#and people have been changing and retelling stories for centuries

[community-gardenss]

I love enjoying things. I love having whimsy and joy in my heart and creating things that serve nothing but my own interests. I love the Iliad and the Odyssey and I love all their retellings too. Bad or good. Wildly inaccurate or not. Because it's just other people enjoying things too. Moving little toys around for their own enjoyment.

[fishofthewoods]

I see a lot of people clowning on the people of Pelican Town for not repairing the community center themselves or clowning on Lewis for embezzling and. like. Those criticisms aren't entirely unfair. But I think instead of coming at it from a perspective of "why can't the townspeople do this" we should be asking "why and how can the farmer do this?"

Like. Think about it. The farmer arrives in Stardew Valley on the first day of spring. By the first day they're obviously different. By day five the spirits of the forest who haven't been seen by the townsfolk in years or generations are speaking to them. By the second week they've developed a rapport with the wizard that lives outside town.

In the spring they go foraging and find more than even Linus, who's spent so many years learning the ways of the valley. Maybe he knows, when he sees them walking back home. Maybe he looks at them and understands that they're different, chosen somehow.

In the summer they fish in the lakes and the ocean for hours on end, catching fish that even Willy's only ever heard of, fish that he thought were the stuff of legend. They pull up giants from the deep and mutated monstrosities from the sewers.

In the fall, their crops grow incredibly immense; pumpkins twice as tall as a person, big enough that someone could live inside. The farmer cuts it down with an axe without even batting an eye. Does Lewis wonder, when he checks the collection bin that night and finds it full to the brim with pumpkin flesh? What does he think? Does he even leave the money? Does he have the funds to pay the farmer millions of dollars for the massive amounts of wine they sell? Or is it someone--something--else entirely?

In the winter, the farmer delves into the mines. No one in Pelican Town has been down there in decades. No one in living memory has been to the bottom. The farmer gets there within the season. They return to the surface with stories of dwarven ruins and shadow people, stories they only tell to Vincent and Jas, whose retellings will be dismissed by the adults as flights of fancy. People walking by the entrance to the mines sometimes hear the farmer in there, speaking in a language no one can understand. Something speaks back.

The farmer speaks to the the wizard. They speak to the spirit of a bear inside a centuries-old stone. They speak to the shadow people and the dwarves, ancient enemies, and they try to mend the rift. They speak to the Junimos, ancient spirits of the forest and the river and the mountain. They taste the nectar of the stardrops and speak to the valley itself. They change Pelican Town, and they change the valley. Things are waking up.

And what does Evelyn think? She's the oldest person in the valley; she was here when the farmer's grandfather was young. (How old *is* she, anyway? She never seems to age. She doesn't remember the year she was born.) Does she see the farmer and think of their grandfather? Does she try to remember if he was like this too, strange and wild and given the gifts of the forest?

And does their grandfather haunt the valley? He haunts the farm, still there even after his death; his body died somewhere else, but his spirit could never stay away for long. Does Abigail, using her ouija board on a stormy night, almost drop the planchette when she realizes it's moving on its own? Does Shane, walking to work long before anyone else leaves their house, catch glimpses of a wispy figure floating through the town? Does the farmer know their grandfather came back to the place they both love so much?

Mr. Qi takes interest in the farmer. He's different, too; in a different way, maybe, but the principles are the same. They're both exceptional, and no matter what Qi says about it being hard work and dedication, they both know the truth: the world bends around the both of them, changing to fit their needs. Most people aren't visited by fairies or witches. Most people don't have meteorites crash in their yard. Most people couldn't chop down trees all day without a break or speak to bears and mice and frogs.

The farmer is different. The rules of the world don't work for them the way they work for everyone else. The farmer goes fishing and finds the stuff of fairy tales. The farmer goes mining and fights shadow beasts and flying snakes. The farmer looks at paths the townspeople walk every day and finds buried in the dirt relics of lost civilizations.

The farmer is a violent, irrepressible miracle, chosen by the valley and destined to return to it someday. Even if they'd never received the letter, they would've come home.

They always come home eventually.

[ad-ciu]

Guth: Reading Irish Myths & Legends

Now that I am a Real Grown-Up Academic (tm), I have been trying to find a way to support my students and the general public by making medieval Irish literature more accessible to people who, be it a lack of time, disability, or any other factor, find sitting down and reading the original texts challenging.

What I settled on was creating a Podcast where I sit down and read out of copyright translations of Irish legends which I have called Guth: Reading Irish Myths and Legends.

If that's all you need to hear, you can go check it out right now! It is on Spotify (here), Podbean (here), and YouTube (here), and should be on Apple Music in the coming weeks. Alternatively, it is embedded here:

For those of you who need a harder sell, or want to know more about it, check out below!

So, why Guth? Well, I have encountered several different Podcasts and YouTube Channels out there which are doing something similar, recording audio of them reading medieval Irish legends. While several of these are quite cool, there are issues.

In terms of more benign issues, to get around the issues of copyright, people in these alternatives tend to retell stories, and while that is very cool as an example of something like an oral tradition, it means the stories are often being altered and changed by a non-expert audience. Elements that are not very important are being given great importance, areas that are very important are cut, and sometimes things are incorporated from other texts to make an unspoken composite (or, alternatively, sometimes people cut a section of a text out and retell it independent of its broader context).

These aren't bad, but, it means these other Podcasts and Videos aren't really suitable for my purposes of supporting my students and giving people access to the actual stories.

In terms of the big problems, there is at least one Podcast on a similar topic being presented by someone who I have reason to suspect is faking having a PhD. Further, there are at least two people putting out content like this that are actively forging content and passing it off as authentic who just so happen to also be Fascists. So, not ideal.

I hope Guth can serve my students and interested members of the public by providing a solid academic perspective on a text. Each episode I open with a discussion of our manuscript sources and the date of the text (a lot of other pieces out there will describe tales as 'ancient', when in actuality they're a 14th century scribe just vibin'). I then read the text exactly as it is translated, including using reconstructed Old Irish pronunciation for all the names that appear in the text. Lastly, I conclude with a brief discussion of secondary scholarship I think is particularly relevant for the interests of the public.

All of that to say, I hope people enjoy Guth, and that it can serve people who are interested in the actual medieval tales rather than the various retellings that are circulating out there.

[autumnmobile12]

The Epic Saga: Just A Man

Trigger warning for infanticide.

I want to talk about what an interesting choice it was in Epic's first installment for Odysseus to be the one to kill the infant.

In all versions of the story, the fate of Astyanax, son of Prince Hector, is always the same. He is thrown from the walls of Troy while the city is sacked. What varies from telling to telling is who does the deed, and it's usually between two people: Odysseus and Neoptolemus.

Most modern retellings make Neoptolemus the villain in this story, or they'll leave out this part entirely, because in the eyes of today's society, the senseless murder of a helpless infant is something only a villain would do.

Who's Odysseus? He's the man who won the Trojan War by engineering the idea behind the Trojan Horse, he's the guy who took ten years to sail home, he's the main character of The Odyssey. Odysseus is a hero. And heroes don't kill infants.

Who's Neoptolemus? He's forgettable. He didn't go on any heroic quests like Herakles or Perseus. He didn't slay any noteworthy monsters. Neoptolemus' biggest claim to fame are three things: He's the son of Achilles, he clubs King Priam to death in the sacking of Troy, and in some versions, he kills Astyanax. (He also enslaved Astyanax's mother.)

From the lens of the Ancient Greeks, a hero wasn't an upstanding guy who did the right thing. A hero was the guy who fought for what he wanted and did horrible things to his enemy in the process.

In the context of modern society, it's no wonder why the dubious credit of Astyanax's death goes to Neoptolemus. When that's the only real claim to fame he has, of course he's going to be a villain. We can't be having heroes killing babies because that's insane.

