have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS
sorry no iâm not done iâm gonna make you all cry some more iâm bringing you down with me
there was once a little boy.
he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he canât walk properly the way the other children do. he doesnât understand why. heâs a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.
somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.
the little boy is eight years old, and heâs going to be king now. thereâs a big ceremony about it. he doesnât really fully understand whatâs going on, because heâs eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! arenât they great?
he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.
as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. heâs not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.
he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.
and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.
yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesnât really click. it doesnât seem real
but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didnât develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.
tutankhamun was a child and he didnât make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child
his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.
but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.
tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest⊠was carved with ducks.
and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.
but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best
Ok but this is how to teach history. This is how you get people to pay attention, to care. Find something small and make it personal, then zoom out to the wider context. History is best taught as a story, with people who lived their lives in ways that came together to create something remarkable that we still talk about today, but who were still just human at the end of the day. They kissed, argued, cried, and dreamed just like we do. And sometimes they really liked ducks.
No thoughts but Bruce donning a disguise when answering the door to Wayne Manor. I'm talking silk robe, fuzzy slippers, hair band to keep his hair from sticking to his face mask or yoga pants and a cute tee, Stanley in hand. It doesn't matter who is knocking, a delivery guy, the Commissioner wanting to talk about a murder in the area, a Wayne Enterprises courier bringing over documents he has to sign or literally any civilian approaching the Manor, he is going to be stood there in his robe or his yoga pants, smiling faintly and being like 'oh my god, excuse me, I look such a mess!'
The kids know that Bruce is riddled with baby fever, 24/7, 365 so they have protocols in place to ensure Bruce isn't exposed to babies or small children longer than necessary. They steer him away from prams, direct him away from recently returned parents from maternity and paternity leave and plan walks through the city where they will not walk by a baby store because Bruce will be stuck making that stupid face at the little outfits and shoes. Bruce is a big butterball when it comes to babies and when the JL start building families around him, he's there waiting for his turn to hold the baby. The thing is, the kids aren't jealous or afraid that Bruce will have another baby, it's because Bruce gets so depressed afterwards. Bruce who never got to raise a baby of his own, who watches everybody around him holding their babies, who feels a twinge of pain in his chest every time he sees pictures of the kids as babies and toddlers and Bruce who misses every single moment he could have had with them. Bruce who gets so down that the kids worry about his mental state.
When Jason gets resurrected, I imagine he spent a lot of time trying to get rid of his white streak because it's a reminder of what happened to him - not that everything else isn't but this he can change at least or try. It's not only that but... With it, he doesn't look so much like Bruce any more and that hurts like a physical wound because he misses him so much. But the streak is damn near indestructible, he can't cut it out because it grows back, dye doesn't take and he refuses to comb it over. Then years later, when he's back in Gotham and at odds with Bruce, he's glad of it, he damn near shows it off every time they meet. Then years after that, down the line when things are peaceful again, Jason's phone buzzes and it's Bruce. It's a photograph, Bruce in his bathroom in his pjs, grinning like a child with so much pride, his hair parted to show the greys and whites coming through.
did i tell u guys i got into an argument on twitter bc i said foxes are dogs and someone tried to bring up their actual fuckin. classification or whatever and i just said âfoxes are dogs cause they are fluffyeâ and they kept arguing with me. the entire time i was like âyou will not survive the immigration to tumblr you are lucky we are not there right nowâ
It's incredibly important to me that men in the Odyssey will just break down in tears at a moments notice. Every time anyone mentions Odysseus everyone starts crying. Telemachus cries because he misses his dad and when he finds his dad and when he hugs his dad, Peisistratus is crying just because Telemachus is, Menelaus is bawling his eyes out so much Helen needs to sedate him. Odysseus cries when he's happy and when he's sad and when he meets his parents and when he misses his home and when he returns to his home and when he sees just any land at all and when he has to think about any of the terrible things that happened to him. And in a media enviroment where I predominantly see a guy shed a single tear at the death of his entire family I find that very yummy
Do you know what really gets my goat? So many problems with the Odyssey movie couldâve been solved if Christopher Nolan had the awareness or background knowledge to realize that both the Iliad and Aeneid are infinitely better suited to the story he wanted to tell and morals he wanted to focus on.
