D.A.REDWING

Aspiring author sharing my journey on Tumblr. Dreaming of turning my ideas into books, hoping to bring joy to readers who love a good story. Always learning, always growing—welcome to my little corner of creativity!

[d-a-redwing]

alexander + hephaestion | sights by xbreathofmadness

[charlenefrl]

1/ Philippos - Follower of Dionysos, dying and returning 2/ Alexandros - Son of Zeus, honeyed ichor in his vein 3/ Hephaision (Orestis) - Hunter of Artemis, heir of Aktaion 4/ Hephaistion (Hephaistion) - The one we sacrified for His glory, the one who haunts you all

[arch--ang3l]

Father-son bonding moment how sweet 🥰 (Alexander will be exiled by the end of the night)

[victoriantomodern]

Sword blades, Mycenae, 1570-1500 BCE, gold inlay on bronze, Ethnikon Archaiologikon Mouseion. From the Visual Arts Legacy Collection (JSTOR)

[pothos-hemitheos]

two coins of alexander, a tetradrachm and hemidrachm. these are both from the same mint in susa from around 319-316 BCE under the authority of philip iii but on the orders or eumenes of cardia, who needed to liquidate large amounts of silver to fund his war against antigonus I.

very rarely does a coin so singularly represent a moment in history, particularly a moment so pivotal as this, but these coins are a testament to eumenes' newly appointed position as strategos of asia by polyperchon, and his authority to draw upon the treasury to fight the royalist cause in the memory of alexander.

it is unlikely these two coins were produced at exactly the same time, but it is plausible they were struck by the same hand. the tetradrachm has survived in better condition, although it has been cleaned and bears deposits throughout, while the hemidrachm has far more corrosion on the silver. nonetheless, the details on such a small coin have been remarkably well preserved.

the asian mints of alexander coinage bore a distinct look from other types, most notably a flattening of the lion mine worn by heracles, as opposed to the perkier look on the common amphipolis mints, and these two coins bear that distinctive style.

these examples, while not the finest of alexander coinage, are certainly some of the more interesting in terms of their historical context and relationship to each other.

[d-a-redwing]

THE STATE OF HISTORICAL FICTION AND THE SANITIZATION OF HISTORICAL FIGURES - RANT

I think the problem @moonlady101 described in the post linked below is due to the same reason authors of historical fiction nowadays feel the need to sanitise their work and apply modern morality and social dynamics in order to make it acceptable for the public and avoid being “cancelled.”

(This is coming from someone who loves ancient history, especially the time of Alexander’s conquests and the Diadochi wars, and has a WiP based on it.)

There are two main concerns for authors and media creators today:

1. Fear of being accused of romanticising or condoning "problematic" historical figures or tropes (e.g. conquest, sexism, slavery, dictatorship, etc.).

Disclaimer: Sensitivity readers are absolutely necessary in the industry, especially when it comes to representing marginalised groups.

That said, we’ve reached a point where we often have to distort historical reality in order to make it palatable and less offensive to modern audiences. There's increasing pressure to sanitise the past and soften portrayals of historical figures, even when such portrayals are unfaithful to their time periods (unfortunately, authors often face harassment for depicting these realities as they were.)

Take Alexander, for example. We don’t have any evidence from sources linking him personally to sexual violence, he’s actually shown to be quite delicate with the women he encounters, but it’s almost certain that his army committed such atrocities during the campaign.

And let’s be honest: would he have cared about the rape of Timoclea if she hadn’t been a noblewoman? Would he have shown such respect toward Darius’s family if he didn’t need them for his PR campaign and to legitimise his rule over Persia? Was Roxana truly so beautiful that he fell in love at first sight, or was she just politically important for pacifying eastern Persian tribes?

We also know that Barsine, the wife of the Greek mercenary Memnon who served in Darius’s army, became Alexander’s concubine and bore him a son, Heracles. Looking at the timeline, between the Battle of Issus, when Darius’s wife Stateira I was taken hostage, and her death in childbirth, it’s also possible the child was Alexander’s. Did he force them to sleep with him? I don’t think so. But the truth is, they would have felt obligated to do so, regardless of their feelings, in order to maintain their status and ensure their protection.

What’s frustrating is that the same people who demand male historical figures be whitewashed to justify their interest in them, often have no problem with historical women being demonised or misrepresented.

