#these passages are so similar i just
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ash-and-starlight · 4 months ago
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things that have me fine and normal on this friday evening
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doctorbrown · 4 months ago
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MCFLY JULY ‘24 ⸺ 「 10 / 31 * RITE OF PASSAGE 」
June 11, 1978
It just looks like a normal building.
A little more run-down than some of the newer buildings around it and it looks more like someone just dropped the old garage on the side of the street and said good enough without any care or thought to how well it fit with everything else around it, but on its face there was nothing wrong with it.
Mad scientists planning to destroy the world or exact revenge on their enemies typically lived in haunted old mansions with perpetual storms raging overhead and thunder and lightning tearing through the sky; not in garages right next to Burger King.
“Come on, McFly.” Needles leans over the handlebars of his shiny new black bike that admittedly makes Marty a little jealous. It was almost the same exact one he’d been begging his parents for for months—it was the one thing he wanted for his birthday so he could keep up with his friends around town and not feel like he was getting left behind just because their parents had the extra cash to throw around. If he got nothing else all year but got that bike as a birthday present tomorrow, everything would be perfect.
Needles grins and Marty can’t help but think of some cartoon villain, fully aware that even before he says anything else, whatever scheme he’s cooking up in his head is only going to spell trouble.
Considering that he, Jake, Scotty, and Needles are all hanging out across the street from Doctor Brown’s garage, lined up in some sloppy half-circle across the sidewalk, there’s only one thing he can imagine will come out of his mouth next and it’s not trying to ride their bikes through the drive-thru at Burger King.
“You ain’t even gotta go inside—all you need to do is sneak over there, touch the wall, and look in through the window. Reeeal easy. You might even see him working on one of his experiments in there!”
Marty scrunches up his face in obvious distaste, shifting his weight and Linda’s old hand-me-down bike with it to favour his left side. “Or we could just leave him alone. Don’t you think he put the fence up for a reason? I bet the guy just wants to be left alone to do—whatever he’s doing in there.”
Which, admittedly, he had been more than a little curious about ever since he first started hearing the stories of crazy old Doctor Brown and his dangerous experiments. Doctor Brown was an unknown—an outlier—an object of immense interest to his young mind that fascinated far more than terrified. More than once he fantasised about this exact moment—stealing into Doctor Brown’s so-called laboratory to sneak a peek at all the things he was inventing in there, being whisked away to a world that might have been infinitely more interesting than boring old Hill Valley.
Once, he almost stopped him on the road to dispel all the rumours and hearsay for good and finally learn the truth about the man.
“Didn’t you hear what Max Gordon said last week?” Jake asks incredulously, surprised by Marty’s blatant nonchalance. “He did it too! And he said—“
Marty groans. “You didn’t believe all that, did you? Max Gordon’s an idiot and if you believed that stuff he said, you’re just as stupid as he is. I bet he just got so scared he passed out and thought the stuff he was reading in his dad’s comics was real. He already thinks Doctor Brown is some kind of evil space alien come here to destroy the Earth.”
Scotty snorts, leaning to his left to thump Jake upside the head. “He definitely believed.” Jake rubs the abused spot with a pathetic look on his face. “Maybe we should send Jake instead.”
“No way—my birthday’s not even for another couple months. I’m not doing it.”
“Chicken,” Marty teases, grinning fondly at them. Jake huffs, content to spend the rest of his days as a live chicken over a dead—or worse—lab rat.
“So what’s the problem?” Needles cuts in, jabbing a finger at Marty’s chest. “If you’re not scared, then just go up there. Even you can climb that fence, McFly.”
Marty swats the offending hand away with a frown, clenching his fists against the obvious dig at his height. “Because, Needles, unlike you I’m not a jerk and I think we should just leave him alone. I’d rather take my chances with Hell Hill.”
