#greek myths discourse

[anistrange]

You Know...?

Imagine being a teenager living on an island where a idiot king like Polydectes forcefully tries to marry your mother Danaë and making impossible the live of your adoptive parents unless you accomplish a series of task that involve your death; with a sheer of luck you get rid of Medusa but then you have to rescue a princess whose mother is a pain in the ass from a sea monster, later, fighting the consort of said princess who doesn't give two shits about the well-being of Andromeda, and then rescuing your mother from Polydectes and thanking your adoptive parents with a powerful gesture of giving to them the crown of the island for the Tumblrinas to imagine you as a raging asshole and wanting you dead because D A D D Y Ovid and your pop mythology authors are always right. What a bummer.

[anistrange]

It's like they can't write something original of Perseus that involves Ovid forcefully. 😫🥴

"Perseus was such a coward, he killed Medusa while she was asleep!!!!!" Good for him. Work smarter not harder

[morrigans-umbrella]

putting my english major to work

AKA

unit 919 favourite (semi popular so you’re not forced to google them all) classics headcanons

starting off strong with morrigan. for reasons i hope are evident i think she is absolutely a gothic girlie, she’s probably got an affinity for poe. i’d say her favourite is the raven, though unlike most poe fan girls i don’t see her as someone who is able to yap endlessly about why she likes him. she’s quite reserved with her interests after all. i imagine she’s capable of giving solid but simple reasons to justify herself when asked (pressed) by her friends but otherwise keeps her thoughts internal.

cadence, this might be a hear me out, has an adoration for oscar wilde. my first thought was dracula actually but as someone who is perpetually cursed to be forgotten i think she’d enjoy the way wilde writes. she finds society frivolous and rather stupid, and wilde is prompt to agree with her on this. i’d say her favourite text is the importance of being earnest, as it’s possibly the most ridiculous piece of nonsense ever, entirely on purpose.

hawthorne was a hard one, as i don’t think he willingly reads anything that he could preemptively deem “boring”. i had to shake my brain like a maraca to try think of something easy and entertaining enough to keep his white boy adhd brain locked in long enough for him to intake it. the conclusion drawn was that i think he could survive through three men in a boat (sincerest apologies she’s a little niche). i found it funny enough, i think hawthorne is capable of switching off his brain and blindly enjoying it.

anah. well. i adore her greatly and i was a little in between. i think she’d ADORE little women. i think she has incredibly strong opinions on all the film remakes and could give you an extensive breakdown of the pros and cons. however. i also think the only CORRECT choice with her is pride and prejudice. she seems like she enjoys a good love story that has her giggling and kicking her legs it just befits her.

now, archan. if you ask he will lie to your face, he will very confidently say the most pretentious book he can think of. this is because his favourite classic dodie smith’s i capture the castle. which isn’t embarrassing by any means, but it is a very silly romance novel (i am strongly passionate about it). i think he likes to read casually more than obsessively and it’s a relatively easy read, and if you get the right copy the cover makes you look very distinguished in public.

mahir was harder as i had to test my knowledge of various translations across the world. he’s definitely a poetry type, i think he likes collections of poems as opposed to large brick novels. poems are more entertaining to translate and test your skill far more. i think he’d like mahmoud darwish (who is unfortunately NOT a classical author but i wanted to bring him up anyway), so i’m marking his as leaves of grass by walt whitman. which i strongly recommend to all poetry enjoyers out there. he definitely would get into translation purism beef online if he could. i know it in my heart.

so francis was kind of hard. i was actually tempted to be sneaky and pick an old recipe book as his favourite without specifying BUT i concluded through my non biased perfectly objective opinions he’s an agatha christie enjoyer. poisoning and cooking are sort of born of the same mother. to me at least. his favourite is dumb witness, as it features a brilliant dog. full disclaimer that’s the one i am presently reading, so i don’t know everything that occurs in it, but i know in my heart he would enjoy this.

