#Paper Myths

[libraryofnika]

⋆˙⊹Last Reading Update of July⊹˙⋆

Gilded Wicked Mirrors (fantasy romance/ paranormal romance)

Got this arc from Paper Myths and BOMM. Already on page 182. The story so far is quite intriguing with all the murder mystery solving and the whole business with the Mirror Gods (unique concept tbh). This one releases on August 6, 2024, if I'm not mistaken.

Not Your Basic Love Story (multi-cultural, contemporary romance)

Backlist arc from Netgalley (I know 🙈) 18% of it and so far I'm not sure what to think or feel yet?

No Longer Human (classic, asian (japan) literature, literary)

On page 26 of 177, basically already on the 2nd book part of the novel. I believe it was a ROLLER COASTER. I'm continuing it after taking a break yesterday.

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[bookstagramofmine]

Book Tour and Review: A Kiss of Iron by Clare Sager

Book Tour and Review: A Kiss of Iron by Clare Sager @PaperMyths #ClareSager #AKissOfIron #Fantasy #Book #BookBlog #BookCommunity #BookReview #BookTour #BookWorm #KindleUnlimited

Title: A Kiss of Iron Series: Shadows of the Tenebris Court Author: Clare Sager Pages: 572 Release Date: 20th Feb, 2023 Publisher: Wicked Lady Press Related Series: Beneath Black Sails A Kiss of Iron by Clare Sager Thank you, Paper Myths, for the chance to read and review the arc for A Kiss of Iron! This is the first book in a brand new series by Clare Sager and is absolutely perfect for…

[gigizetz]

Traditional Circe doodles bc my drawing pad is broken :P

[xinyuehui]

I heard the Farspace Fleet got a new colonel. Judging by that uniform and insignia, could it be...?

[pelideswhore]

Someone: Greek mythology is boring.

Greek mythology:

[logandria]

So you’ve found me then, have you? I’m afraid you won’t be making it out of my labyrinth now…

⛓️🫀⛓️

[inkyswampbones]

'they might be giants': a study of the shifting size of folk heroes in local legend

[mythuzalasheir3]

HOLY SHIT THE MAIN REFRAIN IN THANK GRAVITY IS FROM WHEN ROSE TAKES JOHN’S HAND IN NEWTON’S SECOND LAW

MATT DAHAN YOU’BE DONE IT AGAIN

[greekmythcomix]

The Palace of Odysseus

I think I had an epiphany about the layout of Odysseus’ palace in the Odyssey today. It might be really obvious to other people but I can’t resist a rabbithole!

NB I’m just working with translations here, not the original text, using the Rieu for quotations

Penelope’s quarters and the women’s quarters:

- these seem to be upstairs but with easy access to the megaron - “wise Penelope came down from her apartment, and they drew up a chair for her by the fire” (Book 19) and she’s always described as going up to her bedroom to cry herself to sleep. It is not unusual in Mycenaean palace complexes to have more than one storey. She has access to the megaron (the hall) from her private quarters, as she comes down with her maids to speak to the suitors in there. From the megaron we are told there is a door that leads to the women’s quarters, which would seem to be in the same place as both Penelope and the maids seem to be locked out of the megaron by closing the doors to the hall that can be locked: Book 19, Eurycleia “locked the doors leading from the fine hall” behind her when she goes back to the women’s quarters, and she does this again in Book 21 just before the Suitors get slaughtered, to stop the maids coming down to help and Penelope from getting involved.

So, a suite of rooms upstairs, the maids rooms (where, presumably, the looms are), next to Penelope’s (and Odysseus’) room, for ease of servitude.

Telemachus’ room:

He’s no longer a child, so wouldn’t be in the women’s spaces, and does not sleep up in the women’s and Penelope’s quarters: when Eurycleia has locked the doors from the hall to the women’s quarters, and he is done helping Odysseus hide the weapons, “he went off through the hall to find his way by torchlight to the bedroom where he always slept”. This sounds like it’s off the megaron somewhere, but not through the locked doors or upstairs.

So, a ground-floor room, somewhere off the megaron.

The Storeroom:

We get a little description of where the storeroom is in Books 21 and 22.

