Hi hi! I’m Lily! Welcome to my blog 🪻🌿 24 || she/her || spanish || ao3: @lady_angst (more or less on writing break still) || lover of wlw, whump, hurt/comfort, slowburns, trope subversion, and many more!!
Scylla: a small appreciation post and character study, part 3 (+ slight epilogue spoilers)
🌊🌊 (Part 1 here) 🌊🌊
🌊🌊 (Part 2 here) 🌊🌊
So, in my previous posts I talked about the victim blaming that is done towards Scylla by the game and its characters, mainly Circe and Melinoë to a lesser extent, and that there is a certain line of dialogue that hints at Nymph Scylla being a relatively normal person, that being:
Scylla: Ohh, you keep trying to kill me, lady! The former Sea-Nymph side of me says just forget it and move on! But, I don’t like to listen to her anymore.
I already analysed this line and the possible ramifications of this comment in part 2 of this series, so I will continue on without further ado.
So, other than being your everyday nymph—pretty, flirty and mischievous—we also know that she was 1) a chatterbox, which is obvious in-game but is confirmed to hold true way back when as well by Circe:
Circe: I grew up underneath the sea, and Scylla I remember from my youth. Always yelping about this or that! Was deafening!
And 2) that Scylla was always a diva with big dreams and ambitions in the music industry, as Scylla herself admits once you get the previous conversation with Circe:
Mel: Are you familiar with the enchantress Circe? She mentioned that she knew you in her youth... though, I’m uncertain if you were on friendly terms.
Scylla: The enchantress Circe, no that doesn’t ring a bell! The only Circe I knew was the talentless pathetic little runt of the litter of Helios himself! What has this other Circe got to say?
Mel: She gave me the impression you were always rather boisterous, even back then. Perhaps already practicing the kinds of songs you think shall bring you fame.
Scylla: It’s no secret I always knew what I wanted to be, lady. Always knew what I was meant to be! Circe and so many others... <scoff> all they ever did was get in my way! Same as you.
The thing is, Circe then says this after Melinoë asks if she knows which witch cursed Scylla because of what the Book of Shadows says about her:
Circe: I do not curse, poppet. My practice is about revealing the true nature of a thing. When last I checked, Scylla had made hers clear.
So, according to her, Scylla was always a monster and she merely made her appearance match her personality/true nature. Again, the Book of Shadows says so:
BoS: A witch cursed her, you know; to look the way she is, though not to be. Her disposition is of her own choice.
What I didn’t fully take into account when writing part 1 & 2 of these Scylla analyses is that the Book of Shadows was written, to an extent, by Hecate.
Hecate, who is Melinoë from another timeline.
Hecate, who probably had to fight Scylla on her way to Chronos and resented her for being in her way much like Melinoë does.
Hecate, who is good friends with Circe, who cursed Scylla and always saw her as a monster simply because the god she was in love with (Glaucus) loved Scylla and not her.
Hecate, who is good friends with Odysseus, whose awful run-in with Scylla is a legendary tale that anyone who is anyone knows about even if he is a fan of Scylla and the Sirens in the present time.
Not to mention that the Moon was full the night Circe cursed her—
—meaning that Selene most likely saw the whole thing and took her fellow Unseen’s side in this predicament, which may have skewed Hecate’s opinion on Scylla’s inherent monstrosity even further in case she had any doubts left.
After all, we know far too well that gods can be very condescending towards those they dislike, whether they are mortals (Aranche and Dora), other gods (Eris), or Titans (Prometheus), and that they very rarely, if ever, change their minds about those preconceptions.
I might be reading too far into this (I’m a fanfic writer and utterly fascinated by Scylla, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if I was) but I really like this interpretation. Not to toot my own horn or anything, of course! It’s just particularly interesting and even funny to me since Mel seems to have inherited Circe’s on-sight hatred for Scylla, so this reading adds an extra layer to that as well.
It’s so hard loving a complex fictional woman because assholes will try to turn you against her by listing off all her flaws and it’s like yeah no shit, that’s the whole point. What aren’t you getting about this?
I’m playing Persona 5 Strikers again after so many years (it realised in 2020 and I played it for an ungodly amount of time until I decided to buy P5R after much contemplation) and it’s so damn FUNNY because the main plot revolves around the AI and people exploiting it for evil/self-serving reasons and how it eventually gets out of hand and becomes sentient and literally subjugates the world bit by bit, turning the masses into brainless zombies that rely on it 24/7 for everything and anything.
(Well, that’s simplifying it since Sophia is an AI as well and she’s sweet and nice and genuinely becomes more and more human as the game progresses, but yeah, the stuff with EMMA is very much what’s happening right now.)
You just can’t make this shit up, I’m sobbing. Gosh I love the Persona 5 games so much lol
Characters will make a very nuanced choice that makes sense for their story arc and internal conflict, and audience members will be like "is anyone else going to misconstrue this in the most black and white, bad faith manner possible?"
“hey did you kiss the brick before you threw it” “prev so true” “EXACTLY!!!” “I am always saying this” “op im gonna kill myself” “dont talk to me im unwell about this” “agskhksj!!!"
It gets even funnier because she follows it up by saying „I only gave it to you because I didn‘t want Vexius to have it“ (denial) and then next episode has a crash out where she first aggressively tries to forget this ever happened (denial again) and then proceeds to hunt down Bloom to yell „Bloom! Fight me! 1 on 1!“ Like just ask her out on a date at this point 😭
if you ever doubt that your ao3 comments matter or mean something: i have been struggling with my writing for 6 months straight, crying myself to sleep afraid that i will never be able to write again, that the thing i love most in the world has left me, that my writing is just gone
this morning i got this comment:
and after i stopped blubbering over it, i picked up my writing notebook, and re-read all my fic research, and opened up my document again for the first time in weeks without being afraid of it
you have no idea how much writers treasure every single comment we get. you have no idea how big an impact you can have. sometimes, just sometimes, your one "insignificant" comment changes everything
