#he could do so many studies on me

[bardengarde]

I'm still missing my friend Sidney

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[claitea]

i've had these scenarios written down since volo's debut in pokemon masters and i just really wanted to scribble them down and finally release them

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[allsortzofcrap]

i feel like for the rest of my life i will be walking around totally normal and then periodically, i will be absolutely brained with a metaphorical anvil falling off the side of a building that represents the absolute bafflement i have towards modern adaptations of sherlock holmes and their treatment of irene adler. bbc's most recent adaptation in particular.

im so sorry. please repeat. she was stupid u say??? and i'm sorry, IN LOVE with him u say??????

i'm a feminist so i think women are capable of being in love and also of being stupid. they can do anything they put their minds to ofc ❤️. but this is too far even for me.

it's just that i can't understand why you would choose to write a narrative that is more mysoginistic than the source material when the source material was written in 1891.

was it intentional? did they somehow not pick up on the implications? was it random?

i can't fathom it. it keeps me awake.

[moe-broey]

LIKE something I think is all of the Askr family are like mirrors. Alfonse is a reflection of how much he loves Sharena and the summoner. Sharena is a reflection of how much she loves Alfonse and how, I think in the autistic sense, I think she mirrors A LOT. Henriette is a reflection of how much she loves Gustav (and seemingly, so severely that that love struggles to reach everyone else). Gustav was likely a reflection of how much he loved Henriette and his father. All of them are performing, adhering to SOMETHING. Their roles, and what seems to be The Correct Course of Action.

[californiaquail]

i hate having to deal with horses that are being badly managed lol

[mydearestblue]

so I had been thinking about the many similarities between the Chiss and the Time Lords, and between Thrawn and the Doctor as well, and now I need a Doctor Who AU where Thrawn takes Eli as his companion to show him the wonders of the universe

[airenyah]

now that i've turned thai drama into my bachelor thesis, the only question left is: how to turn thai drama into my master's thesis

[vordemtodgefeit]

i got a high 1st in my classics creative project!!!!!

[allthepandasintheworld]

I just realized I can’t say Rene and Alois live in my head rent free. Like, they do pay rent.

The rent is emotional support

[wintersettled]

i am once again thinking about the hilichurl rogue :(

the first time i fought it was actually yesterday after climbing a mountain in fontaine cause i wanted to see what it was and the drops really reminded me of neanderthal flower burials + how both neanderthals and hilichurls are/have been seen as primitive beings despite tons of evidence to the contrary (ignoring what we know about khaenri'ah since the curse of the wild seems to cause them to be catatonic for a period of time).

theres tons of literature on how neanderthals actually appear to be similar to homo sapiens and have higher mental functioning as evidenced through their tools, their presumed social structures (taking care of injured/disabled neanderthals rather than abandoning them as would be thought of beings focused only on survival), but most notably for this the evidence of "flower burials" at Shanidar.

Basically, two neanderthals were found buried in primarily medicinal flowers (indicating their possible role in their group). I believe there were 11(?) other neanderthals found there who appeared to have been crushed by rockfall whos ages (if my memory is correct) were from around 7 to mid 40s. The reason i bring this up is because of one of the flowers found at Shanidar: Achillea/Yarrows. I find these flowers to be fairly similar in appearance of the petals (excluding size) to the hilichurl rogues drops

Now, each drops description:

A Flower Yet to Bloom "a wildflower that a hilichurl rogue treasured. it was plucked before it could bloom. the hilichurl takes nothing with it in its sojourn across the wilderness save this flower."

Treasured Flower "a wild flower that a hilichurl picked bereft of any special qualities. flowers can be used as gifts or offerings to express ones feelings in many cultures"

for this description in specific i would actually like to quote Ralph S Solecki's "The Implications of the Shanidar Cave Neanderthal Flower Burial"

"Under normal circumstances, today, in many cultures, flowers and death go together, as one can see a funeral corteges and burials. The association of flowers as tokens of esteem, respect, or for the joy of looking at [...]. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'the flower has been a universal symbol of beauty in the civilizations of the world. Confucius included its cultivation among the arts that were essential to a man of culture.' We pride ourselves thinking that we know a lot about Neanderthal man, but the association of flowers with Neanderthals adds a whole new dimension to our knowledge of him, and his humanistic nature."

Wanderer's Blooming Flower "a blooming wild flower that a hilichurl rogue treasured, bereft of any special qualities. the eternal outlander asks not for reward, but only to see their deeds come to fruition"

TLDR (abstract lol); hilichurl rogue drops remind me of the neanderthal flower burials found at shanidar

below the cutoff are some sources if you want to do further reading on neanderthals

(im not an anthropologist or even studying it btw but here are some articles on neanderthals i used for a bibliography on neanderthal spirituality in an anth class last winter in case you want to read up on it, theyre formatted in SAA kinda)

Appenzeller, Tim

     2013    Neanderthal Culture: Old Masters. Nature 497:302-304. 

Hochadel, Oliver

     2020    The Flower People of Shanidar: Telling a New Tale of Neanderthal Brothers. In 

Narratives and Comparisons, edited by Martin Carrier, Rebecca Mertens, and Carsen Reinhardt, pp. 99-122. Bielefeld University Press, Bielefeld. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839454152-005

Mitchell, Mary Shirley

    2021   Geoarchaeological Methods and the Intentionality of Neanderthal Burial. Furthering

Perspectives 11:29-41. https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/handle/10217/233626/JOUF_FurtheringPerspectives_vol10.pdf?sequence=1#page=29

Morris-Kay, Gillian M. 

    2010    The Evolution of Human Artistic Creativity. Journal of Anatomy 216:158-176. 

Pomeroy, Emma, Paul Bennett, Chris O. Hunt, Tim Reynolds, Lucy Farr, and Marine Frouin

    2020      New Neanderthal Remains Associated with the ‘Flower Burial’ at Shanidar

Cave. Antiquity 94:11-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.207

[ko-eko-ev-go-ms]

It continues to trip me up how much human brains are just weird organic computers

[aberooski]

MODERN GX AU WHERE THEY DON'T GO TO SCHOOL NEXT TO A FUCKING ACTIVE VOLCANO AND LIKE ON THE MAINLAND AND THE SCHOOL EVEN THOUGH IT'S A HIGH SCHOOL IS STRUCTURED LIKE A COLLEGE WHERE THEY HAVE DIFFERENT LIKE MAJORS AND DEPARTMENTS SO THE KIDS CAN FOCUS MORE ON THEIR SPECIFIC INTEREST AND ASPIRATIONS AND THEY CAN HAVE REGULAR SCHOOL STUFF TOO LIKE SCHOOL MUSICALS AND P R O M AND-

[fingertipsmp3]

Last night’s dream was the first one I’ve had in a long time where I wanted to fall back asleep and stay in it/experience it again

[transingthoseformers]

Okay buuuuut you cannot dissuade me from calling the Arachnamechs ticks.