- Penelope goes to get the Great Bow at the start of Book 21: “She then made her way with her ladies to a store-room in a distant corner of the palace where her lord's treasure was kept - bronze, gold and 1o wrought iron. Here too was the supple bow and quiver full of deadly arrows which had been given to him by his friend the godlike Iphitus,”

- Melanthius tells the Suitors he will go to the store room: “ ‘The big door into the courtyard is alarmingly near, and the mouth of the passage is dangerously narrow: one strong man could keep us all back single-handed. But let me fetch you some armour to put on from the store-room’ … So Melanthius the goatherd went up by devious ways through the palace to Odysseus store-room, where he helped himself to a dozen shields and spears…”

In the first passage, the storeroom is tucked away and Penelope doesn’t seem to need to go through the megaron to access it (as when she comes into that hall to speak to the suitors, they seem surprised) and in the second Melanthius sounds like he has to follow a twisty route to get to the storeroom. So, it must be accessible from the megaron, but also isn’t next to it, and is accessible from other parts of the building too, which would make it difficult for it to be open and yet still inaccessible to the women from their quarters. I’m imagining it down a corridor that comes off the megaron, with a door to the room itself that Penelope opens with a key she normally keeps in her room, and then which she leaves open or, at least, isn’t described as closing, suggesting how Ody and Tele access it in Book 22. However, Odysseus and Telemachus seem to have had access to the storeroom in Book 19 when they’re putting away the weapons from the hall, without the need of a key. So, it warrants asking: are there two storerooms? One that Penelope keeps the gold and Odysseus’ bow in, that’s tucked away, and another one which is more regularly open and contains armour and weapons and is accessed via the megaron? It would be pretty sensible to have two different rooms for things you wanted guests to be able to access and others that you do not.

So, two storerooms: one accessible from the upper rooms and down a corridor somewhere, and the one with the armour in it, with a door that can be closed, but off the megaron, through an entrance that can’t be barred.

The great hall/megaron:

Given the similarity between this area of the palace complex in Mycenae, Pylos and Tiryns, would also reasonably expect the one in Ithaca to be the same.

(I’ve nicked an internet image here)

Nb there’s an opening in the roof above the hearth in most reconstructions, just like in the Minoan Knossos palace throne room reconstruction.

The king sits on the throne opposite the fire, unable to be seen from the porch. Guests would enter through the front porch and sit here by the columns, waiting to be called in by a herald. This is where Odysseus sits when a beggar in the palace, and where Irus the other beggar finds him in Book 18. It’s also where Odysseus and his friends stand, blocking the threshold for the suitors, in Book 22 when the slaughter begins. It could have had doors that are closed - in Book 18, Odysseus fights Irus “on the polished threshold in front of the high doors”, and in Book 22, Melanthius tells Agelaus that “the big door to the courtyard is alarmingly near”, but I don’t know if the original word is ‘door’ or ‘portal/opening’. And, Odysseus sends Philoetius to bind closed the gates of the courtyard so no one can get out of the palace compound - if they get out of the megaron they still can’t get out of the palace. So are these doors closed? Is there an actual door?

This porch ‘door’ does seem to be different to the ones leading from the megaron to the women’s’ quarters: when Odysseus is sending Eumaeus to speak to Eurycleia to get her to lock the women’s’ quarter doors in Book 21, Philoetius is binding shut the gates in the courtyard at the same time:

“Without a word Eurycleia went and locked the doors leading out of the great hall. At the same time Philoetius slipped quietly out and barred the door leading into the courtyard, which he made fast with a ship's hawser of reeds that was lying under the colonnade. This done, he went in and sat down on the stool he had left, with his eyes fixed on Odysseus.”

So, they must be different doors. It’s also not described that the porch doors are physically closed. That might be instantly suspicious, I would guess.

The side door:

There’s a moment in Book 22 where Odysseus tells Eumaeus to guard the ‘side door’ in the megaron:

“Now let into the solid masonry of the wall there was a side door, on the same level as the raised threshold of the hall, that gave access to a passage. It was usually kept firmly shut with close-fitting doors. Odysseus told the swineherd to stand on guard by this side door, to which there was only one approach.”

This is the same passage that Melanthius describes as “dangerously narrow”. Agelaus seems convinced a man could “climb to the side door and and tell the people and raise the alarm?” This sounds to me like this is a kind of Sally port/emergency exit, like the one we find at Mycenae:

This is an extremely small doorway, limiting access or egress to one person at a time, and passage that goes through the external walls themselves, at the back of the citadel where the ravines tower over the city and it’s very sheltered. The interesting description of the ‘side door’ in the megaron of Odysseus’ palace and the way Agelaus says you must “climb up” to it and would then be outside the city possibly means it’s not immediately accessible, a little way up the wall, which is why Odysseus only needs one person to guard it, but is a shortcut out of the palace. It’s also such a fussy detail and one that isn’t referred to again that it makes it seem very real, like the poet is referring to a real place he has seen or been in.

