The Green Knight

So it’s been a while since I posted here. I’ve had a lot of huge life changes. I quit my job. I bought a car. I moved out of state. I have an apartment now. I returned to academia. I’ve enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Georgia. It’s a whole lot. And I have to say now that it is *ALL* thanks to the amazing generosity of my parents. They’ll tell you it’s not, but it is. And I cannot believe how blessed I am to be here writing this now. I’m also terrified of what the next 5 years will bring. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the one and only film that got me back into a theatre after the onset of the pandemic: The Green Knight.

I’m absolutely obsessed with this film. I love it. I have critique, of course. But I loved it. And now, because you chose to click this link absolutely knowing what you were getting in for, you’re gonna have to hear about it. - oh and here is your BIG SPOILER WARNING because I’m not gonna even try to not spoil this one. Go watch it. Please. (If you choose to watch it do know that it is R rated for a reason and that reason is the sex scenes, of which there are 2-3. I think they are both well done and important, not gratuitous or exploitative. But if you absolutely refuse to watch sex scene then... I guess don't.)

Ok so my prior knowledge of the Green Knight is interesting, because I could have *sworn* I’d read the legend before - for a course in undergrad. But after I watched the film, I went back home to check my books and the story of Gawain and the Green Knight just… wasn’t there. So either I’ve read it but since lost the text which I read OR I just like. Somehow dreamed the whole thing. I dunno. But all this to say - with all my knowledge of mythology, and all my penchant for knights and such, it is by some ridiculous joke of the gods and an oversight on the part of the fates that I must admit - Arthurian legends are SOMEHOW not one of my strong suits. But… I’ve read the entire Wikipedia article on Gawain and the Green Knight, if it helps. And I plan on reading Tolkien’s translation sometime soon.

All that aside, I’d first like to talk about the things I LOVED about this film, then the reason I see behind some of the choices they made to go off-script from the myth as I understand it, and finally a few things I would have changed if I had any say on this masterpiece of a film. (oh my gosh does this post actually have some organization? wild.)

Ok so the first thing that I am just. Ecstatic about. Is the COSTUMING. The costume department for The Green Knight absolutely SHOWED UP TO WORK in a way I rarely see with fantasy or historical fiction set in this time period. Yes I know, I know, it’s set in Camelot, whatever. It’s set in western England, Cornwall, and Wales. Mostly Wales. To be hones,t the entire time I was watching this film the first time I was looking to try and pinpoint when in history it was set (they mention Saxons once but it's hard to understand in what light). It’s not, of course, and there is a huge mix - especially with the architecture, which is wild, btw, and later set than it should be. But the costuming is shockingly good for Arthurian times! The absolute LACK of plate mail is just… YES. THANK YOU. I‘m in love. Gawain’s weird padded pant-shoes? YES. Arthur’s entire get up? YES PLEASE. Whatever it is that Guinevere is wearing? Yes. Good. Just. All of the costumes. Absolutely stellar. (actually there are two exceptions: Alicia Vikander’s entire deal with the low cut dress, and the weird long baseball t shirt that Gawain wears to dinner in that scene. What is even happening here. Excuse me? The Lady looks like she belongs in A Knights Tale. What happened?)

Secondly, I’m in love with the music of this film. Especially the choral and sung pieces - especially the Christmas ones. I’ve wondered if, if it hadn’t been for the pandemic, this would have premiered around Christmas and have been considered an Xmas film. I’m glad it came out when it did. It’s nice to have some wonderful, haunting carols in the late summer.

Third, the cinematography. I’m no expert in film making but I can say that this film is absolutely gorgeous. Beautiful. The color. The mood. The just… ~vibe~ of this film. I love the way this film makes me feel. It makes me feel serious, and invested. I love it.

Oh fourth - I’m absolutely in love with Old Man Arthur. He’s my favorite. I also love how little focus is given to the rest of the Knights of the Round Table. They don’t feel like they have to shoe-horn in all the name drops. This film feels like the exact opposite of Guy Ritchie’s “King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword” (Yes mom I know you love that movie but this one is better, let me explain).

Ok to that’s actually a pretty good transition into Part the Second (it’s almost like I planned this). So let’s talk about the differences between the legend and I know it and the film - and the reasons I see for the changes. The Green Knight is a modern adaptation of a late medieval text based on a much older oral tradition. And no, it’s not a perfect adaptation. It’s not word for word. Yes, it changes some things. And you know what? I am okay with that. In fact, I am more than okay with it.

So here’s the thing. One of the things I love most about mythology - what is perhaps the most important aspect of it, even - is our ability to tell and retell it. Mythology changes over time. And it’s allowed to change. You’re allowed to change it. One of the best ways I’ve seen this happen recently is the huge surge of stories about Hades and Persephone - and their love story. Originally, the myth of Hades and Persephone was horrific. It was a story about a young maiden who was abducted against her will (and probably raped) and tricked into spending half of her life with her abductor - it was to explain the harsh reality of a world where once a year everything dies. But you know what? Stories about abduction and rape suck! Greek views of relationships suck. I don’t want to hear that story. You know what I DO want to hear? A love story between two people the world thinks would be terrible together and would never been good enough for each other, but them falling deeply in love - them having to trick the world, and work through their differences like adults. Love that. Yes. So the story was re-told. And this kind of thing is everywhere - people love Marvel’s Thor and Loki. But in the myth, Loki is the blood-brother of Odin, not Thor, and Frigg is neither of their mother, and other people can definitely weird Mjulnir. But tellings change. And that's good. We add to the text. We get to participate. It's why I love myth.

And that’s what The Green Knight is. It is a retelling. And I want to honor it as such. I think The Green Knight is exactly the retelling that we need right now. I’ve heard that The Green Knight was almost completely re-edited during the pandemic, and I think it shows, in a good way.

When Guy Richie wanted to make a movie about Arthur for the modern day he did so with elaborate action set pieces, showy magic, and a pace that hurts your head. The plot made just about as much sense as The Green Knight, but you didn’t have time to notice that - you were so captured by The Next Thing. The pacing was so fast to keep you Entertained - there were deaths you didn’t have time to process, and plot pieces played in the wrong order. It was a lot. The Green Knight does the exact opposite of this. It’s pace is slow and meandering. It spends time on it’s journey. It does not entertain. There are NO fight sequences in the whole film, did you notice? None. The closest you get is Gawain's attack on the Green Knight, and the bandit's assault on him in the woods, and I don't think either count as "fights". It's not an action film.  

What The Green Knight does do is meditate on its themes - something that The Legend of the Sword did not have. And these themes are many and varied! To me, The Green Knight is essentially a story of a man having to confront the reality of his own mortality. And the theme of death - imminent or eventual - is evident throughout. It’s in the plot - with St Winifred - it’s in the world - with the skeletons and the mushrooms and the rot - it’s in the script - with the lady’s wonderful monologue. It’s about confronting Nature, as well. Everything changes. Everything dies. To me the message of the film is thus: Death is both inescapable and natural. To defy it is not honor but cowardice. Only in accepting this truth can we have honor, life, or anything else. We don’t have to like it. In fact, we can fear it, we can dread it, we can have emotions about it. But we needn’t flee it, or fight it. For from death comes all life.

And that’s not even looking at the Christian aspect of this story - about trusting God vs trusting our own might. I loved Arthur’s line about how no man has ever faced death before his time. It’s so GOOD!

Ok but anyway. Adaptation. What are some of the major changes from the text to screen? Well, first off, the Green Sash is introduced much much earlier - through Gawain’s mother, Morgan le Fay. Then it get cut and then shows up later and the lady claims to have made it? Is it the same one? Who knows. I don’t. This movie isn’t about logistics! That’s not the point. Why would they make this change? Well, if they didn’t, then the EXTREMELY important idea of “this green scarf will make you not die” wouldn’t appear until essentially act III - or the very end of act II. By introducing it earlier, the viewer is allowed to sit and understand it’s meaning, and even grow attached to it when it is lost. You want Gawain to have it. And you really understand what it means for him to take it off.

Second big change - several friends have asked me “you know about mythology - what’s with the fox??”. So the fox friend is not in the book lol but there is a fox. The fox, though, represents cunning - often at the expense of honor. Which is just. Everything about what Gawain is trying with the green sash. I think the film would be less without the fox to both move it along, provide some audience buy in, and give Exposition at that one point. It seems to represent his mother’s wishes. But I also think the film gave the fox a bit too much screen time. Which brings me to…

What was with those giants tho?? This is the one scene I really really think the film could have done without. Like. I get it - seeing giants in the mountains is a big part of fantasy literature. We get it in the Silver Chair and in the Hobbit and they both get it from the same places in folklore. And yes, Gawain does have unspecified trials on his way. And yes, it makes sense for where in England/Wales they are. But STILL. It wasted a lot of time and money that could have been spend elsewhere - namely the Lord and Lady’s house.

Ok so. This is the biggest deviation, and the one I would have fixed. The timeline in this house is super off. The Lord doesn’t ask for the exchange of winnings until the second night, and the first and second Temptation are rolled into one, and there is only one kiss with the lady and one kiss with the lord and also a sex scene… what is. What are you doing. Also the lord’s hunting is very played down. The parallel is lost.

Sorry. If you don’t know - in the original myth Gawain spends 3 days with the Lord and Lady, and this is the focal point of his entire trip. It’s all about if he can be Honorable. So he and the Lord gave their game of exchanging winnings. The first day the Lord is gone, the Lady flirts with Gawain, but gently, politely - and the Lord hunts a noble stag. Gawain and the lady exchange a kiss - and so Gawain and the Lord exchange a kiss as well (Gawain can get it, ok?). The Lady and Gawain are both being genteel. But then the next day, the Lord hunts a boar - dangerous, aggressive. The lady is now REALLY flirting with gawain pretty shamelessly. (in the film this is their convo about “a knight knows nothing of love?” by the painting). Two kisses are exchanged between the lady and gawain - and so two kisses between gawain and the lord. The third day, the Lord hunts a fox. He is tricky, dishonorable, crafty, hard to catch. And the Lady also uses a trick on Gawain. She gives him the green sash. By chivalry, he must accept the gift. In the story, it is not in his accepting that he is at fault. He has been given a gift and accepts, and that's okay. But then, though he does exchange the three kisses given him by the lady to the lord, he does NOT exchange the sash. And it's here that he fails. He does not fulfill his promise to the lord. He keeps the sash a secret, because he thinks it will help him survive his encounter with the Green Knight. He values his survival more than his honor, values magic over his word. He is now the one who is tricksy like the Fox.

Ok so besides the fact that there should have been a lot MORE kissing and not less (also don’t tell me that the lady giving him her sash wasn’t sexual in the myth at all, y’all. YALL) and the confusing timeline which squishes the good good parallels of the hunt and the flirting. They didn’t do a horrid job with the Lord and Lady. But it could have been better. Personally? How I would fix this is to get rid of scenes like the giants - and maybe shorten that drug trip (Also - You couldn’t have picked an actually hallucinogenic mushroom? Really? Fly agaric is RIGHT THERE.) - and given more time to the Exchange of Winnings. I would have had the Lord propose the exchange first thing - when Gawain is still in bed, before he meets the Lady at all. I would have made the timeline more explicit, etc. I think it would help. But besides that? Very little I would change.

Ok but back to the good stuff. The Fox - the dishonorable trickstery - is a wonderful image for Gawain. And in the end he denies the fox - and the green sash. And it’s very good. Gawain is not honorable. It does not save him. But it also does not condemn him. It just is. And in the end, he does do the honorable thing. The important thing isn’t even that Gawain is or is not dishonorable - it’s that he WANTS to be honorable.