So let me tell you that when I first listened to The Horse and The Infant and I realized it was Odysseus who was committing the deed, that took me so off guard and I had to pause the song just to tell my poor sister how fucking crazy that is. I rarely saw this version. I mean, I understand the reasoning; it's setting up Odysseus' guilty conscious that'll plague him for the remainder of the musical. It's the flawed hero trope, which is a far cry from the brutality of the original myths.

And that in itself is testament of how mythologies have evolved over the centuries. It's why we have different variations of the myth in the first place. Societal views and values change and the stories told adapt accordingly.

Did Hades kidnap Persephone or did she go willingly to escape Demeter, her overbearing mother? Both versions are correct. All versions are correct. We cannot look for something as narrow-minded as a 'canon' version of mythology because mythology is a jumble of headcanons about the same basic concept thrown together by countless storytellers over literal centuries of storytelling.

In The Horse and The Infant, Zeus directly warns Odysseus that if Astyanax lives, he will take vengeance on him and his homeland. And after what the Greeks did to Troy, slaying the men, enslaving the women, and leaving the city in ruins, Odysseus is one of many Greek kings who have a lot to answer for.

Is Odysseus heroic for protecting his family by killing Astyanax because now the infant prince won't grow up to take vengeance?

Is Odysseus a flawed hero who carries the shame of his sins with him?

Is the deed committed by Neoptolemus and Odysseus goes home with his honor unsullied?

It all depends on interpretation. You can choose one that reflects a harsh history or you can pick the one that's been adapted to suit modern values. You don't even have to pick. You can appreciate them all for what they are.

And Epic: The Musical came out swinging.

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Chapter 95

Izutsumi gets to decide what she wants to eat.

I bet Yaad didn't even know about Delgal's statement until Marcille told him in chapter 46. Yaad must have really respected Delgal if he's going through all this effort to make sure Delgal's will is enacted.

Yaad becoming king is impractical because 1) he just showed up out of nowhere and has been out of touch with the world for 1,000 years and 2) he might turn to dust at any moment.

This image and description conjured a silly idea for a sequel.

It's several centuries later. Nearly everyone who was part of this story is long dead and no one remembers the true details, only Kabru's embellished retelling.

Some new threat appears and the protagonist is seeking the power of the great demon-devouring king to stop it. Eventually, they learn about someone who knows the truth behind his power and the protagonist seeks them out.

They find this person living in a log cabin inside a dungeon where she's been running her own personal farm growing man-eating plants and dryads, and raising basilisks and slimes. She also has a black and white cat.

When the protagonist asks her about the demon-devouring king, she speaks fondly of their time together, but when asked about his power to turn into a dragon, she becomes deadpan and says the protagonist should not seek that power.

Eventually, the protagonist gains the power to turn into the dragon that devoured a demon, and they and everyone else just thinks "That's not a dragon. Why does it look so dumb."

The focus of this chapter is Izutsumi and what she's going to do next.

I like this little detail where a walking mushroom is helping Senshi and Chilchuck in their recipe diagrams.

Zon picked Izutsumi up by the scruff like she's a kitten. And she's acting like a kitten that just got picked up by the scruff.

HA! That face!

Zon assumes human societies also practice polygamy.

Honestly, marrying Laios shouldn't be necessary. If he becomes king, he'll definitely accept the orcs as his people.

And I can't imagine him being married at all. If he took a wife, she'd be either the craziest-looking woman imaginable, or she'd look like the most unassuming thing who is just as if not more monster-obsessed as Laios.

Chilchuck is such a good guy that he's willing to even take care of scabs like Mikbell.

Chilchuck is vouching for Laios to be king. He's always critical about Laios, but it looks like he thinks Laios does have what it takes to be a ruler.

I amazed Chilchuck is so calm around wargs since Leed tried to feed him to them.

It's the newbies! I don't think they know the first thing about cooking or food prep.

Reminder: Izutsumi is from an eastern culture.

Someone bonked Fleki because of that fingernails remark.

Marcille is Izutsumi's favorite. Izutsumi is more likely to listen to her.

At least, until Marcille gets clingy.

Izutsumi doesn't care that Laios is going to be busy. She's only upset that this means Yaad is going to spend all his time working for Laios.

She was really looking forward to going on adventures with Yaad the talking doll and beating up the magician who turned her into a beastkin.

Would burning the dragon and scattering its ashes in the woods have worked? The phoenix was able to resurrect from its ashes but not from being eaten. I guess the ashes and smoke would still count as dragon remains even if the body would be far beyond recovery.

Izutsumi's theme throughout this story has been about how you sometimes have to do things you don't want to do in order to live a happy, healthy life.

Izutsumi has never gotten to live her own life. She was a slave for as far back as she can remember. When she was purchased by the Nakamoto household, this just meant changing from a cage to a leash. She didn't even join the Touden party of her own volition; she had to stay with them because she'd never be able to escape the dungeon on her own.

While she does like the Touden party more, she still tries to avoid doing anything she doesn't want to do. She cares about them enough that she will come to their rescue and fight alongside them, but she's not going to help lure out a bicorn, clean up a house, or catch a giant block of falling ice.

I talked about how that crossroads moment in chapter 44 was a literal example of how Izutsumi will take the easy path even if it causes her to end up further from her goal. And she still has a lot of that mentality. And the party all know she does.

Every moment of this chapter is about everyone doing things they don't want to do but understand it's what they need to do. Yaad and Kabru want Laios to become king because it's the best option for everyone. Leed is willing to marry Laios to ensure the orc tribe's safety. Chilchuck is going to help all the other Half-foots before running the shop he wants to do, and Marcille is going to jail against her and Pattadol's wishes.

Izutsumi spoke to everyone looking for some ideas because she thought they would all just do whatever they want, but they're all planning to do things they admit they don't like. And Izutsumi's final takeaway on this is that even if they didn't grow up in a cage or raised with a leash on them, there are still things everyone cannot have and things they have to do even if they don't like it.

When deciding what she wants to do right now, Izutsumi decided to talk to Laios. It's probably not something she actually would normally want to do, but he's in the same situation as her. Neither of them know to do going forward. But talking with him might help both of them.

Laios is weirded out by how resigned Izutsumi is.

Their chat with each other really helped both of them out. Izutsumi told Laios how sometimes you don't have a choice about things you don't like whether it be because of prejudices, finances, or politics. And that seems to have made Laios decide that he should accept being a king. Then he can make a place where everyone can come together and share meals they like with each other.

I'm sure this is mostly Izutsumi subtly airing her own grievances. She's a little annoyed that Laios's actions means there's no longer a cosmic being that will move heaven and earth to grant her wishes.

So Laios is going to become a king because it will let him make the place he wants. Meanwhile, Izutsumi is going to eat a meat pie with vegetable because it will let her enjoy his cooking.

back

[redstarjuly]

I was reading discourse on achilles yesterday and I'm still thinking about some people calling him a r*pist and others saying that other books they've read that are from a woman's perspective completely shifted the perception they have of TSOA's Achilles. And to me that makes little to no sense.

Here's what I come from: Achilles is a character from the Illiad, and the poem itself is pretty much fanfiction. I mean, the person and warrior that Achilles is based on probably existed, and it might have been called Achilles even, but i think we all agree that the rest is dubious.

Since the illiad is like the OG story, people tend to look at it as if it's canon and we'll go with that logic. You have the canon work and poets go off on their own versions of these characters writing tragedies, more epics, thesis, all sorts of stuff, and it goes on for centuries until we reach The song of Achilles and Percy Jackson and all the other 100s retellings coming out which are fanfiction of fanfiction.