I get the desire for a story about war and what comes from it, to look at PTSD and trauma and how senseless such conflicts ultimately are. But in a very profound way, so did Homer. It's just that he explored those themes in the Iliad, not the Odyssey. That's why it focuses on both sides of the war, why Hector and Achilles are so often contrasted in their desires and actions â because it begs the question of what a hero, a general, a warrior, really is.
You want a story about the kind of atrocities men at war can commit? You want to cast Agamemnon as the villain? You want a protagonist who's big and strong and does awful things he must learn to regret? That's Achilles' story! Not Odysseus'!
Odysseus is wily. He's a trickster. He's a liar and schemer and talker and thinker. He's also a phenomenal fighter, sure, but that's nobody's first impression of him! His primary epithet is polutropos: literally a man of many turns, many tricks, many tongues.
And that's nowhere to be found in Nolan's Odyssey, which means...it's really not a story about Odysseus. He's not winning the day with wits and tricks and disguises â he's certainly not Athena's chosen champion. Nolan wrote a story about a completely different man than the titular protagonist of the original myth. That doesn't change just because he borrows a small handful events from the Apologoi and a few more from the Telemachy and Mnesterophonia with a completely protagonist and focus and moral.
But we all know Nolan loves his tortured, tragic, angsty powerful male heroes. And one of Homer's epics did contain that â it just wasn't the Odyssey! The Iliad would've worked so much better, because Achilles at his core is the kind of character Nolan likes to write. He's angry and scared of his own mortality and constantly worried about his own legacy and driven to do terrible things at war due to grief and love!
Nolan presents Odysseus' trick with the Trojan Horse as though it was some kind of Ancient War Crime, but the Greeks would not have given a shit and certainly wouldn't have considered it a violation of xenia (which the film incorrectly called "Zeus' Law" â more on that here).
But you know which Homeric protagonist did do something that the Greeks considered horrifying and a violation of honorable combat? Achilles! When he desecrated Hector's corpse because the guy had killed his lover and best friend.
Thereâs discourse (not just among modern academics, Platoâs Hippias Minor is too) about whether wits and tricks should be held as more respectable or valued than pure martial strength in Homerâs eyes â whether Odysseus or Achilles is the greater Homeric hero. Nolan's Odyssey claims to be about Odysseus, but its values clearly state that Achilles is the better hero and protagonist. This movie gave almost zero credit to tricks and wits and disguises and lies, instead focusing on his sense of duty towards his men, his martial strength, and his leadership.
The latter is notably distinctly missing from Odysseus' canonical journey; his relationships with his comrades (summachoi) are almost completely absent, because the Odyssey is instead a story about marriage, about partnerships between men and women. (Circe, Calypso, and Nausicaa are all notably love interests for Odysseus whom he rejects in favor of Penelope; the former two are too dominant and powerful, the latter too young and impressionable. The woman he loves is his equal partner â by Greek standards â Penelope.) But Nolan's misogyny means he was never going to correctly rate the significance of the female characters in the Odyssey correctly, which further hampers the film. He'd likely have done better with the Iliad, where Chryseis and Briseis simply have to cry beautifully and he can paint Helen as a bitch or whore and Andromache as the tragic wife, like he prefers.
And if Nolan really wanted to get into the horrors of war, the things men can do when convinced of their righteousness and their strength is unchallenged...Neoptolemus in the Aeneid would be a fantastic lens to view that through. The Iliad is the war itself, and I think Nolan would prefer the battles to their aftermath, but you can look at the trauma and abuse that occur at war through both the spear-wives of the Iliad and the entirety of the Aeneid.