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dandyshucks · 4 months ago
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also it'd be rly funny if one day he was idly looking at the pins on my bag and notices one that looks like a Sinnoh gym badge that he recognizes bc of something he'd seen at one point so he asks me about it and I go like "oh yeah, this line of pins is all the gym badges from Sinnoh" and he thinks it's just like... tourism decorations or smth so he makes a teasing joke about me having wishful thinking of wanting to beat all the gym leaders in battle and I look at him all confused like "no those are real ? i did do that ??" and he's like WHAT ?? WHY DID U NEVER MENTION IT BEFORE ????
bro i am SHY and i dont like to talk about big things like that esp if it takes me longer to achieve than the average person !!! i would much rather share cool facts about nature that i learned or show u the latest creative project I worked on !!!
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orcelito · 4 months ago
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I'm tired of dreaming about my dad. I know it's part of processing, but I am just so tired.
#speculation nation#negative/#sometimes theyre nice dreams where i have him back. except i still wake up sad.#sometimes theyre dreams where im trying to prevent what i know is going to come. but without fail i wake up. and he's already dead.#and then there are dreams like the one i just woke up from. where i know he's dead and im feeling the full force of grief once again#bawling and bawling in-dream. with enough force that it wakes me up.#and of course. i wake up sad from these too.#it makes me think about that passage i wrote for ITNL. well over a year ago. before the Year Of Death even began.#where i wrote about vash dreaming of wolfwood. with a similar sort of vibe to this.#i wrote that inspired by the death of my grandma. who i was close with and greatly troubled by her death.#even that had nothing on my dad though. no loss has ever felt this severe before.#it's been 5 months and sometimes i feel okay. but then i feel the ache deep in my chest again#and i know im never going to be fully free from this pain.#i want to go back to the person i was before i lost my dad. to before i lost my uncle.#i want to go back to early may of last year. where life seemed hopeful and i was minimally touched by death.#only 2 deaths from people close to me. 3 deaths if you count my childhood cat.#now im up to 5 deaths of people who were close to me. and 7 if you count my sweet baby boys.#can you believe that? 4 deaths ive grieved in the past year (and a bit). 2 more deaths of ppl i knew but wasnt close to.#and 2 of them were so genuinely life-altering that they changed me as a person. my uncle and then my dad.#i still dont know who i am now. i feel so lost. i look out at the piles of boxes of my dad's stuff and i feel so overwhelmed.#im supposed to go through them. i havent touched them in months. i dont know how to even begin.#and so i try my best to keep up with my cleaning and my schoolwork. it's about all that i can manage
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valiant-if · 4 months ago
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i'm not gonna lie y'all, i did fuck all on monday, but I've done somewhere between 12k and 17k words worth of work tuesday and today, so i'm feeling pretty good about productivity this week
here's to the writing gods, who are letting me get shit done right now 🥂
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seaglassdinosaur · 1 year ago
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Remembering that two long-running arcs of the Origami Yoda series regarding Dwight were his classmates becoming real friends with him as they stop seeing him as the ‘weird kid’ and connecting with him as a person, and Dwight starting and continuing to date Caroline, the girl he likes. These arcs present to the (presumably neurotypical) audience, an autistic-coded character as someone nuanced and human, who is capable and desirable as a partner and friend, encouraging the idea of looking past dismissive judgements of strangeness and to try to understand people, and even if you can’t, accept them and appreciate them for who they are.