thaddea was hard, man. i expended my one easy ish to read comedy on hawthorne and i refuse to repeat. then i remembered treasure island. which i also have not finished (someone stole my copy when i was 50 pages in). i don’t actually think she banks too hard on humour to get through books, she more so is interested in action and adventure. i actually think thaddea enjoys to read, she just has a hard time keeping herself focussed and finding the time to sit down and enjoy it, so she probably leans toward audiobooks.

lambeth. well. i opted against the one i initially was thinking of not because it wouldn’t fit just because i considered the discussion that surrounds it and concluded i didn’t feel compelled to dig into that here. she’s definitely a prose enjoyer, she has probably the most “refined” taste save for maybe mahir (i like to believe they talk books together frequently). after much consideration i concluded on black beauty. on account of the fact that it’s my (second) favourite and i think she would appreciate how gorgeous the craftsmanship is.

[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

[luckthebard]

Genuinely confused as to how so much of the fandom watched the first 2 CR campaigns and Calamity and yet still ended up in a “Ludinus is right let’s kill all the gods” position. Like it’s baffling to me how much content/context people have just decided to completely forget? We had 2 full campaigns of very positive interactions with the gods and the moment there’s some hypothetical and interesting musing and speculation about their roles in the world from a more disconnected place we’re just throwing that out the window?*

Tbh the number of people who watched episode 4 of Calamity and still saw Asmodeus as sympathetic or having a legitimate point is unsettling to me, but while that’s a related issue it’s not quite the same conversation.

But like legitimately how did we so quickly make a hard turn from “The Stormlord teaches his barbarians to use the power of friendship, he’s a funny kindergarten teacher” memes to…this.

*(This is not, btw a comment on the characters having philosophical debates in-world because I think those are interesting and on-theme for the campaign and are also nearly always concluding with “our personal relationship to individual gods and feelings about them are irrelevant actually, the people trying to destroy them are doing wider harm and are in the wrong and must be stopped.” I’m actually loving the engagement with this by the characters in-universe but the fandom is exhausting me.)

[sarafangirlart]

"But whose viewpoints reveal a man who is not, in fact, a hero at all."

Did they tell you that? I can understand Medusa hating him but Danaë and Andromeda?

In this book Danaë is a complete moron who thought telling her son that his father is Zeus is a good idea and getting shocked when he develops an ego problem, she even babies him when he does something wrong but sure this is feminist. In mythology she is a perfectly capable and loving mother who managed to hide Perseus from Acrisius for 3-4 years, you can imagine where Perseus gets his cunning from.

In the book Andromeda is kidnapped and raped by Perseus… just… why? Even if you go with the version that Perseus only rescued her to marry her there is literally no indication that she didn’t consent. Hell in Euripides’ Andromeda she chooses living with Perseus over her parents, it’s such an interesting story about making your own life choices regardless of what your parents say and that story is thrown away for this? To have one of the few female characters in mythology that had a happily ever after get raped to show that men=bad?

Oh Clair Heywood is making a book on why Perseus is actually a villian and not a hero.

Oh Clair Heywood NOT AGAIN. 😭

One thing I've noticed about heroes and myths is that it's really necessary to focus on the ACTUAL ancient GREEK sources. Because if we look at Ovid's versions, many of the heroes become total jerks. So, I guess the same happens with Perseus, I will try to check it later, but I have the feeling that in "ancient Greek imagery" he was a good hero, VS whatever later version we can get of him.

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

I keep seeing people talking about some discourse related to Odyssey going on Twitter. And one part of me is curious to know what the discourse is about, while the other smarter, wiser, and more jaded part of me is like, "We both know it is about something so unreasonably ridiculous and stupid it will kill our brain just acknowledging it. Let's just pretend they are discoursing over who has the flattest ass in Epic and call it a day."

