#on the topic of mythology...

[genericpuff]

Bit of a late post because I've been spending the last two days driving around non-stop to visit family for Christmas, but! Happy Holidays to you all! I'm so thankful to be here with such an amazing community of creators, readers, and friends 💖 For all those who celebrate this time of year in their many shapes and forms, I hope you're having a wonderful and safe holiday season! Te'tuji Kesalnu'k !

[mordredpendragon]

obviously i have my biases, but i'm just curious.

a bunch of knights go through grail quest, but what i want to know is your preference for the GRAIL HERO specifically. bonus points if you tell me why!

as a refresher, here's all of the relevant texts they show up in and undergo grail quest

Percival

Peredur (Welsh) Y Seint Greal (Welsh) Perceval + Continuations (French) Parzival (German) Parceval (Norse) Perchevael (Dutch) Prose Perceval (Middle English) Perlesvaus (French) Merlin and the Grail by Robert de Boron (French) Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (Middle English) The Quest for the Holy Grail (Vulgate) (French) The Quest for The Holy Grail (Post-Vulgate) (French) La Tavola Ritonda (Italian)

Galahad and Bors

Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (Middle English) The Quest for the Holy Grail (Vulgate) (French) The Quest for The Holy Grail (Post-Vulgate) (French) La Tavola Ritonda (Italian)

Gawain

The Crown by Heinrich von dem Türlin (Diu Crône) (German) Perlesvaus (French)

Lancelot and Arthur

Perlesvaus (French)

links are supplied by the Arthurian Preservation Project!

[gingermintpepper]

“Your hair’s gotten longer.” 

It’s conscious effort that keeps him from tucking the strands behind his ear, from taking the knife at his hip and shearing it all off. He keeps his stance focused, attentive, there’s little else he can do when he’s taken so completely after his mother when it comes to his hair. His father scratches his chin, the clouds of his beard snaking about his finger like mist parting for mountain-peaks. Ares’ chin is still child-smooth. He can feel the tickle of his over-long fringe against his soft jaw. There’s no heart in his chest, but still he feels as though a pulse is lodged in his throat. 

Father sighs, put-upon, disappointed, and Ares feels a slight tremor start in his calves from holding himself so tense. “Well done, Ares. Go clean yourself up and get some rest. Phoebus will want to look you over later.” 

He should be ecstatic to be praised by his father. Over-the-moon with joy. There should be pride emanating from every pore of his body, the blood on his skin should be sweeter than ambrosia. 

Instead, he bows, manages a soft ‘thank you, Father’ around the lump in his throat and immediately flees the room. A mild ‘make sure to trim your hair’ hits the back of his head like a spear through the skull. He almost wishes the great door had slammed on his foot so he would have reason to feel this horrid in his retreat.  

Phoebus Apollo is waiting for him in his infirmary. 

He’s gilded as ever, gold from crown to heel. Perfect like the statues they carve of him in his temples. He has a smile for Ares when he sees him, a crinkle at the edges of his pretty eyes from the weight of his joy. Ares is waiting to see the crack in the marble, to see if that’s the chip that’ll reveal his fangs.

“Brother,” he greets, and his voice is warm - like the arms that embrace him, his voice is so warm, “Welcome back. I’ve heard you’ve done well.”  

There’s a tremble in Ares’ fingers he hadn’t noticed before. Strain from carrying his sword for so many days, a throb from wounds he hadn’t noticed he’d accrued. “Heard? There’s already gossip?” 

Phoebus blinks, disarming, demure, coquettish, “But of course,” and Phoebus’ voice is honey to Ares’ gravel, the juxtaposition is grating on his skin, “It’s Olympus. The gossip began long before you set your course.” Those warm hands lead him further into the room, bodily sits him on the chaise, pulls his helmet from his head. It’s all one, unbroken motion, “It’s summer alas, so I could not watch your war myself, but I hear it was quite the decisive victory.” 

A thousand thoughts run on horseback through his mind then. 

