#sort of achilles is a popular myth

[petrichormore]

Ghostie: “You should’ve dipped him [Dapper] in the River Styx like Achilles’ mom.”

Bad: “Yeah, but then I’d have to hold him by the ankles and he has really teeny-tiny ones. I’m afraid they’d snap off.”

[wolfythewitch]

Hiui it is 8am and I'm on the zcholl bus and my broam has not shut up about them

There's a lot of discourse about the achilles portrayal in the song of achilles which I agree with for the most part because the sanitization I feel erases the suffering of women and slaves the period was built on by minimizing the raping and violent nature of war hero achilles that Homer wrote - - however, I don't think tsoa ought to be read as a stand alone; tsoa is entirely written from patroclus' pov and I think that idealisation of the man is brilliant because of how grossly codependent they were

I think I really liked one redditors take on it, being [in context of 'the silence of girls'; a breseis pov of the iliad, where in achilles participated in the culture which used her as a bed slave of war] The tsoa protector achilles which defended women who mattered to him and was endlessly devoted, and the achilles that was complacent in the ritualistic abuse of the women he enslaved by pillaging their homes are both coexisting, and possibly one and the same

I personally view the Greek cast as sort of vocaloids, they're tools by which we understand the culture of the ancients, the way we envision their interactions is just a means for our practicing the pragmatics of how we come to understand the period

Okay frankly I'm not the best person to discuss this because I've only read like half of tsoa, but there's two disagreements I have I guess, based on what I Have read

One, as much it's not meant to be a standalone or something like that (to me, it is meant to be a standalone), because of its popularity in contemporary media it is being taken as one, and many people will have Achilles and Patroclus' image forever frozen as tsoa' portrayal. God knows how many comments I've gotten on my videos treating tsoa as fact. I can't really blame the author for that, but it is what it is.

Two, the idealization of man through patroclus' eyes would hold more weight if himself was not changed for the narrative either. Patroclus was a soldier, he was a healer, and he also had his fair share of women (who he slept with). Both of them did. Violence was not shied from, and slave women were war prizes. There are these insidious little rewrites throughout the story to further the narrative of Achilles and Patroclus' only loving each other, and in turn erasing what they've done to the other women in the story. (Taking in slave women because they wanted to save them is. A choice.) Deidamia in the myths, they range from at best her and Achilles falling in love to the point of intimacy, and at worst Achilles raping her. In tsoa, Thetis forced Achilles to sleep with her. Deidamia also forced Patroclus to sleep with her. That flip in the narrative is kind of fucked up, seeing as how both in the myths and in tsoa Peleus raped Thetis.

Trying to make a statement that it is written through the idealized eyes of man, well it doesn't really work here. If anything, it feels more like an author writing with the intent of not having her MCs be morally reprehensible. So Patroclus cares when the plot demands it (saving briseis, outrage when she is taken away. Asking Achilles to save the other slave girls) and not when it doesn't affect him (talking about his mother nonchalantly, questioning why thetis hated Peleus when he also acknowledged how Peleus was involved in her rape).

[ryebread-x]

Greek mythology relationships I feel like would make more of an interesting retelling or are sort of healthier than Hades x Persephone:

Some popular ones/Well known ones:

Eros x Psyche

Ariadne x Dionysus (or Dionysus x any of his lovers for that matter)

Apollo x Hyacinth (Same with Apollo x any of his lovers)

Penelope x Odysseus

Helen x Menelaus

Achilles x Patroclus

Eurydice x Orpheus

Ares x Aphrodite

Poseidon x any of his male lovers or Poseidon x Amphitrite

Some lesser known one:

Demeter x Iasion

Artemis x Callstio

Hypnos x Pasithea

Thanatos x Makaria

Hecate x Aeetes(In some myths, Hecate is credited as being Aeetes lover and Medea's mother)

Thetis x Eurynome(They are said to have raised Hephaestus in some myths)

Hephaestus x Aglaia

Iphis x Ianthe

Hercules x Hylas

Atlanta x Hippomenes

Another relationship suggestion that includes Persephone(while not technically myth accurate) :

Leuce x Persephone (Persephone is associated with the white poplar tree, which is the tree Leuce eventually becomes. They could be interpreted as a tragic love story)

Let me know if there are anymore I should add!

[johaerys-writes]

hey its the anon who was asking about achilles’ characterisation in the iliad! thank you so much for your answer, it was super informative and helpful. i think i very much had the wrong interpretation because i had a classics teacher for a year before my school scrapped the subject and they basically rambled about how achilles was a rapist and awful and went against the gods etc. without really going into the nuance of everything or explaining the context of heroes. i was kind of curious about your mention of hubris though? i thought that was a Big Thing in ancient greece because placing yourself on a pedestal above the gods was a guaranteed way to get yourself smote. sorry for acting like a student bugging their favourite teacher for an answer but you really do explain things so well 😅

Hubris is a big thing in ancient greece, you're right; there are so many myths where someone does something stupid and gets their ass whooped by the gods (e.g. Perseus and Andromeda, among many others). But it isn't exclusive to Ancient Greece. In fact, the idea of hubris may have started there, but it changed throughout the years and took different forms in literary tradition. In ancient greek mythos, hubris is usually violent or dangerous behaviours, such as extreme boasting, that are ultimately punished by the gods. In that sense, hubris is external, that means the punishment comes from outside. As cultures changed and the focus shifted more on the individual, hubris started being used to denote a personality quality of excessive pride and arrogance, which are big no-no's in Christianity. So hubris gradually became more of an internal thing, a cautionary tale to make sure the faithful stay humble and are rewarded in the afterlife. In the context of stories, that often comes with personal development of some kind, such as the protagonist seeing the error of their ways and changing their behaviour, which isn't really an integral part of ancient greek mythos as a whole.

Ancient greek hubris and christian hubris often become confused, and because we are taught that hubris is SO important to greek mythos, people try all the time to fit the Homeric works into these neat little boxes. The thing is that Homer does not fit into that; Homer was strange even when the works were written. The Iliad doesn't follow the traditional formulae of stories and myths that were popular at the time, especially oral poetry: it includes emotional change but isn't a story about personal empowerment; there is complexity and nuance in all of the characters but the characters are not idealised; it is a meditation on complex social and human themes such as the connection between rage and grief; it puts mortality, not morality, at the center of the story.

It shows how vulnerable the characters are through their rage or their grief or their passions in general, but the story isn't at all about characters being punished for their hubris or wrong-doings. For example, Agamemnon technically commits hubris in the very first book of the Iliad, when he refuses to give Chryseis back to her father and Apollo gets pissed off about it. This could be considered dangerous behaviour by ancient greek standards, and the Achaeans are indeed punished for it with the plague that Apollo sends their way. However, at the end of the day Agamemnon himself does not get punished for his transgression in any way. He gets everything he wants: Achilles rejoins the fight eventually, Hector is killed, Troy is sacked, he returns to Argos a victor.

