I'm a medievalist and I teach a variety of literature courses from medieval-modern. Feel free to ask me questions about UK universities or English literature. Over 40. PhD.
Recommendations for people interested in getting into medieval literature: https://professorerudite.tumblr.com/post/159132582176/hi-there-what-kind-of-books-would-recommend-to
My recommended reading list for Viking Era/Heroic Poetry (this includes Italian and Old French) https://professorerudite.tumblr.com/post/159591094086/hi-there-saw-your-medieval-book-recs-could-you
Medieval research resources: https://professorerudite.tumblr.com/post/188677352835/medieval-research-resources
Here’s a link to a list of other Old English Poetry manuscripts (with summaries) Some great reads in Middle English would be Gawain and the Green Knight or Malory’s Morte Darthur.
Literary criticism book suggestions here
Free resource for teaching and learning about Chaucer: Open Access Canterbury Tales
***I'm not a classicist. I currently teach The Aeneid in translation and have taught The Iliad and The Odyssey in translation in the past***
My thoughts on Nolan's The Odyssey:
This was a good film to get students interested in Ancient Greek history, archaeology and literature. If kids will want to read The Iliad and The Odyssey, that's fantastic 😊
Things I enjoyed: Helen and Clytemnestra. Fuck Agamemnon! 🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️
Seeing Sinon my sneaky Greek getting the Trojans to accept the horse. Sinon is in book 2 of the Aeneid.
The horrors of war both in Troy and at home. The defiling of the Temple of Athena.
Everything with how they handled the storytelling from Telemachus and Odysseus
How it was more like Troy with the "psudo-historical realism" over mythology. I guess. I get why he chose that approach.
The idea of the "sea people" destroying the Bronze Age only to realize they themselves are destroying their beliefs and customs. Interesting concept. I guess.
Pronouncing Telemachus correctly. Thanks.
Things I did not like: Athena doing jackshit. She stops the Ithacan war at the end of the poem.
Calypso and Circe not being magical sexy ladies who manipulate men. What the hell?? Lotus with Calypso makes no sense! Make my nymph goddesses sexy badasses!
Virginal Odysseus??!!??? Riding off into the sunset like Frodo for some reason????
No silly or comedic relief?-- Not getting the drunk dude falling off Circe's roof telling Odysseus to bury his body...No-Man?? Polyphemus???...Nausicaa?! Naked Odysseus showing up on the beach
I wanted Hermes telling Calypso to let Odysseus go.
I wanted Odysseus seeing his mom in the underworld. You could show Argos dying but not Odysseus's mom?
What the fuck was going on with the Laestrygonians in pseudo-medieval armour?
No father-son bonding in slaughtering the suitors? 🥺
Bottom line: I can reference it in class, will still use clips from Troy instead. Hope it sparks interest in classical studies. 1997 tv movie is more accurate to the epic poem
Also -- I still hate Odysseus and think he's a narcissist who deserved what he got. I SIDE WITH THE TROJAN REFUGEES.
The more I sit with this finale, the less sense it makes to me in terms of Armand's motivations and goals.
Let me explain what I mean. Bit of a rant.
Earlier in the season Armand expresses concern over the great conversion and it seems, for all intents and purposes, Armand is against the movement.
Of course you can argue just because he thinks it's a bad thing doesn't mean he'll actively try to stop it. But he does express he wants Lestat to stop playing music because it exposes more of the vampire world to mortals and encourages the great conversion. He also warns Daniel about continuing to hang around Lestat because of this.
He then kills Lestat's bandmate (although Larry had quit the band at that point) and this is perhaps the most confusing action in this season after the finale. But we'll get back to Larry's murder later. Put a pin in it for now.
Let's talk about the finale now. So it turns out Armand's plan this whole time was just to decapitate Lestat and Louis, and force Louis to apologize to him? And then stitch Louis back together, or let him die? And what about Lestat, then? Let him die? Because the implication in the narrative is that if Raglan and co hadn't shown up when they did, Lestat would have died. And then we have to grapple with the implication that Armand is actually willing to kill Lestat. And sure, Lestat dying would have stopped the concert, but it wouldn't have stopped the great conversion at that point. There were already too many vampires. More deaths than births. Even Armand stated this earlier in the season.
