3.412, 24.767-68) and recognizes the vulnerability of her public position. Helen, in contrast to the chaste Andromache, treats her story—in part the battles waged essentially for her that she weaves in her second husband's halls (//. 3.125-28)—as if it were the story most central to every warrior's life. And this in some sense is the case: whereas the mourning wife's story would only be properly told in keening over her husband, Helen's story is on the lips of everyone, since it is relevant to all the warriors. As the catalyzing, fateful figure for these heroes, her story is their story; her own kleos is inevitably bound up with the kleosoi each.

But the complexity of Helen's figure and voice in this scene does not end there. Before she lapses into self-reflection in response to Priam's first inquiry, she says that he is worthy of veneration (aiSoioç ) and fearsome (ôeivôç ) in her eyes (3.172), using a show of extreme respect that implies an apologetic attitude consistent with her penchant for self-abuse, the primary stylistic tendency unique to her. Helen then declares, in reference to her coming to Troy, "Would that evil death had pleased me" (3.173 -74), invoking in a sensuous manner the end point with which she is associated. She makes a similar (though blander) declaration in her mourning speech over the body of Hector in book 24: "Would that I had been destroyed before" (764). 

Andromache uses a related construction when, as Hector is dragged around the city walls, she regrets that Eetion bore her (22.481). In book 21, fearing an unheroic end to his life, Achilles cries out to Zeus in prayer: "Would that Hector had killed me" (279). In the Odyssey, the shade of Achilles wishes something similar for Agamemnon: "Would that you had met your death and fate in Troy" (24.30- 31). Most famously, in Odyssey 5 Odysseus exclaims as he faces the storm near Scheria, "How I wish I had died and met my fate in Troy" (5.308); he repeats the exclamation in the fictional account of his travails that he gives to Eumaeus (14.274).

The ophelon phrase thus seems to be a locution used both by those in mourning and by Homeric heroes caught in threatening or painful situations—or, in the case of Odysseus, when telling about them in guest-friendship situations. The phrase does not, however, only communicate bitter despair (which may be either a cri du coeur or a persuasive tactic). When turned on another, it may also be used as an insult in verbal contests, reproaches, and taunts, an important aspect of its usage for analyzing Helen's speeches. In the Odyssey, Odysseus most frequently utters the phrase, deploying it twice (of four times in the Odyssey and once in the Iliad) when he is trying to use a painful situation to gain sympathy, a complex deployment similar to Helen's. 

In the Iliad, it is Helen's favorite locution for expressing both despair and scorn, which she usually does with some other end in mind (of all characters she uses the phrase most often, five times in the Iliad). As a stranger in Troy, her usage in the Iliad resembles that of Odysseus in the Odyssey, who must make clever use of guest-friendship situations to win his way home. Just as Odysseus, when seeking empathy from the Phaeacians {Od. 11.547), regrets that he won Achilles' arms instead of Ajax, Helen, when seeking empathy from Priam and Hector {II. 3 and 6), regrets that she followed Paris. Though each time she employs the phrase Helen's aim is slightly different, never is it simply the direct outpouring of emotion that it sounds. 

Although its repetition links her tone both to mourning diction and to the hero's emotions and concern for kleos, her application of this type of phrase is unique. Rather than actually being a widow or a hero in challenging circumstances, Helen echoes their outbursts by employing an emotional appeal that sounds like self-address, a layered locution whose related aims are deflecting blame and cementing allegiances. In her use of the phrase to cast scorn on Paris, for example, once she seems to be teasing him and once to be flattering his brother. The earlier scene in book 3 involving Paris alone is plotted by Aphrodite, whose machinations irk her protegee and who inspires in her a passion that seems suspended between desire (for the beautiful Paris whom Aphrodite describes, 3.391-94) and anger at the very goddess with whom she is so closely associated.

