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writingsbysam · 1 month

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In the Before

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therivercocytus · 10 days

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The labyrinth was a rot, it was a monster, it was a plague. It was a rot that seeped through the corpse of Minoa, an ashen corpse that’s pitiable hide turned from bright to faded to hideous, miserable, telling white, until the labyrinth’s rot took hold, and like a cow it became grey-spotted, tunnels snaking through every corner of the body.

The monster ate everything, the poor monster in the center and the regrettable monster that swallowed the fallen city like a fire a log, the monster that traversed it with his guide-love, the monster that constructed it and the monster that ordered its construction.

The plague caught children in its grips and sent them to the poor monster; the plague infected the city and gave it its rot. The plague is, too, the tales told of the mythical labyrinth.

#the labyrinth #theseus #ariadne #the minotaur #daedalus #king minos #minos #greek mythology #greek mythos art #greek mythology writing #was thinking ab ariadne and decided to write this

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readingwithminorissues · 10 months

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A fic I wrote, heavily inspired by The Song Of Achilles. ✨✨✨

(Patroclus Centric)

Pairing: Briseis x Patroclus (Slight romance referenced)

(Achilles x Patroclus implied)

Title: He is half the god she should be (“He is more god than I, you know.”)

Summary:

He is my destination. I am the ship. She is my shore.

Warm and safe, always here to secure. Yet, I desire more than the comforts offered, to have a taste at the salty sea of my tears.

To run to him and bask in his glory.

To be holy with him.

To be holy forever.

To steer away from possible, and drench in the possibilities I am undeserving of.

The mast bends under my wake and call. I holler to him, he is beyond my reach. I still sob his name into the hollowed winds round, stomp childishly as if to bring him back.

I come for him, he watches me so. He does not come.

The gods tug him back,

he does not see my tears.

I do not see his.

Yet, she is here to catch me as I fall.

Please read the tags for Trigger Warnings!

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bodhrancomedy · 1 year

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I think it’s funny. And the people have spoken.

#deaf #tiktok #funny #video #queer #trans #writing #actor #greek myth joke #Greek mythology

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joneevarts · 2 months

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My interpretation of Poseidon from Epic: the musical :D

This took me 3 whole weeks help

#poseidon #epic the musical #greek mythology #fanart #artists on tumblr #digital art #jo's art #artwork #art #my art #illustration #too tired to write more tags goodnight :D #the ocean saga

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eelhound · 5 months

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"I think Homer outwits most writers who have written on the War [fantasy archetype], by not taking sides.

The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowelment. Homer was a Greek and might have been partial to the Greek side, but he had a sense of justice or balance that seems characteristically Greek — maybe his people learned a good deal of it from him? His impartiality is far from dispassionate; the story is a torrent of passionate actions, generous, despicable, magnificent, trivial. But it is unprejudiced. It isn’t Satan vs. Angels. It isn’t Holy Warriors vs. Infidels. It isn’t hobbits vs. orcs. It’s just people vs. people.

Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody does. I try not to, but it’s no use; I just like the Trojans better than the Greeks. But Homer truly doesn’t take sides, and so he permits the story to be tragic. By tragedy, mind and soul are grieved, enlarged, and exalted.

Whether war itself can rise to tragedy, can enlarge and exalt the soul, I leave to those who have been more immediately part of a war than I have. I think some believe that it can, and might say that the opportunity for heroism and tragedy justifies war. I don’t know; all I know is what a poem about a war can do. In any case, war is something human beings do and show no signs of stopping doing, and so it may be less important to condemn it or to justify it than to be able to perceive it as tragic.

But once you take sides, you have lost that ability.

Is it our dominant religion that makes us want war to be between the good guys and the bad guys?

In the War of Good vs. Evil there can be divine or supernal justice but not human tragedy. It is by definition, technically, comic (as in The Divine Comedy): the good guys win. It has a happy ending. If the bad guys beat the good guys, unhappy ending, that’s mere reversal, flip side of the same coin. The author is not impartial. Dystopia is not tragedy.

Milton, a Christian, had to take sides, and couldn’t avoid comedy. He could approach tragedy only by making Evil, in the person of Lucifer, grand, heroic, and even sympathetic — which is faking it. He faked it very well.

Maybe it’s not only Christian habits of thought but the difficulty we all have in growing up that makes us insist justice must favor the good.

After all, 'Let the best man win' doesn’t mean the good man will win. It means, 'This will be a fair fight, no prejudice, no interference — so the best fighter will win it.' If the treacherous bully fairly defeats the nice guy, the treacherous bully is declared champion. This is justice. But it’s the kind of justice that children can’t bear. They rage against it. It’s not fair!