Achilles, too, could be said to have committed hubris through excessive violence, when he killed so many people he clogged up the river and then fought the god Scamander himself; and yet he isn't punished by the gods or by the narrative, he is one of the few characters (perhaps the only?) that gets a redemption arc of sorts, by returning Hector's body to Priam and treating the old man with respect, thus showing us his generosity, his integrity, and the nobility of his character once again. And that's where the Iliad ends for him. Not with his death or with him killing even more Trojans or whatever, but with a poignant and moving scene between two people on opposite sides of a war, who have lost everything and yet still find this point of connection between them.

So Homer, and especially the Iliad, breaks all of those norms when it comes to traditional storytelling, and that's why I think it's a work that still baffles and intrigues so many classicists. That's why in my previous answer I said that it's important to keep an open mind, and to try to avoid blindly applying literary criticism devices such as cause-and-effect analyses or importing modern moral judgement and anachronistic theories in works like Homer.

I hope this helped! I love talking about the Iliad so if you have any more questions I'd gladly answer them <3

P.S. WOW that professor really needs to get their facts straight lmao, I'm sorry your first contact with the Iliad and Achilles was through a lens like that. It always astounds me how little some people actually know about the subjects they're supposed to be experts in, like to talk about Achilles, a character from the ILIAD, and to refer to him as a "rapist", a thing that only appears in later Roman works which were basically ILIAD FANFIC LMAO, and BAD fanfic at that because it was essentially anti-Greek propaganda......... wow wow wow

P.S.2 unless the "rapist" thing refers to him sleeping with Briseis/a slave, which WOW once again extremely myopic take, very culturally and contextually tone deaf, I wish they actually do their research and stop spreading slander, that's slander, like come ON

[baejax-the-great]

I've read a few papers regarding this art of Achilles and Ajax playing a board game during the Trojan war, and though there aren't any existing texts from back in the day describing this particular myth, here is my favorite interpretation of this popular motif.

Achilles and Ajax sit with their shields behind them and a board game between them (in this version, they are calling out numbers and Achilles is winning). Achilles' helm sitting on top of his head suggests he is slightly readier to return to the fight if needed. In other versions, Athena stands behind Achilles and is urging him (possibly even scolding him) to get back to the war. There are references to the two of them being so caught up in this game, they are taken unaware by Trojan troops. Being Ajax and Achilles, however, they manage to survive.

My favorite interpretation is that this event is a non-Homeric myth of Achilles refusing to fight-- this time with Ajax joining him in that refusal-- over the death of Palamedes, who argued they should all go home from this pointless war, and whom Odysseus and Diomedes subsequently murdered, framing it to look like an accident. Achilles, who is generally depicted as very morally uptight regarding things like murder, opposed this action, and in this story was incensed enough to quit the fight over it. It is possible he was also influence by Palamedes being a close friend.

What is known from extant myths is that 1. Palamedes invented a board game while at Troy and 2. The soldiers became obsessed with this game to the point that 3. Odysseus was very ticked off at how much everyone was playing it rather than killing Trojans.

Thus, Ajax and Achilles sitting not only with their helmets off and shields on the ground, but specifically playing Palamedes' board game while Athena scolds them to get back to the war could be a nod to more quarreling amongst the Achaean leaders after the murder of Palamedes.

Soldiers quitting a fight over a moral disagreement (and eventually coming back to it) was a popular trope in stories of this time, and Achilles became the sort of catchall stand-in for this kind of myth. I think it's fun that in this version, he gives the other leaders a sort of "fuck you" by playing a friendly game with his good bro Ajax.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Ooh @docholligay thank you for asking. Scrolling through my reads, my stand out favs for various reasons would be:

Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guinn. I would place this as historical fiction with magical realism elements (she meets a 'ghost' of the dying man Virgil who finds himself disappointed about how little thought he put into writing Lavinia and he tells her some of her future).

She Who Became the Sun even tho it was a reread. It's relevant tho because it's sequel came out this year and so...

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan. God it was so good! Right now this duology is my favorite book entirely! XD

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Brennan. He makes the argument that people are fundamentally good and dispels a lot of myths surrounding popular arguments for why we're inherently bad. I think about this book a lot! I had to order a hard copy so I can reread it soon and highlight all sorts of shit.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I'm not one to much follow authors from one book/series to the next, but I have a feeling I will follow her!

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert was a cute little romance I very much enjoyed.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt was such a lovely human story even tho sometimes the narrator is an octopus hehe

Lots more were very much enjoyed and great but these stand out!

[hematomes]

pspspsp i am asking u to info dump about greek myths rn bc i never got into em when i was younger bc i didnt know where to lear about them sooobbbsss

I FORGOR

okay so uhhh just a disclaimer while i am a greek mythology enthusiast i am also not a reliable source AVSJA and i mostly like. stories from different sources and different interpretation. like when i see a myth i like to just take it and be weird abt it

my favorite example: icarus. from the main source, he's the son of dedalus and they got locked in his father's labyrinth, right. and dedalus made wax wings for icarus, and warned him to not get too close to the sun, otherwise the wings would melt. but icarus did it anyway, and fell into the sea

on the other side you have 2 icons for the sun: apollo, the god of sun and arts, and helios, the literal allegory for the sun, who rode the solar chariot every day (hence the rising and setting sun).

what drew icarus to fly too high was hubris, kind of the arrogation of mankind & its consequences (im rly dumbing it down bc i myself am dumb btw. and french so. words. excuses). but i like to involve apollo and/or helios in that, and to extrapolate a lot, often with the common trope of love (not necessarily romantic or sexual) between a deity and a mortal. ik a lot of people who are into mythology (especially in the spiritual sense, but not just them) hate the "fandomification" of myths but i personally like being silly about it and actually often draw parallels between (extrapolated) myths and ocs and/or characters. icarus/apollo/helios make me think of xiaoventher for example!!! so im 0% normal about them:)

anyway yeah the main point is that my enjoyment of greek myths is kind of surface-level, i could brainrot abt certain stories like narcissus and echo but i might start vibrating out of existence. also find hades and persephone to have an amazing story but it was slightly ruined by the comic lore olympus 💀

however a few funny things imo: hephaistos (not 100% sure that's his name in eng.....) was so ugly his own mother, hera, threw him off a cliff as an infant. zeus has to put him in his calf to let him kind of heal??? athena was also born fully grown and with her whole armor from zeus' HEAD. insanity