Just look at the constant mistreatment of Olympias, she's often portrayed as an obsessive, jealous, and nasty witch of a wife to Philip II. Or Cleopatra, who can’t be shown for what she really was: an ambitious, ruthless, and brilliant politician who used her sexuality to gain power and protect her kingdom in a world ruled by men and military strength. Now she has to be a fighter in a literal sense, and the morally questionable things she did to stay in power (like murdering her younger brother) are reinterpreted as accidents, never her fault. Because God forbid a woman ruler uses the same methods to cement power as the men in her dynasty had done for generations.

2. In today’s era, where all media has to be exciting, there's also a push to "spice things up" for a broader audience.

Let’s break down a few things here:

Alexander and Hephaestion in an open homosexual relationship:

They might have continued a romantic relationship into adulthood, but it would not have been open, because that simply wasn’t socially acceptable. In ancient Greece, homosexual relationships usually involved an older man (erastes - ἐραστής) and a younger one (eromenos - ἐρώμενος), with a mentor-student dynamic. Or they occurred between two boys. Once the younger man reached adulthood, the relationship typically shifted to something more platonic. In their case, Alexander was a king (so automatically of a higher status), and even if Hephaestion was younger than him (which I don't think he was), an open, public relationship when they both became adult men would have been extremely humiliating and emasculating for Hephaestion.

Polyamory:

Could it have happened? I think it could. Famously, Ptolemy’s concubine, Thaïs, an Athenian hetaira whom he later married, is sometimes mentioned as also having had a sexual relationship with Alexander. But she was a courtesan (hetaira - ἑταίρα), possibly a concubine (pallakē - παλλακή). That kind of arrangement would NEVER have happened with "proper women" like wives, Roxana, Stateira II, and so on.

Alexander’s relationship with Bagoas:

For an ancient Greek man, Bagoas might have represented the ultimate humiliation - loss of masculinity, so it's rather unlikely that he would have been seen as “sexually desirable” in the Greek context. But besides that, Bagoas would undoubtedly be useful to Alexander. He would have been knowledgeable about Persian court customs (serving under Darius III) and could have been a talented performer (some sources mention his famous dance at one of the banquets), which would not be uncommon for male artisans like music players or actors to perform on such occasions.

In short, we do a disservice to both history and literature when we flatten complex figures into modern archetypes just to make them more digestible. The past was brutal, morally alien, and often uncomfortable by today’s standards, and that’s exactly why it’s worth exploring honestly. Showing the darkness of history does not equate to endorsing it, portraying real, flawed people does not equate to glorifying them. And powerful historical women don’t need to be morally whitewashed or "yasified" to be palatable or admirable. If we can’t engage with history on its own terms, then what exactly are we learning from it?

Post by @moonlady101 · 1 image

💬 3  🔁 1  ❤️ 5 · I went to the theatre last night, but, unfortunately, the play was not exactly what I had expected it to be. First of all,

[moonlady101]

I went to the theatre last night, but, unfortunately, the play was not exactly what I had expected it to be.

First of all, for context, this was a play loosely based on the book The Persian boy by Mary Renault, which I read several years ago. This was already based on a fictional novel, so I expected it to be somewhat different from the historical facts (and even those are not exactly true to what really happened because they were not written at the same time that the events were taking place). Anyways, when the play started I knew that they were going to portray Alexander and Bagoas having a sexual and kind of romantic relationship, as well as Alexander and Hephaistion; I also knew that Roxanna and Alexander would get married in the end. What I did not expect was to see the king of the Macedonians and of the greatest empires in the ancient world talking about love for two hours, about how love for the Greeks was based on beauty and that if someone was beautiful then that meant that you should love that person. I didn't expect either for Alexander to form some sort of consensual policule with Bagoas, Hephaistion, Barsine and Roxanna, in which they all cared and loved each other having absolutely zero problems because they cared so much about their perfect king that nothing he ever did could be wrong.

Now, please don't get me wrong, I know people can write whatever the hell they want, and I am not criticising poliamory relationships. What I do not like is that, with the excuse of being queer media, the story does not matter. Yesterday I spent two full hours in the theatre watching a play in which a guy with black straight hair and tall as he was said to a lot of people that they were beautiful, about how Persians got love wrong (with the exception of how they prepare themselves to have sex), and how Greek gods are so much better because they do not care about loving whomever you want... See what I mean?

The play had flaws in so many ways that it didn't even compensate that Hephaistion and Alexander made out on stage, and they were the first ship I ever had on the ancient world. (And guess what? Hephaistion was short and had curly blonde hair and some really strong temper).

They talked about war, yes, but they justified everything with "but Alexander cares about his men and had mercy on the prisoners", he was a conqueror, he brought two entire cities to the ground, he was a bloody soldier!!

