#nostoi

[masterofthewarcry]

thinking about the curse of house atreides manifesting as madness.

agamemnon starts seeing iphigenia in the corners of rooms after aulis, her dress bloody from where the sacrificial knife went in. all she does is watch him. he starts shrinking in on himself. confusing people. diomedes opposes his talk of abandoning the fight and returning home and agamemnon starts shouting at him except hes calling him achilles. he thinks he sees iphigenia during the sacking of troy, and takes cassandra with him out of the city. his dead daughter sits across from him in the bathtub, and hes so busy looking at her he doesnt see the axe coming down.

menelaus, the longer they spend away from home, becomes more and more prone to explode about the smallest things. he yells at his brother when agamemnon is hesitant to sacrifice his daughter. he throws himself recklessly into the Trojan line day after day. he awards achilles armor to odysseus, knowing that itll upset ajax, wanting ajax to pick a fight. he still argues they should have left ajaxs body to rot after he killed himself. he almost kills helen when he finds her in the sacking, but aphrodite touches his shoulder and clears his mind.

thinking about only one brother making it out.

[holy-mother-of-whumpers]

So Menelaos and Helen spent 7/8 years in Egypt after the Trojan War right?

According to the Nostoi, lost poem of the Epic cycle.

Agamemnon was killed upon returning from the war.

Clytemnestra was killed by Orestes 7 years later.

...

So Menelaos and Helen come back from their vacation/couple therapy and they find both their brother/sister dead 🥺

No point, I'm just sad for them.

[dreamconsumer]

Odysseus on Circe's island. By Friedrich Preller the Elder.

[lyculuscaelus]

Just imagine that it’s not actually those Trojan War heroes that went to Italy after war, and the cities were in fact founded by their descendants, who attributed the name to their ancestors. So that way we’ll have the Diomedeïdae coming to Apulia, Idomeneïdae to Illyria and then Calabria, Philoctetiadae to Campania, etc. which may not be what happened but historically makes more sense and it’s kinda fun to think about

[ultimate-word-tournament]

Ultimate Word Tournament!

Νόστοι (Greek) Nostoi [nós.toi] 1. the act of returning or going back. 2. "Returns," the title of a lost part of the Epic Cycle.

Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher (German) [ˌaɪ̯.ɐˌʃaː.lənˌzɔl.brʊxˌʃtɛ.lənˌfɛɐ̯ˈuːɐ̯ˌza.xɐ] A device used to create breaking points in egg shells in order to allow one to easily remove the top part of an egg using a knife without causing the shell to splinter; used for the humorous effect of its overly-formal construction: Eierschale (“egg shell”) +‎ Sollbruchstelle (“predetermined breaking point”) +‎ Verursacher (“causer”)

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 21: The Library of Alexandria (Miscellaneous III)

I welcome your suggestions for both Library of Alexandria and other lost works of World Literature and History, as there will be future polls.

[bonjin-no-kamera]

Somehow, a lot of the photos I take here are of Kaeya or Childe.

[emmikay]

*slams door open* Does Chiron have access to the lost works of the epic cycle?

[albeyurich]

"Latecoming Diadochus"...

I love Osse. I love Scylla. I love Remuria. Photographs taken during the World Quest Series "Canticles of Harmony"...

... And I miss Cassiodor...

02/02 - After 581 days... Finally AR60!

[genshinmp3]

Year of Tribulation from Cantus Aeternus Yijun Jiang, HOYO-MiX

[inky-quilled-dragon]

GENSHIN KNOWS WHAT WE FUCKING WANT WOOOOOOOO LETS HEAR IT FOR FELINE FORTRESS MECHANICS STICKING AROUND FOR THE NOSTOI QUEST

WE CAN PET THE CATTTTTTTTTTT

[dreamconsumer]

Leucothea preserving Ulysses. By John Flaxman.