BUT YEAH IDK I LOVE IT but i also have a very bad memory so. i did get a whole class studying the gods 2 years ago tho, that was so cool. but i never read percy jackson 😔

tbh id say reading ovid's metamorphoses that's really good!! it's kind of an anthology with a shit ton of myths, and one of the most popular sources so i rly love it <333 and there's also the iliad and the odyssey for troy's war (with namely achilles, ajax etc) and odysseus' journey from troy to his wife and kid. it's kind of hard to read imo, but sort of the base material so ZBDJZN

[amphiptere]

Does anyone have any good adult Greek mythology retellings recs? I have no interest in the Song of Achilles, found Circe to have lovely writing but lacking in sort of female solidarity, too slow and boring, and constant awkward inserts of Circe into myths she had no business in just to create some sort of plot, I also found Ariadne to be slow and boring and thought it also focused too much on less relevant stories and I disliked it’s Men Bad message as overly simplistic and boring (I posted a short sort of review/complaint if anyone’s curious), and I mostly liked The Silence of the Girls since I think it did a great job with its portrayal of women, slavery, brutality, and just the general levels of complexity and nuance were excellent, but it was too slow for me and never quite grabbed me. I’m interested in basically every story except maybe not anything more with the Trojan War since I’ve read enough with that lately. I just have had so little success with the books I do see recommended and that seem to be popular. So if anyone has read any other books and can comment if based on the above, I might enjoy them or not, I’d love to hear it!

[wodania]

@ludcake ask continued

okay so after reading this story I did some deep diving bc I’m fascinated by the evolution of folktales over time and I wanted to get how the Cú I was familiar with became the Cú in this story! And now I’m obsessed with this super niche story akdjakjd. This is super long because when I tell you I fell into a rabbit hole, I fell into a rabbit hole:

So from what I’ve gathered from a basic internet search, this is a variation of the Giant’s Causeway tale of Fionn, Sadhbh, and Benandonner. There’s two variations of this story itself that I’ve found: one is the story of Sadhbh, Fionn’s wife, outsmarting Benandonner in a similar manner to the tale you shared. The other is one of Fionn fighting Benandonner while dressed as a baby. Benandonner does appear to be Scottish, while Cú is very much Irish, being from the Irish Kingdom of Ulster. This specific variation seems to be from the 1800s, or at least was first written down during that period.

My theory is that Cú was much more iconic of a character so he was the chosen replacement for Benandonner. The only difference honestly seems to be the name, since Cú is given all the same characteristics Benandonner appears to have had. Cú was small, that was kind of his whole thing, but he does have a story attached to him that’s sort of like this one. Cú Chulainn and Queen Medb had a truce that Cú would refrain from killing Medb’s men as long as she sent up a man for him to duel every so often. He defeated each man she sent, so eventually she tricked Cú’s only match into fighting him. Fer Diad and Cú end up fighting for days before Cú finally slays Fer Diad with the Fir Bolg, which is basically a war crime on a stick, and also why it took him days to actually use it. The Fir Bolg exploded into barbed shrapnel inside of Fer Diad, killing him, and Cú was half dead and miserably grieving his lost companion (these two have heavy Achilles/Patroclus vibes to them btw). I’m not sure if this tale had any motivation for facing off Cú and Fionn in a “strongest man vs strongest man” contest, but it might. Cú and Fer Diad were both like, seventeen, though. Another point of discussion I saw was just that it’d be cool for iconic Irish heroes to face off against each other, even if it went against Irish canon. The Hound vs Fionn in this story was the original power scaling fanfic basically, and the author decided Fionn was stronger obviously, considering Cú’s killed by Fionn dressed as a baby. A bit reminiscent of Cú wearing a fake beard so that men would fight him, since he was actually the baby the whole time and no one wanted to fight a literal teenager.

As for Oonagh/Sadhbh, I’ve found that Oonagh and Sadhbh are actually interchangeable when it comes to the Giant’s Causeway story. Some retellings of this story include Sadhbh, who has an entire myth dedicated to her and Fionn’s love story, and others include Oonagh, who I don’t know much about. In fact, any mention of her in reference with Fionn that I found is exclusively linked to the Giant’s Causeway.

And as a final note about the giants, since that’s super interesting to me: it seems that’s a simple case of religious bastardization. All of the aforementioned characters are pagan. Their stories include gods, druids, fairies, and the like, so it makes sense that they’d eventually change once they started being told by Christian storytellers. As far back as the 1800s, scholars were writing about how Irish myths had been “dumbed down.” From the Giant’s Causeway wiki article, “the pagan gods of Ireland [...] grew smaller and smaller in the popular imagination until they turned into the fairies; the pagan heroes grew bigger and bigger until they turned into the giants,” (Fairy and Folktales of The Irish Peasantry, 1888), which is honestly a good way of putting it.

Have you read Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs? Your recent Cu Chullain posting reminded me of one of my favorite fables from that book, about how Fionn's wife fools Cu when he tries to check if Fionn is as strong as Cu is

I don’t own anything with that story in it now that I’m checking things over, unless I’m missing it, which sounds in character for me 😭 i can’t find anything online about it (during my 1 minute search) which definitely isn’t unheard of with Irish folklore, and I’m super curious about what the story is since it sounds like the exactly sort of scenario Cú would find himself in akdjksjd

[honeyblockm]

I absolutely NEED your takes on tsoa I think I may die if I don't hear someone else talk about it

well they're kind of /neg so if you don't want to hear me complain about it for a little while then probably scroll away sfjdkj

so like i don't think madeline miller is a bad writer. i think her writing is pretty banging actually. I just think some of the ways she took her book was a little. hmm. WELL. it wasn't for me ^_^. Also i didn't read the whole thing bc i did not have interest in finishing it but i have skimmed most of it. The way Patroclus is characterized irks me especially like bro... he got defanged (in service of playing into, in my personal opinion, some :| mlm dynamics). i really do prefer more the patroclus in the iliad where his relationship with achilles was on more even footing. and he was a warrior! a damn good one! and not at all immune to getting caught up in the bloodlust and violence of the war! the trojans literally have to have apollo kill him because he was going on a huge murder spree, achilles' armor or no! i can see what miller was going for w the stuff about portraying the brutality and cruelty of war ig but to me that's a really odd leap to make for the characterization of a main character. Patroclus is nice, ofc. i love that guy. but mannnn let him kill people let him be affected by culture of his time let him folly!

also i feel like the book wouldn't have gained mainstream popularity with the. ........... crowd if patrochilles' characters hadn't been warped into something that could be crammed into easily digestible weird gay tropes. (though i don't think this was the intention of madeline miller.)

next thing. ehehem once again the (sort of) sanitation of shitty aspects of the iliad like... briseis. idk. i don't always want to read the silence of the girls type bare and brutal recounts of all the shit that happened to women. sure. and i guess it mightve been a precipice point for a lot of people who want to enjoy the protagonists? but it also feels weird how it's glossed over like the book's going wink nudge don't worry guys patrochilles are one of the good ones unlike all the other greeks. there's nuance to be had, though tsoa just seems to skate around it instead.

and oh this is an interesting one kind of related to the previous point but the way most of the women are portrayed is a little.. well why are they all set up as antagonists of a sort (except briseis). why are women like deidameia and thetis set up as obstacles between the two protagonist's epic gay love story or whatever, with only the barest of sympathy for their positions in the world?

