#alt. title - watch me ramble & then lose my mid over extremely minor & trivial things

[bellamyroselia]

Kid Icarus & Aphrodite-problem

Well, I guess after Ares and Apollo this was kinda meant to happen eventually. There’s a lot to say about Aphrodite… Or truth to be told, there’s a lot to say about how Kid Icarus seems to have written itself into a corner when it comes to her. I’ve already joked about how Aphrodite isn’t allowed to have things in this franchise despite the fact that she hasn’t even been introduced yet, and that’s the issue. Taking things away from Aphrodite is a risky game, because she’s probably the Olympian who indirectly has had the biggest influence over the Western civilization as a whole. You can’t really act like she doesn’t exist and compositing her with another figure is near impossible… So what to do here? 

Compared to the two previous parts, this one went into a much more unexpected direction so discussion is now more encouraged than ever.

Going quickly over Aphrodite’s historical background, her name doesn’t exist in Mycenaean Linear B scripts - what this means is that just like Apollo and Hades, she wasn’t worshiped in Mycenaean Greece but instead came to be during the Dark Ages. As for where she came from, it’s widely accepted that her character was influenced by Phoenician Astarte and Mesopotamian Inanna, both of whom are goddesses associated with not just love, beauty and sexuality but also war… So yeah, come in peace Aphrodite did not. Her oldest points of worship as Aphrodite we recognize can be found on Cythera and Cyprus, and in both of these places she was worshiped under epithet Areia (Warlike). So Aphrodite in her oldest recognizable form was still a goddess of beauty and love but also a war goddess - in case you ever wondered why she and Ares were an item in the mythos, this is it, it’s all about the local war god meeting the import war goddess. But as you may have expected the idea of a goddess of love and beauty also being a goddess of war was seen as scandalous in most city states, and therefore her connections to war were mostly erased, Iliad even having a scene where it’s told that she doesn’t belong to the battlefield. But despite the erasure of her more warlike qualities, that did nothing to slow her down since she still manages to be quite conflict-happy in the mythos and she’s not afraid to go big with it. She’s definitely a goddess whose good side you wish to be on because just like being loved by Apollo gives you huge death flags, being hated by Aphrodite will always make you suffer in one way or another. And how much people tried to avoid being hated by her indeed - she was one of the most beloved Olympians, playing second fiddle only to Zeus. So yeah, Palutena’s in-game popularity is built on a lie!

Aphrodite’s influence in the mythos can’t be underestimated. She of course has at least five children with Ares, these being the twins Phobos and Deimos, the goddess of harmony Harmonia and the most important ones regarding Kid Icarus, Eros and Anteros - Pit being quite clearly an Eros-expy and Dark Pit could qualify as a darker take on Anteros, who’s already a bit more edgier than his brother, being the avenger of unrequited love. This is however just small potatoes compared to all the other myths Aphrodite has featured in; to begin, she’s actually the main reason why the constellation Pisces even exists. The most common tale says that once Typhon attacked she jumped into a river and was brought to safety by two fish, alternative story says that after she was born from the seafoam she was brought to shore by two fish (more often portrayed as ichthyocentaurs in art). She was the one who gave Galatea life on Pygmalion’s wishes and later on would end up falling for their great-grandson, for their daughter was Adonis’ grandmother. On Hera’s wishes Aphrodite made Medea fall for Jason, on Poseidon’s wishes she made Pasiphaë fall for the Cretan bull, she gave Hippomenes the golden apples to distract Atalanta during their race and she did end up causing the whole mess that led into Theseus ordering a hit on Hippolytus. Aphrodite was also the one behind Eos’ lust, as she cursed her to desire a new man every day because she didn’t want to share Ares with other goddesses. She similarly cursed Helios to forget everyone he ever loved romantically and then made him fall in love with princess Leucothoe because he had ratted her and Ares out (long myth short, sad ex desperately wanted to get back with Helios and that’s how we got heliotropes). And to round this up quickly, Aphrodite was the one who gave Pandora her beautiful looks (it was Hermes who made her a bitch), she cursed Orpheus to die terrible death (she and Persephone were having an argument on who gets to keep Adonis, Zeus asked help from Orpheus’ mother Calliope regarding it and Aphrodite saw that as an personal attack) and she along with Hera and Athena was dead-set on getting the apple of discord, which would start the chain reaction that leds into the Trojan war. She also famously wasn’t into Hephaestus, but she wasn’t into Apollo, Zeus or Hermes either so one could argue that good looks and power can only get you so far when it comes to her. 

