#greek myth thoughts
(This isn’t my observation - I’m sure there’s been academics who’ve talked about it more, I just read a comment about it in passing in something that wasn’t about Persephone/the Underworld otherwise, I’m rather sure (not gonna swear on it because I can’t remember where I read it).)
I think it’s neat how, Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the cyclical pattern set up in it notwithstanding, myth-wise Persephone doesn’t actually seem to do much travelling between her husband and her mother.
She’s always in the Underworld when she needs to be, and all of the myths where she is simply can’t all be happening in autumn/winter. (I suppose if you go with the assumption that she’s down over summer instead, it would work better, however!) Some of them, sure, but not all of them. The elaborated Adonis myth actually fits into this, since the partitioning of Adonis’ time, as a complete separation of time spent with Aphrodite and with Persephone, makes the most sense if Persephone has no access to him during the time he’s above.
Which, reasonably, given her own cyclical travel, she absolutely would, even if Adonis wouldn’t be staying with her for those months. But that’s definitely not what’s intended by the “x months here, x months there” setup.
I’m very entertained by the fact that the first thing Hektor does when he’s killed Patroclus is go after his chariot to get Achilles’ horses and Apollo has to yell at him to go back and fight. He doesn’t even get Achilles’ armor from Patroclus’s body until after that. Very telling of where his first thoughts and priorities are. Hektor has never once seen a horse he didn’t want
Screaming into the void about the OT3 but editing this chapter of Ambrosia just reminded me of how much I just want to smush them together!! How great they are/can be together. (It also convinced me for myself, at least, that I can write Helen and Menelaos - and Helen/Menelaos - on their own, at least within a greater OT3 circumstance.) I JUST!!! THEY’RE SO GOOD OK.
8’(
hehehe tall helen supremacy
Other people’s sketches: clean
Me: “I can barely fucking see what I’m doing”
Anyway, WIP of art to go with with Adonis story!
Overheard in the land of the Tauri:
“Are you ready to leave, then?”
“… No. I want to know— My lady, why?”
“He insulted me, Iphigenia. You know that much. Thoughtlessly thought to claim what wasn’t his to claim, and I should let such an injury go?”
“But why— why me! I thought I..!”
“Of course you are. Why else are you here? But while Troy isn’t my city like it’s— like it was my brother’s, its people was dear to me, and the land gave me much. I had been insulted, and I also hoped to put a price too steep for leaving. He’d pay with not going to Troy at all, or he’d pay with something he loved. I suppose I don’t quite understand the intricacies of war - or didn’t, back then.”
“Youleveraged me against my father?! And he… he didn’t—”
“No, Iphigenia. Like I said, I didn’t understand all the pressures and parts… I suppose Ares could have told me, or Athena.” [A scoff.] “I wasn’t interested in talking to Athena at the time, and not Ares either. If it was only your father and your uncle, you would have lived. They’d started something far larger than them, though. Or would you have wanted me to choose another little girl? Is that it?”
“No!”
[A beat. Unintelligible.]
“Oh, but one of them were, among all the rest who are dead. Troy paid, even after there was nothing else to pay. Achilles wanted a bride in death, and he chose a young princess. Does that make you happy? Another girl dead, for the pride of men.”
“I— no… My lady, Artemis, please…”
“Come here, then. I think it’s time we leave. It’ll be easier, up on Olympos.”
:’) Writing epic length fics take such time!!
Olympos Asleep will definitely be this year’s monster (well, by my standards. Definitely not 100k, since I’ve only completed one fic that was 100k) fic. I have some others that will definitely be epic - the Paris survives, OT3 AU during the time of what’s basically Helen and Menelaos’ Odyssey will be huge, but depending on how much Events I can actually come up with to fill out those seven years in addition to all the ~feelings~ going on I don’t foresee it actually threatening to be as huge as Olympos Asleep…
So much planning has gone into this haha. But it’s been fun! And letting the immortalized humans do the rescuing for once seems only fair, right.