I like that historians reconsider relationships in the past, I love it when they admit that the term "friend" does not work with everything. But there is a difference between that and justifying what a historical character did because "he was a homosexual".

Hadrian also did some pretty terrible stuff, Alkibiades was good at war because he had flexibile morality and Sapho...no, that I can't, Sapho was amazing. My point is: make art for it to be good, not pleasing, not to fit a trend, not to not get cancelled.

It pissed me off to hear stuff like: "Roxanna O only marry you because I love you" or to watch Kleitus not getting killed because that would make Alexander the softie look bad. To say that I'm disappointed wouldn't be enough. I have seen fanfics better than yesterday's play...

I must give them some credit though, they did manage to get a horse on the stage, and he was prettier than anyone else. Bucefalus stole the show...

[d-a-redwing]

THIS IS GOING TO BE A SOMEWHAT LONGISH RANT ABOUT THE CURRENT STATE OF HISTORICAL FICTION.

I think the problem @moonlady101 described is due to the same reason authors of historical fiction nowadays feel the need to sanitise their work and apply modern morality and social dynamics in order to make it acceptable for the public and avoid being “cancelled.”

(This is coming from someone who loves ancient history, especially the time of Alexander’s conquests and the Diadochi wars, and has a WiP based on it.)

There are two main concerns for authors and media creators today:

1. Fear of being accused of romanticising or condoning problematic historical figures or tropes (e.g. conquest, sexism, slavery, dictatorship, etc.).

Disclaimer: Sensitivity readers are absolutely necessary in the industry, especially when it comes to representing marginalised groups.

That said, we’ve reached a point where we often have to distort historical reality in order to make it palatable and less offensive to modern audiences. There's increasing pressure to sanitise the past and soften portrayals of historical figures, even when such portrayals are unfaithful to their time periods (unfortunately, authors often face harassment for depicting these realities as they were.)

Take Alexander, for example. We don’t have any evidence from sources linking him personally to sexual violence, he’s actually shown to be quite delicate with the women he encounters. But it’s almost certain that his army committed such atrocities during the campaign.

And let’s be honest: would he have cared about the rape of Timoclea if she hadn’t been a noblewoman? Would he have shown such respect toward Darius’s family if he didn’t need them for his PR campaign and to legitimise his rule over Persia? Was Roxana truly so beautiful that he fell in love at first sight, or was she just politically important for pacifying eastern Persian tribes?

We know that Barsine, the wife of the Greek mercenary Memnon who served in Darius’s army, became Alexander’s concubine and bore him a son, Heracles. Also looking at the timeline, between the Battle of Issus, when Darius’s wife Stateira I was taken hostage, and her death in childbirth, it’s possible the child was Alexander’s. Did he force them to sleep with him? I don’t think so. But the truth is, they would have felt obligated to submit to him, regardless of their feelings, in order to maintain their status and ensure their protection.

What’s frustrating is that the same people who demand male historical figures be whitewashed to justify their interest in them often have no problem with historical women being demonised or misrepresented.

Just look at the constant mistreatment of Olympias, she's often portrayed as an obsessive, jealous, and nasty witch of a wife to Philip II. Or Cleopatra, who can’t be shown for what she really was: an ambitious, ruthless, and brilliant politician who used her sexuality to gain power in a world ruled by men and military strength. Now she has to be a fighter in a literal sense, and the morally questionable things she did to stay in power (like murdering her younger brother) are reinterpreted as accidents, never her fault. Because God forbid a woman ruler uses the same methods to cement power as the men in her dynasty had done for generations.

2. In today’s era, where all media has to be exciting, there's also a push to "spice things up" for a broader audience.

Let’s break down a few things here:

Alexander and Hephaestion in an open homosexual relationship:

They might have continued a romantic relationship into adulthood, but it would not have been open, because that simply wasn’t socially acceptable. In ancient Greece, homosexual relationships usually involved an older man (erastes - ἐραστής) and a younger one (eromenos - ἐρώμενος), with a mentor-student dynamic. Or they occurred between two boys. Once the younger man reached adulthood, the relationship typically shifted to something more platonic. In their case, Alexander was a king (so automatically of a higher status), and even if Hephaestion was younger than him (which I don't think he was), an open, public relationship when they both became adult men would have been extremely humiliating and emasculating for Hephaestion.