Did Father overhear some terrible slander that pre-emptively disappointed him? Was Ares’ victory merely a rumour, a bet his father hadn’t bothered to take? Was the gossip more enticing than the stark truth? That Ares wasn’t some child toddling about in the shadow of his sister, that his sword and spear weren’t merely for show - he’d think such a thing would warrant celebration. Not -

“Oh my,” Phoebus is in front of him, pleasant warmth more sticky heat with how close he’s pressed himself into Ares’ space. From this angle, Ares can see the multi-coloured flecks of his eyes, like shards of golden glass suspended in ichor. From this angle, with his hand so gently holding his hair, were Ares to blink too hard, he’d swear Phoebus looked just like his mother. “Your hair’s grown long again.” 

He pushes Phoebus off with such force that he bangs into the wall. It’s Phoebus, it won’t make even the impression of a scratch on him, but Ares wishes it would. Wishes he’d hit his shoulder or crack his neck or hit his head just hard enough for all that perfect, gilded gold to bleed. 

“I’m only here for you to heal me,” the tremble in his hand extends to his shoulder now. He flexes and unflexes his palm. Gods what he would give to just have a sword - “Don’t waste time with the pleasant-work.” 

Phoebus huffs, adjusts the fit of his himation, “...Only because we’re meant to be celebrating your victory.” He crosses the room in two great strides, his hair a swirling tempest behind him as he gathers his poultices and wraps. “The only reason I’ll not throw you from the window is because we are meant to be celebrating your victory.”  

There’s not enough acid in his tone for this to truly be a fight. Ares’ jaw clenches, he bites out a terse, “How benevolent.” 

“Aren’t I?” He’s got nectar and his sutures in hand, that focused look falling upon his face when he switches from overbearing busybody to Paeon of the Gods. “Now strip unfaltering Ares, let us see the measure of damage done to your indomitable flesh.” 

(Somewhere between the fifth set of stitches and the gentle frown that crosses Phoebus’ face when he notices the persistent tremble in his fingers, Ares pins his eyes to the far wall and asks, “What does it mean when Father says ‘well done’?” 

Any other sibling would mock before they gave a true response. Any other sibling would laugh and dismiss it, would say that praise is praise and any lingering ill feeling is just the worst of the war still fogging his mind. Phoebus does not answer immediately. He doesn’t make a single sound. The question settles like fetid water between them, unignorable, the scent right there on the tip of the tongue yet firmly unacknowledged. Ares closes his eyes and tries again to settle his squirming so he does not interfere with Phoebus’ work.  The metallic snip of scissors cutting thread breaks the silence. Phoebus bids him to sit up and slides his warm palms up his back until his fingers tangle gently in the ends of his hair. He twists the dark red strands until he’s gathered it all into a neat handful, holding it loosely as he switches his scissors for his shearing blade. “You should know it was not praise,” Phoebus says softly. The first of Ares cut hairs fall like viscera from his head. Phoebus treats each cutting with the sacredness of a blood-sacrifice. If he focused on the moment of tension right before the blade cuts though, Ares thinks he can imagine the agony of his sister’s sacred birth. “It is acknowledgement. Father thinks you’ve done well so he says ‘well done’.”

Gently, Phoebus releases him. Ruffles his head so all the extra hairs fall like red rain to the floor. Ares runs his fingers through the ends now curling against his ear. “Has he ever told you ‘well done’?” 

A laugh, warm and gilded, “No, and it would not make you feel better if he had.” 

Ares swallows down a thousand different questions. Phoebus wouldn’t answer them, he’s infuriating like that. Instead, he clenches his teeth, the phantom of Father’s dizzying tangle of grey cloud-hairs persistent in the corner of his eyes. “Cut it shorter.”

Phoebus doesn’t protest. He never seems to say a word when it really matters.)

[trees-expertise]

Maybe I’m just sappy and sentimental, but I really love the idea of modern day myths, of saints and guardians and protectors born from the beliefs of internet users.

I love the concept of Arepo, of Fae who take dead names, of little Laika, our guardian dog of the stars.

I love how humanity has grown, and with us, our fairytales.

[sarafangirlart]

It’s so funny how Pseudo-Hyginus was so mad about ppl in his time interpreting that Perseus wore the Helm of Hades himself and even now ppl ignore him bc they really like the idea of Hades giving Perseus his helmet.

