Ok, Also With The Theseus Slander.

Ok, also with the Theseus slander.

How? Is it possible? To boil down a Greek hero so much that it’s actually possible to just flat out detest them.

I find it impossible to take the characters personally. Like people seem personally offended characters and I don’t get it. The characters are all so complicated that it’s impossible to just broad stroke psychoanalyse, and THEN proceed to act like the character has personally wronged you due to this diagnosis you have them based on your version preference when reading. Damn.

Yeah fun fact the villain in the story is Minos. The victims are the Athenian youths, the Minotaur. Theseus is the Hero, Ariadne is the Heroine. But Ariadne represents the suffering of the Athenians when she gets on the ship with them, even though she saved them, and Theseus’s dealing with that represents his tendency to make some very bad decisions, something that will haunt his character for the rest of his stories.

Maybe it’s the fact that I base my enjoyment of a character on how interesting they are. But Greek mythology is set up with these extremely complex characterisations alongside this tendency toward a deeply flawed hero. Not necessarily glorifying the fallenness, but using it to explore what happens to exceptional men when they are deeply flawed. That’s Theseus. He’s not a psychopath, not a narcissist. The texts paint him as a youth who began his ventures to find his place, who stepped up to save his kin, but whose chief and detrimental weakness was not thinking, and making bad decisions with big consequences based on just not fucking thinking anything through. He is a gut reaction person, he makes big moves based on where he finds himself in the moment. His character is glorifying the strength of the hero and, as so many men in mythology ARE WRITTEN, a cautionary tale against the flaws that lay a hero low.

Achilles is also one of these. Agamemnon is one of these. Hector, a great guy, but he has some flaws that get him in trouble. Jason too. Odysseus! And Theseus, a monumental figure, is one of these characters that implore men to be strong but to be wise, to think before they act.

He's the god of war, not the god of victory.

Honestly, greek god and all, Ares deserved to be called a moron. He's out there losing a fight to a 12yo. "God of war" lmao. I wish I was a fly on the wall when the gods found out about it and cracked up behind his back.

UNDERTALE YELLOW FULL RELEASE EVERYONE CHEERS💛!!!!!

Yeah, this is generally my thought on retellings.

I don't think Greek Mythology retellings/adaptions/inspired/etc. are necessarily "evil"...but I DO think people REALLY need to understand that there's a huge difference between the actual mythology and certain media.

I feel like people have to basically do a "Fandom ___" to say the different versions. Like "PJO ___", "Hades game ___", "TSOA ___". For it to be understood that these depictions are DIFFERENT. I'm saying this as someone who grew up reading PJO and still has a soft spot for it. But as someone who really loves Greek Mythology as well, I sometimes get really SAD.

I'm going to use the comparison of Howl's Moving Castle with it's Book Vs. Movie. I enjoy both!!! But they are honestly very different. In the movie there is no "sister swap", Markle isn't a young teenager, Sophie doesn't throw weed killer at Howl, and many more moments. But I enjoy both because even though there are changes they still keep components that are ingrained into the characters!

In some Greek Myth retellings/adaptations/stories/etc., characters are...SO different from the source material. That's fine...Choose what you want with your story... But folks should know that the modern adaptations are NOT the source material!!!

It bothers me that a lot of these wonderful myths and stories are twisted up and seen so differently because of a modern version of them. You can have that character be "awful" or a certain way in your story. But I almost feel that as fans, it's not good to generalize them or see it as "This is the truth". People are hating the mythological figure when it's only in that interpretation they are like that.

In PJO, Ares is "Zeus' favorite", isn't a good dad, a misogynist, etc. The actual myths? One of his Epithets is LITERALLY "Feasted by Women", in the Iliad everybody basically bullies him with Zeus literally saying he hates him. He cries when he learns one of his sons is killed in the war. He literally kills someone about to rape his daughter. Ares isn't perfect but it makes me sad with how he's viewed and talked about when it's only in PJO he's like that. Same with Dionysus. Read the Bacchae, you'll love it.