+ every time i go into the iliad tag i have to scroll past 294020 tsoa posts where everyone acts like a marvel character and honestly, things have earned my undeserved scorn for less. lol

sighs deeply. anyways. it's a fine book. it's literally fine. whatever man there's way worse books and i am speaking from experience. it was kind of fun i liked the odydio snippets. i don't think it's ruining greek mythology or killing people or whatever, I'm just too bitchy to set my differing opinions aside about it. i would know him by touch or whatever that one went is a pretty epic quote. i have another line from it in a tentative webweave document rn. it's pretty cool but i hope queer retellings of greek myths get better from here on out. grits teeth. whatever man

[jeannereames]

Have you read "Song of Achilles"? What do you think about it?

Overall, I liked it. Unlike some critics, I wasn't much fussed by the modernization of Achilles's relationship with Patroklos because, well, it's a myth in the first place. Myths always undergo manipulation each time they're retold in order to speak to the audience hearing it; she's just the latest in a string. She queered the story for the early 21st Century. I'm cool with that. I might have preferred she not draw the shade on sex scenes (YMMV), and show us a little more clearly why the two boys work as a pair. It seems more assumed than demonstrated because of course, they are. But I want to see why. Again, YMMV.*

That said, I DID have more serious issues with how she handled Achilles's mother Thetis--the same as I have issues with how Mary Renault handled Olympias. There's no evidence (at all) that Thetis disliked Patroklos--far less than the smear campaign the ancient sources took to Olympias (and Hephaistion). So the negativizing of Thetis, the sole major female character outside Briseis, by a female author (in this day and age) troubled me. I'm hardly the first to point it out, and I think Circe was an attempt to silence her critics.

For that matter, I was irritated with Pat Barker's handling of Briseis in The Silence of the Girls--supposedly a retelling of Homer from a feminist perspective that started well and ended in a confused mishmash. Briseis's story was eaten by Achilles’s. Maybe that was her point (the "silencing" of the girls), but she failed to underscore it well enough, imo. Achilles sucked all the air out of the room, as he tends to do--and got away from her.

By contrast, if you want to see a master of subversion, read Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad. It's not perfect, but when it comes to TRULY writing a book about subaltern perspectives on ancient epic, she nailed it. She not only flipped the narrative, but by the end of the book, she'd flipped it AGAIN.

Yes, it's Penelope's story, but Penelope lies (well done!) and by the end, Atwood has exposed that even a "feminist" retelling by centering an elite woman's voice is not that radical. She re-centers the (virtually) unnamed "Handmaids." Brilliant. But Atwood's take is also brutal, not lyrical or romantic, unlike The Song of Achilles or The Silence of the Girls, in places. ;) You won't walk away from Atwood drawing fanart. It's not that sort of book.

(Full disclosure: I've taught Miller (Song), Barker, and Atwood in a class on Greece in historical fiction, so I've done a lot of thinking about the thematic arcs of all three: where they work and where, imo, they fail.)

Anyway, I get that Miller sought to challenge traditional (straight male) readings of Homer with a queer-centered one. I'm all for that. I just found it unfortunate that Thetis was negativized when it wasn't necessary or in the original story.** (New info added below.)

This raises a complicated question about how female authors write female characters in ancient or medieval worlds, even fictional ones. There's some very good recent discussion by female SFF authors, including popular tropes that, while they might seem feminist on the surface...aren't. They can be rather shallow. Anyway, you can run a search for SFWA discussion of the matter.

An even more troubling trend among some female authors of historicals (and historical fantasy for that matter) is the vilifying and/or erasure of female characters. This comes up with Mary Renault, which can be a shock to some of her fans. (Seriously. Think about how she portrays not just Olympias but most women in her Greek historical fiction. It ain't pretty.)

Renault had issues with both gay activism (yes, really) and also with women, including other lesbians. Her attitude is reminiscent of the "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher. Women must become "honorary men" in order to be taken seriously and so they must denigrate other women. Renault's own words doing so are documented in her bios (Sweetman and Zilboorg). Nor has this really gone away among some women in male-dominated professions, unfortunately.

I don't consider Miller to have anywhere near the same issues Renault did. Yet even for writers who consider themselves feminists, it can be tough to recognize JUST how deep these hostile tropes GO. And so they accidentally repeat them.

If you're not familiar with the Bechdel Test, let me recommend it. ;) Film, novel...doesn't matter.

I hope that, even in a novel about a misogynistic society with two male lead protags, I did some justice to the women, especially poor Olympias/Myrtale. That said, were I to start writing the novels NOW (remember, I started them in 1988 when I was 24 years old), I would probably have centered Kleopatra and Kampaspe even more. You can be sure they have important stories, going forward. ;) So do a few other women.

--------------

*To be fair, some readers didn't like that aspect of Alexander and Hephaistion's relationship in Dancing with the Lion: Becoming. They wanted it to Just Happen Already! But I'm allergic to that sort of romantization; it feels like short-circuited characterization. So reader preferences can vary.

** I recently had a chance to chat with a woman who knows Miller, and knows the Iliad extremely well too, and I asked her if she happened to know why Miller handles Thetis the way she did? She said it's because Thetis's entire goal is protect Achilles, and as a goddess, she had the power to do so--and saw Patroklos as very human and in the way. Ironically, that's exactly why Olympias clashes with Hephaistion in Dancing with the Lion. In the little short story "Two Scorpions" available on the website, I made that even blunter. I will say that, with more women in the story, I had the chance to show her protective side towards others at the court (not just Alexandros), that gives her greater dimension.

[wordsmithic]

That book sounds interesting!! Thank you for showing me! The blurb had me at "sunken city", haha; love that kind of setting.

As for your question, I should start by saying I'm Indian so I don't generalise! And if we're talking about books written by Indians (as in, not an English language book that is on the NYT best seller list and so people here are reading it too), then retellings of the Mahabharata in particular are very "in" for the last few years. Like most things they range from absolute waste of paper to genuinely good work.