[ryin-silverfish]

Me, staring at the "Nezha is eternally 12/Nezha is often depicted as a kid so he's just a kid and nothing else" crowd: man, have you heard of Child Manjushri a.k.a. Wenshu Tongzi

(This is totally not an excuse for me to find cool statue pictures and talk iconography)

So, here is Bodhisattva Manjushri in his standard "graceful aristocratic prince" form, riding his azure lion. The statue in the picture doesn't have it, but oftentimes, he'll also be holding a flaming sword that symbolizes wisdom's ability to cut through ignorance and delusions.

This is "Holy Old Monk Manjushri", a variant that I came across a few times while temple-touring, but couldn't find many good online pictures of. It seemed like a thing that was popular around Mt. Wutai, based on the "Buddha-palita met Old Man Manjushri" tale. Sometimes his BFF Samantabhadra is depicted as an old man too, for matching purposes.

And this is Child Manjushri, with his five hair buns, often worshipped in an esoteric context. On Mt. Wutai, there are five major temples atop five peaks, each worshipping a different form of Manjushri, and the "middle peak" temple has a Child Manjushri in their main hall. Like, it's far from the most common variant, but neither is it this super obscure form that no longer enjoys active worship.

Lastly, just for fun: this is Yamantaka, a guardian deity/Wisdom King, who, in Tibetan Buddhism, is believed to be Manjushri's wrathful form.

If you wouldn't call Manjushri "the eternal child Bodhisattva" just because he has a child form, why would you say Nezha is an eternal child when he, too, has both child and adult forms?

Even though Nezha's child form is vastly more popular and well-known than Child Manjushri, I think my point still stands: A deity is capable of having multiple manifestations, of varying ages and appearances, each fulfilling a particular function and niche——none of which is the "One True Form TM", just different clothes they wear based on occasions and audiences.

To stretch the analogy a little, Manjushri's child form is the formal dress he puts on before attending a religious event, while Nezha's child form is the lotus T-shirt he wears a lot while appearing on TV, to the point it becomes his most iconic attire.

This doesn't mean he only has a single shirt, for goodness sake, and using his child form as evidence for the "eternal child" claim is like saying Nezha's only allowed to wear that one shirt and nothing else.

[fleurbleedinghearts]

Putting down and being misogynistic to Aphrodite to paint Hephaestus as a saint is gross and weird

but putting down Hephaestus and headcanoning that he treated her badly or was an incel who forced her to marry him to paint Aphrodite as a saint is also gross and weird

[aihoshiino]

Okay my English is not that good but I'm curious on which of these do you think ai encompasses the most, is she like water a tiny drop in the sea where you can't find her anymore, or like a fire that burns bright before it dwindles into nothing but smoke, or maybe like a pretty flower that was admired but eventually got picked, these ones are a bit less in character but imagine she's like a cool gust of wind that eventually got pulled in like a hurricane and you can't find her anymore or people just forget or muse about how cool the wind was, and last which I think is perhaps also really close to her. How about lightning? It comes when the weather is stormy and suddenly a strong shock of energy that's beautiful and loud comes in the middle of the storm but of course it disappears too.

Also be sure to drink lots of water and take break! (⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)

this was a good reminder cos i was actually a lil dehydrated when i answered this..................................

I think the canonical star imagery for her is the one I like best! It's the one I think encapsulates all the things that are most compelling about her & her arc; the artificial brilliance of performance and idolhood, the enforced distance of parasociality and the eventual permanence of her removal from Aqua and Ruby's lives, the imagery of a star burning itself to shine until it eventually dies and collapses in on itself... you see what I mean.

It also has some interesting mythological connotations, though I'm not fully sure how deeply Aka thought them through - Ai is referred to across the franchise with the word 「一番星」 (ichibanboshi), which broadly refers to the first star that shows up in the evening sky but is almost always used in Japan to refer to Venus, specifically.

