#athena sees her children as boons she has given to the world

[writeitinsharpie]

i have a thought about pjo that i can't quite articulate but it goes along the lines of:

athena gave annabeth as a gift to frederick because she liked his search for knowledge. in athena's eyes, any action of annabeth's reflects herself, which is why annabeth 'embarrassing' her had such strong consequences

poseidon fell in love with impertinent, stubborn sally jackson. percy wasn't a gift to her - he is a cumulation of all of her stubborn, steadfast love.

why wouldn't poseidon still love and aid percy when all of percy's insolence is why he loved sally in the first place?

[courier-sux]

🌻🌹

🌹 Where in the world does your OC feel most at home? Is there any reason why? If it’s not the place they were born, where were they born? Is there a certain somebody that makes them feel at home where ever they may be? What does home mean to them?

Jackal (this one is a bit long bc she’s got issues when it comes to home)

Jackal spends a majority of her early life searching for a place to call home. She naturally enjoys travel and often experiences wanderlust, but she also has some major commitment issues. These stem from the belief that everyone will eventually leave her or that she will inevitably screw things up, so she’d rather be the one to leave first.

That being said, if she did have to pick a place, she would pick the Mojave desert as a whole — she just feels a sense of belonging there. She was born in a tiny town in California called Twenty Mules (which is based on the irl town of Boron, a place that I’ve been and has a population of like 2,000) where her family owned a farm.

It isn’t until she ends up in New Vegas that she realizes that for her, home isn’t a place — it’s the people she surrounds herself with. The things she had been searching for were a sense of safety and security, and she finds that in her friends. Still, it’s hard at first for her to accept that the people she considers home, like Boone, Arcade, Cass, Veronica, Raul, and Jace, won’t get tired of her, and that she won’t ruin things like she think she will.

Athena

Megaton is Athena’s home. After leaving the close-knit community of Vault 101, she tries desperately to find someplace she belongs, and is crushed when the Brotherhood casts her aside and Amata exiles her from the vault for good. Luckily, she finds that sense of community in Megaton when she befriends Moira, Gob, Nova, Sheriff Simms, and Walter.

Though she loves the Megaton house, having Charon and Dogmeat (and occasionally Butch) by her side makes her feel just as comfortable while she’s on the road. She also eventually takes in a teenaged MacCready for a few years after his time in Little Lamplight is up.

Ava

Ava has put the most work into Sanctuary, and it’s what she would consider home. Adjusting to the Wasteland was hard enough as it was, and she couldn’t quite let go of her old home, instead opting to fix it up into something new.

Ava was born and raised in Boston, which is why it was extra hard to see the ruins of the city. She visited her old childhood home, for reasons beyond her, and was unsurprised (but still saddened) to see it in complete disrepair.

Dogmeat and Codsworth will always be a little slice of home for her, as they remind her of things before the war while still being proof that things can adapt. Ava can turn anything into a home though, as long as she has her friends to help — MacCready, Nick, Piper, and Deacon, to name a few. She’s the kind of person that visits your house and starts folding your laundry or cleaning the house while she’s staying there.

🌻 What little things do they notice about people or the world around them that make them happy? What tiny little treasures do they find in the normal every day that makes the world seem a little brighter for them?

Jackal

Jackal quite literally finds tiny little treasures, even if other people don’t understand why she collects them. She finds pleasure in the incredibly mundane. Anything small enough to fit in her pocket that she deems interesting is something she will take with her. Her favorites are flowers, which she will pick so she can press them, and anything shiny. Marbles, sea glass, metal buttons, etc.

Athena

Athena is always amazed by nature, given that they didn’t really have it in the vault. It’s common to find her staring at plants growing in between the crevices of a rock, a bird sitting in a tree, or a natural stream. Rain is one of her favorite things in the whole world. A more material possession she enjoys are bottles of Nuka-Cola Quantum, which she collects and arranges on a bookshelf in Megaton (she thinks they’re pretty, especially in the dark when they glow). 

Ava

Signs of hope and humanity are what keep Ava going when she’s feeling run-down. Children playing, people singing, witnessing an act of charity. It gives her the motivation she needs to keep going.

