#hauntedwizardtree

[percabeth4life]

I had a thought last night about the revelation of Athena sending dozens (hundreds? It’s been a while since I read the book) of her children after her statue for centuries in Mark of Athena—and maybe it’s because I’ve always admired the Greek goddesses, but she’s the goddess of wisdom. Sending her children off to try and force a prophecy that is not yet ready to be completed does not seem very wise.

I suppose I can understand why Rick made the plot choices he did, but it just seems like he’s pushing the narrative that Athena sees her children as tools instead of people. And there are definitely ways to show that without making her seem like an angry ball of vengeance who threw away her common sense that she came off as in the book (and given Apollo is the god of knowledge and prophecy one would think she’d consult him on when to try and get the Athena Parthenos back). I suppose I might have just been way too influenced by Epic the Musical’s version of Athena but it just doesn’t seem right to me that she would be so callous and, dare I say foolish in the books.

I don't like how he wrote Athena, particularly the Minerva/Athena aspect in HOO. Before that she wasn't that bad. Protective, a bit spiteful, but willing to look past that to save her daughter.

But in HOO? A mess.

The best I can do with that Personally is say that Rick's Minerva is broken. What the Roman's in his universe did to her shattered what she is as Athena (this is NOT historically/mythologically accurate btw, but in his lore-) and Minerva can only really focus on putting herself back together. She has no children to fix her, so she is Minerva (but also Athena), she is shattered and broken and pulling at what she can to save herself. She's not thinking wise, she's thinking desperate.

Which could, in and of itself, be a fascinating thing to explore in the RRverse but *shrugs*.

[therealvinelle]

I’ve been going down a little rabbit hole of Twilight today, found your blog and have been thoroughly enjoying your meta on Bella and Renesmee’s powers. Do you have any thoughts on what their powers could truly be classified as? Like, Bella makes sense as some sort of self-preservation thing, but Renesmee’s honestly sounds more like mind control.

Thank you!

I don't really love the classification system that's used in Twilight, as it reminds the nerd in me of how unsupervised k-means AI classification will work: it looks at the data points and says "Okay, these are different enough from the rest and similar enough to each other that they're probably related. Alright alright, this cluster must be blue."

You also, when doing this type of classification, want to tell the computer how many categories it's looking for, which depends on the size of the data set, and the type.

It's not a perfect analogy to what Eleazar is doing, but he reminds me more of a k-means cluster than he does Charles von Linné, who was a brilliant biologist who invented the modern system of naming and categorizing organisms that we use today.

He looks at the gifted vampire he is presented, compares it to other gifts he has known, and assigns a similar category if he finds one that's similar. This, famously, leads to such differences as psychic and physical gifts (which to me is such a "Are you a computer trying your best with unlabelled classification? Are you having a hard time?" thing to which the computer would sadly admit "yes :(") where what's assigned a physical gift and what's assigned a psychic gift seems so incredibly arbitrary and contradictory that I can only assume somebody got ahead of themselves with "A and B are similar. B and C are similar. A, B, and C must be the same category!" and now they have a problem.

As an example: Aro and Edward are similar. They both read your mind. They have clear differences, however, as Aro requires physical touch to do so and Edward requires doesn't, while Aro is able to read all the thoughts you've ever had while Edward can read every mind within the area. You can classify them as mind readers, sure. Now you have a category describing "vampire who can read minds".

Demetri, according to Edward himself, is also similar to Edward. They both sense a person's mind, without need of touch. However, Demetri senses location, Edward doesn't, and Edward senses thoughts, Demetri doesn't. Edward is limited by geographical distance, Demetri is limited by one degree of Kevin Bacon. But if we want to classify them, then mind sensing might be the best way to do so. Both can stand in a room and, without moving a muscle, have a sense of every mind around them and they will gain information others can't.

Aro and Demetri, however, have very little in common. Their common denominator is that it "has to do with the mind".

Now for added difficulty: how do we classify Renesmee? She can by touching people convey her thoughts. This seems to be something she needs to block rather than choose to show, as people can touch her to see her thoughts when she's unconscious.

Is she then in the same category as Aro and Edward, or we create a parent category for "something to do with mind reading" and Aro and Edward are a shared subcategory for reading the minds of others well Renesmee is in sharing her mind, or is Edward off on his own with non-tactile mind-reading while Aro and Renesmee get a shared subcategory for tactile mind-reading-related? Does Demetri belong higher up in the tree, at the "mind sensing" junction before the others split off into the "something to do with mind reading" subtree?

The reason why I ask these questions, is to illustrate how meaningless it all is. There are so few gifted vampires in Twilight that we don't have enough data points to start looking for meaningful classification or similarities. Aro, Demetri, Edward, and Renesmee are all unique, with gifts unique to them. God knows that if my theory that Renesmee's real gift is to make people not want to hurt her, then she's suddenly in the same camp as Renata, who makes people forget what they were doing when they try.

Except Renata's gift is to disorient people when they get physically close, Renesmee's is to make them not want to hurt her in the first place. If we classify them together, then I don't think Renata can be classified as a shield anymore. The impenetrable space around her would only be a materialization of her gift, which is to dissuade attackers from entering that space.

Which brings me to the next point: the so-called psychic vs. physical gift division.

It depends entirely on how you classify these gifts. What makes Jasper and Alice's gifts physical? Jasper can manipulate and sense emotions, how is that different from Alec, Jane, Kate, and Zafrina manipulating your sense reseptors? Alice can see things which may happen, how is that physical if Edward seeing thoughts and Zafrina creating elaborate illusions isn't?