Into more important matters, Aphrodite is the mother of Aeneas, one of the last demigods. He’s first seen in the Iliad as a minor character and his origins are told in the first Homeric hymn to Aphrodite, but his influence would only end up growing as the years went by and not just in literature - you see, gens Julia believed that they descended from Aeneas. Long history lesson short, gens Julia was quite influential in the Roman society as this is the patrician family line the likes of Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero belonged to, without them the world would be much different. Aeneas was also the main character of Virgil’s epic Aeneid, and it’s pretty much the only reason why most of us even care of the name Virgil nowadays. Aeneid’s meaning to Western literature can’t be ignored as one can easily name a work influenced by it, and if you think you can’t you’re a filthy liar - Historia Regum Britanniae makes the first royal house of Britain (the one likes of Blaiddyd, Lear, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia belong to) descendants of Aeneas and Dante Alighieri chose Virgil to appear in Divine Comedy as his guide precisely because he had written Aeneid (Aeneas also appears in Limbo, whereas the likes of Achilles and Odysseus are in much more unpleasant circles, Achilles honestly deserving worse than what he actually got). Other works such as Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost and Os Lusíadas have also been influenced by Aeneid, and that’s only the surface. Through Aeneas Aphrodite holds Western culture in chokehold, for all of this exists only because she thought Achises was hot. It’s pretty weird to think that something like Shakespeare’s King Lear or Devil May Cry exists thanks to her, that truly puts things into a whole new perspective. And you probably thought I was joking about Aphrodite’s influence over Western civilization! All roads may not lead to Rome, but surprisingly many of them lead to Aeneas and therefore to Aphrodite.

As for what’s probably the most important Aphrodite-myth considering Eros, it’s of course the tale of Eros and Psyche. It begins in a city where people had declared that local princess Psyche was as if not more beautiful than the goddess, so they abandoned Aphrodite in favor of worshiping the princess. Aphrodite was obviously angered by this, so she ordered Eros to make Psyche fall in love with something hideous as a way to humble her down. He agreed to do the deed, but once he saw Psyche he couldn’t help but fall for the princess himself - for once in his life he decided to defy his mother’s wishes and crafted a plan on what to do next, even getting the god of west wind Zephyrus on board to help him.

In the meanwhile Psyche was quite miserable, as everyone was treating her more like an object rather than a person. This didn’t go unnoticed by her parents, so they went to console oracle of Apollo for help. Considering how Apollo’s a quite petty man, the oracle told that they should abandon all hope and leave Psyche on a mountain, as she would be marrying someone feared by not only Zeus but also every other deity. Psyche and her parents were obviously horrified by this, but they did as the oracle told and she was left on the pointed cliffside. Later on Zephyrus picked her up and brought her to a beautiful palace, where a disembodied voice told her it was all hers and that she would be provided by many invisible servants while living in there. At first she was nervous to meet her husband, but after the first meeting she started looking forward to their nights together. This continued for quite some time, our main couple grew even happier together but in the meanwhile Psyche’s family was getting more depressed over her fate and she was starting to worry about them in return. Eros promised that her sisters can come to visit her, with a condition that she wouldn’t listen them if they sounded jealous and Psyche agreed. Zephyrus then brought the sisters to the palace once day came, but as expected the sisters started to get jealous really quickly and made Psyche worry if the oracle’s words about her husband being a monster were indeed true - what finally broke the camel’s back was them suggesting that he was planning to kill her and their unborn child. So when the night arrived, she had prepared herself to see if her husband really was a monster, only to be pleasantly surprised when she found Eros in her bed. But while admiring him some oil from the lamp she was holding spilled on Eros, causing him to wake up and leave. Earlier in the story Psyche had said that she’d much rather die than throw this marriage away and she was willing to live by that statement, so she goes to search Eros and atonement - in the meanwhile Aphrodite was behaving like a spoiled brat and made the whole deal about herself and how much suffering it had brought to her. She kept calling her son a horrible child for daring to defy her, refused to refer herself as his mother, said he was a good-for-nothing, loathsome seducer and threatened to replace him as he clearly wasn’t trustworthy anymore. Yikes!

In the meanwhile Psyche had wandered around to find some trace of husband, and she eventually found her way into Aphrodite’s temple. After beating Psyche for a while and having a good laugh over it, Aphrodite then locked her in a room, dumbed different kinds of grains on the ground and said that she should sort them by night if she ever wanted to see Eros again. Sometimes prompted by him, ants nearby take pity on Psyche and helped her - predictably Aphrodite wasn’t all too happy about this, so she came up with a much more deadlier task. The goddess brought Psyche to a grove and told her that she should gather some golden fleece from the aggressive sheep living in the grove. This disheartened her as she knew gathering fleece directly was a suicide mission, but she was consulted by local river deity who told her how the sheep behave and that instead of approaching them she should just collect fleece caught on foliage.  Psyche did as was told and Aphrodite naturally became even more enraged, telling her to go gather water from river Styx. While Psyche found her way to Styx without much hassle, she was overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the situation - luckily for her everyone had come to the conclusion that Aphrodite was being horrible and Zeus sent one of his eagles to help Psyche to get the water.

