“Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.”
in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.
The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it's not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can't hunt, but instead, making a point about war.
Artemis was, among other things--patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood--the protector of young girls. That's a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.
There's no contradiction, though, when it's framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.
Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.
And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.
Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.
It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.
you found out today that a phrase you have used before was coined by an abusive man. this felt like getting your teeth taken out. it made you sick and sad and tired, but not surprised.
bad people tell you to be careful when you talk badly of bad men, that it could "ruin" a life. you had your life ruined by a bad man, not that it ever matters to them. your real life having real consequences is not valued as highly as the potential of his future.
this has always been a frustrating little mathematics problem for you. you've missed school and had to call out sick at work and had panic attacks that lasted for weeks. it stole sleep and food and friends from you. you cried in public, fucked your relationships up. and the whole time: your present has never mattered so much as the great what if! of his future. like - one life (your life) is already ruined, should we really ruin two?
so you live with the consequences and he doesn't, and that's just like, something you need therapy for. you once discussed this with one of your friends over coffee. she chewed the wooden stirrer, looked off into the distance. "once i became a victim, everything that happens to me afterward is automatically less interesting in the eyes of the general public. it is always about him. he changed my identity. to survivor. to statistic. meanwhile this whole time - i am a person."
you learned in college that three out of five of your favorite artists and authors were actually abusive assholes. these days, you are no longer surprised. oh, is that what was happening behind closed doors? of course it was, he was a "genius," and she was just a girl. you are talking about him in art history, so obviously his career was absolutely ruined, for eternity. that's what happens, right? they strike your name from the record and refuse to remember you? nobody really knows her name, but hey. that's what you get for being close to celebrity.
you got into an argument about it, which was a bad argument, because it made you cry. he said what, you want us to just ignore all the things this man did because he made a few women uncomfortable? and you'd balled your fists up and choked on it. later, in bed, you agonized over the response you'd been trying to articulate but never found the right moment to deploy: you are ignoring what any person could do if they weren't being fucking abused. maybe her talents far exceeded his and she was just never allowed to fucking use them. maybe we only see genius in white men because they purposefully fucking squash and silence any other people with talent.
but you'd cried about it instead of saying that, because you are the cost. you are the talent and potential that he took. you used to be brave and smart and clever and unafraid. like a lich, he stole years of your life.
quiet on set made you sad and sick and tired, but not surprised. unfortunately, one of the things he said was true: an entire network of people allowed it to continue. this is not news to you, because you have seen entire networks of people make the same fucking excuses when the same thing or-worse happened to you. and your particular story isn't even in hollywood. it was just a guy. it was still difficult getting people to stand up for you.
you and your friend wait in line for your coffee. like a standup joke, one man turns to the other and says "can't wait for every bitch to come crawling out of the woodwork complaining about harassment. it's another metoo." and you think - oh, that's the network. your boss tucks her hair back and whispers that while your skirt is cute, you're giving the boys the wrong idea. that's the network. when you'd told your "friend" about what happened, she'd said oh you must have misunderstood, that would never happen. and that's the network.
you woke up this morning panting, because years later you still have panic attacks. oh, it's not a network, actually, it's a web. and you, little moth: are you still surprised you're caught in it?
For @lorata because I am completely obsessed with her District 2 multiverse and because the disparity between Victor Alec's experience and how the world might see him has been stuck in my head for years. Everything comes from her sandbox so probably won't make any sense to anyone who hasn't read that first.
Every outlier hates careers.
It’s one of the things that binds every victor sitting in the lounge, watching with resignation and simmering rage as another one of Panem’s proudest psychopaths gets pulled out of the arena, hands still covered in the blood of eighteen children who didn’t choose to be there.
Every outlier hates careers, but there are some they hate more than others and in that respect, everyone’s preferences are different. Whenever the topic comes up, as it inevitably does when Two takes the crown, there’s a debate over which type is worst.
Callista is always a popular choice, especially among the Tens, who take her title as something of an insult to their district’s profession.
‘They say she misses the blood,’ Angus will snarl into his seventh glass of some backwater moonshine he insists on bringing with him to the Capitol, ‘They’re all psychopaths but at least some of them leave that behind. She’d climb back into the arena tomorrow if it would give her the chance to torture another kid.’
‘At least she was born that way,’ Cora from Nine will counter; her own preference is drugs that make the world hazy but there’s a sharpness about her which never quite vanishes, a gleam in her eyes that makes Chaff sure she see the strings controlling them better than most, ‘It’s the ones that think it’s an honour or a duty that sicken me. They tell themselves they’re morally superior because they don’t enjoy it but really they’re worse than any of ones in it for the blood. Callista might be a true born psycho but she doesn’t think that everything she did was good or moral or forgivable just because she gave a clean kill to some twelve year old kid.’
