#and they were mostly really mean.

[bumfuzzled-bee]

Pat pat.

[bet-on-me-13]

Danny goes to a new School

So! When Danny got expelled from his High School, it wasn't really a big Suprise. He had missed for too many days or just walked out in the middle of Class, and his grades were lower than anyone else in the school. It was just a matter of time really.

When confronted by his Parents, he had just claimed that it was the constant ghost attacks getting to him (not a total lie) and that he was sorry.

Well, his parents tried to help.

After hearing about his supposed Fear of Ghosts, they decided that it was a good idea for him to go to school somewhere outside of Amity Park, so he could focus on his Schoolwork and not be distracted by the constant Attacks.

Of course no School wanted to accept a problem student like Danny, so they were forced to look into alternative schools to find one that would accept him. And they did! So they had Danny pack his bags, promise to call regularly, and shipped him off to his new School.

HIVE Academy.

[ciderjacks]

despite Laios low self esteem making him think that if he’d been eaten, Chilchuck and Marcille wouldn’t have helped Falin,

theres a small part of me that thinks the reason Chilchuck stayed with the party and went back in the dungeon in the first place was because he didn’t want to leave Laios alone. That Laios was moreso the reason he stayed.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[marshmallowgoop]

no thoughts just Heiji Hattori (HD)

[nonbinoclard]

harry with a tramp stamp has just been simmering on my brain’s back burner for weeks thank you @httpsawesome for the wonderful concept

[kill-your-darlings-art]

Whenever I download new brushes, I like to do little doodles to get a feel of whether I like them or not. Here's a collection of doodles of Ladybug from my most recent set!

For those curious, I use Clip Studio Pro, and the names of the brushes are written beside the doodle the were used on. Several have names in Japanese or Korean, so I did my best to write the characters correctly.)

[kamabokobun]

Have you considered:

Zelda but she comes back a little fucked up

The princess can have horns

as a treat

She was forced to eat cement when she was a worm

[neobastard]

🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨

tnt has officially put the void within on pause between chapters 7 and 8. according to their statement on the official twitter account, it's to "make exciting improvements based on your feedback".

all plot activities (void essence collection, battledome fights, volunteer shifts, and story updates) will be on hold, and voidworks specifically will be getting an update.

the void within is slated to return in early 2025, but the team's assured us that there will be plenty of holiday activities in the meantime.

i have absolutely no clue what this means for the future of the plot.

but i'm going to trust that tnt made this decision because they felt that the feedback they received required such a long hiatus to make changes around.

[peridots-pixiwolf]

[Start ID. A redraw of the official icons of the ten named slugcats from Rain World, arranged in two rows: Survivor, Monk, Hunter, Nightcat, and Gourmand in the first, Artificer, Rivulet, Spearmaster, Saint and Enot/Inv in the second. Each is drawn in roughly the same pose as in the original art and fitted with speculative interpretations of their biology, and the second image is a “dead” version of this. For example, all ten have slug-like rhinophores in place of ears, cuttlefish-like colorful eyes with strangely-shaped pupils, cephalopod-like beak "teeth", expressive barbels or oral tentacles at the corners of mouths, spiny radulas, and the frilly mantle fringes of sea slugs, though otherwise their faces are squishy, simple and mammalian-shaped.

Cream-colored Survivor and yellow Monk both share triangular, bicolored spots matching their eyes (which are tan and brown, and two shades of blue, respectively), small, bumpy fringes, and relatively neutral looks on their faces. Defensive-looking Hunter is mostly a dull orange-pink, though their blobby fringe is a more violent red and their back is purple and marred with lumps. Nightcat is navy blue and flecked with dots of yellow and teal, their rolled rhinophores are a lighter blue, and their shading fractures into stars in some places. Gourmand is almost uniformly tan, their wide, very ruffly white mantle fringe bordered by a spray of white spots, and their beak sticks out from either corner of their smile. Primarily red Artificer, snarling, has yellow markings of multiple sorts, a prominent yellow dewlap and their characteristic dark scar taking out a chunk of its face. Rivulet is a darker blue than usual, with long barbels, red gills and rings, countershading, and a cheerful expression, sticking out their radula. Spearmaster is purple with orange accents, eyes and spots, a large fringe and spines down their back. Saint’s green caryophyllidia are marked by small, yellow diamonds, and their long, thin radula extends far below them. Enot is decorated with mottled red stripes, blue patches, yellow stars, and an uneven and almost cartoonish imitation of blush, though generally the same deep blue as Nightcat, a passive or almost slightly smug look on their face and their rolled rhinophores out to either side.