The Courtyard:

We know it has gates because Philoetius locks them, but also Eumaeus describes them in Book 17: “Athene are buildings beyond buildings; the courtyard wall with its coping is a fine piece of work and those folding doors are true defence. No one could storm it.”

We also know there’s a pile of dung “in profusion at the gate, awaiting removal by Odysseus’ servants for use as manure around the estate” (book 17), and poor Doggo Argus is lying in it.

We also know it has mills: in Book 20, a woman grinding corn in one of “the king’s hand-mills” in “a building nearby” can be heard speaking by Odysseus, originally lying in the porch is now standing outside it, so they must be in the courtyard.

It possibly has a well - Eurycleia orders the maids to go get water form “the well”, although given its proximity to the fountain where the people draw their water (book 17), that might be what is being referred to. But, again, any good stronghold is going to have its own water supply, and the maids came back from the well “soon”, so I reckon it would have its own in the courtyard.

The palace complex overall:

From all these details, combined with what we know of Ithaca being much smaller, almost ‘backwater’ kingdom compared to those of Mycenae and Tiryns, and those citadels being on high ground, here’s what I’ve managed to extrapolate:

What do you reckon?

[gingermintpepper]

I do, in fact, enjoy drawing different variations of this moment. Mostly I just wanted to doodle some wrathful Apollo (and practice doodling more of Hyacinth's curls since I usually dodge colouring them LOL) Bonus doodle under the cut <3

:D

[moonlit-sweet-dreams]

‘there is no absolution for the fallen, only the dying’ by p.d

My dragon is gone.

[libraryofnika]

౨ৎ𝙶𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚆𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝙼𝚒𝚛𝚛𝚘𝚛𝚜 𝚋𝚢 𝙷𝚊𝚣𝚎𝚕 𝚂𝚝. 𝙻𝚎𝚠𝚒𝚜 ᴀʀᴄ ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡ౨ৎ

Happiest Release Day to 𝙶𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚆𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝙼𝚒𝚛𝚛𝚘𝚛𝚜 𝚋𝚢 𝙷𝚊𝚣𝚎𝚕 𝚂𝚝. 𝙻𝚎𝚠𝚒𝚜 ♥︎ I'm truly grateful to be able to read and review this arc in advance ♥︎

°

Release Date: August 6, 2034

Date Read and Reviewed: July 31, 2024

Ratings: 3.5⭐️

°

What to expect 📍

☽｡⋆ ballerina fmc

☽｡⋆ murder mystery

☽｡⋆ unique gods/ magic system

☽｡⋆ gothic atmosphere

☽｡⋆ hate/ rivalry to reluctance allies to almost lovers

☽｡⋆ Twist and Twist and Twist

☽｡⋆ Death Trope 🙈💀

The strength of this novel, in my opinion, would be the combined concept of vampires, murder mystery, and the unique mirror gods magic system.These three are the main reason I was so invested and excited to read this one.

The writing was immersive. It did well in intriguing me in its first chapters, keeping me in my toes. I think the writing did well or fit the story just fine.

The characters are written interestingly as well. The whole ballerina and gothic atmosphere embedded towards these characters were fascinating, in my opinion, adding more depths to their characters.

There's also a lot of mystrery surrounding the other characters, I'm quite 50-50 towards the execution of the twists that happened around them. To be honest, I feel like how the twist execution was lacking in some way. It felt anticlimactic for me.

The mirror gods, on the other hand, was fascinating as what I've said at the start. I really wanted more of them. The vampire concept here was, I would say, something unique in a sense? I can't quite say or describe it, but I quite like and at the same feel like I want more of them in a bomb like execution? Similar to the mirror gods.

As for the main pairing– Quinn and Emrys, they have chemistry. I was really looking forward to them, and again, I'm quite 50-50 with how it ended.

Overall, it was an intriguing read. It's a totally eerie and gothic atmosphere. I'm definitely looking forward to the next one, especially after that ending.

Thank you, author, for the e-arc opportunity via Paper Myths and BOMM.

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[marejadilla]

Hannah Flowers, “The Satyr's garden”, oil on paper.

Flowers was born 1989 in Tasmania, Australia and currently resides in Scotland, UK.

[black-suns-rim]

Doodle dump

Here are some of my sketch book doodles from the past couple of days. Mostly from this week. I've shared more of the doodles on my discord server since I've been on a drawing spree for trollhunters.

[xinyuehui]

Who do you like more ⸺ me or Lumiere? ⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹

[what-even-is-sleep]

thinking about Bodkin again bc I mean,,, ALL THE SYMBOLISM OHHHHHGH. i NEED some tumblr film analysis hobbyists to watch this show and tell me all the themes n such