(Cora had tried to attack Devon the first time he’d made some quip about how great tesserae was. Burt and Angus had had to drag her out of the Victor’s Lounge, frothing at the mouth and screaming threats she could never deliver on)
Chaff never participates in the debates; he’s never really cared whether they’re born that way or trained, not when they’re out there killing kids and laughing about it. Haymitch might get all philosophical, spouting all sorts of rubbish about them just being pawns in the game the Capitol plays but Chaff has never bought that. There’s always a choice and the careers, whether they were born wanting it or brainwashed into it, have never hesitated to make it.
Chaff has always hated them all equally until the latest one raises his spear in triumph. For the first time since his own arena, he feels the pull of that bitter hatred that allowed him to cross the line from boy to killer.
He hates this one most; District Two’s newest murderer, who stepped onto the stage and announced to the world that he was thrilled to be following in his brother’s footsteps. Who watched his brother die an agonising death in the arena and still wanted to kill kids so much that even his brother’s death didn't make him pause. Who sat in his interview talking about honour and his brother’s spirit cheering him on as though any of it was something to be proud of.
Chaff watches him get bundled into the hovercraft and the rage builds up inside him, just like it did in the arena except this time there’s nothing he can do about it. He reaches for Teff’s bottle of rotgut and takes a long swig.
‘His daddy must be proud,’ he sneers, ‘Only took two sons to get them the victor they wanted.’
‘A family like that,’ Teff scoffs, ‘They’re probably gutted he didn’t follow in his brother’s footsteps and die for his country like a good little loyalist should. It’s the greatest honour after all,’ he raises his glass in a mock toast.
Diana lets out a bitter laugh but Chaff doesn’t join in. He drinks and drinks and his anger stays at the surface, where it’s sat ever since last year’s victor gave that interview about playing tributes in the woods and dreaming of when they’d be able to live out those fantasies for real.
‘Looks like he’s gonna sacrifice something,’ Angus slurs, as the feed switches over to footage from the Hospital, ‘No way they’re gonna keep the arm if it’s not better by interview. It’ll be just like it was with you.’
‘It’s nothing like me,’ says Chaff, his lips twisting into something ugly, ‘He’s a career; he deserves it.’
Snape and Lupin are kind of anti parallels, in that while Snape takes a long time in developing his conscience, if he feels that something is the right thing to do he’ll do it, no matter the cost to himself, his reputation, or even his soul. This is something that Snape had even when he was young. Lupin is different in that he has one of the most developed conscience in the series, even as a teen. But his main flaw is that he often fails to act on it, especially if he feels that his reputation will be harmed.
Both of their character arcs are about coming to find what the other already has. Severus always listened to his conscience, he just had to develop it more. Remus always had a good conscience, he had to learn to listen to it. Snape never quite gets a conscience as developed as Remus, and Remus never reaches the level of commitment that Snape does in doing the right thing. But both do develop heavily along these lines, to the point that at the end of the series both are much better people than they were as teenagers.
It's so common to have first war Snape be some super badass high ranking Death Eater, which is really odd imo. All the evidence points to Snape being not at all remarkable among existing Death Eaters. Karakaroff named him as a last resort, and didn't attach any specific crime to his name, unlike the other names he gave. Sirius didn't know he was a Death Eater, and Voldemort thought he was low profile enough that Dumbledore would not know he was a Death Eater and hire him as a teacher (though Dumbledore did in fact know). He wasn't trusted with a Horcrux. His soul is also intact until he kills Dumbledore, which wouldn't happen if he had directly killed anyone (which doesn't remove the possibility of him killing people indirectly like he did the Potter's).
The crime that is consistently emphasized with regards to Snape isn't active malice or sadism. Rather, it's indifference. Whether it's Mary McDonald or James and Harry, the crime that is emphasized were he's involved isn't hurting them, but not giving a shit when others do. Only when the one person who he does care about beyond himself is murdered, by his own indifference to the suffering of an innocent by delivering the prophecy, can Snape's moral journey begin. Evil prevails when men do nothing. Snape learned that lesson painfully, and so he embarks on a journey to learn by actively fighting against evil, so that what's left of Lily can live. In the process, he expands his moral universe beyond Lily, culminating in his year as headmaster, where he gives everything of himself to save others, including those he hates. He also accepts that Harry has to die, acknowledging that Voldemort's defeat and saving the wizarding world is more important than his personal atonement to Lily. He loves the wizarding world, more than he ever did Lily. Snape's arc is one of moving from selfishness, to selflessness.
theartofmadeline
titsay
2087
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