#It's implied so far that YEAH Helene wants to be on the throne and is competing for it by being a good person

[shidoukanae]

Lyla: *is the protagonist*

Everyone in this manga including Lyla herself: We need to put Princess Helene on the throne. No we're not going to ask her for her opinion we're just unanimously going to agree to put her on the throne and force everyone around us to agree to this.

[itonje]

I'm not a fan of Miller's book, either. Seriously, what is it with writers pinning women against each other? It's even more confusing when it's a female writer doing it.

If it was just Perse and Pasipäe, okay. If you want to give Circe a bad home life, fine. But Miller does it constantly. Athena was done especially dirty imo. I know she can be pretty petty herself (ex: Arachne, and even then, the reason for turning her into a spider tends to vary), but the way she was portrayed was just so grating. So eager for a champion, I was almost convinced Miller had conflated her with Ares. I don't think the exiled nymphs are even given names, let alone distinguishing personalities, and can we stop dunking on Helen? The Iliad makes it pretty clear that she loved Menelaus and didn't think highly of Paris.

And tbh, the story kinda felt a little repetitive at times, too: Circe meets someone, they get mad at her or leave her, she'll occasionally sleep with someone, rinse and repeat. And granted, she's a pretty minor character in the myths already, but I feel like it would've benefited the story more if she had been given more freedom, that she wasn't restricted to just her island. At the very least, how awesome it would've been if Circe had essentially started her own coven before passing on the role as the head witch of Aiaia to Penelope.

Also, can we stop having sexual assault scenes if the story isn't about that? At least it gives Circe a reason to turn men into literal pigs, but still.

I also don't think it's ever really explained why Circe has a mortal voice, even though she has full Titan blood. She just does. Granted, Perse is a minor nymph, but then what about the rest of her children? I'd get it if it was meant to be an allegory for disabilities, but it just felt like it was added on for the sake of making Circe more of an outcast than she already was.

And this is really more of a nitpick, but for a book that focuses so heavily on witchcraft, it's strange that Hecate wasn't even mentioned. In some versions, she's even Circe's mother. It's also really weird how homosexuality seems to be something that was so uncommon in Ancient Greece as far as these books are concerned, even though we know from history and myth that it wasn't. So yeah, Circe x Penelope would've been pretty awesome!

Blegh, sorry for the rant! I just have alot of thoughts about this book right now! ^^"

ATHENA WAS DONE SO SO DIRTY...it makes no sense even in the telegony itself its her who urges circe to tell telegonus about odyessus. wouldn't it have been more interesting for athena to assist circe in raising telegonus? wouldn't it have been more tragic for telegonus to go kill odyessus at athena's urging of him to go meet him? and then yadda yadda athena and circe can have a falling out then or something yadda yadda i don't know again, i know the gods are written in very specific ways here for the ultimate theme of the book here but like this book is so hard on athena it's so weird when i think that honestly there could have been more interesting for her and circe to work together...

ALSO YEAH MADELINE MILLER HAS A HELEN PROBLEM...i think it was fairer in the song of achilles and i rationalized the helen weirdness in that one by going 'well they're achilles and patroclus of course they won't have choice opinions on helen if from their perspective she's the one that led them into this war' but come on..not in circe too..leave her alone...

and i agree the book really did feel repetitive, but if you're asking me i wish there was more exploration to the episodes circe does get-especially the stint at crete, i wish we had seen more of circe and ariadne's and even her and pasiphae's relationship so bad. they get one conversation where they talk and it was so good but it ends so soon. honestly i feel a lot of the conversations in the book are repetitive as well- someone talking to someone, they reveal something about something else, the first someone is surprised!

also yeah the assault is um. i did not think we needed that scene as explicit as it was but i get that that's routine in these sorts of books at this point...now i will say i don't think a book has to be about that sort of stuff if a book includes them but i do think it should be addressed with care and i dunno if that book does that....

ALSO YEAH...the mortal's voice thing is an epithet given to her in the odyssey without much preamble as to what implications that has or to where she got it from and i don't think the author really had to explain it to make the story work but it would...have been nice to see her come up with an interpretation of what exactly that means for circe

and no i don't think it's a nitpick, i feel the same way irt to the book and witchcraft but the witch i feel like got REALLY shifted was medea. i think there could have been sooo many good parallels with medea and circe here-while circe is hated by her divine family, medea is a darling of helios (and in a fair amount of medea myths she returns to colchis where she's presumably forgiven by aeetes, including that variant where she kills perses to reinstate her father on the throne. i wish that had been mentioned in circe; at least then perses would have a point). while circe becomes a mortal at the end of her story in circe, medea in euripides' medea becomes a goddess herself or close to it while also becoming more monstrous in the process. while circe is constantly accused of caring too much for mortals medea has a fair disregard for the lives of other people (maybe due to her powers to reverse mortality). there could have literally been so much said here not just about divinity and mortality but the boundaries that both circe and medea would cross for the sake of their love oh my god i have no idea why not only her episode in the book was so short but there was very little follow up to what happened with her story afterward ugauwerwherhe

also yeah irt to homosexuality i think it was implied? telegonus was gay which is chill but also come on...give us the iconic greek myth ladies wlw romances.....

[tragicbooks]

<p>There weren't many nice moments on last night's 'Game of Thrones.' We found 5 anyway.</p>

Welcome to “A Song of Nice and Fire” Upworthy’s weekly series recapping one of the most brutal shows on TV. Since brutality is not really in our wheelhouse, Eric March has taken it upon himself to dig deep, twist and turn, and squint really hard to see if he can find the light of kindness in all the darkness. He may not always succeed, but by gosh if he won’t try his best.