Note that Helen herself calls her painful feelings aKpixa (3.412), the most common meaning of which is "confused, indeterminate," a word that thus underscores both the complexity of Helen's passion and (what comes to the same thing) the merging of roles in this scene, so that Helen's abuse of Aphrodite comes close to self-abuse. Helen has been referred to as a "faded Aphrodite";  their conversation resembles an internal dialogue—a debate not only between Helen and her daimon but also between two of the facets that make up her many-sided figure, with its multiple motivations and opposing traditions. Moreover, her scornful responses to her intimates resemble each other: she exhorts both Aphrodite and Paris with dismissive imperatives (3.406, 432) and pictures each in a compromised position (3.407-9, 434-36); correlatively, she uses the ophelon phrases of both herself and Paris.

Her reproach of Aphrodite for using seductive talk (3.399) also recalls Hector's insulting of his brother for being a seducer (3.49). Helen engages in this derogatory language only with those closest to her; a significant variation on the normal context of such blame speech, her usage parallels as well Hector's treatment of Paris. The scornful abuse of one so intimate can sound similar to the dueling speech of warriors (e.g., the use of negative epithets and goading imperatives). Coupled with Helen's self-abusive epithets, this speech and that in which she reproaches Paris mimic the aggressive challenge of the hero on the battlefield. When Helen returns to the bedroom as ordered by Aphrodite, her expression and tone suggest pique, while her taunting phrases recall the flyting warrior: "Would that you had died there," she says, "subdued by the better man, who was once my husband" (3.428-29). 

At the beginning of book 3 Hector similarly chastises his brother on the battlefield, declaring that he wishes Paris had never been born or had died unmarried (3.40). In the bedroom Helen changes her tack with brusque abruptness, first telling Paris to go and challenge Menelaus for a second time, then remarking that he had better not, since Menelaus would probably kill him (3.432-36). Compare first Achilles, who goads Aeneas with a parallel insult in a famous flyting scene, when he urges him to retreat into the mass of soldiers lest he be harmed (20.197). And compare again Hector, who challenges his brother in similar terms ("Couldn't you stand up to Ares-loving Menelaus?" 3.51), and then predicts that if he did he would end up "mingling with the dust" (uiyevnc, 3.55). 

Both Helen and Hector contrast Paris unfavorably with Menelaus, and point up the superiority of the Greek by giving Paris' defeat sexual overtones (e.g., "mingling" [3.48, 55], "subduing" [3.429,436]). For Paris the lover, even encounters on the battlefield have a tincture of the bedroom. These two scornful acknowledgments of his unwarlike attitude serve to frame book 3, so that it begins and ends with Paris' sensual presence and the bellicose types who reproach him: Hector and Helen. Helen's use of this stance is not nearly so straightforward as her brother-in-law's, of course. She imports a verbal style that belongs on the battlefield, and that here in the intimate context of the bedroom takes on an additional layer of meaning—offering a sexual as well as a military challenge. 

Indeed, Paris (lover that he is) responds to this goading by treating it as a kind of bitter foreplay. And it appears that Helen's amorous husband has interpreted her taunts in some sense rightly, for Helen follows him to bed. By invoking her war-loving first husband in order to prick her bed-loving second, she employs the militaristic attitude of the one in order to denigrate qualities that she herself shares with the other, and her physical acquiescence reiterates her reluctant bond with him. That is, when she turns the emotional phrasing of the angry wish against her too-tender husband, she links herself to him and both of them to Aphrodite (since she and the goddess are the other recipients of such reproach). 

The hero's despair as well as his scorn thus take on a singular usage in Helen's mouth: in challenging those who share her affinities, she implicates herself in the abuse that she levels at them, while also preempting the criticism of others. In this way she stands poised against the gentle judgments of those who would forgive her, her character operating as a window on this defamatory tradition. Something similar occurs in book 6, although Helen's tone has changed somewhat since her interaction with Paris in book 3, and now she speaks with a post-coital combination of enticement and gentle abuse. 