My friend Kaitlyn, who was the person who originally brought me to watch The Green Knight (thank you, I love you, you’re the best), pointed out to me that every single person in this film takes a chance to tenderly caress Gawain’s face. Not as a lover, but almost as a parent towards a child. It’s an act of comfort, of cherishing. She said that it was like every other character - Arthur, Gwen, Morgan le Fay, the Lord, the Lady, Winifred, even the Green Knight himself - saw the potential in Gawain. The potential that he himself did not see. They see the “Yet”. Whereas all Gawain saw was that he had no tales to tell, and wants to forge one. And yet - the tale he forges. It does away with all of the “yet”. It does away with potential. In trying to live out that potential that everyone else saw, Gawain loses - or risks losing - all possibility of it.  

And what's more than that? Gawain FAILS. Or at least, he sort of does. "You are no knight" is pretty strong. Yet this was always part of the plot. Gawain is a very human hero, in a very human world, for all its absurdity. But he is the hero. Honor true or besmirched, we value him. Perhaps he is honorable solely because we honor him? In the original legend, all the knights take to honoring his green sash a as reminder to be true.  

Kaitlyn also highlighted the most powerful line in the film (besides the Lady’s “green” monologue): “Is this all there is?” God, that’s good. Is there all there is to what? Life? Honor? Being a Knight? Yes. To all. Or no? Maybe. What else ought there be? It’s a question we could spend forever answering, and one that Gawain encounters before, with the Lord. It’s also (as Kaitlyn pointed out to me!) an absolute MOOD. I think in this decade and this year we’ve all had that moment. Is this all there is? Is my life, as I am living it, it? There is a deep human longing and need for there to be MORE. More what, we don’t know. But more. More meaning. More something. More testament to the significance of our experience. More purpose. Just more. And while I could talk about how this is a sign that we were made by a creator and for a purpose and to live and bring about a Kingdom we do not yet fully inhabit… I think, after the year we’ve all had, I’d rather just sit in this question for a while instead. And let myself ask it. Not be ashamed of my own disappointment. And keep answering this question, and know I never could.

The end of the Green Knight features a long “what if?” section. It’s not the first in the film - the concept is masterfully introduced and keyed in with a slow spinning pan, which is used again at the end of the second sequence to communicate really beautifully. But one thing I love is that we are not told what exactly causes this horrible AU. Is it the dishonor of lying? Is it his paranoia and fear of death? Is this what his mother wanted all along - to put him both in power and under her control? We are also not told, after, what happens next. Is this all there is?

In the original myth, Gawain does get to go home. He gets a scar on his neck as testament to his failure to act honorably toward the Lord (it turns out the Lord and the Green Knight are one). But this time, we don’t know. Maybe he dies. After the choice he makes - to remove the sash, to accept the death coming to him., to abandon his trick and his claim on immortality - it almost seems cruel for him to have to live on. Perhaps he does live, and has a completely different story, and honorable one. Perhaps not. It doesn’t actually matter to the film.

Ok, I’ve rambled on for a while now. But in the end, I love this film for so many reasons. I love it visually, I love the design, I love the music, I love the pace, the cinematography, even the choices they made the form their re-telling of the text. But most of all, I love that this film is completely unashamed to have a theme and embrace it, and to have a message and show it through. It’s not afraid to sit in discomfort without trying to exploit it’s viewers. It’s not horrific. It does not entertain. It is earnest, and curious, and beautiful. And those are all things I find very lacking in the modern superhero cinema. (Side note: I love that this film embraces its book origins with the title cards. They’re so pretty!! And I love the structure it gives).

Would I change The Green Knight? Yes, but only in some minor ways. Is it a perfect retelling of the text? No, but it’s not meant to be. It is a modern telling - not in the sense of modern action films. It’s actually EXTREMELY well grounded in it’s historical setting - with the costume and the music. And in fact “grounded” is exactly what it is. I’ve focused on the theme of death, but the theme of nature - of green - of Gawain’s journey from the manmade stone towers of Camelot to the wild wood of the Green Chapel, through forested land, through battle grounds, through wild giant lands - is a huge part of the theme. So very grounded. But also allowed to do things that don’t need to make sense. With the spring for winifred - where’s that red light coming from? Same place the music is.

The Green Knight is an exploration. It is grounded yet absurd. It is uncomfortable, yet not exploitative. It is historical, and yet modern. It is quiet, and yet it says so much. I’m absolutely in love with it. And I could say so, so much more.

Did I write this whole thing last night after a strong mug of mead? Yes. Did it take me the whole length of the soundtrack? Also yes. In any case, I want to thank you all for reading, if you’ve read this far. I really loved this film. I loved how it made me feel. I know that a film means something to me when all I can do after is sit in silence for a while. Both times I watched The Green Knight in theatres I sat, without saying a word, through the entire credits sequence. The film gives me a sense of.. Weight. Of moment. Of importance. As if every move I make is meaningful. As if no words need be said. It is heavy and hearty and complex and gorgeous. And I am so glad to have seen it. Thanks again, Kaitlyn!

I will probably have more updates about my life once again in grad school. We shall see. But for me personally this film could not have been better timed. The night I watched it with Kaitlyn was my last night in Texas. Talk about someone knowing they must leave on a journey and not wanting to depart! Talk about someone needing to confront and accept the unstoppable passage of change and of time. It’s me! It’s also just meshed really well with the other stories I’ve been reading and writing recently - of Ragnarok. Of change. Of new beginnings, and how they always start from ends.

Is this all there is?

What else ought there be??

Thanks

Rissa

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts, praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

P. S. holy shit I’ve just realized in posting this that I never wrote a post about Assassin’s Creed Valhalla! I absolutely adore that game and I’m writing a bit of historical fiction inspired by it about the creation of the Danelaw. I have so many thoughts and emotions about Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, I can’t. I will probably be back soon to talk about that. Thanks!

Wonder Woman (again!)

That's right. There's a new Wonder Woman film out. And if there is anything that's going to get me back on this unfrequently updated blog, it's gonna be Wonder Woman!

I'm gonna handle this like most review podcasts I've encountered, by saying as much as I can without spoilers first, and then dive into Spoiler territory. There will be appropriate warnings.

So first off: I enjoyed WW84. It's a stand up superhero film, and I genuinely enjoyed watching it. I was able to watch it at home, on HBO, with my sister and mother. We had a good time. But this film, unlike the previous Gal Gadot-Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman (2017), was not life-altering. It was good, it was not phenomenal. And even as a film, it had flaws.

I think WW84 fell to the same problem that most superhero sequels do - it got over ambitious. With the Origin Story out of the way, it's now time to flex, and complicate the world. Weirdly, though, WW84 also suffered in a way that not many superhero films do - instead of over-preparing for the follow-up third film, WW84 shoved WAY too much into it's third act, instead of exercising the freedom that an expected sequal can bring. So yes. A lot of the problems with WW84 are structural, and plot-pacing problems. My sister really pointed this out to me well when she said (paraphrase), "I was with it for act 1 and 2, but then the 3rd act started... and then the 3rd act started... and then the 3rd act started again. There were like. 3 different times where you're sure it's the 3rd act now. 3 different emotional climaxes."

Unfortunately, the plot structure (which might have been fixed with some editing, and some willingness to cut content) aren't WW84's only flaw. And I do have trouble with the writing. Some of this has been well pointed out by recent articles from Vox (here) and Polygon (here), and one more I read and can't find... Anyway, in my mind it boils down to this: The Diana of WW2017 had one thing in spades: Conviction. She knew that she would save the world, and that the world needed saving. Even when no one believed her. She was genuine and earnest, and she was not undercut by humor or ever belittled. The Diana of WW84 is more... messy. She second guesses herself, she hesitates, etc, and not in ways that are healthy. Ways that just seem... unlike her. And unfortunately, this attitude of hesitation has an effect on the rest of the film, compiling it's already unfocused, scattered storytelling.

Alright, I tried not doing spoilers but I don't think I can hold this up. Here comes the Spoiler Warning for WW84 for all the following:

Ok, so. The plot of WW84 in a nutshell: There is a magic object made by a trickster god that will grant your greatest wish (or whatever wish you express while holding it) but at a price - one of the stone's choosing. Diana and Dr Barbra Ann Minerva both wish upon the stone. Diana wishes for her man (Steve Trevor) back, and Dr Minerva asks to be Cool Like Diana. (This happens after they go on a date). Then our resident bad guy Pedro Pascal (Max Lord) has a balls-to-the-walls idea of wishing to himself become the stone! And gains the ability to grant wishes and take what he wants in return - honestly did this man ever watch Aladdin? He clearly didn't see the ending with genie jafar. Anyway. So Steve comes back by magic-possessing a man which is a totally fine and normal thing to do. Diana is confused but HAPPY! But also concerned because that means the stone is real and holy shit Max Lord has the stone that's bad. Then Lord uses the store to wreck havoc in Egypt. Diana saves the day but is injured and realises she is losing her powers! Steve realises it's because of her wish. They go to investigate. Turns out, the only way to destroy the stone and undo it's effects is for everyone to renounce their wishes - which would mean Steve "dies" again. Diana refuses and says there must be another way. Dr Minerva, on the other hand, freaks out that they are even trying to destroy and undo the stone - which has made her badass, and popular. Also, Max Lord is now causing HAVOC as he grants people wishes willy-nilly and everyone is on the verge of nuclear war. So that's a thing. (Oh I forgot there's this whole side-plot where Steve steals a plane that Diana turns into an invisible jet because she has that magic now, and they talk about flying. Spoilers, Diana learns to fly later. It's legit.) Ok so Diana, Steve, Lord, and Lord's new defender, Dr Minerva, have a big show down at the white house, and Diana loses big time. Turns out wishing to "be like Diana" gave Barbra super powers. In the ensuing chaos, Steve finally convinces Diana to let him go. It's super sad, because as Diana says "can't I just have this one thing?" like for real. Anyway, Diana finally grows up and makes her hard choice and leaves Steve behind for good. She gets her powers back, and faces off against Lord, who is in the middle of a planet-wide wish-granting frenzy. He uses the "price" of each of these wishes to make himself and also Dr Minerva more powerful - fully transforming her into the Cheetah. Diana shows up. She has cool armor. She and Cheetah have a weirdly areal battle that ends with Diana electrocuting (but not killing!) Cheetah after Cheetah refuses to renounce her wish. Then she goes to confront Lord but can't physically attack him because Plot - I mean because Chaos Wind?? He refuses to renounce his wish, so Diana uses her lasso of truth to speak not only to him but to the whole world, telling them that only they can save themselves by renouncing their selfish wishes and embracing the truth of the world before them - something Steve told her to do. They all do, including Max Lord, after he is confronted by the true reality of how he is endangering his son - a son he has convinced himself that he has been helping in his struggle for power, but is actually harming. The world is saved. Tada!

Wow! That was a lot. Ok time for some analysis.

So there are several major problems I have with the plot of this film. I'm going to try and list each of them I see, along with how I would have fixed them.

The first is, as I said before, structural. What is the emotional climax of this film? Is it Diana leaving Steve? is it her having to harm Cheetah? Is it her impassioned plea for the citizens of the world to save themselves? If the first, why does it happen so early? But if not that one, why... just why? This film also has WAY too much going on in it, especially with both Max Lord and also the Cheetah.

How would I have fixed this? I would have changed the pacing of Cheetah's character arc, and also the setting of Diana's leaving Steve. I actually would have treated this as a Cheetah origin story which I would NOT have resolved for the end. It would have been a perfect set up for a 3rd film. Maybe Cheetah is the only person who refuses to renounce her wish - and goes off into hiding, for Diana to track down later. I also would have brought Steve TO the confrontation with Lord, and also would have actually nixed the entire second Diana v Barbra fight (or changed it significantly - more on that). 

So the next, problem, wrapped up in the solution to this one, is a problem in writing. While WW84 has a message throughout - that we should not allow our wish for a better world cause harm to the one we live in, or blind us to the truth and beauty we already possess - it does seem to forget it's themes - the themes of all good Wonder Woman stories; truth, and compassion, and sacrifice. In specific terms, what this leads to is a real under-use of resources. I've seen this in DC films a LOT. There is a solution sitting right there, but that would mean we don't get a big huge fight scene, so we're not going to do it, not matter how well it would work thematically.