#I am having thoughts and feelings abt origami yoda agin#because like. those are the major arcs w Dwight-the ones that aren’t kept to one book alone#it’s nice seeing them go from kinda just tolerating Dwight because he’s a similar outcast and they need yoda#to them actually liking him and wanting to spend time w him (see the museum visit when tommy is ditched by kellen for Dwight)#and Dwight never magically changes to become ‘normal’. the closest he gets is when he’s at that private school which is observed as kind of#stifling? to all the things that make Dwight interesting and creative#nah the series goes on and Dwight still stims and gets sidetracked by his special interests either to his benefit or detriment#but none of the kids have a problem with him for it. they get that it’s Dwight and these are the things he does#they don’t have a ton of moments of insight into dwight. they talk but they don’t dissect their conversations to parse out what he means#and that makes their communication of messages a little tricky#but the thing is: even though Dwight doesn’t tell them in a way they understand why say the rib bq is so important to him#or why he stims or what sensory issues he has because they might not have the language#even though they don’t have that passage of conversation clicked up#they accept these things as a part of him. and I think that’s a nice message to send.#maybe you won’t fully understand the people in your life but you should try. and even if you can’t you should accept them. quirks and all.#the strange case of origami yoda#origami yoda series#my post#tscooy
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magnusmodig · 5 months ago
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||. thor misunderstanding earthen housing norms in the modern day is SO funny to me to think about. He's doing his best, but between being from another planet with far more advanced technology (and much more "archaic" culture customs) on top of also being a PRINCE, I would imagine some normal practices and understandings of things simply don't click with him more than others.... Not because he's not smart. Thor is incredibly intelligent. ONLY because of the huge culture divide. But... that said: the concept of having neighbors who own their own land right next to yours, but the plots of land are TINY ??? absolutely crazy to him. Why aren't the plots of land BIGGER? why don't more people utilize it to farm crops???
Also don't get him STARTED on the idea - or nature of - apartments.
#(it's just— i'm realizing that living with jan.e fo//st.e.r would have taught him SO much??)#(i can imagine him questioning everything about /everything/ on occasion...)#(just... ja/.ne and th.o/r chilling around breakfast and he decides he's got a severe case of the toddler why's)#(he's curious about a common practice and wants to understand the logic of it— who better to make it make sense than his beloved)#(even something as basic as a house key. why does he NEED that? he's never needed a “house key” for his palace)#(he can just /walk in/??? ask the guards to open the doors??? use a biometric lock??? )#(— ah but is the “house key” for a secret compartment perhaps? a hidden passage? a secret chest???)#(what's the house key for if not for something particularly worthwhile??? it's so archaic ?? it must be very old.)#(what??? it was made yesterday??? It actually /IS/ for the front door????)#(what do you /mean/ you haven't got guards or sentries and the po-lice can't offer THEIR services with compensation)#(the avenger's tower does it??? shield does it???? he thought that would be normal for earth houses???)#(he doesn't see how that's supposed to keep j.a//ne safe all that well >> he's decided he's going to fix /that/ first thing.)#(granted: i doubt he'd actually ask or comment most of this out loud but it'd likely be what he's thinking)#(anyways he wouldn't /use/ the key when he has a balcony they can just keep unlocked so he can get in from there)#(and he'd probably have a similar setup on the avengers tower)#(it isn't as though anyone will reach it from up so high. he can fly. it'll be fine.)#(furthermore ...... he'd probably break his house keys....)#(...always on accident tho.... he'd want to keep his house key from ja.n//e safe bc it's from her)#( ooc . ) — stories that leap from the page .#(i'm mostly rambling my thoughts out loud - this would make a really cute domestic fos.ter/s//on fic)#(someone write this and then show me)#(or maybe i'll do it idk)
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inhayara · 6 months ago
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I just started reading Neverwhere and was it intentional to make Richard Mayhew so adhd-coded or did the universe just decide to call me out through this character for no reason-
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silvantransthranduiltrash · 2 years ago
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If throne of glass met the sons of feanor, specifically Aelin
Aelin: *sees the feanorians commit slaughters for a jewel*
Aelin: HAVE NONE OF YOU HEARD OF ASSASSINATION, DIPSHITS!?
Aelin: *appears in the window sill of the room Dior and his wife are sleeping in* *slits throats* *takes the silmaril* YOU SEE THIS? THIS IS SOMETHING WE CALL WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER!
Aelin: i understand the wish to see your enemy’s blood spill across marble floor, but come on
Celegorm: *takes notes*
Maedhros: *tired older brother sigh*
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note-boom · 2 years ago
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Thinking about all the women I ship dazai with while You shake and shit and cry. ❤️❤️
I'm -
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Anon, please, I love you.
But also, wrong blog. Do you not understand how annoyingly I've tag spammed other posts "i dont do ships buuuut..."?
Wait wait wait wait....i just realised after typing in my tags but - but WHAT women?? There's only like....4 viable women to ship Dazai with in this manga....what women??