You're allowed to think the film was fun, but it was not the Odyssey. Nolan wanted to tell any other Greek hero's story. Achilles, Neoptolemus, Agamemnon, but even Heracles, Theseus, or Jason would've worked infinitely better.
So, hereâs the thing: I wouldnât expect someone who never studied ancient Greek language or culture to understand the concept of xenia (ΟΔΜÎčα). But itâs one of if not the biggest theme of the entire Odyssey. Fundamentally, itâs an epic about what happens when this Greek law and value was broken, when was that expected or justified or necessary versus when that was an atrocity.
And I think the filmâŠoversimplified and understated the functions and importance of xenia. At best.
Please see below the cut for a very detailed explanation of what the film gets wrong about xenia, what the practice actually was, why it doesnât work for Nolanâs ultimate thesis to the film, and the role xenia played in the original Odyssey.
âZeusâs Lawâ
Firstly, xenia is called âZeusâs lawâ throughout the movie, which isâŠperhaps not entirely wrong, but certainly an oversimplification. Itâs true that hospitality and how you treated foreigners and the obligation to welcome them was technically under Zeusâs purview, since as King of the Gods everything was.
Propriety and courtesy and kindness is not what Zeus was known for, however â frankly, if Nolan wanted to credit xenia to an individual divinity in concept, either Hestia (as goddess of hearth and home) or Hermes (as god of travelers and journeys) would be more fitting.
And really, it wasnât just about one god; just as hubris is about mortals overstepping or thinking themselves equal to anything divine, xenia is at least in part about mortals being courteous to any fellow man in the name of any god that might have put that person on their path. The only reason to call it Zeusâs law is when thinking about divine retribution, which the Odyssey movie intentionally muddies the waters on by erasing the godsâ consistent direct involvement.
Zeusâs role is in setting the standard kings and leaders must follow, yes. But his connection to xenia is more about punishing those who misunderstand it, andâŠOdysseus doesnât actually suffer from that. Or rather, he never suffers undeservedly, and he does benefit from it in the end. He underwent his struggles in getting home due to other people violating xenia, but when he does get home? Odysseus benefits from the fact that those who break xenia are punished.
Xenia among Greeks
Now, letâs get into the actual meaning and consequences of xenia. Because it wasnât actually about threat of divine retribution â it was about cultural mediation and exchange. Something that gets lost in the filmâs treatment of Greek culture as a monolith (it very much wasnât at the time), and oversimplification of wartime vs. peacetime negotiations.
ΟΔΜÎčα was a social code relating to how hosts should welcome any visitors to their home, and how guests should act when welcomed. The expectation is that the host provides good food and drink (to the absolute best of their ability â you donât just feed them, you give them delicious food and your purest wine and nicest clothes and linens and bed). The guest, after enjoying the hostâs hospitality, will reveal their name and identity and lifeâs story and purpose for their journey. And thatâs where it got political.
Crucial to xenia was mutual peacefulness â if someone comes to you as a peaceful traveler, it doesnât matter that theyâre foreign. You have to treat them courteously. The movie made it seem like the entire reason you had to welcome travelers was in case they were gods in disguise, but thatâs just not true. Implicit threat of offending a god did mean it was considered smart to treat everyone who hadnât outright wronged you courteously, but the real point was peace between peoples from different lands, especially different Greek city-states. Because once you or anyone in your family line offered or received xenia to/from anyone in that personâs family line? You could not hurt each other. It was forbidden.
Thereâs a whole scene in the Iliad where a Trojan and Greek soldier both exchange lineages before they fight, to make sure theyâre not breaking xenia, and discover one of their dads played host to another. They then go âok, we canât fight, letâs trade armor as a friendly peaceful gesture, good luck going to war!â Because xenia established outside war had a different standard.