Polyamory:

Could it have happened? I think it could. Famously, Ptolemy’s concubine, Thaïs, an Athenian hetaira whom he later married, is sometimes mentioned as also having had a sexual relationship with Alexander. But she was a courtesan (hetaira - ἑταίρα), possibly a concubine (pallakē - παλλακή). That kind of arrangement would NEVER have happened with "proper women" like wives, Roxana, Stateira II, and so on.

Alexander’s relationship with Bagoas:

For an ancient Greek man, Bagoas might have represented the ultimate humiliation - loss of masculinity. It’s unclear if he would have been seen as “sexually desirable” in the Greek context. But besides that, Bagoas would undoubtedly be useful to Alexander. He would have been knowledgeable about Persian court customs (serving under Darius III) and could have been a talented performer (some sources mention his famous dance at one of the banquets), which would not be uncommon for male artisans like music players or actors to perform on such occasions.

In short, we do a disservice to both history and literature when we flatten complex figures into modern archetypes just to make them more digestible. The past was brutal, morally alien, and often uncomfortable by today’s standards, and that’s exactly why it’s worth exploring honestly. Showing the darkness of history does not equate to endorsing it, portraying real, flawed people does not equate to glorifying them. And powerful historical women don’t need to be morally whitewashed or "yasified" to be palatable or admirable. If we can’t engage with history on its own terms, then what exactly are we learning from it?

[d-a-redwing]

I kind of see it?

I have recently rewatched Spartacus and Jai Courtney who played Varro has some similarity to the statues of Alexander? I think if his hair were a bit darker and longer, he would be perfect.

He also has this "stocky" build, I always imagined Alexander to be shorter but stockier, while Hephaestion was taller and leaner.

[jeannereames]

By my friend Bettina. Some of y'all might like this and want to add it to your playlists. She's also on Spotify if you want more of her music. She sings in Greek on recreations of ancient instruments.

Please share!

[charlesoberonn]

[gemsofgreece]

Which places of greece are ruined by tourism and would it be ok to visit them in winter ? Asking because i'd really like to see all of greece but i dont want to participate into what makes people lives shit

I'd say that while Greece has gotten very touristy in many places by now, the most touristy places are still (barely) hanging in there and have not been totally ruined yet. The two most critically affected by tourism places are Santorini and Mykonos islands. Aside from Santorini perhaps, which really receives more tourists than it can bear, in the other touristy areas the situation is not so bad yet that you could cause problems with your mere presence there. Tourists do become a problem due to their behaviour rather than their presence, so I am going to give you some tips for an ethical, viable for the local population vacation in any region in Greece.

Ethical travelling in Greece:

Do not use Airbnbs. They have caused severe housing problems in the country. Basically locals can not find houses to rent / buy because everything is modified into an airbnb. Please, do not use airbnbs. Every single type of hotel, from small family run businesses to major hotel chains, they are all more ethical and beneficial to Greek society and economy than the airbnbs.

If you are travelling in the Aegean islands in the high season, avoid the excessive use of tap water. Most Aegean islands have severe shortage of water resources. The little resources that they have get wasted in filling the countless pools of the hotels. And I ask, what is the point of so many pools in Greece? Are tourists really doing all the fuss to reach a Greek island to spend their days swimming in the pool and stare at a wall? You can do this at home. I really don't understand this. Go to the beach. Greek beaches are typically very safe unless you are advised otherwise by the locals. Ask your hotel receptionist or your tour guide if some beach is suitable only for very seasoned swimmers or is better avoided for any other reason. Please, do not support the endless useless pool constructions that suck all the water. Apart from the pools, practice reasonable use of tap water in general (i.e while showering).

Ideally, avoid cruises. They are the biggest culprit of tourist overcrowding and they virtually leave zero money to the local society.

Keep alcohol consumption within reason. Greeks love to drink and have fun. However, unlike in Northern and Western Europe, excessive drinking is not at all part of our cultural understanding of having fun. There are unfortunately 2-3 spots around the country which have become destinations of young tourists aiming to get hammered every night. Their drinking and its consequences disrupts severely the quality of living for the locals and other travellers. If you (not saying this personally, but generally) tend to drink enough that ending up crawling or vomiting in a street or a hospital is not unlikely... just don't do it. Don't do it, it affects negatively the local people's lifestyle and their sense of safety. Remember also that the Greeks like to stay out with their kids until very late at night, don't create publicly images that could be questionable for a child to see.