#i was just going to block but i realised i wanted to frame my very first anon hate#its like am i a popular blog enough for this? do i deserve such a rite of passage?#especially when im not really active lately...but ah screw it#anyway more anon hates WILL be blocked this was for my personal pleasure#it was relatively tame but sorry to anyone who is uncomfortable seeing this stuff#but yeah. i guess ive been invited to openly ramble about why i don't do ships but kinda still find it fun#i mean theres a lot of reasons why fandom shipping doesnt really vibe well with me#but mostly its just that i enjoy looking at things in a way that the author has obviously presented itself to us#like you hear a LOT about...political/economic/queer/racial and so on subtext a lot#and i find that fascinating to employ as an exercise (and in turn find it really cool when others do that for their ships)#buuuuut im in fandoms to have fun and shipping is interesting to see and yeah even fun to do#and you know its not really about looking at stuff as presented by canon#but au-ing in a similar but opposite direction?#in the end i guess you could say im indifferent to shipping but simultaneously find it really interesting#no big reason that i want to share now that i think about it#but anyway that said please dont inflict dazai on women. so many ladies have tried to kill him because of it#anyway i dont think this would be complete without the....#i dont ship stuff but this us fun!! >:DDD#spitting nonsense#we spat nonsense together anon <3#and reiterating warning that any other anons like this'll be blocked
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yuukei-yikes · 2 years ago
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what are your thoughts on ayataka
THEY ARE SO GIRL BEST FRIENDS CODED LIKE THEYVE KISSED YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. THEY HAVE KISSED EACH OTHER'S FACES
as a ship i have to admit i dont care much for it because i am literally so insane abt harutaka i HAVE to work everything around it. i think ayanos psyche is too 😐🥴 to be in a relationship any time soon so forget abt a polycule. and takanes so into haruka its like anyone else would rly feel it and it wouldnt end up working out LOL unless theyre ok with being such a clear #2 but ayano specifically would be so self conscious abt it
i like the idea that maybe eventually they end up as qpp hehe but augh again. i think. haruka isnt into takane being in other relationships so itd kinda be drama lol. dont get me started on haruka She is so demi 🥴
the way i like it is not so much post str but baby sapphics in hs being close to another girl for the first time. they kissed ok. like theyve kissed
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cosmicrhetoric · 1 year ago
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woh. finally got a good chunk of the way into ponniyin selvan and maybe it's just my translation but theres a little explanation section at the end of every chapter to help with some tamil words....but fr they explain maybe 1 out of every 5 bits that would be ILLEGIBLE to anyone who doesnt have a good handle on specifically south indian hindu myth and tamil nadu history. im doing ok language wise ���🏾 like its been a few years since i was really in that world but if im struggling idk how non brown ppl would manage. even little things, poetics, word games....kuruvaikoothu scene was interesting though
#there was a line like 'wow youre a chanakya among men' and i was like???? ur just not gonna translate that?????#15 yrs of bharathnatyam were all training for reading this book fr. im literally only relying on what i learned in dance#this is not my actual family's bag#and the language/spelling is an issue theres a looooong passage in the koothu where i didnt know what god they were talking abt#cause i had never heard the name before. and then they mention the name of a slain demon thats similar to one i knew and i was like#OH. oh its him. okay. cool. but it took work#most of the language stuff im ok with though. a lot of the words are old enough that i can muddle thru with sanskrit roots#this is so crazy i cant believe going to a dance school that was so traditional my parents thought she was crazy is finally paying off#i remember going to kalakshetra and being like. yo this is wild why are we learning the same thing in the same way countries apart#i mean those dancers were better of course this was like. their whole life. but curriculum and vibe was exactly the same#like we had to show up hair braided formal dupatta and all. halfways thru she finally started letting us wear leggings under#a salwaar kameez top instead of the cotton pants they come with#learned nattuvangam too. and she didnt let us perform until we had a solid grasp on different talams#like when i got older half of class was sitting and listening to a tape and tapping out what beats fit#but yeah i just wonder if a more international translation exists! this really seems For south indians#but maybe this is why i had barely heard of it until the film came out my parents arent big readers but they should've at least known it#reading: ponniyin selvan
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haljathefangirlcat · 10 months ago
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#one thing I think it’s always important to think about when looking at ancient literature#and it’s evolution#is the fact that they are working with an array of knowledge and stories will never get to learn#they are being influenced by things lost to history#there are like 7-8 centuries between Hesiod and Ovid#it makes sense other versions or variations would pop up in that time#and these authors often did take artistic liberty with their material#people writing down these myths often had something to say with them#and that going to influence how they write it#like the anti authority (or really anti Caesar) themes in the metamorphoses#most myths have a bunch of variation#why would Medusa be an exception#anyways this was really good and interesting
The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!