In the second image, nine of the slugcats’ eyes are crossed out, indicating that these are death icons. They look fairly the same, with mostly expression differences. Survivor is caught in the beginning of a threat display, a karma flower sprouts from Monk’s side, Hunter is burdened with overgrowing, purple and blue rot, Nightcat’s rhinophores are pinned back, and Gourmand looks mildly disheartened. For the final row, Artificer bites its radula between small plumes of smoke, Rivulet drops their expression, Spearmaster looks very startled, Saint looks almost entirely the same besides half-open eyes and their markings greater in number, and Enot grins confusedly. End ID]

If you'll excuse the unusually lengthy ID: the arena meme introduced by @pansear-doodles at long last after a nearly year-long wip status (or, rather, finished a month ago today to honor my own first time playing it!)

Design notes and shout-outs under cut! :]

The following people are some of those who’ve inspired my designs most since I started this eight months ago (or just inspired me to get a little weirder with slugcat biology), among many others for sure, and I thank them for it–but this is simply to bring attention to artists I find cool, and in no way an obligation to interact or anything :]

> @saturncoyote , @carpsoup , @charseraph , @gallusgalluss , @bitsbug , @dopscratch , and @0hmanit (and a special mention to dddeerbo and hunterlonglegs, who’ve since deactivated)!

Survivor: Surprisingly the hardest to pin down the colors for, since nothing with its sibling's palette seemed to match up right (I did have to add in a little blue somewhere for Monk, the beginning of making it clear how much I’m simply going based off of vibes for the colors of scug innards). I consider them, Monk and Gourmand to be part of the same gene pool of slugcats, and even possibly the same colony even if the latter isn't really related, so took a bit of Gourmand's coloring and fit them in with their inspiration: Goniobranchus verrieri. They serve as a bit of an introduction to my ideas of scug traits (i find it really fun how many people have thought to add so many silly sluglike fixtures of biology completely independent of me, buuut here I’m mostly talking about species variation), and like in-game they’re pretty average! They, Monk and Hunter have a couple scars sourced from a piece of Joar's concept art that I'm failing to find, those across the bridge of the nose, under the eyes, and across the rhinophores, respectively, and my Survivor interpretation features many on the back of the neck, as a result of survived lizard bites.

Monk: Their coloring is primarily based off the fact that I associate them with blue fruits, honestly, a bit because I was compelled to establish a familiarity with Rivulet, and lastly inspired by the spots of Goniobranchus kuniei (and geminus, less important to me as one of my characters is a kuniei instead, but more fitting). Between the yellow + blue and the circular marking in the center of their face, they’re meant to bear a little resemblance to an iterator that shares similarities with the characterization I’ve given them, and similar coding of her sibling can be seen on Survivor’s markings around the eyes. As both a “default” slugcat and one whose campaign I haven’t played, though, I can’t say I have much more to point out about em.

Hunter: The whole rot thing made for a really fun time drawing them, and while the color change on their back is a result of this, it’s also an excuse to relate them to Babakina festiva, arguably my favorite sea slug (mostly for sentimental purposes). And to Spearmaster, a fellow messenger slugcat, and it serves as a gradient between Hunter’s pink and the “traditional” color of Rot seen in the DLLs. Aside from their affliction, they’d actually be the plainest in terms of design, as they don’t have any patterns or quirks of body type, just the red + purple and strange lumps + possible malnutrition. I can’t remember if NSH had created them in particular or just...caught + released or something, but it probably wouldn’t be strange for a lab-grown slugcat to be simple like that.

Gourmand: Like the two above, they’re rather plain in terms of coloring and adaptation, and like the two above, I find that fun. I decided it would be nice to avert the “all slugcats being of the same body type, and Gourmand’s out of place as the exception” thing by just...adding more fat to all of them, really. I did want to emphasize their sheer bulk even so, both fat and muscular (not like I couldn’t have still gone further with it, of course, but slugcat anatomy can be a little obfuscating sometimes, and they were intended to look rather plush considering personal size headcanons and therefore the lack of proper gravity), and the thick and flounced mantle looked like a good addition, as per their sea slug Glossodoris hikuerensis. Unlike Survivor and Monk, I didn’t attempt to hold their resemblance to any particular other character (which means a little less to balance out the “default gene pool” thing), so those are all the design notes I have for em.