[necrotic-nephilim]

i recently remembered DickTim Week 2024 is happening very soon and i looked at the prompts again to see if i could get anything out for it and. the Hades & Persephone AU prompt for day 1 has got me really thinking so here's a vague concept i plan to write.

i've been pretty burnt out on modern Hades & Persephone retellings because of how they always seem to fall into the same generic "innocent wide-eyed girl runs from her evil mean mother into the arms of a dark mysterious man because actually she went willingly and chose to marry him" which has gotten repetitive for my tastes. (for clarity i don't care if this retelling is your cup of tea personally, so long as you're not actively trying to rewrite the original myth and claim untrue things about it, if this is your favorite flavor i sincerely hope you enjoy the buffet i just have little interest in it since it feels overdone for me and exhausted of it's supposed commentary atp)

but? but. biblically accurate Hades & Persephone AU has me all kinds of interested. because wait listen so hear me out right. Hades!Dick and Persephone!Tim, obviously. i feel it'd be more loosely inspired by with themes and imagery (though playing with death and nature powers could be interesting, i haven't decided) rather than explicitly making them gods and all. but. something dark and fucked up where Dick and Bruce are especially estranged. maybe to do with Jason's return, maybe to do with them just clashing and having their usual explosive arguments. and Bruce knows the peace needs to be kept, if he and Dick are at odds then everyone starts to pick sides and things just fracture so he needs a peace offering.

and the peace offering is Tim.

Bruce (the stand-in for Zeus) offers up Tim. agrees to have Tim move to Bludhaven and be Dick's... whatever Dick wants him to be. knowing that with the implication comes the likelihood of Dick grooming Tim. and Tim has no real say and is hesitant to put up a real fight. he doesn't want this, he knows what this is going to imply Dick will do to him, but he also knows if he says no things have the possibility to just... fall apart. so he's the unwilling bride, dragged off to the metaphorical underworld (Bludhaven) with Dick, away from his family, his friends, the life he built.

and on the flip side, i think weirdly enough, your best pick for the Demeter stand-in is *Jason*. just, hear me out on that. not necessarily on the side of it being motherly, but on Jason being just estranged enough from the Batfamily to be the one willing to call it out for being bad and wrong and raising bloody hell to get Tim back. maybe it's because Jason wants Tim for himself, maybe it's truly out of a concern for Tim to have autonomy, i'm toying with the idea of it primarily being Tim's POV and him genuinely not knowing which of these is true. (and the truth possibly ends up being a complicated middle ground) and because i like Helena, i think you can use her as the Hekate stand in, the one who strikes a tentative alliance with Jason and tries to go find Tim and bring him back. Tim stuck with Dick, getting groomed and hyperaware of it, possibly even getting fucked the whole time as well, knowing he can't go back without causing massive issues for Dick and Bruce because well, Bruce did promise him to Dick. so he has to adjust his whole life, try to figure out being a vigilante in this new city with Dick breathing down his neck the whole time.

and then much like the ending of the myth, a sort of compromise is struck that's a shaky deal for everyone involved. Tim is put on an essential timeshare, going back and forth between Gotham, where he has friends and family and a support system, then getting dragged right back to Bludhaven with Dick in this brutal cycle that he slowly gets used to and stockholm'd into even liking it. Dick isn't so bad, once he gets used to the quirks of their unbalanced 'relationship'. the sex is even something he can adjust to as well. not quite a happy ending but one that sits in this realistic grey area that becomes Tim's life.

i will write this, eventually, but i don't know if i'll get to it before DickTim Week ends so by posting the idea i'm essentially putting it out into the world so the peer pressure holds me accountable. i just. really like the potential of making Hades/Persephone AUs as fucked up as they can be simply by adhering to the source material and making it a raw story of being stolen away and forced to like this new home you didn't ask for.

also a less fleshed-out aspect of this idea i have ties into Persephone becoming the Queen of the Underworld when she's taken and how the transition from Kore to Persephone could be reflected in Tim. how he makes the best of the worst situation and becomes something far more dangerous and dark when he's in Bludhaven, possibly takes on a new vigilante name/identity and leans into the worst quirks of his personality he tries to tamper because there's no point in not going full tilt Obsessively Weird if he has no choice anyway and it being one small way he takes back his autonomy, and that inevitably making Dick *more* into him, because he gets to see Tim finally just. let loose.