And you're letting one fanfiction distort another fanfiction? It's bonkers to me because as someone who has to read the classics and grew up on fanfiction, I don't see that happening elsewhere. Between academics, if we're discussing a myth, we mention the different versions, and we can choose one to go on from, sure. But even so, I never saw someone sound so affected by different perspectives on the same character in class.

And if we're talking on the world of street fanfiction, I most definitely don't find people going "Oh this fanfiction of hermione betraying the order and marrying voldmort changed my perspective of Harry Potter's hermione" you know? -- if that sounds like a stupid example, it's because it is. It's just to show that my whole point is that it's insane to me to let a book ruin another book when the authors are creating different versions of the same characters, which basically turns them into different characters with the same names. Especially since you know, it's all made up. And this isn't real criticism to the people forming their opinions or the authors, respect to all of them.

But it’s a little maddening watching people roll into arguments to discuss what piece of fiction is more real and relevant when they're all in the same level of glorified AO3 works.

I hope this makes sense to someone else

[queer-ragnelle]

So, regarding your novels, what made you write backwards? I'm so curious about it.

TL;DR I started writing in Mordred and Galahad perspective. I then became possessed by the "older" characters and went "back" in the timeline to write their origins (starting with parentified Agravaine). I did this several times until I ended up with Ragnelle/Gawain as book 1, "the beginning," of what turned into an Epic many books long.

Let me give you a timeline...

1900s: I am born and develop Arthurian brain worms.

21st century: The worms declare Ragnelle/Gawain are my favorites and I write their Wedding multiple times for fun based off what can be gleaned from Wikipedia and retellings as I have no medieval resources at my disposal.

February 2020: I think Mordred and Galahad would make neat narrative foils and write a short story about them playing chess.

March 2020: The plague. I'm furloughed from my job. Writing becomes my full-time focus. I write 60,000 words in Mordred and Galahad perspective, plotting their story to be a trilogy.

June 2020: I'm back to work but I'm still writing. With money and curiosity at my disposal, I begin hoarding Arthurian books. Local quirky secondhand bookstore owner had an Arthurian fixation in his youth—I clear his shelves. He asks if I'm a medievalist major and I have to break it to him I'm just a High School drop out at the mercy of the Tell-Tale knights chattering in my head. I learn more lore. I splurge to buy the Vulgate cycle. I'm forever changed.

Late 2020: Reading medlit and retellings and watching all the movies super charged the brain worms. The Vulgate especially. I develop an obsession with circumventing the Orkneys/Welshmen blood feud with the power of gay sex. (Joan Wolf did it first in her 1988 book The Road to Avalon with Agravaine/Lamorak.)

January 2021: Historical research shows that Islam didn't exist yet during the 5th/6th century I'd been writing in. I order Zoroastrianism by Mary Boyce to make sure I'm depicting Ragnelle and Gromer's religion properly. But it's nbd their page time is minimal as background characters right? ....right?

2021 continued: The Agravaine/Lamorak brain worms take on a life of their own as I'm hospitalized and bedridden. Chronic pain and isolation become my themes. I write endlessly on my phone from bed. 2/3 novels are completed and readable straight through with a third book in pieces. These are currently at a combined total of nearly 140,000 words. (Plus the notes file with scenes I haven't moved yet...whoa.)

Late 2021: I rediscover old Ragnelle/Gawain stuff and decide to write about their wedding. Again. But this time with legit sources. Except Ragnelle isn't some ambiguous character of color, she's now very specifically Persian [Iranian] Zoroastrian. So the whole thing takes place in Persia and research goes crazy. Someone gives me their college log in so I can download and hoard essays and textbook PDFs. I do beta-read trades with people in facebook groups (bad bad idea) and yet...

End of 2021: I get sample edits from various editors including one guy who insulted my "lack of education" and said emulating J. R. R. Tolkien's old style didn't work anymore and I should take inspiration from The Hunger Games....for my queer romance in Persia. Right. Anyway I pay the $100 for the pages edited so he'll go away and continue searching for my unicorn editor....

2022: Ultimately facebook group scouting finally yields results as I stumble upon a fellow Ragnelle/Gawain enthusiast who would become my editor!! Editor says I have to cut the giant book into thirds, so what is now book 1 ends up chopped.

2023: I'm still revising book 1, now titled The Moonlit Knight, with my editor. All the while I'm drafting book 2, sporadically cheating to write in other books including an Elaine and Perceval book that appeared out of no where, and scouting out beta readers. One beta reader came via a tumblr mutual who connected me through instagram. A second beta reader discovered in a discord server. Another beta reader from a different discord server. So on and so forth.

Early 2024: Beta reading continues, until I have readers for every angle I require; queer people of all flavors, Zoroastrians, Arthurian enthusiasts, Jewish readers, people with DID knowledge etc! Slowly but surely I work through revising the book with all these wonderful people to a final 95,000 words!

Mid 2024: But now...it needed a cover. I commission a tumblr mutual and work for weeks with them on that, still editing/revising and having betas read book 2, Sunshine's Lady, which is currently almost 132,000 words long and half edited/beta read.

September 2024: I still haven't published. lol. But the process takes a long time and has a lot of moving parts!

So why do I actually recommend this method? Well, this has been hugely helpful to write foreshadowing. Forgetting for a second the blueprint drawn from Arthurian Legend itself, I know how my story with my version of the characters is going to go, so I can set all of that up way in advance. It's all well and good to know (spoiler) Arthur dies at the end, but it's never been about the conclusion so much as the journey there and the unique perspective of whichever character the author has chosen to focus on. I mean, Godfrey Turton's The Emperor Arthur is Pelleas point of view. He's instrumental at the battle of Camlann. It's the same with Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles and our one-handed friend Derfel, the reasoning for which isn't revealed until book 3. The world is your oyster! Fixate on your special character and set that shit up and pay it off!!!

Knowing what you're writing toward is extremely helpful during the drafting process. Even if it's only vaguely shaped it'll develop detail as you revise. Other than Derfel's missing hand, the best example of this I can think of is in Realm of the Elderlings series by Robin Hobb. It has a huge fanbase on tumblr for a reason, it's just an insane amount of set up you're not even aware of until the impact slams into you many books later and you're left going, "Whoa.....it was there the whole time." Mind blowing. I want have half as much narrative resonance as that.

Another thing that came of this is, since I wrote Agravaine/Lamorak first, and I'm obscenely Ragnelle obsessed, she pops up in their pov as a hag, only for them to not realize she's one and the same as Gawain's bombshell wife they "meet" later. I wrote this as the lads first, but it's extra funny now that, actually, the reader will experience Ragnelle's perspective first. Hottie uncursed Ragnelle does know she met them before, but feigns otherwise. So it's very fun to see the same encounters happen a second time a few books later. Agravaine is like, "Okay granny whatever. Bye... :^/" and Lamorak is like, "That granny was weird but I like her! :^)" meanwhile the reader is like, "AHHHHH! I KNOW HER!!! YOU FOOLS DON'T KNOW HOW IMPORTANT SHE'LL BE AHHH!!!" At least, that has been the beta reader reaction, which is gratifying. Even better, the books can be read out of order, so actually if you read Agravaine/Lamorak before Ragnelle/Gawain, it works in reverse, too. So if the reader knows who Agravaine is from reading his perspective, when Ragnelle or Gawain runs into him, the reader will realize who he is before it clicks for the point of view character. I had a lot of fun developing all of this across the series for multiple characters, it certainly happens more than once.

Wow that was long but I hope it makes sense and gives you an idea how it all went down. Thanks for taking an interest and I hope you enjoy my books when they're out. Take care! :^)

[lenorenevermore99]

Snow White rant? Kinda?

So I just watched the Snow White live-action (pirated for obvious reasons) and like.... why are people acting like this movie is the worst movie ever? I enjoyed it, it was a nice movie!