(There's a YA/Marvel-esque original movie coming out soon too based on Hindu mythology, though that's an original script.)

Obviously while it's an understatement to say that Hindu mythology is very... alive (is that the right word?) here, there's also this sort of implicit understanding of 'original' and 'modern derivative', I think? So there's plenty of derivative work while the traditional stories are more "authoritative", if you'll excuse me using that word for mythology, haha. (And of course people will have problems if they don't feel the author has been respectful)

Hopefully, it turns out to be great! I really liked the idea of the sunken city!

I suspected you might be Indian because on Tumblr I've seen posts from Indian bloggers that alluded to retellings of the Hindu gods. I've seen there are recent Indian adaptations of the Mahabharata (and I would totally watch the Marvel-esque original movie you mention 😂). But I imagine you are, right now, talking about Indian retellings in the style of Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles but for Hindu gods and heroes? If yes, I had no idea such books were so popular in India! And to do it with gods that your nation still worships is such a foreign idea to me, really!!! My mind goes "how don't they find it offensive???" 😂 And when I saw the posts I was thinking "they have no problem with that?? how?? but they still worship these gods!! hoooow??"

My thoughts are such because in Greece the idea of retellings can feel a bit… sacrilegious, even if the book is somewhat decent. We also recognize the difference between the ancient and the modern when it comes to some adaptations but our ancient is kind of... left alone for so long, and we have devoted millennia to transferring it intact to the next generations. So our way is to just safekeep it and pass it on. Altering an ancient story for a modern audience feels like "smearing" the original. It's like trying to attach a Honda to a 2.000-year-old golden carriage. It spoils the beauty, purpose, and grandiosity of the carriage. So, when we are exposed to how other people write in a modern way about their old texts and gods, we project our own values there.

But, since the approach totally depends on the culture and how its people feel about the matter, I am obviously not the one to tell Indians how to feel! And I am fascinated by how Hinduism is incorporated differently into the daily lives of the worshipers, compared to the way Orthodoxy does it for Greeks as our ethnoreligion. (My mind is still blown from the cultural shock, though, give me some time 😵😂) The possibility of another bad Greek myth retelling makes my skin crawl but you probably have hundreds, if not thousands, in your own country! Wow... h-how do you deal with it without 50 psychotherapy sessioooons?? You are so brave??? (I am fine, I am fine 😂)

By all means, feel free to get in my DMs with some good retelling recommendations of ancient Hindu stories (trans. into English if possible because I don't know any Indian language(s) 😔) But if the good ones are not translated into English you can also tell me about them and why you like them! I am so CURIOUS!

[technospotatoes]

Anarchist Syndicate Codenames Analysis

OKAY so this is something I came up with on the fly and I spent about 1-2 hours on it instead of my lit essay lmao. I’m just focusing on the current members of the Anarchist Syndicate and how their Codenames correlate to their characters and what they could mean within context of the DSMP. 

Buckle your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a long one. 

Let me know your thoughts and opinions!

Techno: Protesilaus

1. A hero in the Iliad who was honored at cult cities in Thessaly (birthplace of Achilles) and Thrace (sired valuable mercenaries and soldiers)

2. Was the first to die in the Trojan war

An oracle prophesied that the first Greek to walk on land after arriving by ship would be the first to die. 

After killing four men in the war, Protesilaus was killed by Hector. 

3. The Cult of Protesilaus

A shrine in his honor

Organized games in his honor

Tomb was visited by Alexander the Great

4. Possibly distantly related to Heracles

Unclear

Protesilaus’ father was Iphicles: a half brother to Heracles

Analysis: 

Techno is a well-rounded soldier/fighter and often utilizes his catchphrase “Technoblade Never Dies”; so it is ironic that he would choose Protesilaus as a codename, even though he was the first death in the Trojan war. Given he was a talented soldier and killed many before his death from Hector, Protesilaus died in conflict, but his legacy lived on. The Cult of Protesilaus could be a subtle reference to the Anarchist Syndicate that he created with Phil, or a coincidence. 

Techno’s codename could be foreshadowing his fate within the SMP in future conflicts. If this is the case, Dream could possibly represent Hector, and take his final canon life/lives. 

Phil: Zephyrus

1. God of the West Wind

Known as the gentlest of winds

Messenger of spring

2. Reported to have many wives

Husband to Iris (goddess of the rainbow) 

Abducted the Goddess Chloris, and fathered Karpos 

Karpos was known for his beauty, also a living metaphor of the coming of spring and bearing fruit

Was said to be the father of Achilles’ horses (with one of the Harpes from the Iliad-- a seer)

Analysis: 

Phil is canonically depicted with wings, as is Zephyrus, so it is a cute little character detail. Interestingly, Zephyrus is the “gentlest of winds” and “the coming of spring”, which is ironic to Phil’s character who insights chaos (see Doomsday and interest in anarchism). It seems odd to me that a character who shows rather unpredictable qualities would choose a name that is synonymous with rebirth/new beginnings and peace. But he does want to revive Wilbur, bringing about a new beginning for him. 

What I think is particularly interesting is we can analyze from the familial ties. Zephyrus married Iris, goddess of the rainbow, which could very well represent Mumza (Kristen) AW. Zephyrus’ son, Karpos represents the coming of spring and bearing fruit; which in the DSMP lore could be connected to Wilbur. Wilbur’s one passion, bringing up L’Manburg could very well be a reference to this fruit. [Also, within the myth, Karpos’ mother Chloris could be the Samsung Fridge we all know and love.]

Ranboo: Lethe

1. One of the rivers of the underworld of Hades

Flows around the cave of Hypnos (meaning sleep, or hypnosis) 

Those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness

Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion

2. Some ancient Greeks believed that souls were required to drink from the river before being reincarnated, so they would not remember their past lives. 

There is another river, Mnemosyne, which is the river of remembrance. (causing the opposite effect of Lethe) 

Souls are given a choice to drink from either river, and if they choose Mnemosyne, they become all-knowing and akin to gods. But they are not reincarnated.

Analysis: 

Now here is where this stuff gets interesting. Ranboo’s character is notorious for his memory deficiency, which is a direct call to his codename, meaning “forgetfulness”. He states that the cause of his memory loss was due to a traumatic incident-- Ranboo doesn’t remember his family, where he comes from (etc). In popular myth, souls must drink water from the river Lethe to forget their past lives if they choose to be reincarnated. My theory is that Ranboo died before joining the SMP plot, and most likely consented to his memory loss to be brought back to life; likely an offer from Dream. Rather than moving on to the afterlife (“drinking from Mnemosyne”), he chose to be someone’s attempt at revival. Knowing that there is a river that brings about the adverse effects of Lethe, we can theorize that there is some hope to recover Ranboo’s memory. 

