#yeah great song but like

[clouds-of-wings]

God. Over a MONTH until I see my special little guys live. Will I be able to keep myself from going on YT and spoilering myself about the setlist? WE'LL SEE!

[poxxum]

So I got obsessed w a certain song for a short period there....

[kesopan]

no thinking over the weekend

[cowardlycowboys]

it's my party and I'll cry if I want too

[turtleblogatlast]

“Haven’t You Noticed (I’m a Star)” from Steven Universe works so ridiculously well for Leo

[esmiara]

Ah, to be a yakuz- I mean. Ah, to be a tiny drunk japanese mafioso

[seoulmatez]

“if this is the fate you have chosen, then i will wait for you in your next life. until then, anaxagoras.”

art commissioned by @/insaneption!

[ccccatttta]

i want to make a slightly angsty moonwater socmed au inspired by cool ; gwen stefani

[britneyshakespeare]

beatles poll, for research (reductive binary opinions only)

[dogbound1128]

Punch Out fandom I got some straight gas comere you're gonna love this this strain is called "WVBA-Mandated all-boxers group stream". Go crazy with you fake scenarios

[sinnettini]

have you all seen tennis channel putting APT. (a love song) over the sincaraz training together video because 😭

[briankang]

btw that new billboard interview is funny for many reasons but my two fav ones being:

nobody tell him there's already a naver article w/ a date for their cb

but also jisung saying this:

[honeyteastar]

Twirls hair more on the heishin idol & detective au! Bc like I said it can be its own post, so how it started bc I was listening songs and projected Heiji into it and now we here!!

Putting the nefarious “keep reading” bc is legit blocks of text so if it interest ya go ahead!

In this silly au the idol/model etc is Heiji! Even though peak at his career he doesn’t feel a burn out but is just more for show yknow. So he usually leaves production and stuff to go solo adventures moment like what he calls a disguise is legit a outfit that nobody seen him on and his famous hat but forward cap bc he’ll get recognized point blank if he wasn’t lol…funny enough he still a detective at heart his spark for it is there so the evil insanity is that even when preforming (if a murder happened along those lines he is gonna solve the case while preforming) aka something bad happened and you are on 5 Heiji, so when he’s yknow doing his preforming to look natural he’s actually seeking and figuring out who was the culprit yknow shrugs this happens like not often but it happens!

ANYWAY!!! Shinichi is full blast detective but he’s sooo burn out and have a limited friend pool (Ran & Sonoko) have heard like songs from Heiji bc of Sonoko moment but still going but for famous people my favorite is still Kaitou KID! While shinichi just like, How does this involve the idol Heiji?? Shinichi wouldn’t say but he actually likes his songs n stuff to the point like Ran notice and she does give him a photo card of Heiji (is given in customs holder that Ran did bc Sonoko does have the materials for KID photocard moment of actual KID heist moment lol) bc she kinda notices Shinichi humming his tracks lmao

How they actually meet was accidental encounter of Heiji going out bc with out anyone know where he’s going (he does that a lot) so yayyy eating on a restaurant bc looks interesting ig, shinichi goes to the same place after a hard case just to like chill out n whatever bc he doesn’t feel like cooking at his place and hasn’t actually eaten anything sooo then the iconic part happens Woaygh murder! And unfortunately Heiji is a suspect but he instantly goes around to crack the case!! Shinichi kinda bangs his head against the table because really??? What is this cruel cosmic joke. So he goes and does his thing containing the people ironically he can’t find one of his suspects and they say he’s the probably the one who did it! Ironically hard focusing finding the clues both Heiji and Shinichi clash at each other. Imagine the shojo sparkles, on top of each other and seeing face to face a bit close! And Heiji internally is like woops…while shinichi is like IDOL HATTORI HEIJI???? but he says ain’t you one of the suspects? and Heiji goes I ain’t the murder and just trying to solve the case? After that they team up and like solve it together! Heiji gets woaugh….detective Kudo… while shinichi kinda freaking the hell out like YAYYYYY!!!! He’s a detective and a super good one at it clashing I cannot embarrassed myself in front of him.

They do have trials and tribulations in a sense Heiji did fall for Shinichi and what’s to know him personally and stuff but his career kinda blows for that but that doesn’t stop him from seeking out Kudo whatsoever lmao like Heiji legit appearing where shinichi has his detective agency just yknow say hi while shinichi is like don’t you have a tv appearance or concert you need to be at? Also the photocard holder does get bring up bc Heiji kinda notices at first when he does appear at the agency like he does tease at shinichi for it then insane comment of I can pose for you so you can have more pictures if ya want and shinichi exploding like insta blush like WHATTTT!!!!!

[taraxippos]

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.

[alfhildr-the-word-weaver]

Shoutout to Long Face by the Vampire Lestat for being an actual real song that actually made it onto my top 100 songs this year btw. Do you think Lestat will make one of those little "thank you fans" videos to thank all of us who streamed his music?

[asteropewpew]

something that kinda wrecks me is that sunday's boss form is essentially an orchestra conductor which not only reflects a great deal of his ideologies but that it also represents how sunday had already put himself in a position to get behind the curtain while robin performs on the bright stage and takes all the attention of the audience

and the way the crude child drawing of dominicus gets more damning along with sunday's hesitation because you'd know then that...when robin was getting tutelage on how to sing harmony, sunday was already being taught the dirtier aspects of penacony or perhaps unknowingly being taught the price behind gopher wood's charity

another thing that i'd like to point out that robin's line regarding sunday:

it's not that sunday had broke his promise to robin that he'll be singing with her together in the future but rather, for sunday, the music that robin held dear to her the most is already proof that he had fulfilled his promise to her by singing with her just like this