Why are people acting like Rachel Zegler is the only saving grace of this movie? Obviously, she's the best thing about it, but the movie is far from bad. Was it the best movie ever? No. But was it bad? Also no.

I've seen a lot of criticism that I honestly don't get and I want to rant about it while the ideas are still fresh in my mind.

"This isn't Snow White!" is the one I've seen the most. Okay, she's not the naive and gullible little girl in the original Disney movie, but no one seemed to be complaining when Once Upon a Time's Snow white did the same thing 🤨 Or the fact that the focus of the plot isn't primarily the love story but Snow White taking her kingdom back from the evil Queen. Again, no one complained when OUAT's Snow did the same thing 🤨🤨🤨

Also, the whole "They're ruining the original story!" thing... You know Walt Disney's Snow White is not the original, right? In fact, these are stories that have been told orally throughout the centuries. The Brothers Grimm were the first to write them down, but can you imagine how much they've changed throughout the generations? We might never know what the original was actually like. Every era has their own retelling of these stories; it's only to be expected that we'd get one like this. People just need to accept that things change and let go of nostalgia a little bit.

Also let's face it, a lot of people's only problem was the color of Snow White's skin. If I have to be honest, I was a little perplexed too when Disney announced they were casting Rachel Zegler as Snow White. But is the skin color really that important, when you think about it? In my mind, what characterizes the story of Snow White, are the seven dwarves, the evil queen who's trying to kill Snow White, and the poisoned apple. All elements that are present in every single retelling of Snow White. Her skin tone doesn't really matter that much. And if you think about it, every country, every ethnicity has their own retelling of these stories. For example, when I was little I read a chinese version of Cinderella. There too, the elements which characterized the story were all present (the evil stepmother and sisters, the slipper). Her ethnicity didn't matter at all. So I really don't see why we shouldn't have a latina Snow White.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Star Trek SNW finally settles decades-old canon issues (spoiler commentary for S02E03)

(Image credit: Startrek.com)

I say spoiler right in the headline, and I mean it. Read no further if you have yet to see Star Trek: Strange New World’s latest episode, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. (The image above is a publicity image and is also in the trailer, so it’s not really a spoiler.)

The TL;DR is: one single line of dialogue fixed nearly 30 years of canon issues. I am not exaggerating. More under the break. And this will be a long one:

To “cross the streams” a moment, it is undeniable canon (not shipping wishful thinking) that not only did the Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who have feelings for Clara Oswald, he even considered her not his companion, but his girlfriend. That was made undeniable canon in a couple lines in ��Deep Breath” when the Twelfth Doctor said “Clara, I’m not your boyfriend,” Clara replied, “I never thought you were.” and Twelve said “I never said it was your mistake.” That was in stark fact. One line of canon dialogue confirmed what many speculated and the show hinted at. This is separate from what came after, any retcons later writers did, and all that. 

Well, one line of dialogue from a guest character in last night’s episode of Strange New Worlds put into canon something I and many others have felt not only about SNW, but the current breed of Trek shows and indeed there were signs of this going back to both Star Trek DS9 and Star Trek Voyager in the 1990s.

The Romulan time agent, Sera, played by Adelaide Kane who some may remember from playing Mary Queen of Scots in Reign, states that the Eugenics war involving Khan was supposed to happen in 1992, but was delayed 30 years due to temporal wars and other interference from the future. (To be precise she’s likely referring to Khan’s birth since he was in his 30s or 40s by the 1990s, the time TOS established the Eugenics Wars took place; here he’s a kid - possibly even a Canadian kid!  The war itself is still some years away.)

That explains a lot. Why since DS9 the Eugenics Wars were redated to the mid-21st century. Why SNW’s pilot episode last year confirmed the Eugenics Wars were part of WW3, not a separate conflict.  Why the Voyager episode where they go back to Earth on 1996 featured no mention of the Eugenics Wars. Why Kirk and everyone else already knows the name Noonien-Singh (even if La’an hadn’t introduced herself by name to “Prime” Kirk at the end, he would have seen her testimony about being Khan’s descendant at Una’s trial. There is no way in this timeline that Kirk, Spock or anyone else would not recognize Khan’s name instantly when the events of Space Seed happen. Heck, even the fact the SNW Enterprise doesn’t match up with the 1960s designs that were also featured in TNG, DS9 and Star Trek: Enterprise. Or even stuff like people like Uhura knowing who T’Pring was years before they were supposedly first introduced to her in “Amok Time”. It even gives wiggle room for the fact this time-travel episode actually breaks canon with the time-travel-based episodes of Picard Season 2! (Laris would have known about Sera and stopped her, right? Sean at TrekCulture had a gripe about this in his Youtube review)

Sera basically admitted that because of people farting around with time and the temporal wars (recall that it was strongly implied in Enterprise that the Romulans were involved if not responsible for that) that the timeline has been changed. 

It can’t be denied anymore and it’s such a liberating thing. Now, SNW is free to truly tell reimagined stories (like the retelling of Balance of Terror last season, albeit that was another alternate timeline), to make T’Pring a vital character and build her, to accelerate the Spock-Chapel romance that was only hinted at in TOS. To truly let Paul Wesley develop his own version of Kirk, not to mention Ethan Peck’s Spock and whoever next plays McCoy (you know they will bring him in eventually and if SNW avoids the fate of Prodigy and lasts a few years, they’re going to have to start getting lined up for a new TOS-era series). Hell, the door is now open for Kirk and La’an to establish a “prime-era” romance - imagine a retelling of Space Seed with La’an in the picture (or at least Kirk remembering her).

This will be a hot take for some. But my rebuttal comes from Doctor Who: “Time can be rewritten.” Finally, nearly 30 years after what was thought to be an erroneous dating of the Eugenics Wars in a throwaway line in an episode of DS9 (I believe the producers even said it was a goof back then), and 22 years of people griping about how the prequel series were not lining up with what came before, either esthetically or storyline-wise (Enterprise, Discovery, SNW, and Picard S2 to a degree), we have a firm, canonical explanation. People will still gripe about politics, general quality, casting, whatever, of shows - that’s a separate argument - but at least in terms of canon, this has changed everything. In a good way.

I only wish they hadn’t killed off Sera. I got very strong Sela vibes from her (Sela/Sera? Coincidence?) and I would have liked to see her become a recurring nemesis. Then again, as I just said, time can be rewritten. 

[garrettwrites]

Warning: discussions of homophobia; extremely negative rant over a popular lgbt book.

Post context: I waited a decade to read a certain retelling book that focuses on the development of an lgbt couple, one which has been discussed over the centuries. I'm doing my best to censor its title and characters, so this post doesn't show up in the tags for people who genuinely love this story. The title, one I now view as overrated, is something along the lines of a song about a certain popular greek hero with long blond hair and a particularly fragile heel. I wanted to read the original, the Iliad, first. I was so excited... and finally, I read the Iliad and other classical texts, I studied ancient history, and I was finally in the mood to start, paired with good knowledge of the characters that would feature in it AND the historical context... Only to find out I shouldn't have waited. 14/15 year old me would have loved this. Current me cannot. I find most reviewers must have either been high while reading, or have taken this book as teenagers, because there is no way an adult over the age of 25 with some degree of reading experience would have not seen the glaring problems with this book.

Disclaimer, if you care - I have no problem with story alterations. I can be critical of them, sure. But even that won't stop me from enjoying something. I think Percy Jackson should have followed a more greek setup, and I don't particularly fancy some of the worldbuilding choices, but those books were and still are among my favourite fantasy stories. Even though they're for children. Even though I've read Tolkien. I'm no elitist, nor do I believe shit can't be changed to make a compelling story. What I do have a problem with is how you present information, and how you distort it.