[lyculuscaelus]

End of Nostoi

ἔνθ᾽ ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες, ὅσοι φύγον αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον, οἴκοι ἔσαν, πόλεμόν τε πεφευγότες ἠδὲ θάλασσαν: Now all the others, as many as fled from utter destruction, were at home, having escaped from war and waves. (Odyssey, book 1, line 11–12)

Just a little reminder that Homer put this here for a reason—first of all, to emphasize that the other Achaeans’ toils had been done—their war finished, their home returned, to contrast with Odysseus, a man still trapped on Ogygia, still yearning to return to his home and wife, as the following lines (13–15) point out:

τὸν δ᾽ οἶον νόστου κεχρημένον ἠδὲ γυναικὸς νύμφη πότνι᾽ ἔρυκε Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι, λιλαιομένη πόσιν εἶναι. But him (Odysseus) alone yearning for his return and his wife, The powerful nymph Calypso, heavenly goddess, still restrained him In her hollow caves, longing for him to be her husband.

This is to incite pathos in the narrative: all of his friends who didn’t die along the way had made it back, but he alone was still suffering. This is again proven by Nestor’s speech in book 3, in which he stated that Diomedes, Neoptolemus, Philoctetes, Idomeneus—the very heroes who would otherwise be wandering around in Italy or in Epirus as other later traditions mentioned—had returned home safely.

Another thing to think about is Dios boulē (Διὸς βουλή), roughly speaking, “Zeus’s plan/will”. It’s quite a dominant theme in Homeric poems, but here I just wanted to point out that it was Zeus who devised the mournful return for Achaeans (and executed by Athena—destruction for others, assistance for Odysseus when he got to Ithaca), as mentioned by Nestor:

καὶ τότε δὴ Ζεὺς λυγρὸν ἐνὶ φρεσὶ μήδετο νόστον Ἀργείοις, ἐπεὶ οὔ τι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι πάντες ἔσαν: τῶ σφεων πολέες κακὸν οἶτον ἐπέσπον μήνιος ἐξ ὀλοῆς* γλαυκώπιδος ὀβριμοπάτρης. And then indeed Zeus in his mind planned a mournful return For Argives, since we all were in no wise prudent or just— Thus many of them met an evil fate Through the destructive wrath of the bright-eyed daughter of that mighty father. (Odyssey, book 3, line 132–135) * “destructive wrath of Athena” or “wrath of destructive Athena”…technically the latter fits the word sequence of the original text better, but considering this ἐξ is moved behind μήνιος due to fit the dactylic structure, I’d say it works for both, and the former one seems more plausible.

The entire point of nostoi was then to punish the Achaeans for their crimes during the sack of Troy; on the other hand, their punishment was already fulfilled during the time of their homecoming. And this would also be the fulfillment Zeus’s plan: for them to return to sing the tales of his plan, from the start of the war to the end of the return.

Thus, in the Homeric context, by the time Odysseus went home, the other Achaeans must have either perished along the way or arrived home safe and sound, with no more trials awaiting. It is the will of Zeus. It is the end of their tribulations. It is the closing of a full cycle—an Epic Cycle.

[keep-on-trying]

Hmmm.

I went to the door to Khaen'riah again. After learning about how suspeciously empty the Nostoi Region's Sumeru parts are. But not all of Sumeru part. To me it seems to be the parts that are right above supposed Khaen'riah location. Image below screencapped from interactive map.

Like, not all of it is empty, the area right above the gate has lots of stuff to do from before Fontaine released. But the rest to the right of it is quite lifeless. Devoid of anything. You could say it's Hoyo being lazy, but it could definitely be a "no point in keeping this area locked up anymore and leave it empty because it will get massive changes later in the story, thus any interactable would become obsolete". It would be bad game design to make such massive area full of temporarily available puzzles.

So, who knows. If they release another area that is so clearly empty of anything to do and it's not really possible for it to be lore related, then it could be chalked as Hoyo not spending enough effort on it, but I want to first see what comes of this area in the future.

[bonjin-no-kamera]

[lyculuscaelus]

Good morning? When the rosy-fingered Dawn shows up. Goodbye? Hector never got to say it to his Scamandrius.

see, everything is an epic cycle (or literally anything) ref if you tried hard enough. “I wanna eat my brain” tydeus. You wanna fight god? diomedes. you wanna commit identity theft? odysseus. apple? golden apple of discord. horses? hektor. trojan virus? i dont need to explain this.