When Hector comes to rouse Paris from his sensuous reverie in the bedroom, Helen tries to get her manly brother-in-law to sit down by scorning her soft and lovely husband. She engages in a delicate seduction of Hector, addressing him with "honey-sweet words" (6.343). Both Nestor and the Sirens also speak in a honeyed manner, so that the term delimits a range of speech types from the authoritatively but gently persuasive to the dangerously seductive, a mesmerizing quality that marks  Helen's speaking style in this passage. When Hector first enters and reproaches his brother, the mild Paris responds that Helen had just been urging him to return to battle with "soft words" (6.3 3 7)— unusual content for such beguiling tones. 

The enticing associations that attend malakos ("soft") thus contrast strangely with the stringency of her message, while those that attend meilichios ("honey-sweet") lend her words a potentially threatening quality. Thus Hector's refusal to sit with her becomes a refusal to play the victim role to her Siren, a role that his brother willingly takes on. While the Homeric poet may counter this ominous seductive quality at the surface level of the scene, it nonetheless resonates there as a disturbing subtext. From this perspective, it should not be surprising that Helen begins her conversation with Hector by invoking her threatening qualities, but in the self-debasing mode that she employed with his father. 

She calls herself an "evil-devising, shudder-inspiring dog" (6.344; 6.356; 3.180). The wish construction that follows is an elaborate expansion of her earlier use of it. Rather than simply desiring to die, she declares that she wishes that on her day of birth a gust of wind had carried her off to the mountains, or into a wave of the many-voiced sea (6.345-48). Helen purports to desire a type of end that Jean-Pierre Vernant relates to being seized by a god, invoking a connection between erotic love and death that he considers especially relevant to Helen's type. An echo of her wish in book 3 that death had "pleased" her (àôeîv, 3.173), Helen's lyrical desire for rapture here in Iliad 6 lends sensuous overtones to her speech. 

While her words explicitly depict regret, her flowery turns of phrase and sweetened tones suggest an attempt to soften Hector's attitude toward herself if not her husband: she sides with Hector in his chastising of his brother, yearns aloud for divine seizure, and notes ruefully her and Paris' future fame. Recall the similarity of Hector's and Helen's reproaches in book 3; here again she mimics his attitude, this time to his face with the goal of cementing her connection to him. Her maneuver is a delicate one. She must acknowledge her alliance with Paris in order to show her awareness of their shame; but she thereby also isolates herself from him, since he assumes no responsibility for his actions.

 As in book 3, Helen brackets herself with Paris as objects of abuse, highlighting their status here by using the ophelon phrase twice in expressions of heroic bitterness to apply to herself and her husband (6.345, 350). Homer thus has Helen transform the typical intentions of the phrase by using it for this anomalous speech act, layering self-abuse, scorn for an intimate, and a seductive allegiance of perspective, all of which ultimately aim at softening the heart of her interlocutor. While Hector does not in the end sit down with Helen, neither does he speak roughly to her, instead responding with a respect that resembles his father's treatment of her. By introducing a defamatory tradition that threatens to reveal her infamous side and yet ultimately serves an apotropaic function, Helen succeeds in deflecting blame: again, no one else abuses her as she abuses herself. 

At the end of the Iliad (24.760-75), Helen has the final mourning speech over Hector's dead body—a surprising status that supports Graver's argument that the Homeric poet is forcefully asserting an alternate tradition that elevates Helen and questions her blame. But if we look more closely at precisely how she mourns Hector, beyond her use of the mourner's topos of bewailing her fate as vulnerable survivor, we can see that her lament in this case focuses entirely on the threat of blame—the threat, that is, of the other story, the tale of bad-dog Helen. This is not to say that other mourners do not fear ill repute: Andromache certainly does, but mostly for her son Astyanax (e.g., 77. 22.494- 501).

Helen's lament, in some contrast, is only about repute; in detailing her fears for the future, she makes no mention of other horrors such as slavery and remarriage, which are often voiced by newly bereft female mourners in both epic and tragedy. After expressing her usual sentiment of regret (24.764), Helen notes that she had never heard a debasing or disrespectful word from her brother-in-law. She adds that if anyone else in his family ever reproached her, Hector would fend them off verbally with his gentle mind and words (24.768-72). She concludes by declaring that everyone else shudders in her presence (24.775). 

