#it varies from person to person of course

[brisim-claimhte]

ancient greek society didn't have the same concepts of sexuality that we have now, it's incorrect to describe virgin goddesses like artemis and athena as lesbians, BUT it's also not wholly accurate to describe them as aromantic/asexual, it's more complex than that

okay so fun fact, for Athena and Artemis (and Hestia and Hippolytus) it is accurate to describe them as aro/ace!

The only time in myth when a persons sexuality (as we know the concept) is described is when mentioning their lack of it.

For Artemis, Athena, and Hestia, HAph lines 6-24, describe them as beyond the powers of Aphrodite, which within the context of this specific poem refer to lust/love.

For Artemis, Sappho fragment 44a, states that Eros never crosses her path/comes near her.

For Hippolytus, Hippolytus lines 75-85, describes how he can enter a meadow no one else dares to because it is only for those who are naturally chaste, aka naturally do not experience lust/love.

And for Artemis and Athena specifically, their lack of attraction is key to their roles as goddesses. According to Walcot (1984), what the Athenians feared was not women themselves, but rather their unrestrained sensuality. It was believed that their inability to control their attraction led them to make irrational decisions and therefore they could not be trusted with leadership roles, participate in warfare, etc. which were typically male spheres.

But because Artemis and Athena do not experience attraction at all, they can hold domain over typically male spheres, because it does not interfere with their decision making. This is why Athena can be the goddess of strategy and wise council, how Artemis can be goddess of the hunt.

So not only are they aro/ace, but it plays a huge role in both their depictions in myth and cult worship!

myths have lots and lots of retellings, there isn't one singular "canon", but we can try to distinguish between older and newer versions and bewteen greek and roman versions

okay so this is more complicated than there is or isn't a canon. Canon does exist, but its a spectrum starting from Homeric epic all the way to the likes of Lycophron's Alexandria. High school and introductory courses at university will often just teach you that there isn't a canon because the level of context needed to understand how it works requires literal years of studying. But a quick summary is:

Homeric epic was taught in schools, and poets competed to have the most accurate recitation of the songs. Once it was written down by Homer it became codified, and we can safely presume it didn't change much because of said competitions of accuracy.

Next there's hymns. These were intended to accurately depict the gods, (hence the invocation to the muses/Apollo at the start which is also seen in epic) but could vary region to region as they also served to link regions to mythic events (see hymn to Demeter linking the story of the kidnapping of Persephone to Eleusis). Here we start to see some variation but the general stories and themes remain the same.

Next there's Athenian tragedies, which were kind of like modern historical fiction (the Greeks viewed myth as their history. Herodotus, Thucydides etc. treated mythic events and figures the same as ones we know to be real). While they were fairly faithful to the myths they were changed to reflect the socio-cultural context of Athens at that time. They were also used by Athens as propaganda to promote their imperial hegemony.

Now we start getting into small stories that are local to specific regions, these are often foundation myths of cult sites, or cities. So like how in Libya, Athena is the daugher of Triton, to link her to the lake Triton and therefore make that region more important.

And finally, we have the likes of the Alexandria. Ptolemaic poetry especially is renowned for having the most obscure and niche references and stories possible in order to flex the author's understanding of myth, as well acting as a way for the reader to distinguish themselves as learned. Education was super important in this context because it acted as a unifier for the many ethnic groups within the court setting that would not consider themselves as similar otherwise (Strootman (2010) is a great crash course on this topic).

most of what you know about sparta is probably incorrect

Paul Cartledge's books are a great place to start learning about Sparta!

reading/watching retellings is not a substitute to reading the original myths, read the iliad! read the odyssey! i know they may seem intimidating, but they're much more entertaining than you may think

Fagles' translations of the Iliad and Odyssey are available free online. They are the OG translations created specifically to make the stories accessible to the general public, and were so incredibly done they were also adopted by academia! They are also free in audiobook format on youtube!

Theoi.com is a digital encyclopaedia of people from mythology. It provides a summary of the persons exploits, as well as direct quotes from the sources. Please be aware that it is incomplete, and therefore is just a starting point for further research.