But if children never learn to bear it, they can’t go on to learn that a victory or a defeat in battle, or in any competition other than a purely moral one (whatever that might be), has nothing to do with who is morally better.

Might does not make right — right?

Therefore right does not make might. Right?

But we want it to. 'My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.'

If we insist that in the real world the ultimate victor must be the good guy, we’ve sacrificed right to might. (That’s what History does after most wars, when it applauds the victors for their superior virtue as well as their superior firepower.) If we falsify the terms of the competition, handicapping it, so that the good guys may lose the battle but always win the war, we’ve left the real world, we’re in fantasy land — wishful thinking country.

Homer didn’t do wishful thinking.

Homer’s Achilles is a disobedient officer, a sulky, self-pitying teenager who gets his nose out of joint and won’t fight for his own side. A sign that Achilles might grow up someday, if given time, is his love for his friend Patroclus. But his big snit is over a girl he was given to rape but has to give back to his superior officer, which to me rather dims the love story. To me Achilles is not a good guy. But he is a good warrior, a great fighter — even better than the Trojan prime warrior, Hector. Hector is a good guy on any terms — kind husband, kind father, responsible on all counts — a mensch. But right does not make might. Achilles kills him.

The famous Helen plays a quite small part in The Iliad. Because I know that she’ll come through the whole war with not a hair in her blond blow-dry out of place, I see her as opportunistic, immoral, emotionally about as deep as a cookie sheet. But if I believed that the good guys win, that the reward goes to the virtuous, I’d have to see her as an innocent beauty wronged by Fate and saved by the Greeks.

And people do see her that way. Homer lets us each make our own Helen; and so she is immortal.

I don’t know if such nobility of mind (in the sense of the impartial 'noble' gases) is possible to a modern writer of fantasy. Since we have worked so hard to separate History from Fiction, our fantasies are dire warnings, or mere nightmares, or else they are wish fulfillments."

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from No Time to Spare, 2013.

#ursula k. le guin #homer #quote #quotations #the iliad #trojan war #storytelling #fantasy #fiction writing #war #conflict #tragedy #john milton #paradise lost #greek mythology

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m1ssnovember · 2 months

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flowersforfrancis · 8 months

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#light academia #poetry #coffee stains #tea stains #insanity #academia #books and literature #chaotic academia #minimal #light brown #coffee and ciggaretes #writing aesthetic #dark academia #aesthetic #classic academia #romanticism #poetry aesthetic #greek mythology aesthetic #Randoms

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greekmythcomix · 10 months

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You Are Odysseus

So

I’m a teacher of Classical Civilisation that has taught the Odyssey for over a decade and studied pretty much every myth and story with Odysseus in it.. I think

and I’m writing an Interactive Fiction (choose your own path) version of the Odyssey, inspired by the Homeric phrase “he turned his great heart this way and that”, where you are Odysseus, allowing you to follow his decisions or make your own

and it already has 400 sections to it - written to emulate modern translations of the Odyssey, including the literary features of simile, formula, epithet, and the rest - and 21 different ways to die, and quite a lot of period and theme-appropriate alternatives

(and if I get time, the option to be Telemachus or Penelope, although that might have to wait because it’s already a monster)

and I’ve tested what I’ve made so far on my pupils, other Classics teachers, and some of the leading (and best-read) Greek Mythology podcasters and YouTubers, all of whom have universally loved it (yay!)

(EDIT: Oops and I presented on it at the Classical Association conference last year)

I’m trying to finish it this summer, but need a bit of encouragement to do so

EDIT: and I forgot to say that ideally I’m planning on it being a beautiful BOOK with an old-fashioned cover and lots of ribbons to mark your place ❤️ (ex-bookseller ofc)

so, please let me know if you’d like to know more!

(EDIT: or sign up here go get notified directly when it’s ready: https://ljenkinsonbrown.wordpress.com/you-are-odysseus-signup/ )

#odyssey #greek mythology #greek myth #tagamemnon #greek myth retellings #homer #interactive story #interactive fiction #classics #classical literature #classical civilisation #odysseus #writing #gamebook

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writingsbysam · 2 years

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I'll tell you your secret

I made another uquiz , and I love it so you all get to see it, even though it's been in my drafts since March.

#uquiz tag #uquizzes #love #writing #dark academia #poetry #poets on tumblr #poem #poets #writings #prose poetry #greek mythology writing #lucretia #art #uquiz quiz #writer

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icarus-daedaluss · 3 months

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