And given how many vampires still gathered for Lestat's concert at the end of the episode, the video Daniel (and Armand) released didn't exactly discredit Lestat enough to make the movement turn on him. So it seems it barely made a dent in Lestat's reputation? There might be long-term damage to his image, but that wouldn't stop the movement. It seems the video was more for Daniel's satisfaction than anything else. Which is fine. But what I'm getting at is that Armand's plan can't possibly have been to stop the great conversion, because nothing he did in the finale and throughout the season did any real damage to it, or even scratch it. The number of vampires are already too many. Raglan stated there are over 200k vampires being tracked by the Talamasca now. Even if you take out all the 50-60k vampires gathered at Lestat's concert, it won't do much to the movement at that point. The movement already have huge traction. Nothing less than vampire genocide can stop it at this point.
Armand may have many issues, but he should be smart enough to know this. He should know he can't stop this. And he shouldn't be naive enough to trust and work with the Talamasca to stop it, either. Is the show saying he was fooled by the Talamasca? Either way, if he has a plan to stop the great conversion, it wasn't what we saw him enact in the finale. So what was the point of his actions, then? Just his own pettiness and sense of being wronged by Louis? Which, to me, didn't seem to have nearly enough set up. It's not as if Armand couldn't have done this to Louis while Louis and Lestat were separated, either.
Why even save Louis from the crypt in Paris in the first place? Why the change of heart from killing him to saving him? Why aren't we exploring that in a meaningful way? Especially because Lestat went through all that effort to save Louis at the trial and it makes no sense that he would let Louis die in the crypt. It seems like Armand just saved Louis on a whim and we're suppose to just accept that Lestat would have saved Louis if Armand hadn't had that change of heart? I'm so tired of the vagueness of Paris...
But back to S3.
It's starting to feel, to me, like the writers simply don't know how to write Armand and don't know what to do with Armand outside of DM. I even feel like they deep down don't want to write Armand well. The writers gave him an anime villain monologue, for goodness' sake!
And I know you can argue this was Lestat giving him that monologue through the framing device of The Failures. But at some point we have to accept that the framing device isn't an excuse for everything we don't like. Especially because it's likely Lestat is a bit more omniscient at the time of recording The Failures than Louis was telling Daniel his story in S1 and S2 due to certain book-lore possibly being adapted. While it is show canon that the characters' words and actions are being influenced to some degree by Lestat's telling of the story, that doesn't explain Armand's nonsensical plan.
Find a Claudia look-alike, use her to lure Louis in and fuck with his emotions and mental state, for what purpose? And then, decapitate Louis and Lestat together? To then what? Let Lestat die (which wouldn't achieve anything to hurt the great conversion) and force Louis to apologize to satiate Armand's feelings of being wronged? Even though Armand was the one who wronged Louis the most? So now we're making Armand even pettier than we saw in S2, for what? Putting Louis through some torture, again?(Don't think I haven't noticed how it's mostly Louis going through most physical horrors and states of helplessness shown on screen, which is becoming tired and repetitive. Let's see more of Lestat all fucked up!). And If the writers had just Armand torture Louis (and the Regina thing) because he found it amusing and wanted to test Louis' limits out of his own morbid curiosity before putting him back together again it would have been better characterization than what we got.
And what was the point of murdering Larry, then? If we got confirmation Armand just did it out of amusement, or because he thought it would 'help' Alex in some fucked up way, I could accept it. But the show made it seem like this was part of some larger plan, and then it turned out it made no sense. Apart from the shock value, I suppose.
Everything Armand did this season turned out to be nonsensical in the end. Which is disappointing. And now I'm supposed to what, trust the writers have some long-term plan with Armand and it will make sense? Because I am not trusting the show to handle Armand anymore. I would love for the show to prove me completely wrong and have everything make sense in the long run. I would. But I doubt it will.
I will keep watching it if it keeps going, but with lower expectations than before.
I think part of it is enjoying the manipulation and psychological torture and also desiring to make him apologize... But also he might say he doesn't love Louis but he clearly does. Another thing that I was expecting is Armand to burn all of the vampires at the concert, locking them in there and stopping the great conversion.
I was really expecting a circular narrative with the burning of the witches and burning of a shitton of vampires at the concert. I thought Armand would stop Louis from going and whether he decapitated Lestat or not, the concert would seem like it's still happening. 🤷🏼♀️
Louis was constantly cheating on Armand? When? Did I miss something?
If there's another season, where will it go? I'm missing so much with Daniel/Armand. There were hints but so little screentime, I didn't see it as true love.