ÎŸÎ”ÎœÎżÏ means foreigner or stranger. It also means friend and guest. Xenophobia is literally the Greek words for foreigner and fear mashed together, and it wasnât a good term in their eyes. Because at least among those who would understand and respect your customs, you had to treat the foreigner/stranger as a guest/friend. Thatâs xenophilia, love of strangers, or the act of being a good host.
The point of xenia is that it forges a peace compact. Critically, it only did so among different Greek civilizations â one polis going to war against another was what xenia sought to combat. Enough people traveling would ensure two city-states didnât and couldnât raise arms against each other.
The Exception
I do think this is the part people donât get, because the movie clearly didnât understand it either â xenia does not apply between people at war.
Yes, the Iliad has a bit with Glaukos and the armor and the peaceful exchange between people who had ancestral xenia. But the reason they canât fight is because their families had contact during a time of peace.
If your first time meeting someone is while you try to kill them and pillage their land â or rather, if youâre the âhostâ and theyâre trying to kill you and pillage your land and rape your women â you do not owe them xenia, because there is no peaceful compact to be made. Preexisting relationships must be respectedâŠ
âŠbut crucially, the entire Trojan War started because Paris, a Trojan Prince, broke xenia after Sparta welcomed him as a guest.
Nolanâs Odyssey makes it seem like perhaps the whole saga is punishing the Greek heroes and Odysseus especially for violating Zeusâs Law/xenia through the Trojan Horse trick. But likeâŠthey didnât? The Greeks didnât come to Troy in good faith as guests, they came as armed conquers determined to see Ilion burn. And the concept of soldiers disguising themselves as civilians (or hiding inside a horse) being likeâŠa war crime or violation of ethics? Was not a thing by Greek standards.
Very notably, one of the (cut) scenes with Helen in the Telemachy sees her recount how she helped Odysseus when he snuck into Troy before the horse trick â she helped him disguise himself as a local/refugee and gather intel before sneaking back to the Greek ships. And thatâs never treated as morally questionable â helping Odysseus sneak around and deceive the Trojans is unambiguously a good thing that Helen did, in fact.
TL:DR, the point is â people trying to burn your city do not count as guests, conquerers do not think of the people they plan to rob rape and kill as hosts. Xenia does not apply to people at war, and the idea Odysseus should feel guilt for his trick with the horse because it was a violation of âZeusâs lawâ is laughable. The Greeks wouldnât have cared! Thatâs not ever a source of angst or guilt in the source text, despite xenia being such a central theme.
Utility of xenia in the Odyssey
The biggest purpose of xenia was that observing it ensured peace. Neither guest nor host poisons or hurts anyone else, not directly or by proxy through hurting their family and friends. When the guest leaves, in exchange for their story, the host also should them off with valuables, ideally gold. Xenia was a way to encourage non-violent contact between different people, and stimulate exchange of information and valuables between different settlements.
Notably, where xenia is practiced, the standard for violating it is high. There are many myths about people who did things that were weird or unpleasant but not an outright violation, and therefore had to still be treated with courtesy and respect as guests.
The reason Penelope and Telemachus canât kick the suitors out isnât because sheâs a helpless woman and heâs a helpless child â their political positions are shaky, yes, but thatâs not the core issue. Rather, itâs because while the suitors have been rude, and wildly overstayed their welcome, they havenât actually broken xenia. Eating and drinking their food and wine for years instead of days, being mean to the slaves, having the bard tell stories that hurt Penelopeâs feelings, all of that is bad but not transgressions worthy of breaking xenia over. Legally, Telemachcus and Penelope have to let these assholes stay and treat them courteously, because the suitors are abusing the spirit of the law but not violating the letter of it.
The suitors donât actually break xenia until their attempt to kill Telemachus, and then when they try to refuse to welcome a poor traveller who should be entitled to all the same luxuries theyâve taken.
Thatâs a huge part of the motive for Odysseusâs disguise. He shows up as a beggar dressed in disgusting rags because he knows these immature assholes will abuse him over it, and he knows that once they do he can legally kill them and get away with it in the eyes of the gods. Thatâs the point of the first feasts and the challenge and almost everything Odysseus does upon arrival to Ithaca.
