Wish-my-brain-would-shut-it - Honestly, Kinda Fucked

This was a good use of my two hours

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

Greek mythology retellings are so fucking cool because mythology is, as a whole, very fluid. There isn't really anything that's a cohesive story, from beginning to end. There are so many versions of myths, which all reflect the values of society at that time.

Of course, sometimes those values are misogyny, so you get shit like women characters who are either good and submissive or sexy and evil, or SA being common and/or expected, but that's why these myths are retold.

The values of society changes so often, and the stories we tell change with it. People like homer wrote down the stories of their time, generations after the stories actually originated.

Retellings are a great way to participate in this millenia long tradition of telling stories, because we shape the stories to be a reflection of our time as well.

That's why I've written this essay on there are other ways from epic: the circe saga because–

Ares is so Hansel by SODIKKEN to me.

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.