If we go with the idea that was brought up a while ago that force suggestions only really work if the subject was already favourable to what was being suggested, then Obi-Wan is just counting on the fact that people hate their jobs.
yeah i do chew them i just dont feel a need to take a bite out of something that's already bite-sized, yknow? it's like taking a bite out of a skittle, to me. could definitely just be me though
He was biting them because he’s so much littler than you. Look at him. He can’t get a whole one in his mouth. You could lose him down a drain. When you put him up a chimney, even a small chimney, you probably have to give him directions like he’s on the Swindon magic roundabout. SECOND LEFT AT THE NEXT BRICK, Thomas. NO, OTHER BRICK. NO, THE OTHER LEFT.
ABSOLUTELY CRYING AT THIS, YOU GUYS, I AM LOSING MY SHIT SO HARD
LOOK AT HIM!!!!
I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING
WHAT A WEIRD LITTLE CREEPER HE'S BEING
THE DRAMATIC FINGERS AROUND THE BEND OF THE ROCK
WHY IS HE DOING THAT??? THERE'S NO REASON OTHER THAN TO BE A WEIRD LITTLE DRAMATIC CREEPER????
AND FOR WHO??? NO ONE IS THERE TO SEE HIM!
HE'S JUST PEEKING OUT AROUND THE CORNER OF THE ROCK
LIKE HE'S A SCARED LITTLE KID AND NOT ONE OF THE BIGGEST BADS IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE
OR SOME WEIRDO WHO IS SPYING ON YOU IN THE SHOWER
OR THAT HE'S SAD HIS BFF IS BETRAYING HIM AND GETTING A NEW FRIEND NOOOOO ): ): ):
AND I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING ABOUT IT BECAUSE YEAH THAT CHECKS OUT
EVERY SITH LORD HAS BEEN A HOT DISASTER WHO WENT ASS FIRST OUT A WINDOW AT SOME POINT ON OUR SCREEN
WELCOME TO BEING A HOT MESS LOSER ON SCREEN, PLAGUEIS
YOU'RE WEIRD AS HELL AND COMPLETELY UNSCARY WHEN YOU'RE NOT ACTIVELY KILLING ANYONE, YOU'LL FIT RIGHT IN
People don't understand Alicent because they take a quote/action and entirely remove the context of it or forget everything else she has ever said. You can't understand an arc if you don't look at the entire arc.
The early episodes make it clear she has no intention of putting Aegon on the throne. "Rhaenyra would make a fine Queen. Would you have me raise a man to steal his own sister's birthright?" When Otto gets removed from the council, she says to him "If you had not been so relentless in advancing Aegon as heir." She doesn't see it as the right thing to do hence she sees it as one of the reasons he got removed.
It has also been made clear that Otto coerced and forced her into putting Aegon on the throne. "Our hearts were never one." "I have been a piece that you moved about the board. I wanted whatever you impressed upon me to want." She adopts the ideology that Aegon is 'meant' to be King because its what she has been impressed upon to do, she doesn't agree with it but it's exhausting to constantly fight against that.
She did not want to drag Aegon from the streets but it was going to happen regardless because Otto had already sent Erryk and Arryk to find him. There was no use in Alicent trying to stop Aegons ascension so she stepped in herself for the sake of ensuring Otto wouldn't advise Aegon to have Rhaenyra killed.
She forces herself to believe Viserys' dying wish for the sake of giving her life a purpose, making her sacrifices amount to something and most importantly, it is her duty to do as the King wants. "You toil still in service to men." is a pattern in her arc. Duty is above all for Alicent. Why do you think she falters so easily when Rhaenyra tells her the truth of the prohecy? She learns it wasn't what he wanted, she knows it's not right to justify her actions on a lie and her heart was never really in it in the first place.
Alicent did not start all of this, the men should be held accountable. It started with Viserys doing nothing to ensure the people remain loyal to Rhaenyra and with Otto taking advantage of the fact the realm doesn't want to see a woman on the throne.
Both women have been victims of circumstances caused and started by the men in their lives.
The moment when Rhaenyra is locked in by her son and stabs her riding cloak, declaring a very much Queen Elizabeth I, "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king," really brought it home for me this season.
The conversations with Alicent and Rhaenyra the last episode solidified, at least for me, that they are both coming to grips with the crimes of the past and hopefully mending ways for a better future.
One of the things I really like about the show is the amount of women serving as directors, writers and executive producers. I don't know if the balance was the same on GoT, but I can see a difference here.
Interested in Hell? Please check out my friend's book: Translating Hell: Vernacular Theology and Apocrypha in the Medieval North Sea by Stephen C. E. Hopkins
You can keep up with him on blue sky --
Asst Prof (Old English & Old Norse). Book TRANSLATING HELL (2026). Phil-lol-ogist, word-lover, pun-makar, collector of dictionaries, glamore