Benjamin, surely, must be physical. Except his gift is the only one of its kind in canon, no similarities to anyone else, which means he proves that vampire gifts can truly be anything and there's no point in trying to classify them in relation to one another when the population is so small and the unknown potential for gifts so vast.

I think I have argued here in favor of tags, or attributes: you identify something a gift can do, and you don't try to draw similarities, for yonder lies nothing but subjective opinion.

Renesmee can be similar to Aro for "shares thoughts by touch", to Jane by "imparts illusions on one individual at a time", potentially to Renata for "dissuades attackers", and is canonically compared to her father's gift. It depends entirely on how you interpret and want to classify their gifts. And sure, you can do that, no one is stopping you from classifying in any way you want, but the trouble is that you now have a system that's extremely vulnerable to expansion and changes to entries.

There's also the matter of usefulness - the tracker category, which encompasses all vampires who are good at finding others, is a useful one. Some vampires will be able to use their gift, whatever it is, to find you, others won't. I respect that category. I also respect calling Aro and Edward mind readers, it's what they are.

What I don't respect is wanting to categorize every gifted vampire, nor attempting larger classification and to cluster them. The similarities are just that, similarities.

Eleazar is overzealous.

[browniesarethebest]

In the Sam is God AU, do you have any ideas for why Sam and the Archangels sealed the Darkness away? Like, was she a genuine threat to Sam and his kids? Or was it more she kept breaking Sam’s “sandbox” (aka the universe) or they had an argument that got out of hand?

And will Dean somehow end up in the middle trying to break up a fight between two Cosmic deities trying to commit fratricide (and the angels are waiting in the wings to either help their father or die trying to avenge him)

It pretty much was for the original reason in the show. She was destroying everything He was creating. She was more a threat to the Archangels than God!Sam, and He didn't want her destroying anything else.

I imagine Dean would, but in this AU there's an added angle that he is Sam's brother but Amara is technically Sam's sister. There's a lot of very interesting confrontations about this. Amara is very angry about being locked away but she's also jealous when she sees Sam and Dean acting brotherly towards each other.

[ashilrak]

For Haunt Me Then—, if Kassandra’s curse was broken, and her soul was able to go to the Underworld, what form would she assume, do you think? Her original form? Her most recent incarnation? An amalgamation of features from her many incarnations? Oh, or could she change from one form or another at will (maybe something like Aphrodite’s shapeshifting ability)?

I've never thought about that! @mrthology and I have conferred and have decided that she'd probably show up as Kassandra, but since it's the underworld there probably aren't That many rules, so honestly it's up to interpretation!

[percabeth4life]

something that has always bugged me about the battle of manhattan is about the campers defending all of the bridges and splintering a handful of groups that could easily be culled by superior numbers.

I am not great at geography, but I feel like it would have made more sense for the campers to destroy the majority of the bridges—or at least make them impassable—and concentrate their efforts on bottle-necking Kronos’s forces and picking them off instead of dividing their forces as they are so small in number (I forget how many there actually were but I know that even with the Hunters of Artemis there were less than a hundred defenders total).

It’s been a good while since I read the books though, so is there some logic there (aside from not wanting to draw the attention of the unknowing mortals) that I’m missing that calls for the strategy Percy and the other demigods/hunters used?

Well, destroying the bridges definitely would've taken time. Lots of explosives, rigging them, getting all the people off the bridge, etc etc. Might as well just guard them at that point lol.

[percabeth4life]

Happy holidays, and I hope you are doing well (or are able to everything that you need to feel/get well if not).

Would you happen know anything about the significance of women wearing veils in Ancient Greece or at least be able to point me in the right direction?

I read that Icarius, Penelope’s father wasn't willing to let her leave with Odysseus until after she covered herself with a veil that apparently symbolized she was under Odysseus’s protection, but what I can’t find out how Icarus figured that out.

(Also, I’ve been trying to figure out which translation of the Odyssey to buy for myself and I think I’ve decided on Emily Wilson’s after seeing a post of yours this last week, so thanks!)

We don't actually know for sure what the reasoning for it was, though there are multiple possible reasons.

A veil was after all a symbol of modesty, and even status to a certain extent. Especially in its original purpose (you could be lashed in the Assyrian times for wearing a veil if you were a slave). So it's possible that it was tied to that.

Veils and weddings have been tied together for a long time. The earliest time that we have reasoning for is the Roman's, in latest record I know. Which was a symbol of the husbands authority or something along those lines. The Greeks? We don't really know the reason behind it.

Here's a Few Sources Talking About it

[percabeth4life]

I have a couple of Percy Jackson reincarnation fanfics brewing (nothing written yet), that I want to write with something of a blending of the canons of PJO, the Odyssey and Iliad and Epic the Musical (which is a loose adaptation of the Odyssey). Any suggestions on how to make that work?

It depends on what way you do it. I mean, I've seen a few different ideas and they're all really interesting. You'd need something there to finangle the memory bit imo. And who is who? How would it affect their behavior? Is Percy Odysseus? Or Telemachus? Is Thalia Penelope? or Annabeth? Basically, you need to decide who is reincarnated first into who, and that influences A Lot.

[percabeth4life]

I have a fanfic idea for PJO that includes a reincarnated Pallas (Triton’s daughter) who was in a relationship with Athena prior to the accident that killed her. But would this conflict with Athena’s status as a maiden goddess?

Well, this is a debatable subject.

In the strictest definition of the term? No. As it is a not a male/female relationship it is not considered breaking of maidenhood by ancient Greek standards.

I could go on about technical analysis of Athena as a Goddess, however at the point of her time with Pallas she was still "growing up" if you will. She was learning and becoming and all that so- even then I'm not sure it would conflict with her nature.