Now that person who revived Ranboo could be Dream, Schlatt or Foolish. Dream, because he wants to bring Wilbur back and is keen to experiment, Schlatt, because of his knowledge and curiosity of the revivebook, and Foolish because he is known to be a god of death. 

Ranboo’s enderwalk state can also be tied to the word “oblivion”, which means he is unconscious or unaware of what is happening, even though he may retain information from those events. Dream is likely in control of when Ranboo enderwalks, or they can see through each other’s eyes in those periods. (See when he visited Dream’s hideout, and recalled his Attachments speech. See also Ranboo’s prison hallucination, despite never actually visiting)

Niki: Unknown/TBD

Potential names I think are cool: 

1. Rhamnousia/Nemesis

Goddess of revenge, or those who succumb to hubris

Niki seeks revenge on those who did her wrong... Specifically Tommy

2. Persephone

Queen of the underworld

Lover of Hades, and chose to live with him

Niki chose to join the syndicate of her own accord, and feels wanted and appreciated there

I believe that Niki has an important role to play within the Syndicate, and we shouldn’t underestimate her ability. This is a setting that is very appealing and redeeming for her character. and Niki has also voiced her opinions on revenge and being spoken over in the past-- so it would be satisfying to choose a codename that resonates with those values. 

Unknown: Harpocrates

1. God of silence, secrets and confidentiality

2. Adapted by the Greeks from the Egyptian god Horus the Child

Who represented the rising sun

3. Father was Osiris, the original divine pharaoh of Egypt

4. Culturally represented by roses

Often found painted on borders of ceilings of rooms intended for the receiving of guests. 

A sign that topics discussed within the room are not to be shared or repeated outside the room 

Roses symbolize confidentiality

5. Could also represent childhood, or childish joy, 

Statues of Horus are described with a finger held to the mouth (egyptian symbol for child, Greco-Roman symbol for silence)

My personal candidates:           (in order from most to least likely)

Karl-- association with the Inbetween and the wither roses, events in the Inbetween are not to be mentioned to anyone. Karl is known to keep secrets (his secret library and time-travel powers)

Connor-- Knows Karl’s “secret” (possibly his time-traveling abilities-- not confirmed), and Tommy first confided in Connor with his “secret” that Dream revived him

Foolish-- His summer home is literally the depiction of ancient Egypt. He has also stated that he is a totem god, or god of death and new beginnings, akin to that of the rising sun. 

Hannah-- not likely, Techno referred to Harpocrates as a “he”, but she is strongly associated with roses. Is currently tied with Egg lore, and Techno does not want anyone with ties to the Egg. 

Callahan-- a silent character. Could possibly know more secrets about SMP members due to his often appearance. No current lore to show any motives

Quackity-- unlikely, due to his capitalism arc and lore coming soon, but he could utilize secrets and confidential information to his benefit… as a sort of “payment”

Fundy-- very unlikely, however fundy is known to be sort of childish. His father was Wilbur, the creator/original ruler of L’Manburg (See Osiris)

Harpocrates could also be a new addition to the SMP as well. 

[readingrobin]

Comfort Zone Bingo Reading Challenge Update #2

Well, capping off the end of the year, I’ve got another reading challenge update, this time with a bingo!

Middle Grade: Girl Giant and the Monkey King by Van Hoang. This is a book I happened to discover at work and the moment I saw Monkey King I was in. I enjoy this character wherever he pops up, as chaotic tricksters are my bread and butter. This was a cute middle grade read, about a super strong girl trying to fit in at a new school while trying to keep her powers a secret and accidentally releases The Monkey King from imprisonment, to which shenanigans ensue. I’d say this would be a great read for those in the Rick Riordan crowd, as it delves into Vietnamese mythology.

Translated from another language: Moominpapa’s Memoirs by Tove Jansson. If you haven’t heard of the Moomin series, do yourself a favor and look it up, whether that means checking out the various TV adaptions it’s had over the years or its book and comic series. It was originally written in Swedish and is generally more popular in Europe but it’s not too hard to find copies of the books in the US. This series just radiates pure, relaxed vibes even when the characters are on the most daring of adventures. There’s nothing really to talk about this installment in particular, as I think they are all the same level of quality and are just peaceful escapism to me.

Written before 400 CE: The Metamorphoses by Ovid. Now this one was a trial. 250 myths spread out across 15 installments and I just had to get through it as fast as I could. I didn’t realize how many of these stories I had already read before, as it’s made up of any myth that includes a transformation of some sort, so yeah you can bet the majority of Zeus’ sexploits are contained within. I dug the first 2/3rds of the collection, but it really lost me once we got to the mythic heroes like Hercules, Achilles, Ulysses, etc. I think I’m more interested in the god aspect of the myths, and man am I tired of hearing about the Trojan war.

Ebook or online fiction: Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire. I’ve been meaning to get around to this book for forever once I saw that it had ace rep in it, something that desperately needs to be in more books. I wasn’t expecting the fast paced plot so much, which makes sense given it’s a novella, but I really was interested in the world and plot. I love “there-and-back-again” stories, where a character goes on an otherworldly journey, completes a trial or two, and is sent back home all the wiser. But so seldom do stories focus on the “back again” phase of the character’s journey. How do they cope after all they’ve been through? Do they miss the place where they grew into an entirely different person? Do they miss the freedom? Are they glad to be out of constant danger? Do they yearn every moment to go back to a place where they felt more like themself than ever? I was just so intrigued by what the repercussions of this kind of journey are on a character, as well as seeing what  worlds they went to. Will definitely be checking out the rest of the series

Young Adult: My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins. Not gonna lie, I just read this one to fill out a requirement for another challenge I was doing and wasn’t really interested at first. A lot of the stories seem to blend together and follow a standard formula of stories that either end too soon without any development or are saccharine sweet to the point of diabetes. Out of the twelve stories there were about three I liked, which isn’t exactly a passing grade. These include “Angels in the Snow,” “Krampuslauf,” and “It’s A Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown.”  If you’re into the more Hallmarky kind of Christmas stories, then this is perfect for you.

[tati-seol]

I am no classicist either, but I’ll elaborate on this and touch on some other things we often ignore when reading Greek mythology. Most of us treat it as if Greek Gods and Greek mythology are one and the same, but the connection itself is not that simple.

What are the sources?

We push every written piece roughly from 800 BCE to 500 CE under the umbrella of “Greek Mythology”.

And I mean, every single piece.