How I would have fixed this is allllll to do with the Golden Prefect. That's Diana's Lasso of Truth. So in the film Diana "loosing her powers" is rather nebulous. She just gets... sloppy. Still super strong but not as strong as she was. She gets hit with a bullet and is actually hurt. And stays hurt. She looses her grip on her lasso at an important moment. She's still super fast but not as fast as she needs to be, etc. Now, if this was a whole plot point about Diana learning more of what it's like to be human, than bring it on. But it's not played that way at all. What I would have done instead is to slowly and then all at once at a critical moment taken away one specific power - her lasso. Could Wonder Woman still save the world without her lasso? Yes, of course. Would she still be Wonder Woman? Maybe not. Not only would this deprive her of an extremely useful physical tool, it would bring rounf the theme very powerfully: Diana has lost her grip on, and lost the aid of, Truth with a capital T. The Lasso, for lack of a better word, denies her. This would have been a stark, devestating moment of realization, and a much better kick in the pants to get her on the right path again than the vauge "little bit weaker" that we got. It also would have made the third act much more powerful for my second part of this fix-it fic:

Step two: USE the lasso! My god the entire time Diana and Cheetah were fighting their stupid flying electric fight I was yelling at the screen, "Your lasso is RIGHT THERE" Diana never once uses this lasso to actually bind anyone or confront them to Truth. She never even tries. In my version of this story, Diana and Cheetah's finaly engagement would be an attempt by Diana to use the Golden Prefect on Barbra, to remind her in an emotional moment of the Truth that she was a good, worthwhile person BEFORE she became a magical badass or a cat monster. Diana would have bound herself to proclaim this, and bound Cheetah as well. Then, to continue the plot outlines above, this would, heartbreakingly, not have worked, and Cheetah would run away.

I also read an opinion in a piece I can no longer find about how the message of WW84 seemed confused in that it punished Dr Minerva for wanting to be like Diana - when the whole point of Wonder Woman is to inspire women to be more like Diana. I agree with this, and would have liked to have seen it addressed by the woman herself - it is not bad that Barbra wanted to be more like Diana. Her end was good. It was the means she got wrong. She also blinded herself to the good parts of the person she already was. She can still deny this, but addressing it would clear the air for the viewer and the message of the film. Diana needs to be affirming, not just pleading in this moment. Diana needs to show that she loves Barbra - and while it could be, this doesn't need to be romantic. Diana loves everyone. 

One of my favorite uses of the Golden Prefect in the comics is from "The Lies", in which Diana binds herself to speak truth to herself. This, too, could have been a really powerful moment - I would have actually had Steve do it. Have Steve bind Diana with her own lasso to speak the Truth - that she knew what she needed to do, which was sacrifice Steve to save the day. (I know I said she lost power of the lasso earlier. Maybe it'll work for Steve for this moment, idk).

I think this would have made a better film. Now let me be clear: I like the film we got! It's good. I just thing it could have been better - in pacing, writing, and thematic elements. I would have put the use of the Golden Prefect at the heart of Diana's struggle, and would have let the Cheetah's plot go unresolved. It would still function as the odd rom-com it is, and all of the plot beats with Max Lord would be the exact same. (He still gets off way better than he did in the comics!)

Unless....

Unless you come with me on an even wilder ride. Are you ready for a true AU? OK so basically my only critique of Wonder Woman 2017 was it's over-reliance on Diana's focused love for Steve Trevor. Now don't get be wrong. I love Steve. I ship it. But I find Diana at her most powerful when she is driven by her Love for humanity writ large, and think that the climax of that film could have just as well ended with a king of flashback of all of the normal human people she helped that would be crushed by Ares' continued war. Instead of focusing only on her loss of Steve.

Let's continue that on to WW84. So Diana starts this film several decades after Steve's death, still actively mourning him. And this is something I want to feel sympathy for but just... can't. In the light of how much more Diana has to mourne, the loss of one man - even a man she loved - seems a bit pale. This is even more emphasized but he start of the movie, which is a scene from Diana's childhood in Themyscira.

Sure, Diana lost Steve. But Diana also lost, in the following years, every single other one of her friends (or most of them). But do you know what else Diana lost in the first film? Literally everything. Her mother. Her sisters. He home. He way of life. Her world. Everything. Diana gave up everything to come and help Steve, and help the world. And then she lost him too. So while I get Diana's whole "Can't I just have this one thing?" And I get why the studio chose for that one thing to be Steve, if *I* were writing this film, the One Thing I would have Diana wish for? The thing that could cause utter chaos in the world?

I would have Diana wish to be back in Themyscira.

Great goddesses, can you imagine a movie like this??? Diana, caught up in a lie version of her homeland - maybe even one where Robin Wright (I mean Antiope) is still alive. The Amazons would be overjoyed and terrified to see her - they would all take a side on whether she should stay or she needed to go. She would have to make a terrible choice. But she would see the world burning, and have to choose humanity again - choose to leave her mother again - choose to leave it all.

You could also go a route where instead of Diana just being whisked off away from the further clutches of the Big Bads, she accidentally wishes Themyscira into Man's World, revealing their secret and endangering everyone. Or worse - make it all an illusion, not the real Themyscira at all, and let Diana discover this too late.

Is all of this inspired by the plot of "The Truth" comic? Yes, it absolutely is. But mostly because I think Diana's choice to be banished from Themyscira is by far the most powerful in her story. Everything after that is just follow-up. Diana binds herself to the world of men - a damaged, ugly, powerful, wonderful, beautiful, terrible world.

Let's be real tho what I really want is more interaction between Diana, Antiope, and Hippolyta. Please.

So yes, how I would have written this movie? Have Diana still be morning the loss of her world, and not the loss of her lover. Have her still be having to remind herself - even after all this time, old habits die hard - of how to act in the human world. Have her be a shining beacon of Amazon light (That Dr Minerva would be jealous of and EXTREMELY interested in). But have her also lose the benefit of the Prefect. Challenge her right to claim Truth. And have her submit to binding herself to bring that truth back. Steve could still be involved in this plot, actually. Perhaps he's still the one to wake her up to do what is needful.

In ANY case. WW84 is good. But it also feels like a lot of wasted potential. The plot is convoluted, the pacing is off, the theme comes and goes, and Diana just seems... off. She lacks the conviction that made me fall in love with her. The film feels unfocused, kind of like Diana herself seems unsure.

If you haven't yet.... I highly recommend the first 4 volumes of the WW Rebirth comic series; "The Lies", "Day One", "The Truth", and "Godwatch". Really I cannot recommend them enough. If you want good Diana and Cheetah content, if you want good Diana and Themyscira content, if you want good Diana and Steve content, if you want good Wonder Woman content! Please read these four volumes. You can borrow my copies! Please.

I hope this post didn't come off as too negative. (Some things I liked: watching Barbra go through the stages of becoming Cheetah, even if I have some qualms about it, Max Lord's humanization and the whole plot with his son (would have been cool if the kid had met Diana, bring those two plots together), the 80s aesthetic (tho lacking in 80s music!), Steve being Steve (tho why did he have to possess a guy? just have him be here by magic. And also the after credits scene, and the accompanying story in film.

Thanks for reading, friends! I hope that you enjoyed WW84, and that you enjoyed reading my critique. I certainly enjoyed watching and writing it.

Peace!

R

A Toast to the Crew of the Good Ship Aurora

It's time to talk about my favorite band.

The Mechanisms.

I think I've mentioned them before on here but it's time to talk about them, because they broke up, and I have a lot of emotions. And because I at this point believe that I will never NOT have a Mechs song stuck in my head ever again.

I found the Mechanisms through Spotify. I had been making a playlist for my D&D campaign about Ragnarok, and so had been listening to a lot of Norse and norse-adjacent music, when a track called "Thor" came up as suggested on my daily whatever-they-call-it. It was not anything like I had imagined it would be. For starters, Odin was a woman? I remember, I was in the car, driving home from... somewhere. I don't remember. The grocery store, I think. And I legit like. my jaw dropped. I found the rest of the album, The Bifrost Incident, and listened in ever increasing awe.

Within the next 24 hours I had listened to all of their albums, and the Bifrost Incident at least three times, I think. I was hooked, bad. And yet, because of the nature of their stories (The blood, the violence, the horror...) I was a bit hesitant to show my friends. That didn't last long, and now you really can't get me to shut up about it... Honestly I have a lot of sad regrets about the fact that I never got to see them in person. I lived in Oxford for two years without ever hearing about them, and then the summer I move back across an ocean I find them? Really? Anyway...

This blog tho has become a space I enquire stream-of-consciousness into WHY I like the things I like, though, so let's have a go.

 So first off, their music is just flat out GOOD. It's well done, well arranged, well performed, well written. Many of the Mechanisms songs are based on tunes that you already know (but maybe can't place). Folk songs that are deep in the social memory of the western world. Some of them I am still trying to give their proper name! And while it would be easy to see this kind of tune-borrowing as "lifting" or "stealing" or even "lazy", I think it's not. If a tune isn't broken, don't fix it. Their music is all stuck in my head because it's got a strong, good tune, that everyone already knows WORKS. And their use of and re-writing of these classic tunes is exactly what they are doing with their stories! It's a beautiful picture really. A mix-mash of so many references and things. Who ever thought about singing a song about Herakles, turned out in pinstripes and working for a mob boss, to the tune of "Rocky Road to Dublin"? That's brilliant. And the original tunes they come up with are just as good.

But no what really gets me about the Mechs is that they did their homework. They did not just hear a myth once and then decide they can muck it up. There are a few artists I know who do this (Heather Dale comes to mind), and I respect it and like it in a way. But the Mechanisms KNOW the original stories well enough to really really play in that space. I think I could write a commentary on almost all of their songs, pointing out the references made by every line. Especially the Bifrost Incident. And it's only when you KNOW this stuff inside and out that when you change something it stands out as so intentional and creative as to be really enjoyed. The Mechs didn't mess up or mis-remember these myths, they re-wrote them on purpose. And it's so. Good. The Mechanisms are also 100% of the reason I started reading Lovecraft, which has in turn started another project of mine, the longest piece of fiction to which I've ever turned my hand, about pirates in 1720 and Cthulhu.

I thought that this post would be longer than it is, but I've kind of run out of words. All that's left would be for me to gush about each individual story and song. Like? Fairy tales in a bloody war in space? A kidnapped princess made into a clone army? Yes please. Greek myths set in a terrible planet-city where the Olympians are the terrible oligarchs? Yeas PLEASE. A western about King Arthur, Guinniverre, and Lancelot, featuring a trans Mordred, all set on a doomed spacestation in a decaying orbit around a dying sun? YES PLEASE. Ragnarok + Lovecraft + Space Trains? GIVE IT TO ME. All told by a bunch of immortal steampunk space pirates?? Where has this been all my life??!

I've you've got the stomach for it, please check out The Mechanisms on bandcamp. And if you do, please message me. I will talk to you. Extensively. About. Every. Single. Song.
https://themechanisms.bandcamp.com/

Thanks for reading
R

Praise God from whom all blessing flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Far Cry 5 is Bad, actually.

Ok so I know I'm behind the ball on this one - and I am by NO means the first to say any of this. But I made a facebook post about this, including the preemptive TL;DR "Polygon was right - Beautiful setting, decent gameplay, bad story, cowardly writing". (this includes a reference to Polygon's review of the game, which can be found here.) So now it's time to write the post that will end up being too long to read...