You can dress however you want in Greece. The only limitations are to keep nudism for nudist beaches and if you decide to visit monasteries, then you should comply with their dress code, which is usually skirts / dresses and covered shoulders for women and ideally long trousers for men. Women in Greece do not cover their heads / hair in religious places. Churches have a more liberal dress code but, still, don't go in in your swimsuit or something.

That's all, I believe. These are the Greece-specific ethical travelling tips.

Should you go to touristy places in winter instead? NO

Like I said, if you are concerned that your mere presence is going to be an issue to the locals, then no, you don't have to change your plans and come in winter. Maybe only if you decide to go to Santorini, then it would be indeed better to go in spring or in autumn, not only for the locals but for your own experience as well. Santorini is an island famous for its vistas, the volcano, its towns and archaeological sites and not so much the beaches, so why go there in the summer and get pressed by the tourist hordes? Go in another season. But NOT in winter.

There is a huge misconception that Greece is eternally warm like a tropical country. Greece is a temperate country. If you go to the islands in winter, you will get winter in the islands, with all the wind and the humidity and the shut down businesses and half of the local population fled to the mainland. Forget about island / summery vibes. If you fall in love with a place so much that you end up wanting to experience it all year round then sure. But if it's your first time in that place, it's not very wise to visit it for the first time in its absolute lowest, right?

Not sure how you imagine a Greek island in winter but it's probably not like that, is it? I am not saying it will definitely snow, but you will be taking your risks. This is from the famous Mykonos btw.

So, if you want to come in the winter, you have to go to winter destinations (mountains, ski resorts, landlocked parts of the mainland, forests, towns and villages in higher altitudes etc). Every season has its best things to see. The islands are for the summer and the spring. Spring and autumn are seasons in which you can prolong your summer in the south or your winter in the north but even those are worthy to be visited for their own strengths.

City breaks / urban destinations are good all year round, least of all summer, because the cities tend to get super hot.

Summarizing, if you want to come in the winter just for the sake of the locals, then no don't worry about it. If you want to come in the winter because you are afraid of the overtourism but wish to see a summery destination, then my advice would be to come in the summer but simply replace the over-touristy destination with a less busy look-alike. Good substitutes for Mykonos are Paros and Ios islands. Good substitutes for Santorini are Milos and Folegandros islands.

"Seeing all of Greece"

I must examine a little what you mean by "I'd really like to see all of greece". If you mean "I'd like to visit any part of Greece so all of Greece is okay for me", it's okay, I get that. If you mean, "I want to make a plan of fitting all of Greece in the same season / trip without bothering the locals" forget about that. You're not visiting all of Greece, not now, not in many many revisits. Don't be fooled by any influencer or youtuber showing you around or any foreign travel article about where to go to, it's total misinformation, 99,9% of the time they are not seeing shit. Moreover, they are not being accurate about the size of the country, how navigable it is, the microclimate variety and the destination density per surface area. There is this portrayal of Greece in foreign media as this tiny flat easily navigable country with all its tinier islands and beaches concentrated within arm's reach. All of this is the exact opposite from the truth; Greece is of average size, extremely mountainous, hard to navigate, with numerous islands larger than you think and in considerable distances with each other. This is why you should NOT DO ISLAND HOPPING IN GREECE, I can't stress this enough, it's the most popular and yet the worst way to travel in the country. The most superficial way, the most tiresome way and simultaneously the way that guarantees you will see the least stuff. Lose - lose - lose situation.

The clever plan is simple, much simpler actually. You stick to one or max two mainland regional unit(s) or one island or max two small islands or tops a mainland region and a nearby island if you have a lot of time, and you explore that thoroughly either with a tour guide or with a map / book guide for this specific region that you explore by yourself. You can find such map / book guides everywhere in kiosks, bookstores, some markets etc. This way you're gonna like Greece ten times over than if you were just ticking off popular islands / destinations from your list. I believe every single Greek will attest to this as well as those loyal travellers we have that return every year - some do it for decades. Those follow this plan. Famous people do this too - I have never heard of foreign celebrities island hop in Greece (unless they have private yachts and stay in those which is more like a cruise rather than island hopping), they choose their destination and stick to it. It's because they know better, island hopping is a SCAM. Ticking off popular destinations is a SCAM. Not because the famous destinations don't deserve their popularity but simply because this is not the efficient / clever way to travel in Greece (and in most places, but especially Greece). Take my word for it! The country is not... structured for this type of travelling.

Summary:

You don't have to be overly conscious of your presence in touristy areas as long as you practice common sense and don't actively disrupt the lives of the locals in the ways described above.