Soft OC Asks

[spjcomicart]

How did the women of Ancient Greece benefit from participating in the Cult of Dionysus

Stefano Junior November 2017 How did the women of Ancient Greece benefit from participating in the Cult of Dionysus If sculptor Polikleitos’s "Spear Bearer"or the "Doryphoros", the 6’11” originally bronze sculpture was the canon by which ancient Greeks at the height of Classical antiquity measured harmony and beauty, which in turn represented not only their reverence for Male athletics and form, but also as a measurement of what was morally good (derivative of the Greeks pride in their exertion of will over Nature and thus balance and order over chaos, than most certainly Women represented the opposite. ​“The blood that issues with the newborn, the mother was considered ritually impure, both “polluted” and “polluting”…as we learn from a sacred law from the Greek colony of Cyrene…The woman who has just given birth pollutes the house; she pollutes anyone inside the house….the person who is inside the house shall be polluted for three days. “ (1) Certainly if menstruation was regarded as essentially a spell of pollution for the both the woman and those within her vicinity, than it is little surprise that authorities of these collective city-states had initiated common practices that ensured women were left to tend to hearth and home and forbidden to partake in affairs of state and government. Certainly if their natural physiognomy was one of chaotic expulsion and pollution than the notion of women participating in athleticism and games would only be set aside for their “superior” Male counterparts, save for the Amazons of legend (a fearsome matriarchal race of breast carving archers and weapon wielders who bred only female babes and sacrificed their male offspring for whom their Queen’s girdle was allegedly stolen by Heracles’ conquest of them—Heracles himself reflecting the notions of maximum masculine superiority by means of partial Divinity, the son of the Father of the Olympian gods himself, Zeus) and perhaps Artemis, goddess of the Hunt, conveniently a Virgin and perpetually incapable of “Pollution”. Yet ever so, Artemis, as reflective of the notion of the Anima in Greece, is tied to the wild—surveyor and champion of all animal life; a woman, no doubt, unchecked is unbridled and base-without logic or reason. Thus, unreliable, untrustworthy, and unpredictable as The beast, for whom the Greeks sought to overcome within themselves. Logic and reason-the qualities reserved and revered by a modern classical Greek citizen for whose very Athenian surrounding was the bedrock for modern philosophy. Or perhaps Athena herself, sprung from the head of Zeus himself, the namesake of Athens herself and the guardian of warfare and creative arts and craftsmanship and WISDOM; perhaps an collectively unconscious contradiction on the capacity of the female, or a carryover evolution of goddess worship from the Cycladian and Minoan peoples that remained, however transformed, as an element of gender balance within a Pantheon of Gods. ​Not only would the measure of a woman’s nature be in comparison to the gods, but her Very origins, according to Greek religion. Woman’s untrustworthiness and unpredictability, after all Pandora, Eve of Christianity’s grandmother, was the “original” woman and set the standard of behavior Forever associated with the ancient woman. “and he (Zeus) ordered golden Aphrodite to shed grace on her head and cruel passion and worries that knaw at the limbs. And he commanded Hermes…to put in her a bitch’s mind and a thieving heart…..in her breast…put lies, tricky speeches, and a thieving heart.” (2) And regarding that famous box or cairn of hers “But the woman lifted in her hands the great lid from The jar and scattered these evils about-she devised miserable sorrows for men” So not only was this First woman and wife rife with poor character and qualities, but she, through her insatiable curiosity, Chaotic unpredictability, and untrustworthiness, unleashed ALL ills and unpleasantries that vex Mankind. Not only does this fortify the belief of woman as a literal vessel, either as for sexual or procreative purposes-or as the vessel of chaos and pollution. Is it any wonder then, that the ancient Greeks would have cause to resent and thus control and inhibit the life of an average woman or girl? ​“From birth to death a freeborn female in Athens was under the supervision of a kyrios, the Man who was responsible for her maintenance and upbringing as a child, and for all situations in which she would interact with the public, such as marriage or legal transactions.” (1) Her father, essentially, would be her first Kyrios, transferring ownership of her to a spouse or whatever living Male relative claim her. Woman as property, woman as cattle, woman as rearers, woman as spinners, woman as weavers, woman as potters, woman as waxmakers, woman as culinarians,….Woman with no power of her own. ​There were nurturer roles that women could aspire to, however, as evidenced by Phanostrate, The Athenian mid-wife and physician. A role assigned either an aged female, or one by circumstance Whom, not barren, was unable to birth children of her own. In this regard, both in the administration of Ritualistic elixirs and medicine, woman could earn money and the admiration and respect of fellow Greek citizens as child rearers and caretakers. Becoming a nurse, or moreover a wet nurse, may have Been boon to the Greek woman whom was able to lift herself from the mires and drudgery of the toils Of regularly sequestered female wife life and to the woman of high status for whom she was employed. According to Women of Ancient Greece by Bonnie Maclachlan, some may have indeed have been slaves or “Malicha”, plucked from the Peloponnese. Apparently, evenslavery on the socio economic stratum, as a nurse was still regarded with respect. So the ancient woman, by limited means, and one might imagine by limited numbers, circumstances, luck, and