Perseus Tufts Library has free translations of the original myths, as well as the original Greek. But again its incomplete.

Steven Fry's books are great entry points, as they accurately adapt the original stories into modern language! Mythos covers the gods, Heroes covers the heroes pre-Trojan saga, Troy covers the Iliad, and Odyssey is self explanatory.

a quick psa to anyone recently getting into greek mythology and is a victim of tumblr and/or tiktok misconceptions:

-there is no shame in being introduced to mytholgy from something like percy jackson, epic the musical or anything like that, but keep in mind that actual myths are going to be VERY different from modern retellings

-the myth of medusa you probably know (her being a victim of poseidon and being cursed by athena) isn't 100% accurate to GREEK mythology (look up ovid)

-there is no version of persephone's abduction in which persephone willingly stays with hades, that's a tumblr invention (look up homeric hymn to demeter)

-as much as i would like it, no, cerberus' name does not mean "spot" (probably a misunderstanding from this wikipedia article)

-zeus isn't the only god who does terrible things to women, your fav male god probably has done the same

-on that note, your fav greek hero has probably done some heinous shit as well

-gods are more complicated than simply being "god of [insert thing]", many titles overlap between gods and some may even change depending on where they were worshipped

-also, apollo and artemis being the gods of the sun and the moon isn't 100% accurate, their main aspects as deities originally were music and the hunt

-titans and gods aren't two wholly different concepts, titan is just the word used to decribe the generation of gods before the olympians

-hector isn't the villain some people make him out to be

-hephaestus WAS married to aphrodite. they divorced. yes, divorce was a thing in ancient greece. hephaestus' wife is aglaia

-ancient greek society didn't have the same concepts of sexuality that we have now, it's incorrect to describe virgin goddesses like artemis and athena as lesbians, BUT it's also not wholly accurate to describe them as aromantic/asexual, it's more complex than that

-you can never fully understand certain myths if you don't understand the societal context in which they were told

-myths have lots and lots of retellings, there isn't one singular "canon", but we can try to distinguish between older and newer versions and bewteen greek and roman versions

-most of what you know about sparta is probably incorrect

-reading/waching retellings is not a substitute to reading the original myths, read the iliad! read the odyssey! i know they may seem intimidating, but they're much more entertaining than you may think

greek mythology is so complex and interesting, don't go into it with preconcieved notions! try to be open to learn!

[marzipanandminutiae]

I genuinely think there were far more trans people in 19th century western history than we're aware of, simply because of the nature of how most LGBTQ people lived their lives back then

namely, though of course this varied WILDLY by time, place, cultlure, race, gender, etc., in relative secrecy

if you go back far enough, legal identifying documents were barely a thing for many people. and even if they existed, circumstances in which they'd be checked were few and far between. surveillance was nowhere near what it is now simply because of technological limitations. and due to those same technological limitation, people were more used to accepting at face value the identities of people with bodies that varied from the norm

Gilbert and Sullivan mention, in their 1885 song "I've Got A Little List," the singer's "auntie with a mustache" (albeit in a negative context). not "well, I don't hold with all this woke DEI nonsense and have we checked Auntie's genitals and what's the marker on this alleged woman's passport?" is it very probable that the auntie was cisgender? yes. there are plenty of reasons for cis women to grow more facial hair than is average, ranging from genetics to PCOS to post-menopausal hormone shifts. before HRT, in a time with few readily accessible safe hair removal techniques (though they tried, and electrolysis had been technically available- at ruinously expensive rates -since the 1870s), you'd be more likely to encounter cis women with facial hair who chose not to try removing it. and you assumed all women were cis. so your set concept of A Woman included, potentially, facial hair, and it was less likely to make you question someone's gender