If you are really concerned about overtourism, better change destination with a similar less busy one rather than change the season of visiting. Remember, different places are better in different seasons.

Do not island hop and do not have unrealistic expectations about how much of Greece you can see in a trip. Trying to meet such common expectations, that are founded on widespread misconceptions, will certainly make your travelling experience worse or not as good as it could have been. Based on your interests choose one specific region only and explore this one thoroughly without worrying that you will miss out, because you won't.

[arch--ang3l]

Is it really pride month without an Alexander drawing

[im-swan]

GenAI and writing in its shadow

I see a lot of creative writers express anxiety or even despair because of how good GenAI or LLMs (Large Language Models) seem to be at writing.

What I want to say is, please don't worry.

Having both worked in software development and been writing for a while, I'd like to happily say that GenAI is ✨garbage✨ at writing good stories because of two big reasons:

They lose the plot too easily and can't do callbacks or non-linear writing, because there is a hard upper limit to what an LLM can 'remember'. Even when presented with something like a plan that they have to follow, they don't necessarily connect each step of the plan to each other; they'll do each calculation in isolation, finish with it, then move on to the next. Because narratives, especially when you have more than one character, become these tangled webs of different 'plans' happening simultaneously, the LLM will 🎶 itself trying to remember and instead begin to 'improvise' solutions, much of which will deviate wildly from the plan and the narrative itself.

Also, did you notice how I used the words calculation and solutions? LLMs understand words and meaning as numbers. The next word in a sentence is math to them: they use statistics to guess which word would probably follow the word before it and still be relevant. This doesn't work for narratives because there's these wonderful things called ✨nuance, subtlety, emotional resonance, and subtext✨, and none of that is quantifiable. You can't put a number value on the 'why' of a character shrugging, or heck, not saying anything—that is literally 0 to an LLM, and thus impossible for it to calculate.

Both of these issues aren't just math or coding problems. The first requires absurd (and insanely costly) leaps in computing power and hardware. The second requires building an LLM on something that... isn't a computer.

Write your hearts out. Don't be afraid. The world needs us to stay creative, because while science and technology give us the ways and means to live our lives, creativity and emotion give us the reason to be alive. 💖

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Archaic Words for your Horror Story

Aberemord - a law term, meaning murder fully proved, as distinguished from manslaughter, and justifiable homicide

Afraye - fear; fright

Avanse - to escape from

Bloody bone - the name of a hobgoblin, formerly a fiend much feared by children

Bugan - the devil

Dezzed - injured by cold

Escorches - animals that were flayed

Hold fue - putrid blood

Lowtyn - to be quiet

Medyoxes - masks divided by the middle, half man half skeleton

Oschives - bone-handled knives

Pericles - dangers

Pethur - to run; to ram; to do anything quickly or in a hurry

Raw flesh - a demon

Resverie - madness

Skrithe - a shriek; a scream

Storve - to die

Stumpointed - a hunted rabbit in its fright ran against the dogs and tumbled over was said to be stumpointed; also, of a rabbit baffled by dogs in a ditch

Transfisticated - pierced through

Tutivillus - an old name for a celebrated demon, who is said to have collected all the fragments of words which the priests had skipped over or mutilated in the performance of the service, and carried them to hell

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Word Lists ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[lockettopia]

⚡ The Olympians Ascend! ⚡

The first images I ever created for this book were of the Olympians, and years later, I’m still proud of them. In Chapter 3 of Greek Gods and Heroes, Zeus rises from the chaos of war to claim the throne of Olympus, shaping a new divine order. Poseidon stirs the seas, Hades takes the Underworld, and the gods carve their legends into the world of mortals. But power comes with struggle—jealousy, vengeance, and fate test even the mightiest.   ⚡The myths are eternal—but this chance isn’t. Don’t miss your chance to be part of this legendary journey—Pledge on my Kickstarter now!  

Lockett Illustrated: Greek Gods and Heroes by Tyler Miles Lockett — Kickstarter

[octoswan]

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

[firelightinferno]

Oh, that’s very helpful indeed!

[writing-prompt-s]

!!!

[jeannereames]

I do a lot of talking about the novels here on Tumblr, in asks. So I expect there's not a lot in this video that's new to anyone who's been reading my blog here for a while. But I've been so busy I didn't have time to prep a history video, ergo I pivoted to the books. I start with a question a colleague of mine once asked, as to how writing historical fiction affects me as a historian, and riffed from there.

So if you enjoy videos of authors talking about their books, here you go.

It also includes a little tour around the Dancing with the Lion website, if you've not been there.