In Lore Olympus, Apollo rapes Persephone (noticing the fact that modern takes on the myths add rapes where there never were hmmmmm) when he never did in any of the myths.

In TSOA, Thetis is cruel when in the Iliad, she is such a loving mother to Achilles. She grieved alongside her son over Patroclus. Also with Agamemnon. In Ipheginia at Aulis, Agamemnon is a MESS. He adored his children.

In Circe, Odysseus is viewed as a selfish man who ONLY hurts others and doesn't care about his family when that is LITERALLY his one consistent character trait. HE is actually the one who is the victim of rape. Circe was never raped.

Medusa is only a victim in Ovid's, a Roman man, works. Not in GREEK mythology. She was just a cool monster. Leave Perseus alone. Poseidon and Medusa actually had a consensual relationship in Greek Mythology!

These adaptations/retellings/inspired by/etc. whatever anybody wants to call them, are not the real myths! They may be similar in some ways but to just generalize them or hate the deity/mythological figure because of something they did in the new media feels fucked up!

You can enjoy these new stories. There's nothing wrong with that!!! But know they're not the real myths. Maybe even label it as "I hate ____'s version of ____". As that makes it clear what version you're talking about.

Op, you have no idea what you've done to me. My neurons have activated. I've been pacing around my room naked for a solid hour. I had to take a nap and think about this. Ares is such an interesting god to me and you just give me this tid bit of knowledge like it's nothing??????

In the time I've had to think I've come to the conclusion that ares just wants you to fight.

Like, violence is his nature, right? I don't feel like he's going to scorn his warriors for their own violence any more than he will for yours. Everyone is able to partake in his violence and strength, if courage to fight is what you need then he opens his body for you to feast on him. Let his adrenaline course through your body as you stab out the eye of the man or women who dares to assault you. Either way violence is being enacted, so he should be satisfied.

I think he would prefer when a victim fights back because it elevated a simple attack into a battle.

Involving the times he himself would (maybe) assault some one, he might find it hot when his victims fight back. It could be foreplay to him. 🤷

Hey, I saw your Ares post!! I think what's noteworthy is that Zeus, Apollo, and Heracles all raped people. (Also, technically Zeus is supposed to uphold justics and whatnot.) I don't know Greek mythology as well as you, though, that's just what I think! <3

That's true. I didn't make this point in that post (though I did mention it previously), but the fact that the others do commit that kind of thing only makes it clear that someone not wanting one of their female relatives to be raped doesn't have to mean that they are opposed to rape in principle.

As for Ares, people often point out that he is the only Greek god with no rape myths, but, to be fair, with two or three exceptions his sexual adventures are about as detailed as the genealogies in the book of Genesis. So it might be technically accurate, but only because we know nothing about the vast majority of unions he engages in beyond the name of the mother and the identity of the resulting offspring. There are also instances where he behaves like other gods, fighting with others over a specific woman (Tanagra) or making use of disguise in order to impregnate someone (Phylonome), so Imma say that his reputation as someone who is particularly concerned with consent does seem to come pretty much out of nowhere.

There is this very interesting post discussing the connections between war, the sacking of cities and sexual violence. To quote a part of it: „this epithet ['Sacker of Cities'] cannot be interpreted as distinct from sexual violence. Sacking, as Gaca explains, is systematically killing all warriors and violating all women and girls to ensure they are subdued, owned, and forcibly bear your own children, which doubles the ownership. This is not frowned upon or the work of foot soldiers; rather, these are their orders from their commanders. Ares is continually used as a metaphor, a personification of this practice, and so is anything but unproblematic in both our modern eyes and the Greeks' own religion; he is a revered god as much as one to keep far, far away”

thought exercise:

men kissing

big hairy men

men cuddling

a couple of dudes (tender embrace)

a group of guys kissing one another

soft feminine men

a pile of men

men showing bashful affection towards eachother

men