Leyna Eithnea @herb-on-a-stick - Tumblr Blog

Hi! Im Ley, she/they, 21+ Im a writer and other stuff, dabbling in any new creative hobby I can get my hands on (or accidentally end up fixating on) and curious about a lot of things

Love compiling source documents and writing source accurate drabbles on my current myth fixation; sometimes other stuff Welcome to my brain ✨

Compilation of my favorite Posts:

Diomedes post series

Introduction Post Post One

Headcanons

Tydeus Childhood and Exile Comaetho Weaves Aegialeus Meeting his Father Melanippus kills Tydeus Oeneus imprisonment smol HC Meleager big bro HC Diomedes training HC Epigoni HCs / Art (WIP) Canon compliant HC Guide Greek Mythology Musicals List

Source Documents

Greek Mythology Sources / Doc Diomedes family tree

My AO3

Stolen Statue, Stolen Hope, Stolen Heart - DioNeas (18+) Italys Shores - DioNeas (18+) Palladium Offering - DioNeas (18+) Rest Another Night - OdyDio (18+) Solace or Sorrow - Odysseus on Ogygia/Calyspo (18+) TW <- check the tags Whispers of Salvation - OG Fairy Folktale

Fic that broke me in the best way by @ asteraspera

Tydeus - Olenias Fic Some More under Cut

#introduction

thhouseofblack

That one source that has Penelope's Mother be the sister of Oedipus' Adopted Mother sets the scene up in the funniest of ways. Penelope hearing about her Cousin marrying his mother, and then her other cousins all fighting over Thebes from the side in Lacedaemon 😭

fawnblooms

WIP Helen my beloved

mikeybooch

Prints Available

From Book V of Homer's Iliad. Upon being grievously wounded by the Achaean warrior Diomedes, the hero Aeneas is saved through divine intervention from his mother, the goddess Aphrodite.

The characters are depicted here in historically inspired looks from the late Bronze Age, the period when the Trojan War was believed to have been set. Aphrodite's look in particulate is based off of Mycenaean frescos as well as Cypriot idols.

for the choose violence ask game. worst blorboification

mh...odysseus, diomedes, ody dio but I have not been on ao3 enough lately to whats currently know going on there, but there has been a tendency to either villanize odysseus (sometimes its aeneas) for the sake of diomedes as his victim or largely ignores 70% of his character in the past, which is sad

i think theres a tendency to victimize Diomedes in general and stuff which doesnt give him quite enough credit and maybe a bunch of that is mostly projection and self insertion to a degree at which point its not something I can really criticize Diomedes still has a mere 150 out of 1000 fics where Odysseus is not mentioned in some form, so ody dio blorbofied Diomedes in a way thats not doing full justice to all of Diomedes' character and usually (though more often) Odysseus not either,,,....for which the Palladium Incident confusion may be another cause

But like I said I'm not up-to-date to what ao3 has been up to lately so maybe this is all not smth prevalent anymore🤷‍♀️ it may just apply to a small portion of the actual content and stuff going around 👉👈

its the only ones I could think of for now

#ley answers

kebriones

the more you research ancient greek mythology the more you get a massive headache. Nobody sites sources properly. Information gets tossed around and mixed up into salads and everyone's theories and hallucinations have become this massive mess held together haphazardly by scraps of ancient findings spanning hundreds of years and a bunch of different cultures. I want to know the truth and the facts. nevermind how fragmented and incomplete.

thhouseofblack

added an pre-trojan war myths section to Penelope's Wikipedia page if anyone would like to go read or check out!

most-sane-classicist

just went to #the odyssey and all of the posts of the first 30 or so save THREE were epic related or nolan film related

ulises-aithon

T T

herb-on-a-stick

Guess we gotta move to homers odyssey or some if we dont want the adaptations ._. 😔

Hands down the most delicous thing Ive ever had lately is orange vinegar and orange infused olive oil, I could drink that raw ITS SO DAMN GOOD

wildehacked

things in fic I'm used to people kind of faking their way through writing about:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

what french toast is

headspace-hotel

read through the notes on this one trust me

kiragecko

Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

kebriones

Phanes design i had to get out of my brain or i was gonna lose it. based on that one 2nd century relief and my own dionysus design to an extent.

weekofpenelope

Penelope Week: From 10th August to 16th August!

Penelope Week is back for another year and 2026's Prompts and Dates are officially out!

Penelope Week 2026 will be held from Monday, 10th of August to Sunday, 16th of August.

There are a wide range of prompts for everyone to choose and work on in any capacity or to use as inspiration, whether that be sfw or nsfw - so do let your imaginations run wild! We encourage art of all different forms focusing on the iconic Greek Heroine!

Feel free to hit us up with any questions or doubts you may have! Our inbox is always open 🩷

Guidelines and Accessible List of Prompts below:

thhouseofblack

young penelope's fame already spreading (long before her marriage) from whispers of her prodigal talent in weaving – how beautiful and unique her finished pieces are. so much so that icarius gifts the guests of his house tapestries and clothing woven by penelope's hand because they too wish to possess a piece of that rich and exquisite work for their house.