Artificer: The second slugcat I’ve ever played, or finished the campaign of, my favorite for at least a long time, and the first thing I did was give them yellow accents, the shape of which have troubled me slightly (not quite like the spots or stripes of the others). They’re both a little more appealing and more explosive-looking to me, and considering how early on I played Arti, actually present in some of my older art. It does give them a little resemblance to Saint (completely intentional, two slugcats with strange relations to karma), as well as the fact that its radula is green for familiarity with one of its children (at some point it was going to have all-green markings, even!). I’m generous with their scars, partly because it was fun to overemphasize the one on their face and partly because it does seem like a reckless slugcat, on top of the dangers of its explosive abilities–I’ll probably just keep adding more forever. Mostly-red sea slugs aren’t too common, but Hexabranchus sanguineus works for sure. The ridged, yellow dewlap can expand for combustion purposes, or something along those lines. Arti’s where I began experimenting with a lot of the mildly-offkilter features seen in my interpretation of slugcats, as they’ve once again been a favorite from the start.

Rivulet: I've obviously given other slugcats spots, deeply enjoy the bubbly-soda markings of other peoples' slugcats, and thought seal riv would be cute. Despite not too closely resembling it, they've been government-assigned Hypselodoris bennetti, for color reasons and for a couple sentimental ones. Originally, the colors of every scug were meant to match up with the custom colors I gave them at the beginning of their campaigns, (though Arti, Gourm and Spearmy are the only three who actually apply here, since I've only played through half the slugcats: I gave arti the yellow as mentioned above, gourm brown eyes and spearmy light pink spears, furthered by the outskirts pearl accompanying me and that palette all the way to moon. Tolerance training for eternity in hell cause I already knew about the maroon pearl quest). I initially gave them the colors of the bi flag for fun... but with the limited palette of this image, I was left without pink for a while and decided to see how they'd look in red. I then realized how they now wonderfully matched Moon, and besides, red's a sort of camouflage in deep water! As a side-note, the difference between their eyes and those of others always bothered me a little for anatomical purposes, and the cephalopod eyes were probably influenced by this!

Spearmaster: Inspired as much as possible by @notyourfunnyman ’s wonderful spearmy: designed in a way that helps it fit in with scavengers, at least between the long sensory tentacles, big ruff, back spines and slightly thin/distended anatomy, a form of defensive mimicry. I always had annulate rhinophores in mind, for a little diversity sure, but mostly because the shape reminds me of radio antennae and communication towers (seems fitting for the comms array and being a messenger slugcat)! I started searching for a real-life slug to give them just by looking up their rhinophore shape...and was met immediately and coincidentally with annulate-topped nudibranchs that fit them more perfectly than I could've imagined: Flabellina and surrounding clades, I think Paraflabellina ischitana works very nicely. The orange was completely unplanned, but there wasn’t a place for light pink among the other slugcats’ palettes, and importantly it likens them to both Hunter and Seven Red Suns a little more.

Saint: I am very much a non-furred slugcat enjoyer, with respect to those who aren’t, so figuring out the only visibly furred slugcat was an interesting challenge. I’ve decided that they likely have other, milder adaptations for help in the cold, mainly just more efficient fat storage, and what looks vaguely like fur is instead a bunch of tubercles (called caryophillia, for the second reminder out of three). Their inspiration doesn’t have these, however, Miamira sinuata’s numerous yellow and blue spots (not to mention...whatever’s going on with that shape) and general effect of being the only really green nudibranch I could find were probably perfect for a strange green echo. Not pictured, but their beak-teeth are tiny and flat to make a surface for grinding soft food against with the lack of a functioning radula, which is tipped with a specialized spiny “grapple-hook” for better traction/grip (not to mention the numerous little teeth running down the whole thing).

(Best part of hiding this under a readmore means edits will be seen by all reblogs, I'm mostly sure, because I completely forgot to mention! The spots on their forehead are simple eyes. Their camera eyes appear closed in-game, I like to believe their complex eyesight is rather poor anyways or otherwise reason that they aren't seeing out of those, and while this was far from her REASON for attunement with the world, it does help compensate for mainly viewing it through a canvas of simple light and dark. This, and the fact that their swapped-out "fur" is not only to commit to a lack of hairs but contributes to sensory input!)

Nightcat/Enot: I guess you could say I found the “these two are technically the same person” compelling. (E.g. similar colors, both very strange and enigmatic, and Enot/Inv/Sofanthiel’s remark during the dating sim about getting removed from Arena Mode.) I doubt they’re the only two slugcats in their body, considering humans with DID tend to have more than a few (and I find it very funny that a slugcat bearing resemblance to Nightcat appears in Gourmand’s ending. They’re allowed in the colony and Enot isn’t </3), and I have to credit @faelingdraws ’s art for being what convinced me on it! Their design inspirations come down to trying to balance a few different ideas: making the patterns and palettes of both look oddly similar (special mention to the stars, since those are fun to draw), basing them off of Felimare sechurana and juliae respectively, using blocks of color with the same placement as in Enot’s official art, and specifically making Enot look...biologically reasonable and imperfect, whilst also clearly trying to imitate human displays of emotion (what with...the eyes and blush on that one piece of official art).