EDIT: wow okay so that is NOT an original G&S lyric! it's so borderline in terms of Poor Taste that I assumed it must be 19th century. nonetheless, references to old women with whiskers and moustaches abound in Victorian and earlier literature, so the point still stands

besides which, for a very long time, personal questions along the lines of "what's in your trousers/skirt" were considered HIGHLY impertinent

so, while there would be a world of trouble if a trans person was caught or if suspicions began to arise about their gender for some reason- the past was not a trans-friendly utopia by any means -it was often somewhat easier to fly under the radar than it generally is today. the transphobic powers-that-were were less aware of this possibility and therefore not on high alert for it, generally speaking

and since most trans people then and now want to have jobs and social circles and families and do things to which being trans is incidental, while trans, it wasn't likely that they'd call attention to themselves in a time when Closet = Safe. indeed, most trans people from that era that we know about are only publicly known because their death wishes to be buried without autopsy were not respected. I'm thinking of Dr. James Barry, Charley Parkhurst, and earlier the Chevaliere d'Eon [no, that's not a misspelling; it's the feminine form of Chevalier since she was a woman]

(you hear about more transmasc people in the history of this era because it was harder to establish an independent life as a woman, at all, without some kind of support network/establishment of Reputation in the area where you were living. unless you were a sex worker, and while we do know about some transfem sex workers of the era, the specifics of their identities are often obscured behind salacious news reports of Man Disguised As Woman Tricks Other Men Into Doing Icky Gay Things. so figuring out whether they saw themselves as women or crossdressing men can be difficult. Mary Jones comes immediately to mind)

how many similar wishes were respected? how many people slipped through history with their gender variance unremarked-upon? there's literally no way of knowing- which is good in terms of immediate postmortem respect, but leaves historians of queer subjects nowadays with a herculean task

I think, in light of all that's happening right now, I just want to remind everyone that trans people have always existed, will always exist, and are an integral part of humanity's fabric

[milky-rozen]

I made a poll on Instagram asking my followers about the biggest misconceptions in Egyptian mythology, and here’s what they had to say! I’ve organized the list based on the number and popularity of the responses:

ENNEAD has spread so much misinformation that now people think that not only is the manhwa 100% accurate, but also that Osiris is a bad guy and Horus and Set have always been nothing but lovers.

Set is an evil god… just like Sekhmet and Khonsu (thanks, MARVEL).

Anubis and the other underworld deities are evil, and the Duat is basically hell.

Some gods are purely evil, while others are too good to be true.

The Egyptian gods are just like the Greek ones and have simple, one-dimensional roles (e.g., Hathor is only the goddess of beauty and love, Thoth is just the god of knowledge, etc.).

The gods are actually ALIENS 🤯

They all have animal heads.

Anubis is the only underworld deity.

Bastet and Anubis are overrated (pop culture has to be blamed here).

"The Egyptians believed that the most significant thing you could do in your life was die!"

Horus is just one god/Horus the Younger and Horus the Elder are the same god.

Now,

On a personal note, I blame laziness and fandom culture as the biggest sources of these misconceptions. Of course, there’s more to it than meets the eye, and I’m oversimplifying a lot here for the sake of not writing a whole essay on the matter (lol), but I couldn’t help noticing a pattern. Pop culture, Hollywood, and the media in general are taken way too seriously these days. People don’t go beyond the handful of sources they’re familiar with, yet they still feel entitled to argue with others based on that limited knowledge they have at hand.

Unfortunately, Egyptian mythology isn’t easy to approach, especially without understanding its cultural context. Its particularistic nature (where myths and deities can vary depending on the region, time period, or religious shifts) makes it especially confusing for those who are used to other enstablished and more unified mythological canons out there. So, in a way, I get where some people are coming from. It’s not always easy to dive into something so complex right from the start! But on the other hand,,, I think people should learn to embrace the complexity of mythology instead of always taking the easy route! Anyway, that’s all I had to share! Do you have any other misconceptions you'd like to add to the list? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[thedubiousdallon]

Okay here's the basic premise for my Heartbroken! Taylor AU. Danny and Annette visit Toronto on their honeymoon, and Heartbreaker decides he's interested and kidnaps her. 9ish months later, Taylor is born. Taylor has an interesting childhood event by Heartbroken standards, because Annette often has enough lucidity to remember and miss the man she married and the life she would've had, though never enough lucidity to actually want to leave Heartbreaker (and only once enough lucidity to put herself between him and Taylor. That's not the kind of thing Nikos would let slide). As a result, Taylor grows up a bit closer than her mother than most of the Heartbroken are to theirs, and she grows up hearing - occasionally and in secret - about the man who would've been and who might maybe possibly actually be her father, and some snippets of what a normal life could've been.