With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.
Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.
Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?
Step 1: Yes, but no.
The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.
Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.
Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.
The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.
Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.
But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)
But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.
Step 2: So… no rape?
Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.
The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.
As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.
So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.
So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.
Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!
Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.
Step 3: The missing link
Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…
Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.
The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.
But what was the reason behind this change?
Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair – and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).
“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.
[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]
And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.
CONCLUSION
Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.
A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.
B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.
C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.
[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]
EDIT:
For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.
Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster
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From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.
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Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that
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nadiajustbe · 5 months ago
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One of my favorite parts about the writing of Howl's Moving Castle is how easy it is to write off all the things from our world at first as him just being a weird wizard™ (also thanks to bestie @jutenium for spotting this I wouldn't put it like that without you!!/pos). Sure, Sophie uses weird descriptions, but readers have every reason to believe them because of the way Howl is presented as a character. When Sophie says he wrote with a quill that doesn't need an ink, you wouldn't think it was actually a ballpoint pen, you would think Howl had just enchanted his quill so that it wouldn't need ink! When she adds that she can't make out a single word, you think he has matchingly terrible handwriting, but in fact Sophie has simply never seen a pen writing. When she sees the mysterious labels on his books, you think he's keeping a lot of obscure magical literature, but it's really just an encyclopedia and a guide like "Top 10 Rugby Tips." When Sophie notices the bottles in Howl's bathtub, you think they're some kind of magical jars where he keeps girl's hearts, but I'm almost certain that they're just 'Dove' and 'Head and Shoulders' that he's enhanced with his spells and put silly labels on. When you read Calicifer singing a song in a language Sophie doesn't understand, you think it's some kind of ancient cipher or code, but it's actually just a rugby song in Welsh that Howl sings when he's drunk. And finally, when you see the terrifying black door, which is completely shrouded in darkness, you imagine a passage to an eerie, mythical place, similar to what Miyazaki showed us - but it's just fucking Wales.
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fairuzfan · 10 months ago
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Also re:necropolitics of israel (click)
A few days ago there were reports of Israeli soldiers "returning" bodies of martyrs they took like just straight up from Gaza. Here is a report about bodies being stolen from al-Shifa (click).
The director of Al-Shifa had reported the bodies being stolen back in November (click) before his arrest. The hospital workers mentioned not knowing why the soldiers would do that. The speculation of the photo-op arose because the photo-op of October 7th within Israel happened a month and a half after October 7th, after the Al-Shifa raid. People (Palestinians) noted that the level of violence done to the bodies seemed similar to what they had been seeing with the bombs in Gaza, and found it hard to believe that Hamas could inflict that much damage. There was a thread that was examining this idea but I haven't found it as it's been a bit. If I find it, I'll comment on this post.
But even then, Israel routinely makes corpses serve out their sentences or even outright steals them for the sake of enacting psychological torture onto the relatives of the martyr (click). The burial process is an essential step in mourning and grief, which means by withholding the bodies, they ensure that the family is unable to recover emotionally from the death of their loved one nor are they allowed to move on. This is essentially a form of ensuring that people are unable to resist as the emotional toll this takes on them is quite high.