In short, I think the story of Far Cry 5 was poorly constructed, poorly concluded, and in a sense even cowardly. Especially compared to other Far Cry games. For those who don't know the series, they are in a sense adventure stories, or perhaps the same story told over and over again in different settings, and they always involve 1.) LOTS of guns, 2.) An exotic/beautiful local full of wildlife 3.) An absolutely psychotic villain who has taken control of the land, 4.) Some sort of resistance you must help to take back said land. 5.) Hallucinogenic drugs. Which, when combined with the aforementioned guns, come to bad results. And 6.) A morally interesting ending offering critique of the player and of the genre as a whole. (Reminds me of Spec Ops: The Line in a way, although it is not as well achieved).

FC5 pits you against a cult, caled the Project at Eden's Gate, who have taken control of and (somehow) sealed off Hope County Montana (a fictional place). The game is open-world, with the world divided into three major regions, with each ruled by a different psychotic leader/family member - John, Faith, and Jacob - and the whole thing under the mystic leader Joseph Seed. When promotional material came out for the game showing the use of a lot of Americana and Christian-esque imagery, a lot of people got a bit up in arms about it. But it turns out they really shouldn't have bothered. When I myself first saw FC5's trailer, etc, I thought it was a rather brave step to take a game traditionally set in a fictional and exotic place and set it in America, because it would allow them to stage the same critique they always do, but aim it directly at the far-right. And that's what FC5 could have been. But it's not what FC5 is.

Let's start with this cult. The cult of Eden's Gate is full of the kind of contradictions that make them easy to write off as evil, but the game is written AS IF they have at least a marginally compelling argument and have reason behind their actions. The problem is, they don't - they have reasons, and they have actions, and those two do not line up. The rhetoric and the practices of these villains have no alignment, which both makes them incredible and also lets them borrow imagery but not actually critique anyone. They look nice, but so much of what they do in Joseph's goes against what Joseph preaches. Now this could be seen as a commentary on the church itself, which has both a history of violence and a history of doing things very much in the face of that which they preach. But let me say - if that was the goal, they've done it extremely poorly. Because none of these contradictions are ever called out in fiction. They are not a point of tension for any of the characters or a point of argument - the game writers do not acknowledge them at all, possibly because they don't see the inconsistencies themselves.

It is typical for FC games to critique both sides (the player and villain) - FC4 did this exceptionally well - but FC5 chickens out, and lets one side be the Good Guys, who have a weakness for falling under the magic spell of a drug but are otherwise justified in their Red Blooded American Firearm Militia Patriotism, and even in killing and (spoilers?) torturing their opponents, because they are The Good Guys  Yay America. Speaking of - all of the FC games are set in fantasy places, but most of them are also set in fantasy countries. The bad guys in FC3-4 are a fictional group, but the good guys are a fictional people too. In FC5 the bad guys are fictional, but the good guys are American. But the game doesn't use this to critique America beyond a little friendly ribbing (see: Clutch Nixon), and every "success" screen is celebrated genuinely with American flags and fireworks. The game doesn't say "These type of real people should be critiqued", it says "These types of real people should be celebrated, because they are in the right, especially in comparison to these OTHER guys who really are terrible.". FC5 isn't anti-conservative, anti-christian, anti-republican, or anti-militia. It's actually pro all of those things, because it's created a fictional strawman that makes the far right look like moderates in comparison. Which is. The exact opposite of the kind of critique we need, and the opposite of what it gained controversy for.

The Bad Guys meanwhile commit atrocity after atrocity to justify why you ought to stay and fight them. All this is cut through by monologues from the Big Bad that are both magic (they remove the player from their character entirely) and are supposed to make Joseph sympathetic, I guess? Joseph and Pagan Min (Big Bad of FC4) are both psychotic, and there is in both a break from and noted disjunction between their person and their influence - but Pagan's is the type of break that comes from the privilege of being Above the chaos (a critique of capitalism and class divides), where Joseph's is a mystic break that... i don't know how it should be understood. It breaks from the rest of the game. I got so tired of hearing from him. (Spoilers from FC3, 4, and 5): FC3's turn is that Jason might be just as crazy as Vaas, and that anyone can go mad. FC4's turn is that Sabal and Amita (your allies) are both willing to commit war crimes as much as Pagan Min, and you've advanced as much villainy as you've fought off. FC5's turn is that while what you did was good, and you and your allies were all fighting the good fight, nothing you did mattered in the end, because Joseph's prophecy came true, so really that shows you, doesn't it? It is unconvincing, shoehorned in, and means nothing. There is no critique, just a lot of imagery that makes it FEEL like a critique.

(Oh and as a note - if anyone should be upset and feel targeted by this game it's probably the Mormons/church of latter day saints. Because while you can tell me that every OTHER character is or isn't a rip on some such far right so-an-so, you really cannot argue that the Big Bad Joseph Seed bears no inspiration or purposeful parallel to Joseph Smith. As I said, the critique doesn't land. But still.)

The decision to use a mute/blank slate player character is also infuriating because of how much it doubles down on the developer's care to side-step anything that could merit real controversy. I played the whole game as a woman, and a black woman at that. This had literally no impact on the game. There is no apparent sexism or racism in Hope County, two things which are usually VERY associated with the type of characters found there. Because that would get Ubisoft's hands dirty, I guess. FC3's entire critique of the action genre it was a part of came from watching it's protagonist Jason succumb to addiction - to drugs, to adrenaline, to killing, to power, to fantasy, and to worship. FC5's protag is incredibly stoic (because they are silent), and although they finally express some emotion (fear) before Jacob, they have NO opportunity to offer critique or praise at any time, besides the (spoilers!!) two times you can choose to walk away from arresting Joseph. The player character in FC3-4 both prescribe player reactions and subvert them. FC5 has access to none of this. And that's on purpose, because it's safe.

Outside of these broad accusations, the actual structure of the story also doesn't hold up. This game tried to fit too many cooks in one kitchen. The three sub-bosses, John, Faith, and Jacob, are so jarringly different in their ends and presentations that this is basically three games cobbled together, and  the tie that each of them (especially Jacob) has to Joseph seem quite nominal.  Having the world be open-world also allows the player to tackle these problems in any order. I think I did them in the intended order (John, Faith, Jacob) and I could talk about why I think that order makes the most sense and how the game leads you in that direction. But the fact that I could do them in a different or opposite order is... odd, to say the least. And it doesn't let any of the player's major actions have as much impact on the game as they should.

FC5's devs really narrowed down on it's gameplay, and focused on what makes FC games fun and enjoyable. The gameplay is genuinely good. The puzzles are fun, the world is GORGEOUS, the effort-reward system is well worked through, combat and movement feel fluid, they took out all the gate-locking and made it truly open world. And they let you have and pet a dog, and a cougar, and a bear! I even like several of the characters. It's a good game, as far as a FC style game goes. It took the things that were fun in FC3-4 and did those things, but more, and better.

Story wise tho it's almost the exact opposite. It's like they took everything that made the story of FC3-4 engaging and hard hitting, but then threw all that in the garbage. Either that or they filed it down and padded it so much that it achieved the opposite result. And don't even get me started on the ending. (Spoilers!) The fact that the ending is cut-scene heavy and negates literally all of the player's effort, is neither bold nor good. It's pretentious, disappointing, and infuriorating.

When FC5's promo material came out, it put people at arms. Their marketing team was GOOD. But they mis-sold the game, which failed to live up to any of it's controversy by pulling every punch it could have had, and throwing away any decent discussion it could have prompted. There is potential in FC5's story, but I don't think it ever actually figured out what story it was trying to tell. So it told a bad one.

Don't even get me started on the ending....

Anyway, thanks for reading. It's been a WHILE since I posted on this blog, and I'd quite like to get back to my Mythology series sometime.

I hope you are all healthy, well, and safe during this whole pandemic business, and that you are all taking proper precautions to halt or slow the spread of disease, especially to the vulnerable, are washing your hands, and using your time wisely (more wisely than me, since I've spent about a week mostly playing this bad game...)

As always, Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

R

P.S. Oh one last thing - another really notable absence in this game is the lack of Sex. Like I know that's a weird thing to bemoan, but I think it's highly indicative of American media's and ESPECIALLY American Video Games' 100% acceptance of violence - murder, mutilation, firearm worship, power fantasies, even nuclear force - and willingness to accept drugs, which are both good and bad in this game - alongside the American video games industry's absolue FEAR of sex and nudity. Like sure you can give me a lot of examples of when this has been broken (especially in female character design) and whole games where sex is a huge theme. I mean Far Cry 3 (Spoilers!!!) actually has a first person sex scene in one of it's endings, including a bare chested woman. But really. For how hyper-masculine and Red Blooded American FC5 is, and how it has multiple villains interested in different forms of torture, it's notable that sex - and sexual violence - doesn't come up at all. I'm not complaining. I don't WANT there to be sexual violence in this game. I'm glad there is not sexual violence in FC5. But it does I think shine a light to ask - why are we so accepting of other forms of violence, if we are too scared of this one to even mention it in a game?

And even more so with nudity. Villains who brutally mutilate corpses or still-living victims and display the bodies, or worse? Fine. A penis? Absolutely not. How dare you. Totally reprehensible, cannot be shown. (boobs are ok tho, apparently. There aren't any in FC5 but just in general you see more in games). Talk about double standards, on so many levels! I think this is another thing that made using a blank-slate character a "safe" choice for FC5. Because this would present really differently for a female character than a male character. That said, I think the game is designed for a male character through and through. Which sucks, btw. One more thing the games industry has been cowardly about; creating games where you have no choice but to play as a woman. There are loads where you have no choice but to play as a man, and a great number where you can choose male or female. There are very few where you can be anything other than a man or a woman (genderfluid, etc), and none that I know of where you must play someone of a non-traditional gender. But there are also sadly only a few where you must play as a woman, and where the whole game is designed for you to do so.

Their love that made the world go round

I've been waiting to make this post for some time. Now that all of those silly Olympians are out of the way, it's time to tell another story - one you have probably heard before. We are going to sing it again, though. And what the heck, why shouldn't we tie in the underworld's second favorite love story while we're at it? It's an old song, an old tale - and it's a tragedy. But we sing it anyway.

I'll might do a more in-depth look at the other children of Kronos later (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus) but for now it's time to talk about by far the most interesting of the lot. HADES.

This is, technically, my introduction to "minor" gods - because this post is also about Persephone. But let's not get bogged down in all that. Let's start this story. Long, long ago, when the world was young and her children younger still you may recall that Kronos, the youngest of the Titans who overthrew his father had taken a wife, Rhea, and borne several children. Kronos, however, because of the terrible sin he had committed against his father, and because his mother wasn't super happy with him either, gre paranoid that his own children would overthrow them, and so he ATE each of them while they were still too young. First, Kronos has three daughters - Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. Next he had three sons - Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. I've already told the tale of how Rhea helped her youngest child escape and later overthrow his father - fulfilling Kronos' fears. I've also mentioned that Zeus, with the help of the giantess Metis, caused his father to regurgitate his swallowed siblings. Because this is a story of inverted power structures, these gods and goddesses are honored more or less in opposite order of their birth - Foremost among the gods is Zeus, and among the goddesses, Hera. Next is Poseidon, and Demeter, and finally Hestia... and Hades. Now for the ladies, this oder isn't super important. They each have their own natural domains of Wife, Lifegiver, and Homemaker. (Please don't see this as an insult of any of these three great goddesses. Being a woman who does traditionally feminine things is NOT to be dishonored. These three fulfil vital and honorable roles, all). The three brothers, however, instead of just finding their own niche, divided the realms of creation up unto themselves. Zeus chose first, and made his seat in Olympos, ruling over the mighty sky. Poseidon was next, and he made his home deep within the mighty sea - some say in Atlantis. And Hades - first born son of the mighty Kronos - to Hades was left no choice but the Underworld.

Now here's a thing. People often heard "the underworld" and think "the afterlife", because the underworld is where people's souls go when they die. And while this is true - Hades is the ruler of the afterlife - the concept of "underworld" is far more broad and important than this in greek thought., because Hades' kingdom is - quite literally - the underground. Everything under the ground belongs to him. And in case it needs pointing out - what is underground is VERY important to all life aboveground. Just as if not more important than the matters of the sea and sky. It's just harder to see.