This does not make her well-liked by her siblings, and she gets bullied pretty badly, something that is only somewhat mitigated when she Triggers. She has a lot of antipathy towards her powered siblings of her approximate age for being more socially adept and willing to earn Daddy's favor at her expense. She's got a lot of antipathy for Jean-Paul in particular, because she was part of the group assigned to bring him in, and when she failed, Heartbreaker didn't just punish her, he punished her mother.

Fast forward, and it's only a matter of time before Annette dies of abuse and neglect. With her mother gone, Taylor realizes that there's nothing holding her here anymore, and she makes an alliance with Cherie to escape together. They succeed, but are forced to separate to avoid recapture. They had planned to travel to Brockton Bay, where Taylor has desperate hopes of finding Danny and... well, when she tries to put her hopes for what will happen next into words she feels childish, silly, and depressed, so she's not gonna think about it too hard.

Taylor spends a few days in the city tracking him down, then a few more days trying to convince herself to make contact, only to be nabbed by Coil and pressed into the Undersiders. The story would their escapades as in canon, but with a focus on the difficult interpersonal dynamic between Taylor and Alec, with Cherie being added to the mix once she makes her way to Brockton for a lack of any better ideas (no S9 for her in this timeline!), with them eventually collaborating to get the Undersiders out from under Coil's thumb in something of a "let's do it right this time" reprise of their much more individualistic escapes from Heartbreaker. They would make contact with Danny eventually, but his exact involvement is TBD.

Taylor's power would allow her to detect the presence of everyone within about a block of her, and the ability to choose one person at a time within her range to tap into the senses of, replacing her own perception with theirs. This wouldn't let her read minds or emotions, but would allow her to borrow other parahumans' power enhanced senses. So, like, she wouldn't hear the information that Tattletale's power feeds her, but if Grue was in his darkness when she tapped his senses, she'd be able to see through it because he could see through it. Lastly, while tapping someone's senses, she can put words in their head that they'll hear, but they won't necessarily be able to tell that those words are coming from someone else as opposed to being their own thoughts. Exact responses to this would vary depending on the nature of the target, but one of the most subtle and consistent uses of it would be that, if she suggests specific courses of action while someone is doing something absentmindedly or on autopilot, and it's a suggestion that can be carried out fast enough that someone wouldn't have enough time to think twice, they're likely to do it. Driving a vehicle at high speed? Hard left! Got a gun trained on someone? Safety on!

Her cape name would be Subliminal.

[crabussy]

sorry you feel that way!! I think you can be kind AND firm. there's no need to let people walk all over you while you're being kind. I just don't really want to be the type of person who is mean first thing before even trying to understand the other person. often times people are rude because others aren't kind to them. I've had people apologise for how they treated me after I responded with kindness instead of spitting insults back at them. people aren't used to it!! sometimes kindness is about being the bigger person. sometimes being unkind is the best choice. but I'd be lying to your face if I said it wasn't the best choice most of the time

I'm so serious about being kind above all else. it has genuinely changed the way I interact with the world on a fundamental level and has made me so so much happier.

[cruelplatonic]

my personal headcanon is the vees were unremarkable nobodies when they were alive. i just love it as a thematic throughline for them. they love to let the public of hell speculate on them being famed and acclaimed since before death, but the the truth is they were a d-list failed influencer that got by on cheap controversey and scamming, a broke junkie who burned every shaky bridge he ever had, and a worn-out broadcast production assistant with more rejected auditions and tossed out script pitches than he could count. nobody missed them when they were gone, nobody cared who they were until they were dead.