Here’s what he found on this week’s "Game of Thrones."

To think just last week, the characters on this show were curing fatal diseases, caressing each other tenderly, and trading pie recipes.

About that. Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

Back to reality, I guess.

In an episode that saw handful of fan favorite (and decidedly non-favorite) characters outmaneuvered, boxed in, and poisoned, I'll admit there really wasn't much loving kindness to go around.

Still, it's my job to find whatever glimmer of niceness there is, and because I like my health plan, I reached way down deep and found ... some very nice moments in season seven, episode three of "Game of Thrones."

OK, really, really, really deep.

Here goes.

1. Sansa makes sure her knights are warm 'n cozy!

"No, I haven't read Reinhold Niebuhr, what does he have to say about neo-orthodox realist theology?" Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

With Jon gone having his dire warnings laughed off and his boat curiously appropriated, would Sansa rise to the challenge of leading the North?

Unsurprisingly, yeah, duh.

At rise this week, we find her striding through Winterfell serving orders to the castle's various similar-looking maesters, making sure the hay goes where it needs to go and, most importantly, getting her southern palls to strap leather on their armor so they don't freeze to death.

Look at those leadership skills blossoming!

Of course, she still has to endure Littlefinger's incessant monologuing. "Every possible series of events is happening all at once," he says, reminding Sansa that, yes, he is taking that freshman philosophy seminar and, yes, he did do all the reading this week.

This is really your game, guy?

I mean...

Ugh.

It's going to work, isn't it?

2. Some random Ironborn dudes are kind enough to hoist Theon out of the sea!

Oh good, Theon gets to keep on living!

Theon and Yara, seen here in happier times. Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

A gaggle of clanky boatsmen do the erstwhile heir to the Iron Islands a solid by not just sailing by and letting him drown. They do manage to insult him in the process, but even still, it's more than Theon deserves.

His Uncle Euron, meanwhile, gets a parade down the one street in King's Landing we all know ... and sister Yara gets to join for free! Unfortunately, she has to endure it from the cheap seats where you get rotten vegetables hurled at you. After a long journey, though, maybe it was nice to briefly sniff a decaying tomato or two?

I'd go for it.

3. Cersei allows herself to briefly experience empathy!

"Even though we're enemies, you and I, I understand the fury that drives you."

That line, delivered to a shackled and gagged Ellaria Sand, clocks in at precisely two seconds — the longest sustained appreciation Cersei has ever expressed for another human being's perspective.

Just thinkin' up ways to torture you. Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

Yes, the very next thing she does is condemn Tyene to a painful death of unknown duration and Ellaria to hanging out with her dead daughter's corpse for weeks or years or decades, but hey! I got Cersei on this week's list of nice moments. Cersei! I didn't even have to cheat.

Oh, and sub-nice thing shoutout to Davids Benioff and Weiss for choosing not to subject us to another implied, gratuitous rape-and-torture-by-Mountain. The scene was clearly, totally headed there until all of a sudden it wasn't and, well ... phew! Good call, everyone.

4. Daenerys treats Jon to an all-you-can-mine obsidian buffet!

The dragon's share of the episode is taken up by a long-winded meeting between Jon Snow and his Aunt Dany (here's the long-speculated, Bran-affirmed family tree from last season's finale) who, strangely, is skeptical about this whole "White Walker" thing despite giving birth to three flying, fire-breathing, sky dinosaurs like, last week. Perhaps it's because she's skeptical of the messenger — the beardy guy with the wolf snuggie who calls himself "king" and won't pledge his allegiance despite the dozens (hundreds) of curvy blades within torso-piercing range.

Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

Still, the would-be queen needs allies, and so, after apologizing for the time her dad napalmed Jon's grandpa and uncle to death, she tells him to help himself to all the dragonglass he wants and get the heck out.

Sure, she doesn't want the stuff or even really know what it is, but she can tell the guy is earnest, and besides, you gotta respect anyone who comes so far south with a dead animal on their neck.

That's just fashion-forward.

5. Jamie kills Olenna the nice way!

"Oh, one more thing real quick." Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

The bad news? Cersei manages to foil Tyrion's too-clever-by-half sewer invasion plan by sending the bulk of her army to murder an old lady.

The good news? Jaime is the one who gets to do the murdering, and as a certified Reformed Bad Guy in Good Standing, he lets the Queen of Thorns take the (relatively) easy way out.

In a world in which revenge killing typically consists of beheading, flaying alive, hungry dog-siccing, stabbing-through-the-pregnant-belly, and/or slow neck slicing after force-feeding the blissfully-unaware-condemned his own relatives, a quick, painless poison-in-the-wine counts as a win.

Even when the elder Tyrell lets it slip that she killed Jaime's kid way back in season four, he chooses to sullen himself out of the room rather than revert to Cersei's original head-slicing plan.

Score one for that famous Lannister restraint!

Random Acts of Niceness

I suppose it's nice that Bran complimented Sansa's dress, but did he really have to bring up her wedding day? Yeah, he wasn't around for the aftermath, but dude is all-knowing and all-seeing. Come on.

It's cool that Archmaester Ebrose doesn't expel Sam from the Citadel. As long as the Xerox machine is up and running, Sam should be all good.

Jaime Lannister actually sends his regards to Robb Stark. Nice of him not to hold grudges.

Whew. That was a stretch, y'all!

See you next week when hopefully someone picks Grey Worm up in a Jeep, Bronn stitches Randyll Tarly a lanyard for his broadsword, and Varys makes a friend who doesn't run around vaguely forecasting his doom. Should be fun!