Overcoming The Slightest Challenge Of My Day: “This Is Just Like The Odyssey.”

both the iliad and odyssey plus trojan women should be required reading before you odysseus post

homophrosyne

thinking about heroes wishing to switch places........

[...] when Odysseus meets the shade of Achilles, he addresses Achilles as "best of the Achaeans". But the Odyssey then has Achilles saying that he would rather be alive and the lowliest of serfs than to be dead and the kingliest of shades. [...] Achilles seems ready to trade places with Odysseus, whose safe homecoming will be marked by a painful transitional phase at the very lowest levels of the social order. The words of Achilles in the first nekuia are ironically conjuring up the glorious days of the Iliad when he had said: "I have lost a safe return home [nostos], but I will have unfailing glory [kleos]." (IX 413) The destiny of the Odyssey is that Odysseus shall have a nostos, 'safe return home'. From the retrospective vantage point of the Odyssey, Achilles would trade his kleos for a nostos. It is as if he now would trade an Iliad for an Odyssey. By contrast, at a moment when Odysseus is sure that he will perish in the stormy sea, he wishes that he had died at Troy: "...and then the Achaeans would have carried on my kleos." (v 308-311)

From Gregory Nagy's The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the hero in ancient Greek poetry (1979)

Loved the Annihilation book, just saw the 2018 movie, and thoughts on the ending. Heavily spoilers, partial ending explanation.

The first moment in the movie I stopped and said “Wait, that makes no sense” is the ending when Lena walks on the beach with the glass trees. Up until this moment I followed with a ‘eldritch cosmic horror being unreality” mindset, but this moment stopped me.

Because it made no sense to me that there could be any sort of mutation that results in clear, crystalline forms. This movie hammers in that biology is being disfigured, but not non organic forms; we see the old buildings, the boats are practically untouched, old weaponry is usable. So why now with these trees? Minerals don’t have dna to mutate.

But THEN the movies goes on, and Lena is replicated with a green being. And we see the inside of the lighthouse, the underneath with that shimmer black moving WHATEVER, and the creature itself, which is an iridescent green. Then it all makes sense.

Sand is the largest source of silicon in the world, and silicon is the second most abundant element on earth. Sand is also a primary ingredient in glass. Silicon -> Sand -> Glass -> Glass trees.

This is the best photo I could get of the being underneath the lighthouse, if you’ve seen the movie you know it’s more shimmery, almost liquid, looking identical to the material on the right, which is solid silicon.

Silicon is also used in making computer chips and wafers.

Silicon wafers have a holding, greenish iridescent shimmer as well, much like the being that tries to relocate Lena at the climax.

Here’s the thing about Silicons atomic properties. Silicon has 4 valence electrons, and if you remember grade school chemistry, an unreactive, stable atom has 8. So silicon is semi stable, but would really like to bond with other atoms to achieve 8 valence electrons. This basic concept is what makes it a good semiconductor, or a material that easily allows electrons to move through it. There’s a lot more technical science that has to do with it I’ll cut out, but some elements are ‘injected’ into silicon to manipulate these properties, creating a system that allows electrons/electricity/energy to very very easily run through it. A very popular choice is phosphorous.

I couldn’t get photos of the scene, but Oscar Isaac’s human character self immolates with a PHOSPHORUS grenade. When he destroys himself, it’s a contained, rapid fire that does not spread to his surrounding and dies out fairly quickly. But when the creature is then trapped in a phosphorous blast, it doesn’t dissolve, but continuously burns. The burn doesn’t spread to the regular stone of the lighthouse, but absolutely rips through the underground area and being growing on the side of the lighthouse that the movie has us believe is a living creature, apart of the clone, or obviously at least the same substance that one (aka me) might say is silicon.

Here’s one last thing about silicone properties. The material most related to silicon on the periodic table is carbon.

All known organic life is made of carbon. Period. If it’s alive it’s carbon. Many traits responsible for why carbon makes life possible is shared with other Group 16 elements. Silicon is the closest Group 16 element to carbon. Therefore, it is hypothesized that any non-carbon based life would have to be made of silicon. Many theories and sci-fi stories play with the idea of an alien life being made of silicon is more environments that can accommodate that.

So back to my initial confusion. I was confused as to why the creature, or the shimmer, or whatever force that is responsible for the movie could make clear, crystalline, glass like trees. It’s ability was clearly stated to genetically mutate living things. But I’m arguing that somehow through sci-fi movie reasons, the creature is silicon based life, or become silicon based upon hitting the sand at the beach, then perhaps adapted into carbon based life.

After this scene, when Lena is being interrogated, she is asked ‘Was it carbon based?’ Imma say that is a very, very relevant question, and maybe the entire point of this line of questions. So cool thing the movie did, it all still makes sense.

End credits: the reason we don’t see silicon based life is it would theoretically require an insane amount of energy to sustain. Doesn’t react with this theory but yo it’s a movie they gotta make it work somehow.

The Trojan prince Troilus brings his horse to a fountain to drink, while Achilles (to the left; not visible) lurks in ambush.  Detail from an Etruscan red-figure stamnos, part of a pair known as the “Fould stamnoi”.  Artist unknown; ca. 300 BCE.  From Vulci; now in the Louvre.

“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. )

–if that ever happened.

Drew them to remember how drawing works lmaoo

Finally GIFs from my project! I made a simple animation for a story about the death of Ajax. I combined the first dialogue of Athena and Odysseus from the tragedy of Sophocles with the episode of Odysseus in Hades from the Odyssey. And Ajax in this project had no words :( dying in silence.

yoo imma fight a river god