For instance, if you wanted to write a story about Ariadne and her godly husband set in the year of 1850 for some reason, and make opium play a role? I think that's a fucking weird setting. But it could work, if you stuck true to what characterises them, their relationship, and had a story with a beggining middle and end that tries to show something.

Going back to the retelling that inspired this "rant review". I'll let others more qualified than me to talk about the sexism. What shocked me here was the gay lovestory that reads so homophobic in how cliché it is that it hurts.

This story reads as "when you're so progressive you gotta turn a gay couple made up of two masculine, warrior like, war drowned men into "the hot warrior and his healer who hates fighting" so it fits into (the already sexist/misogynistic) heterosexual couple role".

Because god forbid you have a gay couple where you actually need to deconstruct masculinity without villainizing it. God forbid you actually need to write men into a gay story. God forbid these men are not good, and you need to get into their complexity. God forbid the pov character, who is written as a love struck maiden, has a life outside his strong warrior that helps contextualise his love for him.

Listen. Feminine men are amazing. Gay feminine men are too. I have plenty of original characters that fit within these labels. What I do not do is turn two ancient greek warriors into an early 2000s seme uke yaoi dynamic where one of them is a fragile maiden war tent housewife and the other a very hot but detached strong soldier god man. This is not the story to do that. And even if you play with gender roles and have a man take a more "womanly" role, it's not enough to just genderswap - a character is still badly written regardless of wether they're male or female.

If the housewife character here was a woman, I guarantee everyone who praises this book would be losing their marbles. A woman with no personality outside her lover? Afraid of fighting, of standing up, of speaking up, and this never changes? Who becomes a healer not because she studies it, but because her fragile soul has no other option? Who is passive as all hell in the story until the author remembers she has to die in an impactful manner to trigger her male love interest? That is two dimensional and no way to write a girl, and it's not suddenly okay just because this girl has a dick and is a him.

Yet cause it's gay it's okay to write such an insipid character. Praised even. Which is made even worse, because the original version was a man who yes - indeed - was kind to others yet an absolute beast on the battlefield. Who had opinions and gave counsel. This is not even an original character - I wouldn't criticise an original character as harshly, but this author changed a fighter with incredible skill, who killed a son of a god and was a hero in his own right, into this. A character who yes, was kind and beloved. But touched by war regardless. A character who was loved by those around him, but in this book is ridiculed by these very same people.

Why do you think that is.

And no, trying to make the story more anti war is not an answer. The Iliad is anti war. The Iliad literally comments on how war corrupts what it touches, how it fucked up the lives of everyone involved. This is not a modern take on an old story, because the old story in question already talks about it.

But what can I expect, here. I could call this a work that doesn't know how to write gay men without adhering to (already dated even for straight people) gender roles... but truth is? Author doesn't know how to write women either. The moment you unironically think Helen of Troy is just a vain little hot chick you should not be allowed to write an Iliad retelling, me thinks.

Oh, and let's not get into the fact both main characters are meant to be gay. They're not bisexual. Yet this book - a GAY ROMANCE - is not shy about shoving straight sex scenes onto you. Sex scenes with really no purpose, for they're never brought up again later, and have no story impact.

I am not kidding. Character A gets D pregnant, Character P barely reacts to it, and when D gets upset at P for whatever reason THE TWO OF THEM HAVE SEX TOO. NOTHING AS GAY AS FUCKING THE WOMAN IMPREGNATED BY YOUR BOYFRIEND, UH?! And it's never brought up again! Nobody forces Character P into this yet he willingly goes? Excuse me, if you wanted these characters to have sex with women so casually, why not just make them bisexual and open to banging outside their relationship?

It reads as so disgusting, to have an author clearly lean into a soulmate trope, then just pull some of the most uncomfortable to read sex scenes ever outside that soulmate couple (I love purple prose. Purple prose is probably the only reason I didn't hate this book - the writing was beautiful. But the way the sex with Character D goes... good lord it's written in such a puke inducing way). I'm not against poly in books, what I am against is leaning into monogamous tropes for a gay couple, where you write neither of them as bisexual (which, btw, bi-erasure of the original characters) but then have them bang outside their relationship EVEN when nobody is forcing them to. Never have I read a gay book where straight sex is pushed forward so much. And it's not just even weird for the gay couple, it's also written in a really odd way for the women involved.

"Oh you just don't get the theme! It was out of pity! It was-" turn this into a straight romance and tell me, with a straight face, that this story is well written. Bad character development, bad usage of tropes, terrible pacing, and the use of sex outside the main romance purely for reader self insertion (for it contributes with nothing but shoddy erotica, in a book supposedly about AxP) should not be excused just because a book is gay.

Honestly. "Let people enjoy things" well I propose let me be a hater. I went above and beyond to block the book and character names, let's hope it's enough. But I'm against not criticising things just because they're diverse. It's 2024. There's plenty of authors writing good stories with marginalised people.

And let's talk about LGBT+ worldbuilding, shall we? In the beggining of this book - set in Ancient Greece by the way - it's stated men could take male lovers on the side. Then it's not brought up again, until later a woman tells P many married men take lovers on the side. This girl was originally a sex slave by the way, and here she gets Stockholm Syndrome and falls for P. But then another character tells P he's too old to be into men? So, which is it? It's not even a thing about ancient greek men having that thing where it was accepted for an older man to be sexually involved with a young boy, because here the problem brought up is P being too old, not his lover being too old too.

Oh, and the love interest's (A's) mother. She hates their relationship. We are told she hates their relationship because P is mortal and she doesn't want a mortal to be with her son. Yet later on she arranges a marriage between her son and a MORTAL woman. So is the problem really mortality, or homosexuality?

Why is there modern day homophobia in a story that many praise for historical accuracy?

I honestly hate how people care about representation at the cost of quality. It is mind boggling to me that a woman in this century wrote a book more homophobic and misogynistic than greeks almost 3 thousand years ago did.

[digitaldoeslmk]

I apologize if you're not the right person to ask but I've been wondering this for a while and since you both enjoy (but are critical of) lmk and also enjoy/know a lot about jttw I figure you may be a decent person to ask. And I mean this is as an entirely genuine question.

Jttw has so many different adaptations and parodies and, for lack of a better term, spinoffs, why is it that LMK in particular seems to get so much more criticism? How is it different from any other story that uses jttw as a base?

I was under the impression that while a lot of events and chatacters have been changed or tweaked in some ways (looking at red son in particular, as well as seemingly replacing Buddha with the jade emperor, I could go on) it was still relatively faithful at least in spirit. It has a lot of callbacks and mentions to the book, even if it's more or less an AU of the original story.

So why is it that its adaptation in particular seems so...disliked I suppose? Or at least takes a lot more criticism than other adaptations. I could take a few guesses (fandom (and its lack of knowledge of the source material) being a big one, or otherwise being more western than the story probably should be) but as someone who was introduced to jttw by lmk (reading the book now and having a blast with it) I'm curious and confused as to why it seems to be disliked when there are so many other jttw adaptations that also change fair chunks of the story, and those don't seem to garner the same level of criticism.