It’s a huge chunk of time (1300 years!), with different cultural and political situations. We don't think the same as folks from 1920s, why do we assume people from the 5th century CE would have the same views and values as people from the 8th century BCE.

Not only this, but we start to judge Gods on comedies, on satires, on tragedies, on all kinds of pieces of fiction. Yes, some of these were written by actual practitioners of Greek religion (who knew what their Gods were and were not), but somewhere on the way we all got very unlucky and the most popularized versions of myths turned out to be by a Roman guy who just wanted to cash out on lewd (and sometimes very gross) stories.

Also, people usually read (or watch) summaries. And here's the thing. Summaries are mostly based on that Roman guy's versions.

Moreover, there is this another guy, who had enough confidence to write "Read only my retellings of myths". Guess what? We do! I've seen tons of summaries of his versions and they're treated like the only versions in existence.

If you read his versions of myths side by side with earlier sources, you’ll quickly start to guess what he wrote in the other myth retelling.

Theoi website is very good for this since they have a lot of sources and fragments sorted by a specific theme and divine figure.

Villains vs Antagonist

Greek Gods were never villains in mythology, but antagonists. (Well, maybe except for Typhon). There’s the whole Hero-God antagonism, to the point of a hero looking very similar to the God they’re antagonistic with. Like Achilles and Apollo, Odysseus and Athena, Pentheus and Dionysus, etc.

So, in modern terms, they were partially just a plot device to make a “human” into an actual Hero. And, of course, into a cult hero, because they were worshipped, even though not on the same level as actual Gods. And often they were worshipped alongside the God/dess they were antagonistic with. We wouldn’t expect this if one party was a villain, right?

Even our perception of Hera as a jealous wife, who had to deal with her husband’s affairs, crumbles, when we think about her actions as a making of a Hero. We wouldn’t have so many heroes if it wasn’t for her. And heroes were a major part of Ancient Greek culture. I dare to say, without heroes Greece as we know it wouldn’t be the same. Heroes were kings and queens, skilled warriors, initiates of mystic cults, founders of nations. But would’ve they become as great if they had all the glory from the beginning? Or it’s thanks to Hera they overcame their obstacles and became Heroes?

Symbolism

We, as most of us are not Ancient Greek speakers, missing a lot of symbolism.

There's a very common theme of making everything catastrophically wrong in myth, so we, as practitioners of religion in Ancient Greece (or modern practitioners now), would do everything right in real life. Every word and every action was so carefully chosen to reflect a mystic ritual, or even a common religious or social practice, without spelling out that it is, in fact, a ritual. While we treat it like stories, that thanks to these extreme metaphors and analogies can get really weird, a practitioner, especially initiated in a mystery cult, would treat it like a secret code. Why they did it this way? I don't think we'll ever find out!

Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter, the one with the actual story about Demeter, Persephone, and Hades, is an example of it. It was a part of their mystery cult (Still is, if we assume the cult was operating without being public throughout the centuries, which is a possibility, and people reconstruct it in modern times, too). When we start looking for the meanings in it, we can easily see that it’s such a multidimensional story.

It's cultural, as a marriage of a girl was often tied with death and lament. It also can be viewed as a mother's attempt to deal with the sudden loss of their child. It can be interpreted as agricultural seasonal change, even though we tend to forget that actual seasons also exist in this pantheon. And it can be viewed as a romantic story, because love, especially the tragic one, is such a common theme in ancient Greek literature.

It can be extremely empowering, both from Demeter's pov (as a mother who fights back for the right to see her daughter after she got married. Again, cultural thing), and Persephone's pov (as a woman who turns a questionable or bad situation to her benefit).

We can interpret this story as the worst possible thing happening, or as the best story ever. Just don't forget to give the same treatment to other myths as well, okay? It’s really not cool when people choose the best version of the myth (or even invent one) for one God, because it fits their interests, but then decide to choose the worst versions of myth for another God, just because.

Another thing to add here is that this particular myth centers around Demeter. Her feelings, her stress, her wanderings, her love for her daughter. Not around Hades, not around Persephone, or at least not to a degree in which we can sweep Demeter away as some background character that stands in a way of true love. Well, we can, but should we really?

I can’t stress enough that we treat the myths as literal most of the time, ignoring the fact that Gods are not... Physically humans? They’re not corporeal. Which is a hard concept to grasp since they are personified in myths.

But there's this myth, for example, where Olympian Gods carry twenty (or twelve) daughters of Asopos away from him and "marry" them. But... Asopos presided over two huge rivers both called after him, and technically he was a literal river, a geographic place, not a human. His daughters are the smaller rivers that stem from him. And the whole act of "marriage" is just people founding cities in the banks of these rivers with certain Gods as their patrons. In one of the myths surrounding this, Zeus specifically throws a lightning bolt into Asopos who tries to get one of his daughters back. Is this a king misusing his power or a God of order taking action against something that tries to prevent an establishment of a city? Is it a description of natural phenomena, in which a river was averted from its unintended course by a bolt of lightning?

Should we call out a God for literally being a patron of a city? I doubt it.

From this perspective, it’s okay for us, in general, to not get it. When we read a myth for the first time there is no way we would know what it refers to, what its hidden meaning is, or who those people in the myth actually are. Especially, when the most obvious meaning for us reading the translations is not the one that was intended in Ancient Greek.

But it’s not okay to attack Greek Gods and especially their followers based on myths, the meaning of which we, as individuals, might not understand completely.

Gods’ domains

Greek Gods are multidimensional and not just cookie cutters of their domains. In fact, no Olympian has strict one-domain boundaries. (I can't say all Greek Gods, because there's too many of them and I bet some actually have more or less strict boundaries)

So it’s really hard to say Artemis is wild and ruthless because of this one domain she rules over. Apart from nature, she's also the Goddess of childbirth, of all things related to womanhood (except the lewd stuff).

But she can be angry and ruthless nevertheless, because she, even as a goddess, has feelings and consciousness. (Depending on your religious views, this still holds true both to Ancient Greek literature and to religion itself)

Compare her to Pan, a God more closely identified with nature and often described as wild and panic-inducing, but in 90% of myth he's... Kind of just there, playing on his pipes or flute (and chilling with Ekho). Shouldn't this difference show us that Artemis' wrath in myth is there for a reason that we need to figure out? Sure, some stories may be cautionary tales of not going too far into the woods, but we can’t expect every single story about Artemis’ wrath to be about nature’s destructive powers.

Another problem is when we constantly dilute Artemis to a wee lesbian, Apollo to a femboy who writes bad poetry, Dionysus to a drunk party animal, Aphrodite to a vain beauty, Hades to a sad soft goth boy, and so on. We then get exceptionally surprised to find myths where they show not only their wrath but just any sort of emotion or action that doesn't fit this box we put them into.