There's also the fact that the Earth, too, is a goddess - Gaia, mother of all, from whom all things are and to whom all things return. Hades' realm, being contained inside of Gaia, is mystic and primordial in its relation to his grandmother Gaia, in a way which is much more explored than the relationship between Zeus and his own grandfather Sky (Ouranos). (Or Poseidon and his...grandmother's other lover, Pontos). Hades' realm is also just as if not more varied than the Sea and Sky, containing many different geographical features and areas, such as the river Styx, the Elysian fields, the pits of Tartaros, etc.

I'm tempted here to just give a geography lesson on the Greek underworld. So bear with while I provide a few details. The most important featrues of Hades (the place) are its rivers. Now remember, in greek myth rivers are also people (mostly ladies), so these are both places and also noblewomen in Hades' court/world as it were: The River Styx, which is the most powerful and important river in the world. Styx is that upon which the gods make their vows, because a vow upon the river Styx is considered unbreakable. If you're not familiar with how vows work, the idea is that if you swear ON something, you are saying two things 1.) Your vow is as strong, sure, and everlasting as that upon which you swear, and 2.) If you break your vow, the thing upon which you swear has the right and duty to exact revenge upon you. This is why people in antiquity would often swear upon weapons (which is to say - if I break my vow, may this sword strike me dead), and why it is exceedingly dangerous to swear on the Word or Name of God (you're asking him to be your witness and your executioner should you lie or fail).  So Styx is considered as eternal, constant, and powerful as Death itself, and could even bring about the death of a god - even Zeus, should he break an oath made in her name.

Styx is also one of the rivers which Charon, the ferryman of the dead, crosses to escort souls into the underworld, along with the river Archeon. You see, when a person dies their soul passes through a lot of hands. First, their soul is seperated from their body by Thanatos - the god of death/grim reaper. Next, they are escorted by Hermes, god of travellers and breacher of realms, down towards Hades. Hermes leaves them waiting on the shores of the mighty rives styx and Archeon, where the ferryman Charon finds them. IF they came all this way carrying a coin for him - with they ought to have been buried with, usually with the coin in their hand or more traditionally on their eyes or tongue - then they may pay for passage into the underworld proper. If they cannot pay, they are cursed to wait and wander on the barren shores for one hundred years. This is why burial rites are so important!

The other rivers in Hades include the river Lethe - the only river of (relavite) mercy to be fond here. To drink the water of the river Lethe is to forget everything that came before. You will not remember the life you lived, or anything else. Lethe flowed through the cave of Hypnos (god of Sleep), and some say that if you drank from its waters, having forgotten everything, you would then be reincarnated on earth again (Reincarnation myths are sparse, but not entire missing from Greek thought). as well as the river Phlegethon (which is terrible to say), a river of fire which leads to Tartaros, and Coctyos, the river of wailing (I don't know much about it really).

Within this realm there are also special areas which only certain people may enter or exit - and who goes where is determined by the King and Judge - the dikastes basilaus - Hades himself. These are places like Tartaros - the deepest pits of the underworld, where Ouranos and Kronos once kept the Hecatonchires and Cyclops imprisoned, and where the now liberated Hekatonchires stand guard over their terrible prisoners, the Titans. Tartaros is as far below the earth as the earth is below the sky, deep down in the darkest dark. Some people thing that the worst of human criminals are also sentenced to Tartaros.

On the other side of things, you have Elysium, a place of paradise where only true Heroes spend eternity. Elysium is described as being the opposite of most of the rest of the underworld - golden fields, fertile and living. Elysium is a place of rest from toil, and those who are favored by the gods, or who live virtuous or noble lives are permitted to spend eternity in Elysium. It's said that our good friend, Socrates, is there. Which for some people might mean it's far from restful afterall ;) Within Elysium there is also the Island of the Blesses, which is highest paradise. It is said that to achieve this one must be reincarnated three times, and achieve Elysium with each of their three lives.

There are a few other middle-ground places. The majority of souls in the underworld can be found either in the Asphodel Meadows - which is just kind of a middle ground. Like you're not terrible, you're not great, you just kind of... were. And the Mourning Fields, which is a place for lovesick souls who wasted away unrequited - presumably because Hades doesn't want to hear any of their whining, so he sent them away together to have a pity party by themselves. Most of the time, though, souls are just kind of... in Hades. Either awaiting trial, or having been sentenced to a certain job within the realm. A few famous jobs/punishments people have been sentenced to include:

Tantalos, who profaned the gods by serving them his own sons to eat at a feast, was sentenced to stand in a pool of water up to his chest, with low hanging fruit branches just overhead - but every time he bends to drink, the water recedes where he cannot reach, and every time he reaches up to eat, the branches bend away beyond is grasp.

Ixion, the first murderer, who also tried to sleep with Hera after Zeus tried to make peace, who is tied to a fiery spinning wheel forever. (He may actually be tied to the sun itself, an not in the underworld at all. it's hard to tell.

Sisyphus, a man who taunted the gods by cheating death. After betraying Zeus' trust, Sisyphus was sentenced to be chained in Tartaros, but he was so crafty that he tricked Thanatos, and chained Death up in his place. While Thanatos was chained up, however, nobody on earth could die. Which sounds nice, but is actually terrifying, because it means that people with fatal wounds or diseases just... lingered on in pain. Finally, when Thanatos was released, Sisyphus was killed for good. But every crafty, Sisyphus had left explicit and secret instructions that his body was NOT to be given a proper burial. And so he arrived on the shores of the styx with no coin for the ferryman. Being a king, he complained to Hades and Persephone, the rules of the underworld (don't worry, I'm getting there!) who allowed him to return to the world above to take revenge on his wife, who had, it seemed spurned her duty to bury him. But Sisyphus, obviously, refused to come back to Hades once he left, and so eventually King Hades showed up on earth to personally drag him back down, and sentenced him to an eternity of futility, in which he must roll a tremendously heavy rock up a hill every day, only for it to roll back down so that he must roll it down again.

And finally, the 49 Dnaides and their father, Danaus. Danaus had 50 daughters and 50 sons, and when he married his daughters off (and received a great fortune of a dowry), he told them all to kill their new husbands on their first wedding night. All but one of these daughters obeyed. The 50th righteously refrained, because her new husband had respected her wish to remain a virgin, and had not slept with her. These 49 women's punishment is to forever carry jars of water to fill a tub with no bottom (or with a leak like a sieve).

So yeah, you get it - the greeks were good at coming up with eternal punishments (we haven't even mentioned Prometheus! He will almost undoubtedly be the main character of my next mythology post). We should probably get back to the part with the love story!!

OK. So. How did Hades get it's/his Queen? That is the tale to be told. Once upon a time, long ago when the earth was young, but the great war between the Titans and the gods had ended one of the daughters of Kronos - Demeter, goddess of the harvest - had a daughter (probably by Zeus) names Kore. (I got you there, didn't I?). Kore (or "The Maiden") was the young goddess of spring, by whose power the flowers opened, fruit ripened, and life flourished. She and her mother worked together to make the world a beautiful, fruitful place, and were sometimes called The Great Goddesses because of how much good they did humanity (unlike those other losers in Olympos who are just having parties and getting everyone pregnant). Kore spent her days living among the nyphs and naiads - and is one of the few goddesses usually portrayed as living primarily ON earth, with nature. However, living on earth and not in the sky brought her much, much closer to Hades' domain.

Story goes that one day Hades saw Kore from afar, and fell in love. Hades knew that his sister Demeter (look I never said there wasn't incest in this story) would never allow the beautiful maiden to marry, so he decided to - as Hades normally has to - do all the work himself. And so, when Kore was dancing out in the fields one day, alone save for a few of her nyph friends, Hades tore open a great dark hole in the earth, sending young Kore tumbling down. He caught her up in his dark chariot, and brought her down into the underworld.

When her daughter did not come home that night, Demeter was distraught. She searched high and low for Kore, and asked everyone if they had seen her. Some people had seen her dancing in the field, but then it appeared that she just vanished - stumbled and fell over a small hill, and then never got up. One person had seen, however - Helios, the Sun, who sees all. He told Demeter that Hades had her daughter, and so Demeter sought help from another goddess - Hekate, the goddess of witchcraft, sorcery, and gateways - who she knew could help her find and pass through the entrance to the Underworld.

While Demeter spent her time searching madly for Kore, however, she neglected the harvest - no food would grow, and humanity began to starve. Demeter knew that Hades would not give her daughter back unforced, so she used this as leverage, and appealed to Zeus - if Kore was not returned to Demeter, than no food would ever grow upon the earth again. Given this, Hades capitulated, and said that Kore could return. However, there was one small problem. When Hades brought Kore down to the underworld, he had brought her to his own personal garden, so that she might feel at home. And Kore, not knowing the curse of the underworld, picked a pomegranate and ate from it. All she ate were six seeds, a very small snack that would change the world.

You see, the underworld is a dangerous place. Because once you are infected by death, you may never leave it. Have you ever heard that rhyme, "We must not look at goblin men, we must not eat their fruits: who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots?" That's the food in Hades. You mustn't eat it, or you will be cursed to stay there forever.

Zeus needed to help Demeter get her daughter back, but he also had to honor the law of Hades' land. So he came up with a compromise. Because she had eaten six seeds, Kore would spend six months of the year - one for each seed she had eaten - in the underworld with Hades. There she is his Queen, and her friend Hekate stays with her to keep her company. She would spend the other six on earth with her mother. And THIS is where the seasons come from!! For six months, with the goddess of spring in the land and her mother Demeter happy, life and warmth fill the world. And for the other six months, with the goddess of spring gone away, the world and Demeter both mourne her absence, and grow cold and dark without her.

Also, having wed Hades, or at some point in this (usually right after her abduction) the goddess' name is changed from Kore (the Maiden) to Persephone (The Bringer of Death), which I have to say is a BADASS way to lose your virginity like holy shit. Some women take their husband's last name, Persephone just embraced her inner goth, and I love it.

By all accounts, Persephone is a good Queen of the dead, and a powerful one. All respect which is due to Hades is also due to Persephone, and more. She is a fierce, mysterios, chthonic goddess who rules over both life and death. She shares her husband's judgement seat, and judges well.

Anyway yes, that is the story, the bare bones of it. I've been trying really hard to keep this somewhat unbiased, because why I LOVE this story is that it alllll depends on the bias you take.

The way I just told the story is I believe a rather classic telling. The story is sometimes referred to as "The Rape of Persephone" - because it's a story about a big strong man who kidnaps and presumably forces himself upon a young girl, stealing her maidenhood against her or her mother's wishes, and then tricking her into becoming his captive forever - or at least for six months every year. It's easy to paint Hades as an absolute villain: A kidnapper and a rapist who then forced his victim to marry him, and to live far away from anything she's every known.

But. That's not the story that people tell. Or at least it isn't anymore.

One of the most beautiful things about Myths is that they must - MUST - be retold. It seems to be part of what makes something a myth rather than just a story that a certain author wrote. Myths are stories that change and evolve. They are themes, motifs, archetypes. And in recent years, the tale of Hades and Persphone has been retold probably more than any other tale in greek myth. More than Herakles, more than Troy, more than any other. And I wish I was a good enough historian to know who started this new resurgence, but what almost all of these stories explore is a simple idea: What if it wasn't rape? What if we can write this into a love story after all.

You see, rape is pervasive in almost all of greek myth, and frankly the world was tired of it. We need to escape rape culture - but instead of discarding all of the tales which involve rape, or excusing them, authors have begun to reclaim them, and rewrite them. To view stories from different perspectives.

