“Please, let him be soft. I know you made him with gunmetal bones and wolf’s teeth. I know you made him to be a warrior a soldier a hero. But even gunmetal can warp and even wolf’s teeth can dull and I do not want to see him break the way old and worn and overused things do. I do not want to see him go up in flames the way all heroes end up martyrs. I know that you will tell me that the world needs him. The world needs his heart and his faith and his courage and his strength and his bones and his teeth and his blood and his voice and his– The world needs anything he will give them. Damn the world, and damn you too. Damn anyone that ever asked anything of him, damn anyone that ever took anything from him, damn anyone that ever prayed to his name. You know that he will give them everything until there is nothing left of him but the imprint of dust where his feet once trod. You know that he will bear the world like Atlas until his shoulders collapse and his knees buckle and he is crushed by all he used to carry. Dear God, you have already made an Atlas. You have already made an Achilles and an Icarus and a Hercules. You have already made so many heroes, and you can make another again. You can have your pick of heroes. So please, I beg you– he is all that I have, and you have so many heroes and the world has so many more. Let him be soft, and let him be mine.”
— Please, let him be happy ( j.p. )
Blasphemous II + concept art by Juan Miguel López Barea
Ancient Greek culture/mores for deceit and archery is like
Male-coded intelligence vs. female-coded trickery, FIGHT
Male-coded intelligent warfare (fighting from afar is smart and minimizes injury so you can do more of it) vs. female-coded fighting from afar because of trickery and cowardice in not standing up to close combat, FIGHT
Myth-wise, then you've on the one hand got all those female characters resorting to trickery to achieve their aims (Hera, Klytaimnestra, for example) = bad. And on the other hand you've got characters like Odysseus, where the deceit of the wooden horse, which would be the modern-day war crime of perfidy, is smart and good.
And you've got instances like an author writing a dialogue between Chiron and Achilles, where Achilles is scorning archery for being a cowards' method of combat and Chiron rebuking him that it's smart fighting. And in extension/connection, we've got Odysseus who is archery-coded (even if he does not do any archery in the war, at least in our surviving source(s)), and, in the Odyssey, using it to win the day, contra Paris, our ur-example of ~bad coward archer~
Clytemnestra for @lesbiancassius (my part of the trade for an incredible alcibiades/socrates fic ;__;)
the way that storytelling in the odyssey loops in on itself… everyone in the odyssey wants to know the odyssey. telemachus leaves for sparta in order to hear it. odysseus sits with the phaeacians deep into the night telling it. and he withholds it from people he doesn’t trust, only to reveal himself and tell it again. the sirens and demodocus sing to him about the iliad. penelope tells ithaca's bard phemius to stop singing because he has no songs about odysseus returning; if he can’t sing the odyssey, he shouldn't sing at all
its not about fuckin. problematic romance or whatever the myth isn’t ABOUT romance it’s about demeter and persephone’s separation. death took her child and her heart broke. The world withered from her grief. its okay if you all hate your moms and wanna run away with a guy with face tattoos or whatever the fuck but making demeter the antagonist to a forbidden romance plot means you’re illiterate sorry
time passes
almost a week of school left i am doing it for him.
I found another rare behind the scenes one.
Eurpides’ The Trojan Women at Alumnae Theatre (2011)
I just think they’re neat
Jon Bernthal / Rossy de Palma / Sevdaliza / Adrien Brody / Tamino / Sofia Coppola / Elisabeth Moss / Andy Samberg / Damiano David / Alba Flores