AnasAbdin
Today's Document
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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Game of Thrones Daily
Love Begins
Janaina Medeiros
No title available
Sweet Seals For You, Always
PR's Tumblrdome
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
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izzy's playlists!
almost home
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
oozey mess
Product Placement
NASA
#extradirty
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Canada
seen from Malaysia
seen from Italy
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Malaysia
@ghostly-grumbles
was feeling a bit insane about hector so i wrote a poem about him using only words and phrases from some articles. this poem has eaten the wikipedia page on hector, the wikipedia page on horse training, and how to break a horse (with pictures)
Dear children of Priam, were you doomed all along?
Suppliant my children's murderer to implore, And kiss those hands yet reeking with their gore
(2/2)
Returning Home
picky eating
Never underestimate Dionysus.. 💜
a cabbage white butterfly, amongst other things
- mom i’m tired
the manuscript- taylor swift/ thirteen/ class of 2013- mitski/ 13 going on 30/ wonderland- taylor swift/ cat city- vewn/ @death-born-aphrodite/ skins/ @inkskinned
when mary oliver said ‘if you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. give in to it.’
and mahmoud darwish said ‘and if happiness should surprise you again, do not mention its previous betrayal.
enter into the happiness, and burst.’
- sing, o goddess, the rage of helen | by prithvi. p
posts that make me want to rip my heart out part 5
fawzul himaya hareed (@milodrama) reimagining shame, on writing and being seen (link to substack) \\ @allsadnshit \\ alyse leah angélique des francs on lirr train \\ sam sax xenotransplantation (via @cloudswamp) \\ liana finck
kofi
the ache of nostalgia
@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks
anecdote of the pig, tory adkisson // achilles & partoclus // house of dragon, 1x07 // plainwater, anne carson // ? // ?
In defense of Demeter (who seems constantly villainized in recent interpretations)
I like the recent retellings of Persephone because it gives her agency.
But I also like this.
Agency? Why give Persephone agency in such a terrible story? To do such would be erasing all the terrible things that happened back then and her story.
Myths were created with certain intents- to explain creation, why some things in nature were the way they were, reinforce the rules of obeying your father (which is why Persephone stays with hades, because Zeus, the deadbeat dad of the century but still her father, gave her away) and honouring the gods. That’s the reason why the Greeks made the myths. And the myths aren’t meant to be bedtime stories either, they show the cruelty of the time (not that the Greeks found this particularly wrong, they just needed a good way to explain spring).
This modern obsession of giving agency to Persephone and saying she wanted to go with hades strips away at her character. Don’t respect Persephone because you want to believe she went down to the underworld out of free will. Respect her because she, like so many women in history, was put into a horrible situation and survived nonetheless.
This explains so much of my own thought!
Needing Persephone to be strong through her love and freedom erases or implies that by just surviving as a woman in this situation (or in most situations, esp in Ancient Greece) she was not already strong.
In theory, I am fine with modern retellings. Culture and stories adapt.
The issue with the Persephone myth is that the story is not adapted to give Persephone freedom, but to relieve Hades of wrongdoing. Sometimes I feel it’s intentional in the retelling, sometimes I feel it’s more subconscious.
People like the aesthetic of the relationship, they like love, and they like male protagonists (we’re so used to putting ourselves in the shoes of men it’s only natural that we gravitate to their characters and try to defend them). Hades is made pitiable in retellings. Persephone is made into his girlfriend who wants to unlock his trauma and take care of him. This is a common trope in media, powerful yet broken or sad men being tended by younger and kinder women (off the top of my head think 50 Shades of Grey). People focus on his trauma, even make up trauma for him, and sweep the trauma of the women in the original story under the carpet. See? Hades isn’t bad! He’s misunderstood and abused by his brothers and is a kind and gentle man. Look! He didn’t kidnap her! She loved him and they planned it, or maybe he did but it was accidental. Notice! Hades is not abuser! In fact, Persephone is the boss of him, and takes care of him like a strong and good (and stereotypical) wife!
If the story was really about giving strength to women, then Demeter wouldn’t be constantly written as a one dimensional obsessive mother. In the myth Persephone begs for her mother to save her, because the Greek men of myth are scary and usually violent rapists (Demeter is even raped herself by Poseiden while looking for Persephone). Turning a story’s villain(s) from an abusive father and husband as well as a hoard of onlookers (like Helios) who do nothing to save a young woman from abduction as she screams out for aid, into an overprotective mother is not a change that’s empowering, but one that is sexist and wrong.
I haven’t seen an adaptation, or at least a popular one, that makes the story about a mother and daughter having to be clever, smart, and secretly powerful in order to return to each other after being forced apart by men who find their needs for sex, for women, for dowery, for anything and everything more important. A retelling like that would give strength to women. Maybe Minthe could be rewritten as something else than just another jealous bitch, or as Persephone’s secret girlfriend who tries to relieve her from Hades’s constant need and attention, or as literally anything else.
I don’t think it will happen though because (TLDR) the story isn’t retold for women.
Joan of Arc
I mean you’re mostly right. But she looked like this
She didn’t but thank you for the input!
Joan of arc is a very popular figure in media so her image is subject to a lot of bending. Sometimes it’s very subtle, and other times it’s very apparent. There’s no official pictures or paintings of her that survived from her time, but there are several trial transcripts that describe her, as well as first hand reports and letters from those who worked beside her that do the same.
The general consensus within these that I found on her appearance was that Joan was pretty short and stocky. Her eyes were far apart, and somewhat large, her hair was black/dark brown and close cut, and she had a fairly common looking face. Multiple people report that she had a red birthmark behind her left ear and a low but sweet voice. A surprising amount is written about her physical strength despite her small stature. I would suggest you read De Boulainvilliers’ (Chamberlain to Charles VII) letters, among others. He knew her first hand and goes into a lot of depth about her appearance and aura.
A big part of her rebranding is making her seem older, more feminine, paler, and blonder. Due to color/racism as well as light representing purity, renditions of her make her whiter (she was a poor farmer from mid/south France which means she was on the darker side of white complexions) to show holiness. People also make her more feminine due to stigma against women who “don’t look like women” and to lean into her Virgin Mary esk aura.
(Here’s two paintings I found that more accurately represent her image)
She was prosecuted and blamed multiple times for “dressing like a man” Wearing full plate, suitable for a warrior, not custom made, as expected of a poor farmer. She was strong, and skilled with a sword. A talent mysterious, since she never had formal training. Her voice was soft and pleasant, but strong enough to be carried by the wind in the fields of battle, so anyone could heard her becoming to charge.
One of those woman I fell for while reading history. Strong, talented and skilled, but a woman trough and trough. Treason by the very church she defended with such passion to put many saints to shame, by the very nation she healed with her words of hope and the strength of her sword arm. She was beautiful, not in the sense many would want to believe. She didn’t had a models beauty, nor the dazzling looks of a charming princess. But her very existence, the way she carried herself in a country of broken and defeated men, was beautiful.