And I apologize again if you're maybe the wrong person to ask, but I wasn't sure where else to start, if you know anyone who can maybe answer this better I'd love to hear from any of them as well, I've been so curious about this for a while.

no worries at all, and i appreciate the ask!

i do wanna preface this by saying that i have very little interaction with the LMK fandom, and mostly heard the horror stories through the grapevine or by others telling me their own experience with it. and make no mistake, this sideblog is very much me laser focusing on the few stuff i enjoy of the show and expanding on those and filling in the rest with a lot of plaster and spite ajdhawjhbdh

i will keep most of my vitriol to myself though, and that the opinion i'm giving is my own. there's a lot of good folks who are more than welcome to pitch in with their own criticisms here, for a larger poll of voices.

read more cus this is long xvx

as you have said, JTTW has an overwhelming amount of retelling, rewrites, sequels, prequels, adaptations, what have you. trust me, there is a JTTW adaptation for everyone out there and it's part of the beauty and appeal of it. and equally, everyone has their pros and cons for each of them.

one major point to keep in mind is that LMK has a very online fanbase, and it's an abnormally large one. it also has fans on the west and in china, and the language barrier tends to keep both rather separate, for better or worse. so a larger fanbase means a larger pool of criticism simply by law of averages.

another thing to keep in mind is that, because it is so large, a lot of people are getting into JTTW thanks to it, and it's exactly those changes that make it even more of a hurdle for people to meet JTTW where it's at. and by that i mean, a very different worldview and belief system than known in the west.

i've been in the JTTW fandom properly for, three months now?? three and a half lol and the amount of reading and studying i've been doing to just scratch at the depth of centuries of cultural context is not insignificant. and i'm only just starting! it's a wonderful experience, but not many in the LMK fandom are as eager or willing to learn all that, much less listen when people correct them on things that they believe, that are factually false. and that can be deeply frustrating for those who simply want to share in the joy of learning.

it's incredibly demeaning and patronizing, to have such an old and rich culture reduced to a single adaptation that rly lambasts the roots of its entire premise for existing. no other fans of other adaptations have that kind of attitude that i've come across; those are all understood as AUs and not to be taken as gospel, but some of the fandom treat LMK as the end all be all of JTTW media and it's, infuriating.

beyond the fandom leaving one hell of a bitter taste, there's the fact that LMK is a very westernized view and parody of JTTW. it breaks not only with the lore of it, but with the very fundamentals of Buddhist and Daoist cosmology. those changes you mentioned, like the JE replacing Buddha and then the guy getting killed, the absence of several concepts and deities, and sometimes the very change of them, are incredibly disrespectful on their own. it's very hard to remove JTTW from its religious roots (it can be done but those usually read more as "inspired by" rather than proper adaptations), and to do so by filling the empty space with a Greco-Christian view of cosmology is... A Big Ol Yikes.

while we in the west might be okay turning stuff like Christian, Norse, Greek, etc. mythology upside down for our stories, it comes off as disrespectful to do the same for an overall dismissed and ignored religion in the west like Daoism, and even more so for such a sprawling one as Buddhism. that attitude does not translate well at all, and to be faithful only in spirit is simply not enough. you wouldn't (i hope) say that about people who appropriate Indigenous or closed faith beliefs for their own use; it's 2023 surely we don't need to revive the W-nd-ig- debate again, or the Lilith one. (i can for further context but i'd rather not, but you're than welcome to google it)

at the end of the day, an AU is just an AU until you're using it to sell toys and it has turned into a massive entry window for many western fans into a foundational piece of literature for an entire country that has been and still is routinely degraded and discriminated against.

i hope this hasn't come off as too harsh, but this is smth that rly grinds my gears and i tend to be a bit stern when discussing it. none of it was aimed at you anon, i know you're just trying to understand the situation and i do appreciate the effort you're making!!

[demeterdefence]

hi! i just wanted to ask in regards to your whitewashing post, i've seen some people disagree with the term whitewashing and i'm not quite sure why because like...if greece is multicultural and you erase that then it is whitewashing lol. but im also from a western country so i get im biased. just seems like a weird miscommunication? or is like 'americanized' better?

you're good! i get the confusion and i understand that for a lot of people "whitewashing" has become a kind of "sjw buzzword" that has been taken out of context in many places.

whitewashing is quite literally as the name suggests - it strips the colour from the story, narrative, or culture. there are some people who believe the term comes from the statues of ancient greece and rome being "stripped" of their colour over the years, leaving purely white statues behind. the concept of this whiteness became core to the concept and identity of ancient rome and greece, allowing centuries of art and rhetoric to depict them as solely caucasion, homogenous and unchanging.

when we look at the culture of ancient greece, we know the art, the style, the clothing, the politics, the very minutiae of everyday life was radically different than it is today. that's history! we grow, we change, we expand and we create new. greece was not one solitary culture or identity, but a collection that expanded and brought forth many fundamental creations people use today.

when rachel, or many other "modern retellers," depict these stories, they like to remove the origins of the myths - persephone being dressed in american / western "glam" fashion, for example. rachel repeatedly makes the explicit statement that the mortal realm, and by extension the ancient greeks, were boring, flat, and homogenous; only the gods have colour, and only the gods have innovation, creation, and life.

but what we, the reader, have to remember is that the fashion the gods wear, the food they're depicted as eating, the cars they drive - those are all western objects. rachel draws a lot of the gods life as if it was an episode of "keeping up with the kardashians," and goes out of her way to disdain the origins of the culture she's supposed to be depicting. not only does that serve to erase centuries of culture and mark it as "bad / boring," it again represents a very white / whitewashed presentation. besides the few mortals who pop up (who are ALL lightskinned), the only character of explicit non-white ethnicity is psyche (and she goes through her own racial changes, it is not ideal.)

rachel is very explicitly replacing the greek world, the culture, the heritage, with her modern, westernized one. she does not research or present greece as itself, so for many readers, their understanding of greece is explicitly what rachel is telling them. this serves to cover / obfuscate the actual history of the people rachel claims to be telling.

this is a great article that talks about it a little more but in short - there is a LOT of americanization in lore olympus, absolutely. but it's not solely americanized - it's more a western / white-fronting narrative, and that is concerning.

[elf-osamu]

“THE HAPPY MONARCH”

[ masterlist ] [ event ] [ reblogs are very appreciated ]

hurt/comfort, very slight angst & fluff, AU, romantic or platonic relationship, blade (hsr) x gn!reader

warning(s) : blade could be a bit ooc (i hope he isn't but i had to make him similar to the character in the fairytale </3);

word count : 2040 words

plot : “retelling of oscar wilde's fairytale ‘the happy prince’; blade is an immortal traveler who has seen his fair share of odd events when, one day, he meets the statue of a monarch — but is it really just a lifeless sculpture?”

a/n : this is for the masked fools' monthly event ! although this one-shot is heavily inspired from this fairytale, there are great differences between this fic and wilde's story. the original story follows the interactions between the statue of a deceased prince who has been seeing the suffering of the world for years and a swallow that is heartbroken.

in a long forgotten land there was a stunning statue made of pure gold.

it depicted a young adult who once was the personable and charming monarch of many people; they were known for their goodwill and kindness and, since their face had always been adorned with a welcoming smile, they had been the hope of their realm for centuries.

until, one day everything had abruptly changed for a choice they decided to make.

said statue — you stood above your town, on a tall column, greeting everyone with your warm presence and grinning to the passing travelers.

“they look like an angel”, the citizens commented: some were fascinated by your beauty and were confident in their future, reassured by the happy monarch; others said so regretfully, since their hearts were filled with resentment at the sight of such an ethereal statue, which had to just stand there to be appreciated while they were forced to continue their lives working non-stop.

“how could you know such a thing? you've never seen a true angel”, certain people muttered in indignation with a contemptuous look on their faces.

in another domain, a traveler with long raven hair had been disappointed by the one whom he had fallen in love with.

the traveler's name was blade and he was relatively known for his expeditions and encounters of every kind; he had mastered the grand art of the sword while searching for a purpose in his interminable existence. he wasn't someone who easily trusted others, he preferred to not get attached to people - but sometimes he had to have faith, to hope for the better.

along his journey, blade had found companions to spend the time with: they all had reunited in the same rural area, so they had decided to stick together for some time, resting from their last adventures that happened in a place quite distant from there.

since the new destination hadn't been chosen yet, they had stayed in a near village, helping the local people. blade wasn't quite fond of this idea; he had never used someone else's aid unless it was an extreme necessity and he usually had done everything on his own; he couldn't understand why he had to assist people who meant nothing to him. still, he carried out his duty without complaining.

as the time passed, he had spent many moments with a certain inhabitant; he had saved their skin multiple times, helping them with their obligations, from personal to professional matters.

he had fallen in love for the first time in his life, with that person representing the light at the end of the deep tunnel he had found himself in.

his companions had dismissed his feelings because, after all, he was a wanderer who sooner or later would have had to leave for another journey. “it's aimless to keep talking to them,” they had sighed many times, “they don't even reciprocate your feelings”.

but blade hadn't listened to them and so his comrades had departed for another adventure, leaving him in the village.

he had been afraid of admitting his love, which had grown in the last few months. said emotion was consuming his soul, making him crave the attention he needed. therefore the week following his companions' going away he had determinate to confront his feelings with that person.

