Sthenelus Bandaging Diomedes' Finger

my uni staged philoctetes and one of the best choices was to have odysseus walk in with a cigarette through the entrance directly beneath the "no smoking" sign

i straight up do not believe that odysseus did everything he did to get back to penelope and telemakhos. or even that he did everything he could. wanting to return to them is not the whole story. i like the myth about odysseus pretending to be mad to get out of the war for lots of reasons, but one of them is because it's an attempt to escape the narrative, foiled by his love for his son, but also because there is contrast to what we know of him long after the narrative has sucked him back in. odysseus is no less kleospilled than anyone else! he fights for his pride; he makes mistakes; he gets worn down; he delays his homecoming, in ways that are and aren't his fault, all the time. he wants to go home. he doesn't just want to go home.

but he does try. by leaving ogygia he willingly goes back into the narrative one more time, and he never gives up until he finally returns. isn't that compelling enough? do we have to sand it down?

When I saw this picture, I knew I had to draw it with Hektor and Andromache, it's perfect for them~

actaeon the hunter and king lycaon

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.

Filling a request on twitter for Hektor experiencing a moment of happiness, and really, isn't that what we all truly want?

A rare day with nothing more urgent to do than entertaining Polyxena

Values so clear it could bring a man to tears :’D

One of the funniest real-world things to mix with the Iliad is that in Hittite society bird omens/reading birds was like.

A really important divination method.

Maybe not THE most important but it was big and it was complex and involved.

And then you have Hektor "fuck your bird signs" of Troy.

Illustrations by Janet & Anne Grahame Johnstone for Jason and the Golden Fleece

Quick painting before I go pass out