Most of these retellings would function on the idea that the story as it has been told - the Persephone was forcibly taken captive and held against her will - is the story as Demeter might have told it. And there are SEVERAL different variations upon what "really" happened. Sometimes Demeter is portrayed as overbearing or overprotective - and Persephone's journey with the underworld with Hades is either a result of her directly asking for Hades' assistance in trying to live her own life outside of her mother's shadow, or is something that happens on complete accident. Sometimes the story goes that Hades and Persephone met and fell in love long before he took her away. Other times, they meet but only fall in love after he has taken her with him away from Demeter. Some times Persephone becomes queen of the underworld because it means marrying Hades, and sometimes she marries Hades because it means becoming queen of the underworld. But all in all, modern adaptations are generally sure of two things: 1.) Hades. Loves. Persephone. Hades seems to be the only man in greek myth who absolutely adores his wife, and doesn't go wandering off after every other available maiden. Hades adores Persephone. And 2.) You don't rape someone you love. In fact, you don't rape anyone. Ever. Because rape is evil.

If you want to read some VERY good stories about Hades and Persephone, two of the top versions I can recommend are both webcomics - wonderful artworks updated periodically. You can find them both on the app "WebToon". The first is called "Punderworld" by Lisa Sejic. Sejic's tale is still visually set in ancient greece and it's really gorgeous. I also really love the simple and unadulterated love and adoration which Sejic paints between her characters, and her very cool character design. Punderworld is slow to update, but you can also find a lot of it on the artist's twitter account, @LindaSejic. (A word of caution: Linda also re-tweets a lot of her husband's work - Stjepan Sejic. And his work is very very good but also very VERY nsfw. Punderworld in general is sfw (with a few exceptions which are on twitter and patreon) but Linda's twitter is not. If you wanna stick to the swf content, stick to WebToon).

The second is the darling child of WebToon - Lore Olympus. There is a reason that this webcomic has broken every scale of hits, favorites, kudos, etc. It's. Wonderful. It's beautiful, creative, hilarious, and has really interesting characters and stories. I just love it. It is the epitome of a slow burn (two characters who both like each other but for what ever reason cannot or will not admit if for. a long. long. time). But it's WORTH IT. Lore Olympus updates weekly, and it's author is Rachel Smythe & co. @used_bandaid on twitter/insta.

And finally, you know I have to talk about it - Hadestown!

Hadestown is. Wonderful. And I love it because it doesn't just tell the story of Hades and Persephone - it's actually the story of Orpheus and Eurydice (we'll get there), but it involves Hades and Persephone's story in such a unique way. Hadestown looks at Hades and Persephone not as young lovers or newlyweds, but as an old married couple who have realized just how very different they are, and have started to fall apart from each other. Hadestown is about the importance of their love, and how they return to it, and return to themselves, with a little help from Orpheus.

One thing I failed to mention about Hades which Hadestown brings out really well is that Hades is also the God of Wealth. There are two reasons for this - first off, Hades rules the underground, which means that all of the gold and silver and other ores and precious stones which are mined from the ground all belong to him (and oil and coal). The other is that every soul which Charon ferries across the river must pay a toll - and those coins add up. In the end, death comes for everyone, and you cannot keep what you have when you are dead, so it all comes to Hades. They say all roads lead to Rome - all wealth with eventually find its way to Hades, which is probably where it started in the first place.

Hadestown does a great job playing with this idea, because Hades believes that his wealth is his security - and guarding this security is how he thinks he shows his love for Persephone. He is obsessed with it, and thinks that everything he's doing he's doing for her. When in reality, everything he's doing he's doing because he's insecure and thinks he's not good enough for her without his massive wealth, and that she, a beautiful goddess who already spends half of the year without him, will one day leave him for good - and that she already wants to. Hades deep down thinks himself unworthy of her love, and lashes out in ways that push her further from him, all while trying to paint it as her own fault. Persephone, on the other hand has let herself fall into distraction and boredom - because her husband is, while trying to earn her love, actually acting exactly opposite her interest, and she lets him, and ignores him, and lives up her time away from him - and the fact that she is happier on earth than in the underworld makes him even MORE insecure, which makes her even more miserable... etc. The other thing Hadestown does well is depict how much this lack of harmony between the gods negatively affects the world and it's inhabitants. The harvest fails, the people starve, the world is dark and hash. The world is out of tune, out of time, it's not functioning correctly. (Which, by emphasising the correct movement of the seasons, and because of Hades' obsession with industry and his destructive pursuit of security, is also a commentary on global warming and it's effects on nature!). Finally, I love the genuine love between these old lovers, even if they are opposites, when they are reminded that they were once young and innocent and gave all they had to one another without fear, without insecurity, just in harmony. It's GOOD. Their love makes the world go 'round. And they just need a bit of reminding. I adore this version of Hades and Persephone because it embraces them as lovers, but respects how utterly different the god of the underworld and the goddess of spring are - death and life, cold and warm - and how much they need each other.

Finally, I said that in honor of Hadestown I would tell one more story. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice. A lot of what we know about Hades (the place) comes from this story, so it's appropriate that it be told together. (These two stories are also often tied up with the tale of Eros and Pysche, but I will get to them later).

Ok so this is my first purely human tale - no meddling gods in this one, just some meddling humans. Once upon a time in Ancient Greece there lived a young mand and a young woman who were very much in love. Her name was Eurydike (Eurydice), and strangely was don't know anything about her parentage (or at least I don't). She was just a girl in love with her husband. Which probably means she did not come from wealth/power, and this is one of the true marriages for love and without thought of dowry in greek myth.

His name was Orpheus, and he was the son of the Muse Kalliope (Calliope) - the beautiful voices muse of Epic Poetry. We haven't really talked about the muses, but they are daughters of the Titaness Mnemosyne (Memory), and there are nine of them: Callioe (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (sacred poerty (hymns)), Terpsichore (dance and chorus), Thalia (comedy and idyllic poetry), and Urania (astronomy). Personally I'm a big fan of how Astronomy gets included with all this music.

Anyway, Orpheus' father was either one of the kings of Thrace or quite possibly the god Apollo himself (the god most associated with music and with the lyre). It's hard to say. On one hand, Orpheus was mortal. So him being the son of Apollo and a muse seems like he would be a god. On the other hand, Orpheus does have god-like abilities. Personally, I don't care who his father was. But it says something about how GOOD he was at music that people weren't satisfied with saying that his mother must be the Muse of poetry herself - but that his father could be none other than the God of Music. That's the highest compliment I can think of!

Orpheus' music - played on his golden lyre given to him by Apollo - was so beautiful, it could captivate all who heard it and bring them to tears. In many stories, all of nature is drawn to his music - it can tame animals, and make even trees and stones weep, it's so beautiful. When he was young, Orpheus used this magic ability to help the Argonauts. When they and the mighty Argo sailed past the Sirens, who could lure men to death with their magic singing which no man could resist, instead of stopping everyone's ears up so they couldn't hear (why Odysseus did), Orpheus engaged the sirens in a battle of the bands! He pulled out his lyre and sang even MORE beautifully, and drowned out the magic of the sirens, so that he and his friends could pass on their way. During this time, Orpheus was a devotee of many gods, including both Apollo and Dionysus - who, I failed to mention last time, is also the patron god of Theatre. He also briefly had a bit of a love affair with a young man named Calais (All greek figures should be assumed bisexual until proven otherwise). But that all ended when he met Eurydice.

Orpheus and Eurydice were happy and in love. But upon their wedding day, tragedy fell. Eurydice was celebrating and dancing when she was set upon by a Satyr - here to ruin everything. She ran from him, but fell, and stumbled into a viper's nest. The snake bit her, and Eurydice died in her new husband's arms upon their wedding day. Orpheus was overcome with grief, and played such sad music that the forest and the trees wept, and helped him to find his way to the Underworld. (In Hadestown it is Hermes who helps him - which makes sense because Hermes is usually the person to help souls find their way to the underworld). There, Orpheus' music is so beautiful as to pacify the normally fierce guardians of the underworld - Cerberus, Hekate, and others. Finally, Orpheus arrives before the thrones of the King and Queen of the underworld - Hades and Persephone. He plays such beautiful, heart wrenching music for them, his grief and loss so profound, that Hades and Persephone agree to allow Orpheus something they have so often denied to others - to let his lost love return with him to life. They do this on one condition: Orpheus must turn around and walk out of the underworld the way he came, and Eurydice's shade will follow behind him. He must trust that she is there, and following him, because if he gives in to doubt and waivers from his path - if he turns around to look upon his love - then her life will again be forfeit forever.

Orpheus agrees, thinking that his trust and patience will be well up to this simple challenge. However, this is a greek Tragedy, and so their love cannot be. Orpheus makes it all the way back to the land of the living - but he turns around too fast. Even though he has made his journey, Eurydice behind him has not yet stepped through the portal when he turns, desperate to look on her face. He sees her reaching out to him for one instant, and then she is gone forever.

Orpheus spent his whole life mourning. He swore that he would never love another woman again (some say he had affairs with some boys, and unfortunately these 'affair's are of a paedophilic nature, so I'm not gonna talk about them. Just know that paedophilia between boys and men was a BIG PROBLEM in ancient greece), and he swore off the worship of all gods save his patron Apollo. Which would in the end become his undoing.

You remember a couple of posts ago I said that it was a thing that sometimes happened in greek stories that the ladies of the cult of Dionysus - the Maenads (Roman name: Bacchae) - would go mad with lust for someone, and if they insulted the god by refusing to join their orgy, they would kill them? Well, that's what happens to poor Orpheus in the end. He is beheaded by a bunch of mad women he doesn't want to sleep with. At first, the women tried to stone him to death, throwing rocks and sticks, but Orpheus' music was so beautiful that the stones and wood refused to strike him. Then the women took it a step further, and tore him apart with their hands.

Orpheus' story doesn't end there, though. So much magic was in him that even severed from his body, Orpheus' head continued to sing. It is said that it, along with his golden lyre, washed up on the shores of Lesbos (Yes, the island of the post Sappho, the 'tenth muse'), where it was buried, but continued to prophesy as an oracle until it was silenced by Apollo (presumably to make more people go to the oracle in Delphi). And Orpheus' shade at last returned to Hades, to join his wife forevermore.

Orpheus' lyre was not buried with him, but placed by the muses among the stars - the constellation Lyra. And as you can see, his story lives on to this day.

I'm not sure I even have time to analyse this myth as I did the others. Is there a cult of Hades still? Perhaps. But what is far more interesting is what this myth can tell us about myths as a whole. What is important about myths is that we continue to tell them. We don't just tell and re-tell the stories of those long dead, either. We tell our own stories, using theirs. We unite ourselves with the past without living with it - we critique, and create, and celebrate. It reminds me of one of my favorite books on mythology: "Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes" and "George Washington Is Cash Money" by Cory O'Brian. (Go buy these books!). in his introductions, Cory writes that "anybody who complains that a retelling of a myth is “inaccurate” doesn’t really understand what it means to retell a myth, or probably even what a myth is" and "History and mythology are the same thing. They're stories we dredge out of our pasts in order to make sense of the present, and those types of stories will always be necessary. But the stories themselves, and who the main characters are, are always gonna be changing." And as one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, says in his own introduction to his book, Norse Mythology,

I hope I have retold these stories honestly, but there was still joy and creation in the telling...That's the joy of myths. The fun comes in the telling them yourself - something I warmly encourage you to do, you person reading this. Read the stories in this book, then make then your own, and on some dark and icy winter's evening, or on a summer night when the sun will not set, tell your friends what happened hen Thor's hammer was stolen, or how Odin obtained the mead of poetry for the gods..." 

This little paragraph in Neil Gaiman's book was a large part of what got me to write this whole series of blog posts. And this myth - Hades and Persephone - is one of my absolute favorites BECAUSE of how it has been retold.