paternity, may (albeit in the capacity of a nurturer) aspire to something greater than property. ​So what about DIONYSOS? Who were these Maenads, or raving ones, that carried Out ritualistic libation ceremonies to honor a god whose very origins predated the Athenian sky gods And whose very essence and tenets were at odds with a culture so refined and elevated beyond the Natural earthy realms for haughty orchestrations of reason, intellect, and philosophizing? How and why Should this ancient deity and subsequent cult attract women ofHomeric times? And how might they Have benefitted from the rituals and practices therein in great opposition to their general existence and Expectations in classical Greece? ​“Procreation takes place in moisture” (3) Walter Otto writes in Dionysos: Myth and Cult And continues to elucidate the symbolic relationship between women, water, and its chaotic (antithesis Of reason and order) in the ancient religious symbolism. The watery nymphs, or maidens of the water, Themselves “nurture and rear the child Dionysus”. That very origin itself may have emerged from the Depths, if you will, from the waters that surrounded Crete during the height of the Minoan culture, Named for a king (Minos) who allegedly reigned there. But it isn’t a reigning patriarchy that is of Interest there; it is the art, and pottery, and history that remain that illustrate a highly matriarchal Society, where the station of a woman was elevated to that of priestess or regent or perhaps even a A governing one. A rich culture that succeeded at architecting complex communal “Palace” structures And the earliest potter’s wheel, which in turn led them to become a profitable and formidable trader of Goods throughout the Aegean as far as Egypt and Asia Minor and even mainland Greece for whom, their Militaristic Mycenaen culture greatly imitated and incorporated Minoan art and ceramics. But of most Interest here, was the Bull god for whom, according to (4) Arthur Evans “The God of Ecstacy” was Arguably the basis for Dionysos and begat many other stories as well, i.e.: The Minotaur. During Ceremonial ritual, Minoans would drink from great vessels called rhytons sculpted in the shape of a bull: The ultimate consumption of divinity—by intoxication, in the shape of a beast—Purely Dionysian. ​“Zeus gave birth to a bull-horned god, and crowned his son with a wreath of snakes” (5) Euripides writes in The Bacchae and Other Plays and borrows, not one, but two symbolic images Associated primarily with Minoan ritual: The Bull and the Snakes (see the famed Minoan Snake Goddess) Giving further evidence to Dionysos’ relationship to a more ancient feminine culture and one that so Closely married the anthropomorphic elements that were more closely tied to nature and all its Instinctual ramifications, logic be damned. Arthur Evans (4) quotes another author Nilsson, 1950, who Explains plainly why in modern classical Greece, the ideals Dionysus would have reemerged and held Value for women “We have a warlike upper class which created a state of the gods model of their own Feudal organization. On the bottom was the great mass of architectural workers and slaves who retained the agrarian and nature deities of the old Minoan religion and their special rites” Evans continues “by the time of the classical era, he had become the center of a massive cult….that disturbed the upper class…,therefore, the return of the repressed…not just of the underclassses at last making their social clout felt…also a resurgence of a world-view,…regarding nature, sexuality, and religion that directly threatened the established concepts of the time.” In Classical Greece, certainly no other citizen would have defined the word repressed better …than a woman. Dionysus own mythical family and mother Semele, relative to Minos, was derivative of Crete and the Minoans, so who better than one Bull headed god of chaos and nature harkening back to a time of female patronage and power could champion an entire downtrodden indentured sex in an effort to either overthrow establishment or subvert it or at the very least, release. ​These mad maidens, imbibed with the liquid essence of Dionysus, for which they no doubt Pressed with their own feet and fermented and bottled and toiled over, could, in the private company of Other “sister” citizens retreat literally into nature into the forests and hills and unleash all of their Urges and desires, and rage against a society that revoked their will while recounting and recollecting a Time in which women held greater powers . A celebration of, not a triumph over the beast as the Athenians admired, but an intercourse with him and thus, perhaps a greater understanding of the The nature of physical reality and life. One that, by their very physiognomy, would remind them of That vey crimson element of life and death that runs through all living things, once a month: the “Pollution” of menstruation. Where women were expected to be softer, docile, and recepitous of sexual Engagement—as ornamental and immobilized as the very vessels from which they drank, here within Ancient sacred Dionystic rites, was an opportunity for them to unsheathe their ferocity, Aggressiveness , and sexual desires into a state of frenzied abandon and freedom. Freedom, even if only Symbolically set aside for a ceremonial night of debauchery would have appeared a powerful aphrodisiac To a repressed woman of Ancient Greece, in contrast to the restrictions of their daily modern and “Platonic” lives. Perhaps the greatest benefit they may have gleaned was a therapeutic one. Work Cited 1. Women In Ancient Greece (A sourcebook) by Bonnie Maclachlan 2. Women’s Life in Greece & Rome (A sourcebook in Translation) by Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant 3. Dionysys Myth and Cult by Walter F. Otto 4. The Cult of Dionysys by Leon Davalos 5. The Bacchae and Other Plays by Euripides (translated by John Davie) 6. The God of Ecstasy by Arthur Evans