(sidebar - this is why some translations of IDOL will choose to render the line 「一番星の生まれ変わり」 as 'the reincarnation of Venus', since that's how 一番星 is most often colloquially used)

Venus in Roman mythos is a goddess whose domain covers a whole load of things but most people will know her as a goddess of love, beauty, sex and fertility which... well, I don't need to tell any OnK fan how that relates back to Ai lol. Where this association becomes the most interesting to me tho is when taking into account all Venus' myriad epithets and the number of contexts in which she was worshipped. This isn't unique to Venus, obvs, but I do think it has some interesting synergy with the way Ai was misinterpreted anew by everyone around her, all of them projecting things onto her that they, personally, wanted to see that may or may not have had anything to do with who she really was.

Interesting as this association is, I do think it's mostly accidental since the Private arc much more pointedly and deliberately likens her to Ame-no-Uzume for whom a lot of this stuff doesn't really apply. As Ame-no-Uzume (metaphorically/narratively speaking, that is), the association is more to do with the way Ai's performance draws people out of themselves and encourages them to step into the light.

Ofc, this association isn't really super fixed - the Ame-no-Uzume drawing out Amaterasu dynamic is echoed across the manga a few times with Ai herself playing the role of Amaterasu at least once. So ultimately it's just vibes.

(fun fact btw - in the Oshi no Ko x Takachiho tourism collab, one of the merch lines included illustrations of the cast dressed up as the roles in the town's traditional kagura performance and Ai was Amaterasu!)

[gawrkin]

(Source: Doctor Doom #2 (2019), by Marvel Comics)

Morgan le Fay - wearing modern clothes and renting out an apartment in Queens, New York - helping out her fellow supervillain, one-time protege and one-time lover, Doctor Doom. Also, Spiderman cameo and the "Cronos eating his kids" painting.

[aroaceleovaldez]

if one more person says "Disability metaphor? It's not even a metaphor lol! They just explicitly have ADHD/dyslexia!" in the tags of that one post im gonna start biting.

1. If you read the word "metaphor" and presumed I was referring to something that is not a metaphor and that you are identifying is not a metaphor... perhaps you have assumed what I was talking about incorrectly. Perhaps when I said metaphor. I was referring. To actual metaphors.

2. If you think there are no disability metaphors in the PJO series outside of just all of the demigod characters explicitly having adhd/dyslexia, then a.) you dont know what a metaphor is and b.) you are the exact type of person I was making a joke about in that post.

anyways here's my post going into most of the major disability metaphors outside of just demigods being adhd/dyslexic.

[jeyaam]

apollo u r everything to me

[wildbasil]

group therapy (they make each other worse)

[0rphicachilles]

Everytime me and my sister talk about arachne we get into the same argument so i want to see other people opinion

[sigyn-foxyposts]

Another question! Have you heard about the theory of Freya being Fulla rather than Frigg, and Freyr being Phol rather than Baldr, and what do you think it entails

Oh yes, I totally have, and somehow, I personally think it makes sense. At least the Phol freyr aspect of it. I'm uncertain about the Fulla one, but it is not impossible since Freyja can take on different forms.. like the gullveig is freyja theory! ^v^

I think this theory, in particular, highlights just how overlapping the Norse deities can be at times. It's like the Frigg and Freyja situation all over again but different, obviously. If Freyja and Fulla are the same (or once were), it might mean that what we consider different "goddesses" today were actually local names or aspects of a singular fertility household goddess, split apart in later retellings. It also reminds me of the creation myth and who was there too!

This would be possible considering "The Merseburg Charms" is an old high german incantation written down in the 10th century CE (c. 900s) in a manuscript found in Merseburg, Germany. The language suggests they stem from much older oral traditions, possibly going back to pre-Christian Germanic paganism in central Europe. It is amongst the only surviving written records of continental Germanic pagan belief and mention deities like Wodan (Odin), Frija (Frigg), and Balder (or maybe Freyr, depending on your theory).

Thank you for the ask once again. Please feel free any time to send more. I love to ramble about these things ☺️✨️

[sarafangirlart]

I don’t like it when ppl draw Hades as a young emo guy bc part of the appeal (at least for me) is that he’s an older more mature guy. Like idk man I’d rather be kidnapped and married to Disney’s Hades rather than a guy I’d see at hot topic.

[anna-scribbles]

really kind of taylor to release an album about the perils of fame / falling in love with the most toxic man alive right at the height of my emilie agreste insanity