I often joke that Hades is the "hot one", etc. This is not because Hades has some magic that makes him attractive - it's because Hades is the character who has been rewritten the most by those who love him, and crafted into someone far more loveable than most of the Greek gods. In Hades, the world decided that it was done writing stories about rape and violence, and myths in which Winter is a dark captivity of the soul. We did not want our mythology to follow that path. So we re-wrote it into an experiment - how many different love stories could we tell? How deep and wonderful could this love between Death and Life grow? Hades is a unique, and interesting, and wonderful character because we have made him so. And Persephone likewise.

Why did people choose Hades and Persephone? Perhaps it was because Hades - unlike the other gods - doesn't have a tendency to run around sleeping with everyone he likes. (A.k.a. Zeus is an irredeemable ass and do you even know who Poseidon's wife is? No, you don't. It's Amphitrite (not Aphrodite) and I had to look it up). Hades loves his wife. Even in the old myths, he loves her, and is dedicated to her. And these new myths, what they really do, is re-interpret what love is. Love would never kidnap, love would never rape. Love respects, love is patient, love is kind, etc. Love makes sure of consent, and acts in the best interests of the loved. And in this rebellion, this refusal to tell a story of violence as if it is love, the world is made a better place.

This post is quite long enough, so I'm going to end it here. The stories we tell - they matter. And they can change the world. It is not only our right, but our duty to tell stories which tell the truth - the truth about what Love is, the truth about life, and death, and sin, and humanity, the truth about doubt and fear and beauty and rebirth, about hope and hard work and family and struggle. The more we paint and re-paint and tell what these things are - what they look like, taste like, smell like - the better our world will be.

A lot of people think they know what love is, but their perception is marred by the fallen relashipships they have had. No matter how loving one's parents, one's spouse, one's friends, or one's children, there is only so much humans can do. But we know - deep down we KNOW - that Love with a capital L must be greater than this. It's easy to talk about God's love, but it's difficult to understand it, to feel it and know it and accept it. Some might day that that is what we are put on this earth to do - to lean and condition ourselves to know the love of God, which is too much for us to take. One important way we bridge the gap of understanding is by telling stories. Because even is a story is not true (even is Hades and Persephone are fiction) - they can still proclaim a truth. They can still teach us: Come and see, here is what love is, what love can be, what love should be. Hades and Persephone are not all-in-all, but they are beautiful. Their love that made the world go 'round is but a small reflection of the God whose Love made the world from nothing. Orpheus' love for Eurydice is a mere shadow of the love of the God whose love brought him down as a man, to die for his beloved. But these shadows, glimpses, and reflections help us remind ourselves again what love is - they help us learn what it means when God says he loves us. And what it means when we love each other, too.

I told myself that I would write this post before the year of our Lord 2019 was up. And here I am, on the last day of the decade, posting it. My challenge for you in the new year is this: Wherever you see truth, and wherever you see beauty, and wherever you see love, claim it. Claim it, and tell in again. Wash it off and put it on display - not as something to be worshipped, but as what it is: a reminder, a lesson, a pointer and a reflection of Truth and Beauty and Love incarnate. Go and proclaim truth and beauty and love again and again - experiment, and question, keep an open mind when someone disagrees with you, because maybe they are merely seeing the same reflection from a different angle.

Go and tell powerful stories. And as always: Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

R

Let's Talk About Sex Baby

Let's talk about APHRODITE.

(That would have rhymed better if you read her name right, which is "a-phro-DEE-tee", not the anglicised "a-phro-DIE-tee". Or at least that's how Kassandra says it in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and she should know if anyone does.)

TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY. Am I crazy? Yes. Yes I am. If you haven't yet, please read my previous post about Dionysus before you read this one. Thanks!

Y'all I'm still on narcotics after my recent surgery, but I want to get this written. It's time. To talk. About dicks. What, y'all thought that just because we're talking about a goddess that means that dicks won't be a major part of this story? Then you do not know Greek mythology, my friend. There are always dicks. Always. (Unless you're Artemis, Athena, or Hestia. Then you're safe from dicks. And also allowed to cut them off.)

Obviously there's gonna be a lot of talk about sex and sex organs in this post so you can leave now if you're not okay with that. Sorry if this grosses anyone out.

Do you remember waaaaaay back when, when I mentioned that Ouranos' dick was a secret tool that would help us later? Well my friend, that time has come.

So normally the Birth of Aphrotide/Venus is depicted like this:

Thanks, Michelangelo. So if you go by Mikey here, or by any family-friendly version of Greek myth, you might know that Aphrodite just... arose from the sea one day. Like magic. She has no father or mother, but just kind of. Appeared. Or was formed out of sea foam. The personification of beauty. Too beautiful for even Zeus to be her parent - to beautiful for any woman to claim to be her mother, except the Earth of the Sea itself.

Now all of this is... technically true. But Also. That sea foam which formed Aphrodite didn't just come from nowhere. It was specifically formed when Kronos - the youngest of the titans - took up the terrible scythe and rescued his mother Gaia from her treacherous husband Ouranos by... castrating him. Which is equivalent to killing, apparently. Because guys seem to really REALLY care about their dicks. As a woman who does not have one, I feel I shouldn't judge. But at the same time. I'm judging. Hard. Men need to calm down. Now that said, mutilation of any sort is horrible and I'm not trying to say it's okay but really... you're not dead.

Okay anyway I don't want to talk about dicks anymore lets get back to Aphrodite. Story goes that after Ouranus was castrated, the part of him which was cut off fell into the sea (remember, Ouranus is the Sky), and it caused a large wave of sea foam (which I'm choosing to think of as a wave caused as waves are often cause, by an object hitting the surface of the water and not as... the result of some function of the organ. But this is greece, so it probably was ejaculate, let's be real). Anyway, when this sea foam washed ashore, out stepped a beautiful lady! Aphrodite! Beloved by all!

Because of all this, Aphrodite is often symbolised by all things sea-shore. Especially those little shells, like the one she's standing on in Michelangelo's painting. You know how people sometimes picture mermaids with sea-shell bras? Like in the Little Mermaid? Yeah, that's probably because of Aphrodite. Weirdly, Mermaids themselves aren't really in Greek Myth much, just Sirens, who are half-woman-half-bird, not fish. However, a lot of people think that Mermaids are in fact adaptations of sirens, and that the shift from bird-to-fish might have happened pretty early.

But we're not here to talk about mermaids are we? So Aphrodite washes ashore on the island of Cyprus, and when the gods see her they just. Immediately offer her a seat in Olympus. Even though she's the only one here who is neither a child of Kronos nor or Zeus. Because she's just. Too damn hot. To not be an Olympian. She also just. Never wears clothes. Like ever. It's weird.

So we've already discussed how Aphrodite was originally wed to Hephaestus, but cheated on him IN HIS OWN BED with his brother, Ares (Like an idiot) and they ended up getting divorced. Aphrodite, understandably, has a lot of myths of her various lovers (most of whom are men) and a few about her children and other chosen.

The foremost among Aphrodite's children is Eros - better known as Cupid. Eros (aka erotic love) is her firstborn son by Ares. Other children by Ares include Harmonia (who married Cadmus and had Semele, the mother of Dionysus), and Phobos (fear) and Deimos (dread), the most famous children of Ares. Also Adrestia, who I don't know much about just that she's who Kassandra names her ship after in ACO and her name means 'she who cannot be escaped' which is BADASS. Aphrodite also had some kids by other gods (because she's not a one man kind of woman), including Herme's kid, Hermaphroditus, whose name is a union of their parents "Hermes+Aphrodite=Hermaphrodit" - the 'us' at the end comes because Hermaphroditus was born male, but when they were young, they were united in spirit to the naiad Salmacis, and are now andogynous (which btw is just the greek word for man, 'andro', and for woman 'gyne', put together).

Anyway I was gonna talk about Eros, because he's the one of Aphrodite's kids who is most like his mom. You probably already know about him - he's got wings and a bow and if he shoots you you will fall in love. He can also shoot you to fall in hate, as it were. He does his mom's work for the most part. And at first, the both of them used their powers pretty much however they wanted. The only people who are immune to their ways are the Sacred Virgins - that is, Hestia, Athena, and Artemis, and their sworn followers. But as we've seen with Zeus' wayward ways, sometimes falling in love causes chaos. Specifically ihen Aphrodite and Eros started meddling with the loves of her fellow Olympians, like Apollo, and even Zeus himself. Eventually, Zeus banned them from using their powers against other gods - and he punished Aphrodite for the chaos she caused, by turning her magic against her, and making her fall in love with a mortal man.

This bit has always struck me as the inspiration for Shakespeare's bit in Midsummer Night's Dream when the faerie queen Tatiana falls in love with a man with an ass' head. Aphrodite falls in love with some common shepard. The shepard - a man named Anchises - at first is just blown away by her beauty, and asks her if she is Aphrodite, swearing to build her an alter. Aphrodite however wants him and not an alter, so she lies to him - says she is a noblewoman and not a goddess, and that she wants to sleep with him. He acquiesces rather readily, but then in the morning she reveals herself to him, and he is full of regret, apologizing and saying that nothing good will come from his sleeping with a goddess (the most sensible and modest man in greek myth). However she tells him she will bear him a son, who will be the mighty and prophesied Aeneas, who will be the deliverer of Troy! Anchises is still scared, because he knows that mortals who sleep with immortals tend to have rather short or horrid lives afterwards, but Aphrodite comforts him and keeps him safe. (She also tells him about Zeus' longest-living mortal lover, Granymede, who is his cupbearer and favored male lover).

We'll get to Aeneas in time. But Aphrodite had a few other stories lovers - most notably perhaps Adonis. Adonis is another of Aphrodite's bad plans coming back on her. You see, there's one thing Aphrodite absolutely cannot stand. And that's when someone is said to be more beautiful than her. She's really insecure about it, and this causes a lot of havok. For instance, there was a young woman names Myrrah, whose mother boasted that she was more beautiful that Aphrodite herself. So Aphrodite cursed the daughter with a twisted inversion of an Oedipus complex, and cause her to fall madly in love/lust with her own father. After acting on this, Myrrah bore a son to her own father, but was driven out. Instead of dying of shame, however, she was transformed into the first weeping Myrrh tree, crying sap forevermore. But her son was born, and he was Adonis. The myth goes that Aphrodite found the baby and chose a foster mother for him - and for whatever reason she chose Persephone, queen of the Underworld (who we will talk about soon!). But then when Adonis was grown, he was VERY HANDSOME, and Aphrodite wanted him for herself.

Zeus settled the matter in a similar manner as he settled Persephone's own - saying that Adonis would spend 1/3rd of the year with his adopted mother Persephone, 1/3rd of it with his lover Aphrodite, and 1/3rd of it with whoever he so chose. And he chose Aphrodite. Because of course he did. Unfortunately for Adonis, Aphrodite already had a long-term lover who was a very jealous man. Ares. He wasn't happy about Adonis, and he had him killed (by a boar. Some people actually say that Artemis sent the boar, to avenge one of her own followers). Adonis died in Aphrodite's arms, and went back to the underworld forever, as a shade this time. And Aphrodite mourned his death forever more. Adonis is very associated with certain flowers and plants, and gardening in general. And I'm not entirely sure why.


Lets see, who else did Aphrodite favor? Well there was Hippomenes, for a time. He was a young suitor who wished to wed the marvelous Atalanta. Atalanta was the foremost athlete in Greece when it came to her sport of running races. She could run faster than any man. And so she declared that any man who wished to wed her would need to beat her in a running race first - and if they lost, they would be executed. Because dang, Atalanta. You get that. Isn't she great? I love Atalanta. Atalanta is also the only woman who is said to have joined in on the great Hunt for the Calydonian Boar - and the first to draw the blood of the great beast as well! In the end, the hide of the boar was awarded to Atalanta too. Which caused no little strife. She is also sometimes said to be the only female Argonaut! which is awesome. We'll talk about the Argo later.