[anistarrose]

I think when a lot of queer people who aspire to marriage, and remember (rightly) fighting for the right to marriage, see queer people who don't want marriage, talking about not entering or even reforming or abolishing marriage, there's an assumption I can't fault anyone for having — because it's an assumption borne of trauma — that queers who aren't big on marriage are inadvertently or purposefully going to either foolishly deprive themselves of rights, or dangerously deprive everyone of the rights associated with marriage. But that's markedly untrue. We only want rights to stop being locked behind marriages. We want an end to discrimination against the unmarried.

We want a multitude of rights for polyamorous relationships. We want ways to fully recognize and extend rights to non-romantic and/or non-sexual unions, including but not limited to QPRs, in a setting distinct from the one that (modern) history has spent so long conflating with romance and sex in a way that makes many of us so deeply uncomfortable. And many of us are also disabled queers who are furious about marriage stripping the disabled of all benefits.

We want options to co-parent, and retain legal rights to see children, that extends to more than two people, and by necessity, to non-biological parents (which, by the way, hasn't always automatically followed from same-gender marriage equality even in places where said equality nominally exists. Our struggles are not as different as you think). We would like for (found or biological) family members and siblings to co-habitate as equal members of a household, perhaps even with pooled finances or engaging in aforementioned co-parenting, without anyone trying to fit the dynamic into a "marriage-shaped box" and assume it's incestuous. We want options to leave either marriages, or alternative agreements, that are less onerous than divorce proceedings have historically been.

I can't speak for every person who does not want to marry, but on average, spurning marriage is not a choice we make lightly. We are deeply, deeply aware of the benefits that only marriage can currently provide. And we do not take that information lightly. We demand better.

Now, talking about the benefits of marriage in respective countries' current legal frameworks, so that all people can make choices from an informed place, is all well and good — but is not an appropriate response to someone saying they are uncomfortable with marriage. There are people for whom entering a marriage, with all its associated norms, expectations, and baggage, would feel like a betrayal of one's self and authenticity that would shake them to their core — and every day, I struggle to unpack if I'm one of them or not. If I want to marry for tax benefits, or not. If that's worth the risk of losing disability benefits, in the (very plausible) possibility that I have to apply for them later in life. If that's worth the emotional burden of having to explain over and over, to both well-meaning and deeply conservative family members, that this relationship is not one of romance or sex. (Because, god, trying just to explain aromanticism or asexuality in a world that broadly thinks they're "fake" is emotional labor enough.)

Marriage is a fundamental alteration to who I am, to what rights an ableist government grants me, and to how I am perceived. I don't criticize the institution just because I enjoy a "free spirit" aesthetic or think the wedding industry is annoying, or whatever.

[emberwritesinsight]

I know we as a society have about a hundred million bigger fish to fry right now but I hope at some point within my lifetime we get around to fixing the absolute hellscape that is the women's clothes sizing system

[bmpmp3]

and another thing about vocal synth fans: we will always find some adult male voicebank to turn into a funny little clown for our amusement. some guy to communally bully in our talkloids, the miserable straightman to the shenanigans, the sad little freak punchline to our jokes. it happened to kaito. it happened to gakupo. it happened genbu. it even happened a bit to kevin (although he seems to have looped around somehow). and it will happen to you too, frimomen. it will happen to you too.

[bancaishi]

since there are still new people liking and reblogging my tally hall art/posts, old and new(ish), i figured i should make my stance clear. joe hawley has proven time and time again that he cannot be trusted to foster safe and appropriate interactions with his fans, especially those who are underage. and this is to say nothing of the extremely harmful and bigoted views he has repeatedly expressed surrounding race and gender.

any past art i have made of him or any appreciation i have for tally hall and their work does not include any support for him and his actions. in fact, it's more reason to condemn his behavior, for using the importance this band has to his underage audience to take advantage of them. i would advise any fans, minors or not, to take caution and avoid him, and to not put him up on a pedestal for the sake of others as well.

[mantisgodsdomain]

We ought to write more Pokemon fic some time. We want to recreate the Pokemon Manners/Human Manners cheat sheet that we made a few years ago we think that this site would like the Sliding Scale Of Politeness When Greeting A New Pokemon You've Never Met Before.