I’m going to be able to use the line “mortal babies are floppy!” not just when doing (silly or serious) meta, but in a fic, now, too. :D
Age-swapping Menelaos and Paris is like putting a wounded lamb in front of two hungry lions.
Complete fucking bloodbath. :D
So have a quick rundown of how this AU could work:
The Judgement happens earlier, but in comparison to regular canon Aphrodite isn’t offering up someone else’s wife. Paris is the lone non-Achaean attending Helen’s courtship.
Makes an impression on young teens Menelaos as much as Helen has as he’s been growing into puberty /cough
The oath is taken as normal, Helen and Paris marry, they go off to Troy. Couple years later the whole “curse of sterility + epidemic” happens, Menelaos goes with Kastor and Pollux to Troy, gets put in the metaphorical lion’s den.
He stays in Troy (it’s not like his brother need-needs him! and he was trying to both pay back Sparta for how they hosted him and Agamemnon, plus trying to show his brother he is Competent and growing up lol), undoubtedly amid increasingly exasperated messages from Agamemnon to come the fuck home.
Couple years later, Achilles now old enough to actually Do Shit and with no outside reason for a war in Troy but still his split destiny, Hera and Athena have their opening to (attempt to) get revenge. Because, after all, why should the most beautiful woman in the world, an Achaean woman, be married to someone who isn’t Achaean? And even if Achilles wasn’t old enough back then, now that he’s old enough to marry, if anyone, shouldn’t Helen be married to him?
It’s not so hard for the goddesses to spread this sentiment throughout the royal houses of the islands and mainland, even if this isn’t how the oath should be weaponized, it’s how it gets used.
(I feel like Agamemnon is by now sure there’s sorcery or something involved in keeping his poor, naive, deluded little brother in Troy. He Must Be Rescued.)
Enter war.
Now, you can either go more canon-ish and have the usual end, or have a Troy wins AU (I’d lean towards the latter lol). Menelaos spends ten years trying to avoid fighting his brother and worrying about him staying safe, but he’s not going to leave his lovers. :v
“Go sit with Alexander yourself; henceforth be goddess no longer; never let your feet carry you back to Olympus worry about him and look after him till he make you his wife, or, for the matter of that, his slave […]” (Helen, Book 3)
“[…] while Aphrodite keeps ever by Alexander’s side to defend him in any danger; indeed she has just rescued him when he made sure that it was all over with him […]” (Zeus, Book 4)
These are the only two direct statements we have about Aphrodite, Paris, and their relationship.
I feel like I had a thought about this, because I love the implications here/their possible/actual relationship, but now I can’t remember what it was.
Something about how, while Helen statement is obviously phrased to provoke, it does imply a certain - too much? - closeness. But that I also don’t think/don’t want to read it as sexual or romantic, because that would be too straightforward, but I also don’t want to say it’s noteither of those things?
Like, have Paris and Aphrodite kissed? Maybe. Have they have sex? No, I don’t think so, but the possibility of it going there, Aphrodite’s care too intense for plain platonic affection (as she gives to and attends her son with), but never fully blooming out into anything provably “this mortal and immortal are Involved carnally”.
But aside from the inherent insult in Helen’s comment, that Aphrodite dotes on Paris to such a degree that it would be more “straightforward” for her to take the full step Helen charges her with to do in her stead, to lower herself (again) into a mortal’s bed, and this time as the lowest mortal there is.
Zeus’ comment is, too, meant to provoke, but to provoke Hera and Athena this time, not Aphrodite, and the provocation wouldn’t mean much of anything if there isn’t truth in his judgement of how attentive Aphrodite is of Paris’ safety. Which, I do think we get a good view of in the way she rescues him - off the battlefield entirely (she attempts to do the same with Aeneas but is hindered). All other divine rescues don’t full on remove any mortal so tended from the battlefield (unless they’ve been removed by other mortals, like Hektor).
So, yeah, maybe the thought was something about how it would be simpler to read it as “more than” platonic care, plus that it’s nice that there is something solid to read out of these two statements and the rescue she gives Paris.