So anyway, Hippomenes is a man who wants to take up this running race challenge but he knows he can't win, so what is he gonna do? He's gonna cheat. Because of course he is. Aphrodite likes this idea, and wants to see Atalanta wed (lol probably so she won't go off and join Artemis), so she gave Hippomenes some magic golden apples, which Atalanta would be compelled to collect. Hippomenes and Atalanta came to the starting line. The race would either end in their marriage or his death. And Atalanta was confident she would win. She didn't hate Hippomenes - she actually loved him, but she was a woman of her word, and he had chosen this. The race started, and Atalanta outpaced Hippomenes by a LONG way. So Hippomenes threw one of the golden apples, as far from the track as he could. Despite their race, Atalanta saw the golden object in flight, and was confident enough in her lead that she took a break from their race to run out and pick it up. Hippomenes did this three times, each time sending Atalanta on a longer wild goose chase which took her far away from the finish line. By the end, she had run over three times the length of the race, but he was the one who crossed the finish line first.

Atalanta was true to her word, and the two were wed. Apparently she was okay with the tricks he had up his sleeve, as they seem happy. Unfortunately for them, Hippomenes apparently didn't do enough to thank Aphrodite for this union, and one time they may have been so passionate in their lovemaking they didn't realise they had stumbled into a holy temple of Rhea. I don't know which one of the goddesses was more upset but the long and short is that one of them turned Atalanta and Hippomenes into lions. Which is... fun I guess. Idk, y'all. Lions are cool.

Then there was Pygmalion. You've probably heard of him. He was a devout follower of Aphrodite, and a wonderful sculptor. Once he sculpted a statue of Aphrodite so marvelous that he himself fell in love with it, and wished to marry the perfect woman he had carved. Aphrodite favored him, and brought the statue to life. From all I can remember, the two were wed and lived happily ever after.

This is a lot of happily ever after for greek myths I'm getting uncomfortable. Let's talk about another child of Aphrodite. So Aphrodite doesn't have any kids per-say from her actual husband, Hephaestus. EXCEPT. They did co-create a being once. Which no that's not a euphamism - they didn't co create a person in the normal way by having sex. Instead, Hephaestus shaped a woman in his forge, and Aphrodite helped bring her to life. He name was Pandora, and she was remarkably beautiful. A gift from the gods to mankind. And Pandora also had a gift from the gods - a box. You've probably heard this story before. This was when mankind was still very young, before the flood.

Have I mentioned the flood? Oh dear I really am telling this out of order. Did you know the flood was in Greek myth too? Well it is. Ok so let's back waaaaay up a second. Back to the creation of human kind. And... oh bother this is going to be a whole other post to itself isn't it? Ok so what do you know about Prometheus? Hmmm... maybe I should save this story for another time. There is a whole lot of it. Ok well for now, just know that Aphrodite helped make Pandora. And I'll get to her when I turn to the minor gods in the new year.

Sorry about that side-track. There are loads and loads of other myths about Aphrodite. Especially about her having fun at mortal's expense, or getting angry when people are called prettier than her, including one story where she causes an entire island of women to murder their husbands. But there is one story which is the most important of all, and starts when someone finally refuses to name anyone as more beautiful than Aphrodite - and everyone in all of Greece suffers for it. You see, the man was named Paris, and this in the story of the Trojan War.

I'm going to be very brief about this because wow I did not know I had this many stories about Aphrodite. So this story starts when one of Ares' little friends, Eris, the goddess of discord, gets pissy because she wasn't invited to a wedding (would you invite discord to a wedding? I didn't think so). So just like the 13th/4th faerie, Eris shows up with a gift of her own. It is a golden apple, upon which is simply written "To the fairest". Which sounds nice except... none of the goddesses want to admit that they are not the fairest of them all.

Three goddesses in particular lay claim to the apple - Hera, the queen of the gods, Athena, goddess of wisdom and fine craft, and Aphrodite, goddess of sexual pleasure and beauty. To settle this matter, they asked Zeus. And Zeus - in his one moment of clarity - refuses to decide (which, seeing as one of them is his wife, is probably a bad move even in itself). And in the next moment he makes an even stupider move by declaring that some random mortal boy names Paris will decide for them.

Paris was the younger son of King Priam of Troy, and younger brother to Hector. Apparently, Paris had good judgement and humility, because one time he had bested Ares in some bull-breeding contest, but because he had a head on his shoulders, he let Ares claim the prize instead (because Ares is known to rip people's arms off when he loses).

Unfortunately, having enough sense to fear Ares does not a wise man make. And when someone came and asked Paris "Who is the fairest of the goddesses - Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite?" Paris did not take the only sensible course of action, which would be to RUN LIKE MAD and hide in the hills. Maybe Artemis would have helped, or Apollo. Instead, Paris listen as each of the goddesses attempt to bribe him - Hera promises him a mighty king, Athena promises to make him a mighty warrior, and Aphrodite promises him the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris, like an absolute love sick fool, declares Aphrodite the winner. And earns the eternal scorn of both the Queen of Heaven and also the Goddess Athena. Which is. Wow. Such a bad move.

It really sucks for Paris, because if he had chosen anyone besides Aphrodite, you know she would have cursed him to like, fall in love with his shadow or some shit like that. But anyway. The ire of the gods is not actually what brings on the Trojan War. It's Aphrodite's promise. Because Aphrodite did not say "the most beautiful maiden" or "available woman", she said "the most beautiful woman" and it turns out that the most beautiful woman in the world was already married! Her name was Helen of Sparta, and she was the wife of King Menelaus.

If there is one thing which should be fairly obvious about ancient Greece it's this: Do not, I repeat DO NOT attempt to seduce the King of Sparta's wife. Looking at you, Paris, and you too, Alkibiades. It's a bad. Bad plan.

So Paris seduces Helen, and she runs away with him, leaving Sparta and travelling to Egypt and then home to Troy (and was thus called Helen of Troy), and married Paris. Her husband. Gets. Very. Very mad. And he calls up his own big brother Agamemnon, the King of Mykenae, to go to war! The Greeks all unite and sail across the Aegeon, and lay siege to the city of Troy for a solid 10 years. YEARS. Like an entire decade. It's bad. During this war, Aphrodite takes an active role, appearing on the battlefield to assist her chosen heroes of Troy - especially Paris and her son Aeneas. However the Greek hero Diomedes ends up hitting her with his spear - nicking her wrist, nothing terrible, but she borrows her lover Ares' chariot and runs back to Olympos in shame.

I will have to tell more stories of the Tojan War later. For now I just wanted to mention Aphrodite's part in it. As you can see, not everyone favored by Aphrodite gets a happy ending. In fact most of them don't. She's a dangerous person, that's for sure.

This post has gotten. So long. And I'm not even started my analysis yet. So let's get going.

I mentioned way earlier that if there are two Archtypes which modern america seems most obviously obsessed with, it's Ares and Aphrodite (and weirdly they are the only gods to survive the wrath of Xena... but that's a different story). And I mean it. I don't think I could turn the television on for more that two minutes without seeing a commercial which is dedicate to Aphrodite - or as well as could be, anyway. Have you ever SEEN a perfume commercial? Or jewelry? Or really any film or tv show focused on a (hetero) romance? It's all very Aphrodite.

I don't think I have to spend a lot time enumerating the dangers of Aphrodite. The Church has done a whoooooole lot of that on it's own. The only specific thing I would point to is how the world's obsession with erotic/romantic love often causes it to belittle "platonic" love (for lack of a better word) - meaning love that does not involve sex. Like. You do not have to kiss someone to love them, and your love of that person is NO less important than your love for someone you would kiss. You can have intimate relationships without sex. In fact, you should. And you can have physical relationships without sex, too. Casual physical intimacy is something I feel like I really value, even though I've never had a romantic/sexual partner. And while there's a lot to be said on this topic, one of the worst things is the feeling and assumption that the world has that any two people who are close (esp if they are male and female) WILL and ought to end up kissing/getting married, etc. It's like this weird idea that there MUST be a romance. Aphrodite must win. The play must end in a marriage. It's so expected as to be dull! So much so that when it doesn't happen it's considered subversive. The same way a woman is considered subversive if she does not model herself for the male gaze.

Now I'm not one against romance, let me be clear. I'm not even against marriage and sex. But this world is OBSESSED with it. People order their lives around attracting a mate. Whole industries are build upon making oneself look and feel and smell and act and speak more attractively. Have you ever been on Instragram? Or YouTube? a HUGE percentage of our social space is a Shrine to Aphrodite. And it's hurtful! Even if you are someone who does value finding a spouse and being married as part of your life goals, appeasing the God of Beauty as it were is a bad way to go about it. And it's a terrible, terrible message to give our children.

I could go on a whole speech here about the terrible sexualization of young children and especially girls - both in fashion and just in general. When people see young children interacting and treat the girls like they should already be concerned in romance and looking good for boys is just... yuck. But I said I wasn't going to focus on the dangers of Aphrodite, because they are so obvious and prevalent.

As always I want to point out - this is not me saying Aphrodite is evil, nor that sex and romance are bad! As ALWAYS, there is danger in the excess (which the goddess represents), but also goodness in moderation (which is given us by God).

I really don't have time or energy to point out that hey - sex is good, y'all. To be honest, I don't have the experience to tell you that either. (Honestly, how should I know? I am what they would call a "Maiden", and I don't even mean that in the lose pagan sense I mentioned with Artemis, but the more Biblical sense of the word). But I DO have the experience to tell you that the the Church has, once again, just like with alcohol, done a lot of harm by absolutely demonizing something which is a gift from God. It's a PROBLEM. There are so many people who grow up genuinely SCARED of sex and sexuality - and also ignorant of it! Because of the terrible and completely intentionally imposed restrictions on sex education. On education! It's terrible. Because people WILL and DO learn this stuff, they just learn it either too late or from bad resources. Do you know where my own sex ed came from, primarily? The internet. And yes, that is just as bad and dangerous as it sounds. This is because if there is one pagan god who genuinely terrifies the Church, it's Aphrodite. And sure, there may be good historical precedent for this, from the many horrible sex scandals that church ministers have been involved in over the years. But that is no excuse to foster Shame where there is Freedom, or Fear where there is Love.

The Scriptures - in both the old and new testaments - spend a lot of time speaking against the abuse of sex. Because there are a LOT of ways to abuse people through sex. And humans are. Extremely creative in this regard. But the Church, instead of wading into this choppy water and embracing the gifts God gave us even in this fallen world, has often chosen to pitch the baby with the bathwater as it were. And the chruch could do a lot better by helping teach itself how to celebrate ALL of the good gifts of God, including sex - INCLUDING sex which doesn't necessarily look exactly like you'd do it yourself, if that makes sense. Like. Creativity and FUN are and should be part of this.

Ok sorry this analysis is shorter than normal. The TL;DR is this: As you go through your every day life, you're going to see a LOT of modern devotion to Aphrodite. Please don't fall victim to it. She is a dangerous mistress, and an unattainable one. But at the same time, do not run from her. Praise God for the blessing that is the beauty of human beings, and their sexuality. It's a very VERY complex issue, and as I said, I'm still a bit addled by my recent surgery and pain killers. I'd love to talk more about this though.

Sometimes I give 'homework' or challenges. Last time was to have a symposium. This time it's "Please provide good sex-ed for your children. PLEASE." I cannot tell you how important it is that these subjects are treated with openness and respect, and not with fear and shame. PLEASE. Sex Ed is not evil. A lack of sex ed is evil. PLEASE PROVIDE EDUCATION ON SEX AND SEXUALITY FOR STUDENTS preferably starting before high school, and CONTINUING as students grow up.

There's a reason that, when JBU opened up it's course on sexuality designed for students reading for degrees in family counseling up to it's whole campus over 70 students audited the class. It's because so few of us had any formal sex ed before College. COLLEGE.

Some say that we worship what we fear. Please do not allow the next generation to fear sex. Do not let them worship it. But let them enjoy it.

Thank you for reading this mess of a post.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Amen.

R