At this point Aphrodite’s patience was running thin so she gave Psyche a box and told her to go into the Underworld, get some of Persephone’s beauty and come back with it because this whole deal of torturing her little daughter-in-law had been so hard for her and she had to look good while going to the divine theatre. After being consulted by a tower on how to actually get into Underworld without dying, Psyche did as was told and and it didn’t take long for her to be greeted by Persephone. She ignored the banquet the goddess had set up for her, told Persephone why she was visiting her and she agreed to help Psyche without a hassle - but after returning into the mortal world, Psyche’s curiosity took the better of her and she wanted to see that beauty herself. It turned out it wasn’t beauty at all but rather Stygian sleep, and it Psyche caused to drop down a like a rock.Thankfully for her Eros finally managed to escape his imprisonment at this point and he flew straight to his wife, drew the sleep back into the box and gently pricked her with an arrow to wake her up. The two had a heartfelt reunion and Eros then brought Psyche to Olympus, asking Zeus if they could now get properly married. Everyone agreed, Zeus told Aphrodite to stfu and they gave Psyche ambrosia, making her the goddess of soul. The two had a glorious wedding as equals and some time later Psyche gave birth to their daughter, either named Hedone or Volupta, the goddess of pleasure, joy and delight - because only with both a heart and a soul, can any of those feelings exist.

Now with all that out of the way, I think you can see what I meant when I titled this post as Aphrodite-problem. She’s literally too important to be ignored, be it when it comes to history, the myths in general, the role she plays in Eros’ life and even in-game references as minimal as they may be (after all, Pisces Heal has to come from somewhere). But despite all of that it’s almost like Kid Icarus wants us to believe that she doesn’t exist, but all that does is launch even more questions. Would she end up upstaging everyone else if she was around? It’s a possibility, and I guess it could also draw a lot of unwanted attention things such as why Palutena would even have angels - Aphrodite having the Erotes around is justified since she’s their mother, Athena in the other hand has no such justification. I think it could be possible that Palutena may have been intended to be in fact more of a composition of Athena and Aphrodite rather than just simply being less problematic Athena; that could explain some things, like why she has angels. Aphrodite is also actually associated with mirrors unlike Athena, mirror not only being one of her symbols but the astronomical symbol of Venus and the female gender symbol in fact is her hand mirror. However it only really makes sense from a marketing standpoint, since Athena and Aphrodite are two deities you really just can’t composite. While I can understand the basic “This is primarily for children so there can’t be anything too sexy here” reason combined with the thought of mother using her children as free labor being scummy with the added misconception of Athena being more ””pure”” when compared to other Olympians for going with more Athena-based character, all it does is create a character with an internal consistency of a flipflop.

What are things Athena and Aphrodite have in common? They’re both Olympian goddesses, neither of them are into Hephaestus, they both wanted the apple of discord, have a kill count and were worshiped under epithet Areia, that’s about it. Pretty much everything else about them is contradictory, the most obvious thing being how Athena is one of the three virgin goddesses while Aphrodite is unapologetically sexual, with all the quirks it brings to one’s life added to the top like parenthood. Their relationships with other deities and people are wildly different, and it just reaches into uncomfortable levels once you remember Ares, his and Aphrodite’s shared children and Aeneas - Aphrodite’s relationship with Eros isn’t really a problem by itself, but it has potential to become one if we want Pit to become independent from Palutena. 

Starting with the easier problem which is Aeneas, it boils down to the fact Athena and Aphrodite supported different sides during the Trojan war. That alone is problematic enough, but it becomes even worse when one remembers Athena’s actions during the war. One could even view it as Athena’s villain arc just for the fact that she supported Greeks, because multiple works from Classical antiquity portray the Greek side of war as being pretty morally bankrupt, it all culminating in the lost epic Iliupersis. As for what Athena did during that time, short list includes her doing things such as ignoring the pleads of Trojan women when they asked protection against Diomedes, luring Hector to his death, telling Achilles to go kill Troilus and giving Odysseys a the idea of the horse. Quintus Smyrnaeus even goes as far to say that she and Hera were the only deities happy about the destruction of Troy, which… Yeah. That’s straight-up villain behavior. Pretty much everyone Aeneas has ever loved is either dead or POW at this point, and that’s ignoring how during the war Athena fully supported the guy who tried to kill him. With all this in mind, it’s definitely a good thing that Minerva isn’t an important character in Aeneid. Juno’s the closest thing to a villain it has, so Minerva would’ve likely been in the same boat had she been there. 