Lastly, here’s just a lineup with notes on body shape and size. Most of the nicknames (existing to give a little more space, that’s all) are obvious, and while I can’t remember why I shortened Nightcat to Nox, it is in honor of my friend by the same nickname :]

[dykedvonte]

Why do you think did Curly let Jimmy go before the crash? I've seen the theory Curly briefly thought about crashing too but didn't expect Jimmy to go through with it

I generally believe it was shock and a bit of denial.

It’s the sort of thing where Curly knew Jimmy enough to know he blows up at things but he never would’ve expected him to go through with something so crazy. He gives Jimmy way too much benefit. It’s just his nature and the dynamics he has with Jimmy. They have a stable relationship as friends but it’s stabilized by the unhealthy toxic aspects that keep him in it. He’s like this with Anya, taking the gun is something he really shouldn’t have kept off the record, so is Swansea’s feigned hostility toward Daisuke. He doesn’t want to get people in trouble and doesn’t want to believe anyone would cause trouble other than to themselves. He’s a very lenient man.

I think the words were hollow in his head. Said but not really meant like all the times Jimmy lashes out and says something cruel to him or others. He never means it, if he did why would he still be Curly’s friend? Curly’s head wasn’t in the right space in that moment, he just got through panicking with Anya and if the sound design is anything to go by, was panicked and preoccupied going to confront Jimmy. I mean, the flash of the warning signs before he runs back are identical to the dissociative episode of sort he has when going to talk to Jimmy to do his Psyc eval.

There is this sort of assumption in fanon that Curly was the idealic person for the job and simply failed. None of them were the idealic people to be there, it’s Curly’s entire concern with the ladder he chose. I see more interpretations of him being purposefully ignorant where I see him as just always looking the wrong way or not in a place where he can see it. There’s something different about seeing something than being told about it in the human mind. It may just be the psych student in me but Curly def has some sort of cognitive dissonance just like Jimmy but when it comes to his role as a Captain vs who he is.

They blur in his head to where if you ask him if he was acting as a Captain or a friend or himself to his crew he couldn’t answer. Not with confidence even if he did. There are many times we see that Curly himself is not in the right headspace to lead the Tulpar and that’s outside of anything with Jimmy. He’s spacey, he’s not sleeping, he’s deeply unhappy with himself and life. It’s why there’s believability he crashed the ship. Maybe the others saw it, or maybe Jimmy heard enough of it to spin it in a way that made Curly seem suicidally depressed.

So the tdlr is I think it wasn’t so much letting Jimmy go, more so not seeing the severity of what he was allowing to transpire. In his mind it’s just another one of Jimmy’s bluffs, cruel words, off words but just words. Jimmy rarely ever acts, why would he now? Maybe he’s never seen it because Jimmy hides those actions? Either way, he just never thought he’d really do it.

[mira0000000-blog]

metal help me understand csp

MOSQUITO ☝️

[erinwantstowrite]

why are people saying Bruce was a teen when he started fostering Dick? he was in his early twenties

[mockiery]

Once Upon A Time 3x05 "Good Form" my beloved, I know the text and shots and scene transitions directly parallel Hook saving David's life to Killian's loss of his brother, and Killian's pained expressions of seeing David succumb more and more to the same poison Liam did. Killian's insistence David tell his family, give them the chance to say goodbye that Killian didnt have with his brother. Of Killian himself sayinf David reminded him of Liam, his canonical hero. I know the ep's dialogue speaks of Killian's want to be seen as a man of honor, to be that man of honor.

And I know Killian would absolutely have been a deflective ass with the "I didn't do it for you" to David about saving his life, bantering teasingly that he did it for Emma like David has accused all of his actions to get to and be at Neverland as - just a selfish attempt to have Emma.

And I know Killian's half-joking flirtation with Emma later with "Is that all your father's life is worth to you?" is in character bc for his entire presence on the show previously he has used compliments of himself and flirtatious remarks as deflection, jokes, and to be actively antagonistic/inflammatory/annoying/playful.

I know all of this. I know this is all perfectly in character and the nonspoken motives informed by the flashbacks to his past and his performance are deeply in character. But christ alive I wish that a tiny little line would've been added in somewhere that made it clear that his motivations in this ep and the Neverland arc as a whole weren't just about Emma bc it feels like the writers partially forgot this in 3a, despite the strength of this episode and all its parallels. They say characters' feelings out loud or allude to them more directly in dialogue all the time like pleeeeeeease, you could've made it a lil more obvious it's not solely bc of Emma like. i just wish it wasn't easily misread if u didn't read into it deeper with Killian's characterization, beyond his contradicting words

[taraxippos]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.