#source: big mouth

[angelofthenight]

Agatha: Well, well, well, look at who can't keep her dick out of my mouth

Wanda: I’LL PUT MY DICK WHEREVER I WANT!

[emmikay]

Rum Tum Tugger: My brother is not a cat.

Rum Tum Tugger: He is a one-star Yelp review come to life.

[snakemama611]

Leonardo: Should I take off my glasses?

Venus: Oh, no no. This isn’t an eye test, it’s a gay test. Now tell me…

*She holds a picture of Oroku Karai in one hand and a picture of April O’Neil in the other*

Venus: Number one or number two?

Leonardo: Number one?

Venus: Interesting. Okay…

*throws away April’s picture and replaces it with one of Miyamoto Usagi*

Venus: Number one or number two?

Leonardo: *gasps* Oh my god.

Venus: *smirking* Number two, right?

Leonardo: Maybe I am gay?

Venus: Okay, alright. That’s good to know.

[incorrect-whos-lila]

Tanya: You ever get lonely? William: Of course not. I remain lonely.

[incorrect-bhaalspawn-quotes]

Charname: I can’t believe I brought you assholes into this sacred space!

Anomen: …It’s the Adventure Mart.

Charname: It’s a chamber of wonders, you dick!

[frostcorpsclub]

Incorrect Quote 134

Rath: Mom, do you think you’ll ever want another baby?

Virginia: Oh sweetie, it was a real struggle to even want you.

[hyperfixation-hideout]

Nora: Turns out Weiss and I can’t make out at either of our houses cause both our families are germophobic :/

Blake: I think you mean homophobic?

Weiss: Oh, no, my father actually considers me to be a virus.

[incorrect-hgs]

Amaryllis: Alright, Slab, I've got a few questions for you.

Sage: You got questions? For me? I feel terrible, I didn’t get you anything.

[autisticrosewilson]

Talia even being called an assassin gives me the ick because when she was first introduced she hated killing, felt immense guilt the few times she had to, and most of the time if it looked like she killed someone it turned out to be anaesthesia or a tranquilizer or something. Like she was literally studying to be a doctor when her and Bruce met and she was based off of the stereotypical Bond Girl because it was the 70's. Like I know it's basically her entire character now that she's an "assassin mom" or whatever but that was not who she was intended to be and I hate how it's done most of the time because it's ALWAYS a way to point and say "look at the evil brown woman! She's a cold blooded killer who forced/passively allowed her son to kill as well! It's a good thing that the feral brown boy is now with his good white family so he can learn the value of life and art and how to exist in civil society!" And it's actually really pissing me off. You guys don't even read a characters introduction comic before you start writing the same regurgitated nonsense steeped in racism and misogyny. Damian's whole character as it stands is basically character assassination for Talia and in order for me to be able to engage with him he'd have to be entirely rewritten.

[prolibytherium]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[youroriginalsublimecupcakestuff]

Jon : " Damian, do you ever get lonely ?"

Damian : "Of course not !"

Damian : "I remain lonely."

[moophinz]

A lot of people have shared this information, but there’s still a lot of people who haven’t seen it so I wanted to try to spread it out more. From this article on Amazon’s site

Some have noticed that Kiryu’s dragon is very different than the one in the game. The promotional image features a very edited version of it, but the gold screen to the right shows that it’s practically entirely black. While I haven’t seen anything to explain the differences they made, I can only guess at least part of it must be due to how much it’s being pressed this is something of an “alternate” or kind of redone version of the games. As also displayed by the Japanese title.

The timeline for this series covers 1995 to 2005 which is pretty much the first game. However, there’s been a focus on Kiryu’s childhood friends and telling stories the games didn’t get to. Multiple articles have also stated this is going to be an “original story.”

As of now, it’s almost feeling as though this won’t be a retelling of the first game. Usually, RGG adaptations don’t seek to do that so it’s not too surprising.

In case someone also doesn’t know, yes, it’s going to be a Japanese acted series in the same language and shot in Japan. (I saw some confusion and fears on that)

[nonsensical-shitposting]

I’m replaying Bug Fables and I noticed that Kabbu moves his arm up and down quite a lot while he’s talking, so new idea: that’s due to a muscular injury from his first encounter with the Beast. Specifically, his side was wounded and didn’t heal properly, so now when he moves his spiracles/mouth to talk, it pulls at the muscles in his side and shoulder and forces his arm to bob up and down with it. The only way this doesn’t happen is if he’s being quiet or mumbling, he’s saying something consisting of sounds that’re made by only his spiracles or only his mouth, or if he’s actively straining to keep his arm from moving.

[vulpixhoney]

I'm sorry but this is so annoying. I understand that there's already inconsistencies in the original Percy Jackson series (and I have beef about that too mind you) but the whole Athena cursing Medusa bullshit isn't even Greek, it's roman! That "retelling" was written by the Roman poet Ovid specifically to slander Athena. Ovid hated Athena so he made us "retelling" specifically to make her look like a vengeful woman who punishes women for being victims. And they included it in the show. this is such bullshit.

She was born a gorgon. Medusa was born a gorgon and was one of the gorgon sisters, their visage was used over doorways and on jewelery as a symbol of protection.

hate when people insist that Ovid's stupid poem is a part of Greek mythology, because it's 1. not, just straight is not even Greek and 2. misogynist. all of these "modern retellings" of Greek myths are flat out misogynist. People try to make the victims stronger (Medusa, Persephone) by tearing other women (Athena, Demeter). In y'all attempt to make ~better victims~ you tear down powerful women and make them into vengeful woman haters

[florshedworf]

fun fact: birds are immortal!

[incorrect-bhaalspawn-quotes]

Anomen: My father is not a man.

Anomen: He is a one-star Yelp review come to life.