“would you like to come away with me on my journey?” he had murmured to them one day after his confession, “i'd always be there for you”.

they had shaken their head. “my home is everything to me; upon your arrival i was glad to have new people in my village and i was more than content with your company, it meant a lot to me. yet, i've never deemed you as a long-lasting partner”.

because of that event, blade had become cold again and left immediately the settlement, looking for a new purpose.

since the city he wished to go was far too distant from him, he had determinated the stop for the night in a town which was nearer his position.

he traveled all day until he finally reached the small city. he had nowhere to go for the hours of darkness, so he walked on the roofs of house after house until he landed on a column near a vast and beautiful palace; on the column it stood a solemn, golden statue which seemed to gently greet him.

it had an affable smile plastered on its face and the statue's clothes resembled the ones of noble people — whoever was portrayed there, in such a way, must have been someone of grand significance.

“i'll sleep here,” blade muttered, situating himself at the sculpture's feet. it was of human height, but the top of the column was so fairly great that a few people could have rested there without feeling pressured.

as he was closing his eyes, he felt a drop of water fall on his neck, making him shiver. blade suddenly sat down and looked at the sky: there were no clouds nearby, but it seemed like it was raining.

“the weather is rather strange in this land, isn't it?” he asked to himself, now too unsteady to try to fall asleep. “should i find another place to rest peacefully?”

drop after drop fell on his head and he sighed in exasperation. he got up and was ready to look for another area when he raised his gaze and met your eyes, which were filled with tears; your golden skin was glowing under the moonlight, a sight that would have been pleasant if it weren't for that sorrowful look.

“who are you?” blade questioned you without thinking; puzzlement had made its way on his face and he had no idea what to believe anymore. could a statue truly cry tears?

“the happy monarch” you said in response, weeping again.

“then why are you crying? i couldn't fall asleep because of your tears”. his intentions weren't mean — his mind was just very tired from the long day.

you, the happy monarch, let out a bitter laugh. “i apologize for this. you see, many years ago i was a young member of royalty and i had always lived in the palace near this statue. in this building tears and pain aren't welcomed, only joy is allowed. i've spent most of my life there, happily joining my family on jolly occasions and laughing with my cousins without a care in the world. once i grew older, however, i doubted the way i was leading my kingdom: i couldn't go outside and meet my people — they only saw my face and heard about my temperament thanks to the artists who could leave the palace from time to time; century after century i wished to share my bliss with everyone, but my relatives had forbidden me to do so. they told me a legend about my kin: immortality ran through my family since the early ages and it was dearly preserved by my ancestors; however, they said that, if someone who was a member of royalty stepped outside of this great palace, they would have been transformed into gold, without giving me other details. i had listened to them for so long that, one hundred years ago, i decided to disobey them”.

you paused for a moment, choosing your next words carefully; it was hard to remember all the emotions you had felt in the past. “and upon seeing how much sorrow, which was something i had never experienced, was in the world, my body altered itself. i'm still a human, though my body is covered in gold and precious gems and, since they're so heavy, i'm stuck here, watching the suffering of the people i swore to protect”.

“i blame myself for not getting to know the truth as soon as i could, but it's useless to dwell in the past now. still, despite my condition, my only wish is to aid all these people”.

blade had remained silent the whole time, wondering what he could have said in a situation like that. he had promised to never help anyone anymore, yet he was there, feeling commiseration for the happy monarch who hadn't felt happiness for a century.

“how could you assist them when you are stuck on this pedestal?” the black-haired boy commented, trying to hide the thoughts that were spinning in his head.

“first thing first, to be able to get my true body back, someone needs to take the gold and the jewels out of my current form. it's not an easy job, for one has to meticulously sculpt my figure under the metal; so, before doing anything else, someone should extract the gems that cover this statue and give them to the ones in need”.

“your majesty, wouldn't that be considered faux philanthropy? you wouldn't change anything by just making them sell your valuable stones — sooner or later, they would be without money again”.

“it has been so long since someone called me that”, you laughed and your eyes shone under the moonlight. “in any case, yes, i agree with you, but i still don't help them by being here and doing nothing. if i want to meet my people, i must get out of this troublesome situation as soon as possible, so i can't be made of gold anymore”.

blade observed the night. “my destination is still far away, your majesty. i won't be here tomorrow.”

“then, could you stay one night with me and be my messenger? in that red building there is a family who has to pay rent due in two days and the parents aren't able to afford it, so take the emerald that is on my left shoulder and bring it to them”.

the man did as he was told and a warm feeling welcomed him in his chest at the sight of a family who seemed to rediscover happiness.

when he described said emotion to you, your smile looked bigger. “it's something very common among people, when they help someone. not everyone experiences it, but most people would say it's one of the nicest things in the world”.

many days passed and blade was still with you, the happy monarch; every night he gifted a jewel to those who needed it and then stayed near the statue's feet to rest. “i'm going to leave this town tomorrow”, he had said many times, but at the end of the day he continued to ask you what he could have done to be of use.

he had gotten to be acquainted with the happy monarch's presence: you two shared the burden of immortality, something which was the main cause of pain in your hearts; blade had told you some of his adventures, describing in great detail all the things that he had witnessed.

after a month, it was time to take off the gold leaf by leaf: a task of such importance required great resilience and self-control, but blade never complained and instead immediately took action.

you had given some of your gold to him on certain days, so he could have bought food and water for himself.

“how do you feel?” he asked every few hours to make sure he was doing everything properly without hurting your real body.

you lightly chuckled and always answered in the same way: “i feel... free. i can sense the soft air that caresses my skin”.

that process lasted for some time - until, it was finally done.

it felt like waking up from a long dream: your limbs were sore from the numbness that one hundred years had caused you and at first blade had to keep an arm on your waist to keep you balanced.

you grinned at him. “thank you, blade. now you're free to go and continue your journey; i'll stay here and build more practical resources for these people”.

the black-haired man shook his head and, for once, smiled back at you, it had been a long time since his face had welcomed a smile.

“no; i'll be here by your side, as long as time allows me to do so.”

perhaps, after so many centuries, he had found a place to belong.

[ do not copy, translate, repost, etc. | by @ elf-osamu ]

[lavenderand-vanilla]

Lately,I've seen a lot of people talking in a negative way about "the song of Achilles", which is okay. But there are some of them who had read the Iliad , or read it even in greek,and they start complaining that tsoa isn't good enough... Of course it is not good enough, if you compare it to one of the most famous literary works in human history and why do you even expect a retelling to be just as good as the original??

A few said that it seemed like a cheesy fanfiction. It's a retelling, every retelling is some kind of fanfiction, isn't it? It is also a retelling that talks about a love story that wasn't mentioned directly in the original work, so it should be predictable that I'll be "cheesy", simply bc the main idea isn't even the Trojan war, but Achilles' romance with Patroclus.