Fully half of the Odyssey is Odysseus already having returned home, but acting like a guest, so he can see who respects xenia (and is therefore loyal to him) vs. who breaks xenia (and is therefore deserving of death). And Odysseus actively works to slot the suitors and many of his own slaves into the latter category, so he can kill them and know that heâs not breaking custom, that he isnât incurring further divine wrath. And Athena helps him do it, so he can get his glorious revenge. ThatâsâŠpointed.
Conclusion
Odysseusâ attempts to exploit xenia for his own gain â implicitly in Books 5-12 and more explicitly and maliciously in Books 13-22 â are missing in the film adaptation. I think thatâs in part because Christopher NolanâŠisnât interested in that side of Odysseus. He wanted the story of a tough tortured war hero finally returning home and repenting for his wrongs at war. He didnât like or focus on Odysseus the witty schemer, the master of tricks and lies. And Nolan certainly didnât want Odysseusâ return home to center on a blatantly bitter and violent, arguably unnecessary revenge ploy, as it did in the epic poem.
But the fact of the matter is that the last half of the original poem is Odysseus struggling to find an excuse to break xenia. He doesnât want to send the suitors peacefully home â which he at least nominally could. Thereâs a threat that they physically overpower him, but that requires the suitors to openly break xenia. Which thus far those who did by conspiring to kill Telemachus have done only in discreet ways, and many have not done at all.
Like, crucially, the original epic poem does introduce suitors who were more decent in their conduct, even if they did still eat Odysseusâ food and try to court his wife. Theyâre not all evil people who have to be killed for his own safety. Some would just fucking leave if they knew the king was in fact alive. Some would accept that since Odysseus is back to be King again, the Ithacan suitors should return to their houses and the foreign suitors return to their city-states. Some of them would respect xenia and make up for their wrongdoing. Thereâs a dichotomy when the suitors die â some, like Antinous, go down fighting and cursing Odysseus and Telemachus, but others try to apologize. They promise to repay the guest-gifts and food and charity they abused and respect xenia and go in peace. Odysseus tells them ânope, too late, die.â
I get why instead of the brutal slaughter of many men who beg for mercy, Nolan frames the final battle against the suitors as a desperate, almost losing struggle for Odysseus. But in the epic poemâŠitâs just him taking advantage of the fact he finally tricked them all into really breaking xenia, and taking revenge.
The entire epic poem was about xenia â not in the context of war, either.
The Telemachy is the first four books of the Odyssey, focused on how Odysseusâs son sees xenia exploited in his own home, but benefits from it immensely when welcomed as a guest in someone elseâs.
The Apologoi or Wanderings are books 5-12 (Calypso, the Phaeacians, Aeolus, Polyphemus, the Lotus-Eaters, the Lasteygones, Circe, and the Underworld) and see Odysseus arrive at foreign islands where he tries to exert xenia over and over again. He meets good foreigners who do exactly as they should, dangerous foreigners who instead respond with sinister temptation or outright violence, and people who arenât foreigners at all but divinities, and therefore arenât bound to mortal customs like xenia.
The Mnesterophonia or Murder of the Suitors is Books 13-24 â fully half of the Odyssey is Odysseus having already reached Ithaca, but now using xenia both to test peopleâs loyalty and morals, and to contrive an excuse to kill them if they fail to uphold the custom.
Given all thatâŠI think Christopher Nolan owed it to the Odyssey to learn the true meaning of xenia, and to at least try to depict it with the nuance it deserves.
I'm thinking about AI again because we're in the Nexus that creates Torment for profit.
And there's a thought rattling around in my head over the fact that a lot of the issues with AI are not brand new to the technology era--a source of chronic and easy misinformation; a technology that causes people to withdraw and isolate and often self-harm; an environmental scourge; an absolute machete to critical thinking, disciplined learning, and meaningful study because why bother with hard and long tasks when you can get fast and easy dopamine hits--all of these can be applied to social media as well.