#YESYESYES

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Love that, its such a hard pick!

Honestly, because its currently on my mind: the geneaology of the heroes. All of them

I love that Penelope, Castor and Clymenestra are descended from Andromeda and Perseus and must have ties to ancient aethiopia and egypt and the other line ties to Sparta and how Helen and Pollux, although not related to that paternal line to them, must've still grown up with part of that culture as their own. Maybe not the language anymore, but maybe theres a weaving technique that andromeda taught her daughter who taught it her grandchildren and daughter in law or maybe a chest made from a crystal not typically found on the achaean lands or jewerly made out of seashells that you cant find in greece

I love how often Ares shows up as a possibility for Diomedes paternal line (directly related or by marriage) and how kinslaying seems to appear there not unfrequently and how his maternal line may have some ancestral ties to egypt and ancient libya but also all the way back to the autochtons and the name givers of Argos and Siycon

I love how Odysseus may have ties to Cephalus who held captive by a goddess and came free eventually as well

I love how the theban royal line was founded by phoenecian Cadmus and how they later tied together with the cursed house of Tantalus exhilarating the doom of their city

I love how closely tied the Trojans are to the regions of Troy and Anatolia through their close connection to a bunch of possible river gods

I love to think about how home the rivers and forests and mountains must feel to the heroes and heroines born to nymphs and river gods

I love how when we're told the ancestry of a hero how much context it gives us to who they are - it tells us where they came from, who their family is and was, and what possible trauma occurred in the generations before, what cultures they had mixed together and who their distant relatives are who they may seek out for alliances and support in times of need

I love how nearly all greek heroes are connected with each other through their shared heritage to Hellen, and while theres many other lines springing up from nymphs and gods and people of surrounding regions in the end you nearly always can find some shared ancestry as a possibility somewhere (maybe not in the most common version but often theres single accounts that then again would establish a connection)

I love how exiled princes and expelled princesses connect regions together that must've had cultural and economical consequences via trade, politics and passing on familial traditions, skills and heirlooms and how imporant their home "lands" mustve been for them.

I love how the heroes are proud of their ancestors, what importance it must hold for them to i.e. claim ties to Perseus or Heracles because to them their "kleos"/glory was part of their own

...yeah i think this is an element thats largely overlooked with the way that people complain about the list of ships or that the sources always provide us with the fathers names and further ancestries and how so often the characters are removed from these ancestral lines

we may get their home region being noted but only the place that they themselves live in or were born at, rarely even their parents and not much about the geographical location playing into everything as - sometimes We do like with ithaka but its very often also neglected

they may mention the godly heritage, but ignore the mortal lines

you get a little here and there - for example Agamemnons ties to Atreus and the cannibalism or Polynikes and Oedipus, but its usually just in relation to negative cases of association to the parents.

So yes, i love the geneaology of greek heroes :)

#tagamemnon #greek mythology #ley answers

Diomedes was not 14 at Thebes

Ive dug up all I could trying to track down where the assumption that Diomedes of Argos was 4 years old when his father died came from.

I cant find anything.

The wikipedia page added that claim on 6th Nov 2009, it never got provided with a source to back this claim.

A private blog article claimed he was around 15 in 2011 but provides no sources as well

Abagond chronogical timeline (which is a made-up one) only gives the year differrnce between Seven and Troy and not Diomedes' birth

The closest I can assume is the Thebaid by Statius saying its been 3 seasons since the wedding of Adrastus' daughters and Polynices and Tydeus that they started their campaign against Thebes, but that would make Diomedes closer to 2-3 years old at the oldest.

But A source that would possibly contradict this is the hellenistic Epilium Diomedis papyrus fragments that say he had a son before he ever went to troy, though the Iliad says he is pretty young / Nestor says "he could be his youngest" (though we gotta assume this excludes Peisistratus of the Odyssey) so the Epilium may be counted to not follow the Iliadic Tradition

So where does this claim come from? Can anyone provide me with a scholarly source or ancient text that would allow this assumption?

And if there IS no source. Then its made up and its a false claim that has been going around for 17 years without getting fact checked and should get corrected

Because the then the answer would be "young but we don't know how young" he could be 14, he could be 18, he could be 20

We

Dont

Know :)

#tagamemnon #diomedes #diomedes of argos #the Iliad

yekokataa

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥

the character everyone gets wrong

a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

worst discord server and why

which ship fans are the most annoying?

what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

worst part of canon

worst part of fanon

number of fandom-related words you've filtered

the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

worst blorboficiation

that one thing you see in fics all the time

that one thing you see in fanart all the time

you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

there should be more of this type of fic/art

it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

part of canon you found tedious or boring

part of canon you think is overhyped

your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

ship you've unwillingly come around to

topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

thhouseofblack

someone tell Nolan stans to stop tagging the odyssey on their god awful movie, no one wants to see that here

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Leyna Eithnea