In the book,they were a lot of unlogical things here and there, Miller ignored a few historical facts to make the love story seem more real, instead of just showing it the way it was. Of course Achilles wasn't just as naive and sweet as in the book, and of course Patroclus wasn't just some good-hearted twink that didn't even know how to hold a sword. But the author just tried to make the characters fit into an actual love story. She changed a lot of stuff about their relationships with women too, to make the love story more understandable for someone in the 21th century. The truth is just that love was different back then, a man often had more than one lover and things weren't as rosy and red as shown in the book. She made them have a relationship that a gay couple would have nowadays, which is obviously some kind of unrealistic.

Personally, the book still means a lot to me, it is sweet, emotinal and very goodwritten ,(at least for a book that I've discovered from Tiktok). But the most important thing is, that it's the first book that really talked ,in such a direct way, about the romance between Achilles and Patroclus, instead of saying they were just friends, besties etc. The world has been trying to sleep on the fact that they were many queer couples in ancient history, and this book was a good try to change that. You can't expect it to be 100% realistic, bc' tbh, the characters wouldn't be even likeable if everything was just like it actually must have been.

[cowboyhorsegirl]

Why do you think the MCU made an ults adaptation instead of a 616 adaptation? I have some theories but lmk know what you think of this conundrum

This is such an interesting question!! I will preface this by saying that I haven't yet read a lot of Ults or 616, and a lot of what I've learned of canon has been gained through osmosis from other, much more knowledgeable people in the fandom (@sineala, I'd love to hear your take on this ask!). That being said though, I think the main reasons why the MCU was adapted primarily from Ults instead of from 616 was because:

Ults had less canon to work with than 616, so it's a bit easier to ascertain a linear narrative that hasn't been rewritten and retconned multiple times. (For example, in 616 Tony had originally helped found SHIELD; this was completely retconned later on.)

Ults isn't as fantastical as 616, or as we all say colloquially, Ults is the grittier, 'more realistic' version of events that happened in 616. This would be particularly beneficial for a live-action remake, where the commonly held industry thinking is that audiences don't have as high a capacity to suspend their disbelief as they might for animation or live theater. The realism of the medium would necessitate a more grounded comics canon to build off of.

Ults origin stories lend themselves to the strategic vision of MCU Phase 1 much better than 616 origins. I think this is most apparent with Steve's origin: in 616 he was discovered only by the Avengers whereas in Ults, Steve was found by SHIELD (though I believe some of the other Ultimates were also there). I imagine this version of events would be much easier to tweak so that each member of the MCU Avengers had their own separate movie establishing background and characterization before throwing them into a very busy ensemble cast.

I don't actually think that all of these reasons for choosing Ults as the main canon to base the MCU on ended up working in the MCU's favor though. Like, Iron Man 1 is clearly set within some sort of nebulous Middle Eastern conflict that the US is involved in, for a variety of reasons. This conflict would have been easily recognizable to American audiences in 2008: at the time, the US has been in war in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq since 2003. You don't have to waste precious movie minutes establishing a war for Tony to be making weapons for when American audiences are already primed to fill in the blanks if you give them the implication of a war in the ME. The setup of a vague Middle Eastern war acts as cinematic shorthand to establish Tony Stark's background and character to a broad audience, and to the many who hadn't read any Iron Man or Avengers comics, this was their first introduction to Tony Stark's origin story. Additionally, the setting acts as a plausible 1:1 retelling of Tony's original introduction in 616 (elements such as Yinsen, the life-threatening shrapnel to his chest, and Tony inventing the Iron Man suit instead of building weaponry for the terrorists who had taken him captive are all taken directly from his 1960s origin story), revamped for 21st century moviegoers by changing the indeterminate Southeast Asian war from the 1960s comics to an indeterminate Middle Eastern war for the MCU.

However, you literally never see MCU movies dedicate themselves to this level of realism again, for good reason. Whatever cultural shorthand you draw on by placing Tony Stark's weapons-manufacturing backstory in the context of an actual real-life geopolitical conflict also comes with the baggage of all the Islamophobia, xenophobia, and imperialism that comes with that conflict. In Iron Man 1, the inciting incident that causes Tony to want to halt SI's weapons production is the fact that his weapons are being used by the terrorists to harm American soldiers. But what about all the hundreds of thousands of innocent Middle Eastern people your weapons harmed and killed Tony?? What about them, huh?! What about the instability that America has wrought in the region, Tony, backing up political capital with firepower that YOU provided to them??

Immediately, the MCU backs off of America's actual real-life military operations as a basis for their fictional world. I like to think that they did this because they realized that it's very difficult to make your billionaire weapons-manufacturer superhero sympathetic in a world where both billionaires and the American military are coming under more scrutiny by more people every day. I'll guess that the real reason has to do with the fact that those story elements made it much harder to sell international audiences on the franchise.

It's frustrating too, because to this day I would say that Iron Man 1 is one of the best MCU movies out there, but in my opinion, the reasons for this aren't that IM1 was the most realistic or the most plausible or the most grounded superhero movie. What drew me to the MCU in the first place was the emotional depth of the characters and the stories, a depth that I think is best exemplified in Tony Stark. As the MCU moved forward and began to (but never fully) shed it's commitment to realism, the movies started to lose their ability to tell emotionally-compelling stories with high stakes that actually leave you in suspense of the ending. The fatal flaw of the MCU is in believing that audiences don't have the capacity to accept emotionality in stories that aren't limited to the bounds of our reality, when the whole point of a superhero story is to challenge ourselves to imagine more fantastical worlds than our own.

[trainsinanime]

When it comes to musing about the philosophy of fanfic, there's a huge problem because it's not clear what fanfic is. What's the first fanfic? Depends. Dante's Divine Comedy is absolutely not fanfic, and it also absolutely is fanfic, depending on who you ask and sometimes at what time of day you ask them. The "Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)" is fanfic, as is every modern staging of them, and also the original Shakespeare plays themselves, except all of that is ludicrous. And so on and on.

There are millions of different definitions, but for the purposes of simplicity, we can say that there are two: The broad definition and the narrow definition.

Broadly, something like fanfic has been around for as long as people have told stories. People tell stories, and others repeat them, retell them, and in retelling change them, or tell new stories with their favourite heroes. If you look into any of the ancient myths of ancient deities, they're always stories like that, created piece-wise over centuries, written by different people and often contradict each other. The legend of Arthur has been through numerous iterations, each adding their own spin on things. Most of Shakespeare's plays are based on older stories. Both English and German have plays about Doctor Faustus that are considered crucial pieces of literature that are completely different. And so on.

The narrow view of Fanfic is to look at the modern practice, which is generally believed to have started with Star Trek shipping and has found its current home mostly on Ao3. This form of fanfic is really its own genre of literature, with fixed tropes (there was only one bed), a heavy focus on romance instead of new adventures and so on. It exists in constant tension with copyright law. It's based (mostly) on commercial brands and commercial products and puts its own spin on them. We've all read and often written it.

Which view of fanfic you prefer depends on what you want to talk about. Both have their flaws.

The first version is so broad that it encompasses all of storytelling on some level. That can be the point, but it can also make it completely useless.

The second version on the other hand is too narrow and too limited. For example, there are plenty of Star Trek fans writing fanfic who aren't interested in, or even aware of, Spock/Kirk or other romance stuff. Even the simple question "is an abridged version of an anime a fanfic?" becomes hard and "hm it depends" if you see fanfic purely through the lens of Fanfiction.net and Ao3.

But ultimately it really depends. If you're talking about the trends on Ao3, then looking at the Ao3-specific definition makes a lot of sense. If you want to talk about whether fanfic is a legitimate endeavour, using the all-encompassing definition is correct. In the end the answer to "is this thing that doesn't claim to be a fanfic actually a fanfic" depends mostly on who's asking and why.

TL;DR: The statements "Dante's Divine Comedy is fanfic" and "Dante's Divine Comedy isn't fanfic" can and must coexist.