Moving into the other elephant in the room, it being Ares. He’s Aphrodite’s favorite boyfriend and depending on your point of view, them having one the best relationships among Olympians is either highly amusing or just plain sad. As already mentioned they have at least five children together and if you remember my post about him you know that I think he’s a likely candidate for being Pit’s father, for he and Pit seem to share much more similarities than Pit and Aphrodite. The big wrench here is that Ares and Athena famously don’t get along, which is the complete opposite of his and Aphrodite’s relationship - so what’s the relationship even supposed to be like in the case of the potential composition? Majority the myths of them interacting follow the formula of some guy does a thing → Ares doesn’t like the thing → Athena supports the guy who did the thing, so they’re not even the type of people who autonomously interact with each other. Most of the things in question that anger Ares are however related to his children, which puts things in rather distressing light - you see, going after your lover’s children by other man/woman is pretty exclusively Hera-behavior when it comes to Olympians. Hera’s behavior in these various myths is rooted to the fact that she’s the goddess of marriage and a loyal wife, so this would absolutely not fly with a composite character. Unlike Hera Aphrodite isn’t even married to him, and she also has multiple children with other men like with the already mentioned Adonis and Anchises - so what we would have in our hands now is a character who's a massive hypocrite. One can definitely try to view the myths Athena and Ares interact through romantic lenses and after doing so one could definitely make an argument of Athena being romantically frustrated… But that still leaves way too many uncomfortable questions out in the open, like what’s the case of Ares’ and Aphrodite’s shared children. Even when Eros and Anteros are ignored, it leaves Phobos, Deimos and Harmonia in this odd limbo. Them being specifically Ares and Aphrodite’s children is important to their characters, so whose kids are they supposed to be now and where are they? Considering the way she treats Pit, I doubt Palutena’s actually a mother of any sort but it just makes me wonder who their mother is then supposed to be. Phobos and Deimos being with Palutena would actually make more sense than her having angels, since Athena is a war goddess and would therefore technically have power over twins whereas this isn’t the case with Erotes… And speaking of Eros, wouldn’t this mean that if Pit ever wants to go on his own, Palutena has the potential to become his worst enemy? Aphrodite seen in Eros and Psyche is quite an intimidating figure, even if the worst of it reserved for Psyche.

So… What have we learned here? That Kid Icarus indeed seems to have written itself into a corner when it comes to Aphrodite. That and one doesn’t need Ovid to come up with reasons for Pit to think that Palutena may not be flawless, but that’s a discussion for another day. There wasn’t even any room to talk of potential plotlines, because you can’t even be sure if she can exist by the rules Kid Icarus has set on itself. On one hand, they really badly want Palutena to be like Aphrodite - she’s the one who’s pretty, popular, widely beloved and worshiped, has an interesting history and most importantly, has Erotes as part her retinue loyal to her and only her, them helping to pave the modern day view of angels. On the other hand there are multiple things that don’t just make sense if Aphrodite doesn’t exist as herself… Not to mention that Palutena’s character would take quite a nosedive if the theory of her being intended to be more of a composition of Athena and Aphrodite rather than being simply less problematic Athena is true. The intent may have been good, just take the best of both of them and leave the ugly bits behind, but… Their contradictory natures mean that things that weren’t problems before become ones, so what actually ends up being created is this horrible hypocrite who’s a bad romantic partner and even worse mother. Considering how the games already don’t really want to acknowledge Athena’s actual faults because it would mean acknowledging that Palutena isn’t perfect, all this would do is to make it much, much worse. Palutena’s character would be ruined beyond saving and the tragic part there would be that it was by her very design. Handwaving can only take you so far when it comes to something of this magnitude.

So all in all, I think this post can be summarized to these three points:

If you’re creating something based on an already existing material with an established world, some figures are literally too important to be ignored. However if you’re still trying to pretend that they don’t exist, maybe don’t include any references to them into your work. It just draws attention to their nonsensical absence, which is the last thing you want to do.

Compositing characters is harder than it seems. If it looks like the characters you’re trying to composite may not mix well, it’s better to not composite them at all. Last thing you want to do is to create a character that’s not internally consistent.

On hindsight, maybe it was a bad idea to make the Eros-expy work for a goddess primarily based on Athena. 

That’s all from me right now. What do you think? Do you think Kid Icarus can write itself out of this corner or does the series have to accept the consequences of the writing choices that have led it here? Is there even a good way to solve the Aphrodite-problem, meaning that the best way to handle it just to never bring her and people closely connected to her up? I’m interested of hearing your thoughts.