A variety of reports and testimonies are linked in this article regarding the harvesting and removal of organs throughout the years by Israel (click). The most damning of the evidence is a testimony by Dr. Meira Weiss in her book "Over Their Dead Bodies." The article has a translated passage from Hebrew about the period at the turn of the century and their practices then (roughly 1996-2002):
“They would take corneas, skin, and heart valves, while noting that non-professionals would not notice the absence of these organs as they would place something plastic in place of the corneas and ‘take’ the skin from the back so that the family wouldn’t see it. In addition, the bodies of detained martyrs are used in medical colleges at Israeli universities for research purposes.” Weiss confirmed that “in the first Intifada, the army effectively allowed the institute to extract organs from Palestinians under a military procedure that required the autopsy of a Palestinian prisoner. The autopsy procedure was accompanied by organ removal, which was used by the Israeli Skin Bank established in 1985 to treat burns suffered by Israeli soldiers. This was after the Chief Rabbinate Council issued a ruling legitimizing it, which led to saving the lives of many Israelis who were injured during attacks on Palestinian citizens, continuous assaults, and wars — at the expense of Palestinian martyrs, according to specialized Israeli medical sources for burn treatment.”
It's worthy to note: as an occupying force especially, Israel should not be doing ANYTHING with these bodies and just returning them to the families. I've seen some people say "they didn't JUST harvest Palestinians' organs, they also harvested Israeli organs." It doesn't matter. They are an occupying force that enacts systematic violence on Palestinians especially and within this context, anything Israel does towards Palestinians is a targeted, racialized violence. It is widely known that Israel denies crimes it has committed until many, many years, especially from during the Nakba, such as well poisoning.
People provide evidence that organs can't be used after a certain point in time.... in this context (October 2023-December 2023), it's not about whether or not the organs were used for anything. It is specifically for the purpose of body desecration which Israeli soldiers especially have not been shy about. Here is a report during the bulldozer massacre in which people report that Israeli soldiers run over bodies for no other reason than desecration (click).
Also, remember the grave desecration that happened a few days ago? It was reported that they had stolen bodies believed to belong to young Palestinian activists then (click). This is widely known as 'necroviolence' on Palestinian bodies in order to humiliate them (click).
You cannot remove the context of an oppressive force (Israel) that is documented to have disrespected graves and bodies. You must analyze it within this context, not any others. Withholding bodies of Palestinians, no matter what they did while they were alive, is a form of disrespect and oppression on a subjugated population. To deny that this happens and to attribute it to antisemitism is not only disrespectful of Palestinians' mourning rights, but also an effort to remold the narrative into one of "Jewish people against Palestinians" by emphasizing the Jewishness of the occupying force rather than focusing on... you know... the fact that they're an occupying force known to enact violence on Palestinian martyrs.
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xclowniex · 3 months ago
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The whole "israhell" and "isnotreal" shit is just blatantly anti jew at this point.
Like Israel has been a word used by jews to describe jews for centuries, far before Israel, the country existed. For example, am yisrael chai means the Jewish people live.
"Oh but I'm talking about the country not jews"
Cool yeah sure that may be your intention, but the other month a synagogue in the US as Israel crossed out and replaced with Palestine by antizionists who thought that the passage on the outside of the synagogue was referring to the country of Israel, when in reality it was referring to jewish people. Essentially the word jewish/jewish people was crossed out and replaced with Palestine.
Hopefully most people can look at that and go "damn that's fucked up and antisemitic".
And I get that there is the very likely that they did not know that Israel also means jewish people, however it takes 2 minutes to Google search + vandalizing a synagogue bad full stop. And the whole not knowing that it has multiple meanings in of itself causes antisemitism.
And ignoring the fact that people aren't pulling this shit with other countries they don't support, as a jew I feel unsafe when i hear people saying that shit as I A) have no clue if it's has or will result in them pulling similar shit at synagogues or even with posts using Israel meaning the Jewish people and B) I also have no clue if they genuinely mean Israel the country or Israel as in the Jewish people.
It's super simple to not use israhell or isnotreal. Using those words does not at all do anything to actively help Palestinians, it is slang created by those in the west so they can refuse to say Israel. And if you believe that not saying Israel is more important than not making jews, not zionists, jews around you uncomfortable, than unfortunately you are not normal about jews.
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