(Next point is kind of reaching, but it’s fun to think about)

The timeline

If we chose to judge Gods on myths (because that's what we, as casual people, have access to) we're also missing an important aspect of the timeline. We can argue that it doesn't exist, but it’s there for us to decipher.

There are two major points that people are missing when talking specifically about how awful Zeus is, but they also concern other Gods in general.

Firstly, yeah he doesn’t do the baby-making thing anymore. Moreover, Gods stopped falling for mortals altogether for a reason. Aphrodite along with Eros used to make every God and Goddess fall for mortals, but there's a myth in which she finally fell in love with a mortal herself. Why? Because Zeus had enough of this whole falling-in-love thing. Yeah, the same Zeus people love to hate on for being "too affectionate". Thanks to this, Aphrodite realized that it's really not fun to fall in love with a mortal so she promised to stop making Gods and Goddesses fall for humans. (Hint: it happened before the Trojan war) (It's from Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite. Very beautiful stuff and interesting to read too)

So, it’s really up to us to decide how to treat the myths about Gods’ mortal lovers after the Trojan war happened. Were they just made up so a person can look cooler as a king? (Looking at you, Alexander the Great) And if they weren’t, what about Aphrodite’s promise? We all know that nothing good happens when a God or a mortal breaks their oath. Is there maybe a deeper symbolism for this that we don’t notice because we read these texts as literal?

Secondly, there's this goddess called Ate. She's a personification of delusion, error, rash decisions. In Illiad, it is said that she is a daughter of Zeus, while Hesiod calls her the daughter of Eris, no father mentioned.

She had the power to lead both men and Gods down the path of ruin. When she tricked Zeus into making an oath that screwed Herakles' future, he realized what is she capable of and banished her from Olympus. Do you know what that means? Illiad spells it out. Olympians used to be rash and making mistakes, but not anymore (or at least not to a catastrophic degree). And since this was mentioned in Illiad, we can place Ate’s banishing somewhere before the Trojan War, and after the birth of Herakles. So all the rash things and bad decisions happening during and after this were either caused by us, humans, because Ate is now with us, or we had much less catastrophic things happening with Gods, because, again, they still have their own interests and desires as conscious beings.

Conclusion

Greek Gods can be whatever we want them in myth and retellings because we write them. So wouldn't it make more sense to say "This Roman guy sucks because he wrote such and such" instead of "This God/dess as a whole is bad (because of a few popular pieces that were written about them)"?

Judging a divine figure only by their domain or by the stories written about them without a full understanding of the purpose of these stories, and without consideration of historical and cultural influences on them, has little to no sense.

Even across Greek Mythology as a whole, there are sources that portray Gods and Goddesses with generally bad domains, as forces of justice, punishing those, who were indulging in the things they preside of. (Like a vase painting of Hybris, the goddess of insolence and excessive pride, where she was portrayed dressed as a Maenad, and described as an avenging spirit driving Dionysus to punish the hubris of men: https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/N21.1.html)

I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

[bigfirecreator]

Protector - Chapter 2

Virgil was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice anything before it was to late.

He looked around to find his headphones were lying on the ground next to him along with someone else.

“Oh my gosh are you okay? I am so sorry  I wasn’t paying attention.” He sputtered.

“It’s alright you seemed to be having a rough day from the looks of things and beside I shouldn’t have blocked your path…. Um Virgil correct?”

Virgil found him staring at the most popular person in school ever. Roman Mensch was looking down at him and was offering his hand to him. He quickly was pulled to his feet and was standing face to face with him.

“Yeah and you’re Roman correct?” he mumbled.

“Yes we have history together anyway I should be heading to class but maybe we could talk some more…. Also Happy Birthday!”

“How did you know it was my birthday?”

“Well two people are quickly making their way towards you with a bunch of balloons and gifts in hand so I kind of put two and two together.”

And with that Roman smiled and walked away leaving Virgil dumbfounded. He soon felt himself picked up from behind snapping him out of histhoughts.

“Patton what are you doing?”

“It’s a Birthday hug Virgil! Me and Remy wanted to celebrate so we got a bunch of stuff.”

Virgil looked up to find Remy had his hands filled with birthday presents and balloons but still managed to carry his Starbucks.

“Remy is all that stuff for me?”

“Of course it is your birthday and from the looks of things you are having a decent day so far…” Remy smirked and began to sip his drink a smile on his face.

“What do you mean?”

“Girl, it is so obvious you are in love.” Remy then handed him the gifts and slowly sauntered off.

Patton let out a squeal of delight.

“I’m so happy for you! Tell me more as we get to class the bell should be ringing in any minute.”

“But I’m not….”

~

He sat down and was immediately overwhelmed. Virgil’s teacher was weird and obsessed with myths and legends and a lot of the time instead of learning what they needed to they would end up on discussions involving unicorns,achilles, and etc. Today his teacher decided to talk about dragons. He let out a groan and put his head down and glanced up to find Patton giving him a concerned look. He was about to reassure Patton but all of a sudden the teacher was in front of his desk.

“Mr. Ladon would please explain why a Chinese dragon would be carrying a pearl?”

“Um...It was because after they reached a certain level they would obtain a pearl and they usually represented wisdom or power..” Virgil felt his heart speed up.

“You are somewhat corre-”

He didn’t wait to hear the rest he quickly left the room and made his way to the bathroom and he looked at his hands to find his fingernails had morph to claws. He was about calm down when he notice bulge on his back. He took off his hoodie and a pair of bat like wings stuck out.

Virgil didn’t know how long he waited in there but when he walked back into class he was given a lecture.

Today was going to be a long day.

~

By the time the school day was over all he wanted to do was go home and lock himself in his room forever but before he could a small pixie flew right up to him and handed him a paper of some sort. It contained an address and nothing else.

Virgil used his phone to help find the way. The building look like an ordinary thrift shop of some sort and the sign said closed but the lights were on inside.

“Hello?” The door was open but he didn’t see any one. He walked all the way inside and notice that everything was meticulously placed throughout the place. He found a person his age hunched over a desk mumbling incoherently and writing something.

“Um,excuse me.” The person jumped but once he looked at Virgil he relaxed.

“Salutations, I’m very sorry I lost track of time. Virgil correct?”

“Uh yeah and don’t worry about it you seemed busy.”

“This is just some paperwork that is due next month but there is no point in explaining, I am Logan Ophiuchus your trainer and if you don’t mind let’s get started.”

@emphoenixcat @mirror2thespirit @icouldhaveabettername @6tick6tock6 @creepyfloof  @cypriusgray @julia6181