Helen's final word in the Iliad resonates with the dread that she might inspire, as the dog-faced daughter of Nemesis whose self-blame in Homer repeatedly suggests this other story. Hector, like the poet, may be gentle-minded toward Helen, but her description of his protection reveals how tenuous this praise tradition is; here as elsewhere in the poem her words declare one thing but point to another—this time her dangerous qualities, which cause a sensation in those around her like the chilly hand of Hades. At these moments Helen's figure suggests the deadly side of the female, to which Greek poets often attribute the downfall of men in some profound and sweeping manner. 

These figures are the embodiment of Fate (Moîpa/ Kf|p), the Medusa who freezes the bones, the Nemesis who is the end of the hubristic man, even the Aphrodite who (dog-faced) devours the husband's energy and wealth alike. 3 6 The word nemesis ("retribution") in fact surfaces repeatedly in Helen's speech and that of those who speak in her presence (e.g., 3.156,3.410,6.3 3 5 -36,6.3 51). That is, in the scenes where Helen appears, her presence seems to call forth the nemesis that is an essential aspect of her story. And her speeches, in their insistence on her infamous associations, serve as constant reminders of the just indignation and deserved retribution that acts of hubris bring down on the heads of those who commit them.”

- Nancy Worman, “This Voice Which Is Not One: HELEN’S VERBAL GUISES IN HOMERIC EPIC.” in Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society

[magnetic-rose]

if i had a penny for every time my favorite character from a show i was watching ended up being a direct parallel to odysseus’ journey in the odyssey i’d have two pennies. which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.

like, being alone from their family for decades with the sole intent of coming back to their loved ones, trying to protect a crew of dysfunctional people who end up getting killed (in five’s case, over and over again), finally coming home to finding their family in shambles (penelope and her suitors - the hargreeves siblings all dysfunctional at the start of s1). odysseus has to escape calypso right before he can come home. five has to escape the handler/ the commission right before he can come home. 

when five yelled at reginald in greek i went and googled it... and immediately sat up when i saw that he quotes the odyssey to reginald. the writers knew what they were doing there.

[rappaccini]

greek mythology and the umbrella academy, a brief bulletpoint ramble:

so right off the bat, the icarus theater: icarus, a boy in greek myth who builds a pair of wings, and against his father’s wishes, flies too close to the sun and burns up forever.

the end of the world happens at a place named for a myth about hubris.

whose hubris is it? five’s. he’s the one who ran out against his father’s wishes, overestimated his abilities, and paid dearly for it.

everyone had a part to play in the end of the world, but five’s was the largest, and it’s what got the proverbial snowball rolling down the mountain. more than anyone else, the apocalypse happens because of him.

the license plate on reginald’s car reads ‘hermes’: the car that bears the family around is named for the messenger of the gods and guardian of travelers. the car that’s owned by their father, a billionaire, is named for the god of commerce. 

the siblings themselves: fatherless children with special powers mysteriously sired upon mothers who couldn't have possibly had them otherwise. they’re half human, half something else (something that gives them incredible supernatural power).

for all intents and purposes, they’re demigods.

the gods comprising the greek pantheon are all related and they’re all fucking. make that harcest parallel. the hargreeves siblings are demigods, and they’re just doing what gods do. for that matter, the same applies to diego and lila, as she is revealed to be like them.

five quoting the odyssey at reginald in season 2 in the original ancient greek, a language that each and every one of the siblings knows fluently.

the odyssey. about a man defined by his incredible cunning, and his prowess in battle, who goes on a long perilous journey home after a war. he travels far and wide, determined to bring his shipmates home, and to reunite with his love, who is faithfully waiting for him there, who has despicable suitors in need of dispatching (... and he arrives in a form that is unfamiliar to her).

five is odysseus. vanya is penelope. in this version of the story, she’s the one who gets rid of the despicable suitor.