[sarafangirlart]

It’s amusing to me how ppl say it’s “unrealistic” that disabled ppl exist in fantasy. Meanwhile the ancient Greeks (who were violently ableist mind you) didn’t find it unrealistic that Hephaestus as disabled (wether by birth or injury) not a single source states Apollo heals him or anything like that, he’s allowed to exist as he is, even having epithets of his disability. They had no issue viewing a literal deity as disabled but noooo you can’t have your dnd character use a wheelchair that’s just unrealistic!!!

[anistrange]

Also, Διονύσιος or ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ looks more eye pleasing than Dphioppsisns 😅 cute drawing, but I think corrections can be made 😁

Part of my original art series “Interstellar Olympus”, a reimagining of Greek mythology combined with elements of space.You can purchase prints or wall tapestries of this series at my Online Store

[idamante]

I can tell who's new to studying Greek mythology if they only care about 'shipping siblings'

[fluffypotatey]

It's kind of funny to not ship a Greek relationship due to incest. You do you, but have you seen "canon"

oh buddy…..my sweet anon, you recite the deep magic to me?

[gilbirda]

[Creator] writing a story based on a myth: Hey this is based on a myth but is my own take, I'm not trying to adapt it or anything.

Assholes on the internet: TOP 10 WORST DEPICTION OF THIS MYTH -> Number one, Story by [Creator]... clearly they don't understand the source material *scoff*

[hecates-corner]

Bit of a random side note but personally don't love using gay as an umbrella term, I think queer is more open. But that might just be me. I agree that we shouldn't be assigning gods sexualities.

Totally hear that! I suppose it does depend on the person.

I use “queer”, personally, but often refer to myself or other mono-homo-attracted people as “gay”. For example, as a lesbian, I am often labeled as “gay”, in short. It all depends on comfort!

But yes! I see a lot of discourse on if Apollo was pansexual or bisexual, or if Athena was aromantic, or if Artemis was a lesbian, and at some point, it simply gets confusing. The gods never labeled themselves, and did as (and who) they pleased. Who is to say what they were/are?

Labels in general, IMO, should one day fizzle out so we may simply be an Us, and not have to divide ourselves based on differences. Like who you like, do who you do, and let that be enough. That mindset has been fed into the concept of the gods, for me.

Thank you for submitting! I adore hearing your thoughts!

[pirunika]

thinking abt how to write Eos and Tithonus romance......bc Tithonus is a black man, this a depiction of their son Memnon i love this art btw how he s gazing at sunrise, as a son of Dawn

um so Eos is white.. well mediterranean or greek..or anatolian at best. Maybe minoan origins (she s a titan goddess but i mean in looks)

Her mother, Theia is very much against this marriage bc she dislikes humans (in my version) but i realized as she s also white she will come across racist 😳 maybe i will change things a bit....

[anistrange]

Pretty good insight of the myth I don't realize, you have great attention to detail :o

“one must imagine sisyphus happy” no, one must imagine him a stubborn asshole who thinks he’s smarter than everyone including the gods. i’ve heard plenty of versions where hades gives him the CHOICE to roll the boulder up the hill; it’s the only way he’s getting into elysium. if he wants to walk away, fine! he’ll just be relegated to the asphodel meadows (the “nosebleed/overflow” section of the underworld where all the normies end up).

and sisyphus, well, he’s a goddamn king. he cheated death! twice! a simple boulder is no match for his mighty wit.

hades’ punishment isn’t “you are forced to perform an unwinnable task forever”. it must fit sisyphus’ crimes. his hubris. any sane person, and quite a few insane ones, would spend a while pushing the boulder, maybe a few hours, maybe a few months, and eventually realize it was futile. an eternity in a peaceful meadow, not alone, not tortured, seems agreeable. but not to sisyphus. no, he’s too famous, too smart for that. he’ll get it to the top this time. this time. this time for sure.