[moe-broey]

Sometimes I worry I get too self-indulgent w how I portray Alfonse w Sharena, ESP keeping that one FEH comic in mind (which shows Alfonse and Sharena's differing boundaries, and how Alfonse in general "isn't much of a hugger") BUT. In my heart............. I like to imagine....... there are moments where he'll happily allow it. But the Problem Here, is if he gives Sharena an inch, she's taking a mile. She's going to completely smother him. She's dangling off his shoulders and squishing herself against him in ways previously thought impossible. Which may or may not be a contributing factor as to why he's a little apprehensive by default. And it's a feedback loop. Him being standoffish, her trying sooooo hard to respect that when she's STARVING for that physical affection, him allowing it, her squeezing him so hard that if he wasn't in armor he might break a rib. Endless loop. Unique hell. But they do love each other, completely.

[telekitnetic-art]

I hope this is okay to ask...but do you think it's okay for non-native and non-indigenous people to do formline art? I've seen some stuff online say that making it is a great way to connect to various native cultures as well as helps you learn and notice the patterns and symbols within formline art, as well as help you appreciate it more, but I'm not sure. It's something I'm super interested in and love how it looks, but I don't want to be hurtful.

This is just my opinion but if you want to and you’re non-indigenous, I think it’s ok to give it a try!! As long as you don’t sell it/promote or claim it as actual Indigenous art, I think you’re good! It’s always good to have a teacher of course (my dad won’t ever not bring up how mad his mother was when he first started his journey making formline art without a formline teacher and she lectured him about how he was making it thoughtlessly before bringing out a bunch of his dad’s templates/sketchbooks). Like you said, formline art has patterns and rules and symbols that you don’t pick up on just from looking at or referencing someone’s else’s art.

Of course keep in mind that formline art and knowledge can be passed through family teaching their own family, so some families and teachers might prefer or prioritize their time to their family members, and some formline artists may prioritize young Indigenous artists over non-Indigenous artists as it’s their culture and birthright. But I think as long as you’re respectful and try and consult with Indigenous elders/formline artists and don’t do a whole “Spiritual Insight Online Etsy shop with mass produced dream catchers and random “”Native American”” art prints” shtick, I think you’ll be fine!

[darkaac]

Fin.

[kindnessoverperfection]

I've found that, when interacting with others (or myself), it's useful to consider the lessons I'd want to teach a growing child.

If a child makes a mistake, I wouldn't want them to feel shame. I wouldn't yell at them, humiliate them, or in any way indicate to them that their mistake is a reflection of their worth or of who they are as a person.

Instead, I'd want them to associate the process with love and joy. If they say something that hurts someone's feelings, or otherwise ostracizes someone in some way, I'd compassionately explain to them. Ideally, they'd walk away knowing why they said / did it in the first place, how to handle similar situations in the future, and would accept the consequences (e.g. if a friend no longer wanted to hang out with them).

While the consequences may sometimes be painful, I'd do my best to instill in them that mistakes are human and natural, and that the process of learning from these mistakes is an opportunity to improve connections with others and express love.

I have a tendency towards excessive guilt. Memories in which I've said / done something ignorant or hurtful are infused with this guilt and shame- but ideally, I'd feel a sense of love and peace, and perhaps happiness, when looking back on them. Because they were moments of growth, moments I learned how to be more compassionate (even if the actual learning came years later).

So I'll put this out into the void:

When you make a mistake, that is not a reflection of you as a person. It is a moment in time, a moment which was informed by your past experiences. Humans are not static labels, or monsters in an RPG game. We are social creatures who live and learn and react and grow and experience and love. Be gentle with yourself and move forward knowing you're doing so in accordance with your values.

[mieczyhale]

"You know, as a white, ordained, 6 foot tall man of a certain age, it's pretty easy for me to just ignore the ways in which power and power imbalances can affect my ministry. Because frankly, most of the time, that power imbalance is in my favor. My Safe Training has been critical in helping me to be aware of how my power can be misused to the detriment of others. Not intentionally! But my intention to not harm does not mean I'm not harming. I need to be mindful of that." - H. Mark Smith