#Tale makes way for the kings

[tokuteasings]

HE IS GORGEOUS!!!!

All of the bug kings are hot and are out for me in some manner i take offense to this-

[gingermintpepper]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ozcarr]

“Where do you think you will sit in the history books? You are a footnote, hastily memorized by a child and forgotten the instant you are written down on a pop quiz.”

I sincerely believe that I’ve listened to Rude Tales of Magic: Come at the King more times than anyone on earth. I’m always coming back to it. A vastly underrated miniseries from a vastly underrated podcast. A show that will make you feel almost every emotion. A wild ride from start to finish.

EDIT: made a mistake but I fixed it look at this version of the post instead

[starry-bi-sky]

catch me looking up nightingale symbolisms for tales of the passerine. if danny's using the name of a songbird for a hero name, regardless of familial connections, i will utilize the symbolism tied to the bird. Anyways general gist of the nightingale symbolism i've seen, other than what wikipedia told me, is that nightingales were frequently symbolisms of spring renewal, loss/death, love, etc. catch me about to incorporate music into Danny's character

[goldentigerfestival]

Raven (feat Schwann) in the Vesperia stageplay being an absolute champ. 💜🧡

[4esthetic-dissonance]

I'm working on a fic and was like 'how in the hell do you make LINGUANG JUN the least bit redeemable?'. I mean, /Linguang jun/ who tossed a developmentally four year old Mobei Jun to a pack of humans? The kid could have died. And then I saw a translation of the extras. It describes lgj as mbj's 'young uncle', says that he 'wasn't that much older than him (mbj)'. And I just- its a hell of a lot different, a Scar type tossing his nephew to the proverbial wolves than it is for a maybe dumb, maybe petty, maybe developmentally five or six year old to shove their annoying technically-nephew-who-in-age-and-context-is-more-like-a-brother-than-lgj's-actual-brother into a situation that the text implies was more frightening than actually /dangerous/. And that- well I can work with that.

[moe-broey]

Sketch I accidentally put too close between other doodles

[ograndebatata]

pseudo-incorrent quotes from Sofia the First (inspired by @a-lilac-lyric's post on the many scenarios regarding the Wishing Well and Amber and James' birth:

|||

King Roland II: Wishing Well, we wish for Lorelei's current pregnancy to go through all the way to the end and for our children to be born healthy. Queen Lorelei (sitting on the stone bench close by): Please. We'll give anything for that.

King Roland: Yes. We'll give anything.

(Time skip.)

King Roland II: It was you, wasn't it? You took Lorelei. Why?

Wishing Well: You both said you'd give anything for her pregnancy to go through to the end and your children to be born healthy.

|||

(Yes, I admit I don't look very fondly upon the Wishing Well, and think it's deliberately engineered so that any of the wishes upon it have the greatest possible likelihood of inflicting lasting harm in the long run, with it only making an exception for any 'bait wishes' it decides to grant to tempt the wisher into using the follow-up actually bad ones.

And I admit, this is the theory I follow for my AU. Credit goes to @a-lilac-lyric for coming up with it, and my thanks also go to her for allowing me to use it.)

[repurposedmeatlocker]

The idea of King of the Hill having a revival in this era of US politics is so scary to me. Lots of directions the show can go and I'm not sure if I like any of them.

[heliophia]

Is this what you kids want?

[noknowshame]

Best parts of Veggie Tales: The Pirates Who Don't do Anything (2008)

the plot concept of "waiters at a pirate-themed dinner theater are transported back in time and forced to pretend to actually be real pirates” love them for this.

hilarious and perplexing lack of religious content for a media franchise with the sole purpose of teaching children about Christianity. The god people wanted to make this movie so bad they forgot to put the god in it

the main villain (Robert the Terrible) is a pirate captain with a peg entire body because he is a pea and does not have any limbs in the first place

One of the mechanical limbs is still a peg leg even though there is no logical precedent for this. Amazing.

Robert is a master inventor. This makes sense to me and me alone because of the Greek myth I read about in which Hephaestus falls to earth and learns how to blacksmith from Sintian pirates

before the main characters get isekaied back to the 1700s an elderly blind man delivers a prophecy to them. so I guess Tireseas is here and he is a leek

Blackbeard is mentioned. I need to know what kind of vegetable he's supposed to be. I like to think he is a head of lettuce for the decapitation pun

"just get me back to 1972, I can walk from there"

the wait a minute isn't this just the plot of Galaxy Quest?" is made clear by both movies including a giant rock monster

at the very end they play the song Rock Monster, a parody of Rock Lobster by the B-52s

Robert is the villain because he wants to take vengeance against the king for redistributing the wealth to the people. so even when the pirates are the bad guys the moral of the story is still Socialism

the king... is heavily implied to secretly BE God? A lot to unpack there.

A lot.

???? like????

Bob the Tomato is not in the movie because Bob the Tomato is directing the movie. meta.

[tokuteasings]

Sooo, did Gira snap or was the "King of Evil" his coping mechanism so as not to go insane just after his worldview shattered?

Alright, my interpretation of Gira under the cut and what I assume about Kingohger

Gira did "snap" but I think he's played around as the "King of Evil" since he was young. To me, Gira seems like a very family/people/kid-orientated person and perhaps he's almost "living" through the kids in a way? He's used to that persona of being the "king of evil" because it makes the kids happy and the smiles on their faces. After all, he had believed in the king during that time so his "king of evil" was just for show.

But you're right. I mean, this is a sort of coping mechanism. But I think Gira isn't stupid. He knows what it absolutely meant that he's defying the king, he pointed the sword at the fucker. So in a way, Gira is used to be a scapegoat(?) but this is life now. He's going to feel the consequences of it soon. But if you're faced with the concept that the person you thought was great and mighty is in fact...ya know...a piece of shit

Wouldn't you become "evil" to go against their ideals? To do what you think is "right" and take matters into your own hands?

[laurasimonsdaughter]

It was peculiar how names stuck. The young king had been released from his enchantment, but people spoke of him as the Frog King still. And Heinrich, his most loyal and beloved attendant, they still called Iron Heinrich. Except that name they only used in hushed tones, where the king's young bride would not hear.

Putting some new emphasis on the Grimm's "The Frog King or Iron Heinrich"

[britneyshakespeare]

i finished the merry wives of windsor today btw. 4 shakespeare plays left to go

[whosname]

I'm very normal about Gintoki's Snow Silver from the 2021 fairy tale style Gintama (thanks, @babygray-dam for the additional context), why do you ask?

Also, my money is on stockings (the subtle color change, the wrinkles, yup, stockings)

[friendpilled-visitmaxer]

My coworkers do their fucking job challenge (they fail)