But something makes AI so foot-to-the-gas-pedal worse in such a festering and pervasive and sudden way, and I think my conclusion for that lies in this emergent technology debuting to the public already under the control of big tech mega-conglomerates who--and this part is critical--were absolutely panickingly desperate at the exact moment ChatGPT hit the scene.
And I'm going to bother you with graphs about this. Because I think it will help explain a lot of the Full-Shove-Down-Throatedness you've no doubt noticed with AI.
And like to back up a second--modern social media is controlled by these exact same mega-conglomerates. But the social media platforms didn't start that way. They were a lot of guy-in-his-basement style inventions--tumblr included--which developed to serve an organic and natural niche people wanted. No throat-shoving yet. Most of us (tumblr demographic) were probably sparkle-dogging on deviantart and--yeah whatever--superwholocking over here. And that was by no means perfect or necessarily even good but there was opportunity to ease in and learn the good and bad.
THEN the mega-conglomerates got it and Facebook is a festering cesspit and Twitter is Like That. But there was a bit of a gradual enshittification there, and I imagine most people following my blog are old enough such that you were able to recognize what enshitted itself and disengage appropriately.
AI--for all the way its ills mirror social media--was born a fully formed fucking asshole directly into the cradles of big tech. And it's weird to consider the technology behind LLMs is not, inherently, evil. And that feels weird because it never really had the chance to exist in the public eye in any capacity before it was the throat-shoved and desperate weapon of big tech downright begging you to rot your brain out your ears and steal your work and pollute the earth and stop thinking and stop trying and stop learning.
Which maybe then begs the question, WHY the crazy desperation? Why the complete disregard for sense, law, legal ownership, and customer voices? Why does 'fetch' need to happen and why do Tech CEO's talk about it like they're gonna bite the cyanide pill in their molars if you don't buy a fucking gemini subscription.
Well I promised you graphs.
Here's your first graph. And here's a little fun fact for those following at home: ChatGPT came out Dec 20, 2022.
This graph shows the stock price for Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta (nee Facebook) between August 2016 (10 years ago) and Dec 20, 2022.
Now see that peak right before the start of 2022? Cover the downward side of it with your finger. Go on. Don't you see a beautiful exponential future of infinite growth? Don't you love when exponential growth is forever? Some of those returns were 400% in just 5 years. Sure, Covid caused a blip but what's a global pandemic in the face of a bullish stock run?
Okay now uncover the right side. That side is the screaming crying sobbing coaster of rich people feelings. And they were so very in their feels.
I'm zooming in on the graph for you. Welcome to November 2021 to Dec 20, 2022.
If you bought Amazon at peak? You were down 50%. Meta at peak? Down 60%. And every rich person investor is a money genius until the market turns, at which point it's panic to right the ship.
There were whispers of recession all throughout 2022 and it made the tech market crumble, because tech stock prices are highly speculative, and they ride market whiplash with more aggressive slingshotting than companies grounded in material value.
And then something happened on Dec 20, 2022. Obviously you know, I've said it 3 times. ChatGPT released. And oh boy.
Companies started promising AI. Investors started listening. The stock prices got happy.
Welcome to the graph 2022 to current day
And if the dance is working, they don't fucking stop dancing.
Do you WANT AI? Do you NEED AI? Will it actually help you? Might it in fact harm you? Will it harm the planet? Will it harm learning, and discipline, and the vulnerable, in the exact ways big tech companies are shoving it down people's throats?
Who give a shit! Whogiveasshitwhogiveasshitwhogiveahit. Money up! Desperate crying tech company HAPPY now. Money happy now!
Now the entire 10 year graph looks like this
And that scary scary scary scary drop off in 2022 that course corrected itself nigh exactly on December 20, 2022?
Well, you love AI, don't you? đ As long as it's shoved down your throat.
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