#patrichilles

[caught-in-the-afterglow]

Song of Achilles rant (spoilers) - open to other opinions

I just finished The Song of Achilles and I'm reeling. I feel like Madeline Miller does so well at showing Achilles' pride getting the best of him and a sort of downfall in his character that costs him immensly. I mean I feel like, as Patroclus describes, he is a genuinely kind and soft-hearted person who trusts, smiles and laughs easily. He wants the world to be fair and doesn't understand why the Gods aren't. However, he can be arrogant and dismissive of others feelings, aside from Patroclus.

I think the author portrays really well how Achilles partly enjoyed killing and the bloodshed, but mostly enjoyed showing off and using his abilities and skills and most of all the praise and admiration. However this gets to his head. I can understand why, given how he was raised being told of the prophecy and that he'd be the best of the Greeks. And he was quite literally made and born for war. But his desire for fame and fear of not being remembered like he had been promised and wanted became so obsessive. And he was so blinded by his anger at Agamemnon and wanting him to beg that he makes HORRIBLE decisions that cost a lot of lives and costs him Patroclus in the end. You can really see it cloud his judgement and he can't see past the need for fame. I also love how even despite how much Patroclus loves him he tries to call him out on it and tries to get him to help the Greeks.

I wish a life with Patroclus could have been enough, and I don't know if losing Patroclus makes him realize the wrong he did or if it only drove him off the edge (and I think Briseis was mostly right in what she said after Patroclus died). I still love their love story and am obsessed with this book though.

Did anyone else think of it like this? It pained me to see his character go into what felt like a spiral that he didn't get to come out of in a good way.

Thoughts? I have no one to discuss this with.

[scarbordoefair]

I just finished The Song of Achilles and I’m SAD so here’s me in the denial stage drawing one of my favorite scenes from it.

[taesmintpods]

i am begging for someone to draw achilles when he was a dancer and pretending to be a girl please i need this

[amzarashi]

“I have done it," she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. A C H I L L E S, it reads. And beside it, P A T R O C L U S. "Go," she says. "He waits for you." In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.” ― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

[bisexualwentworth]

On Patroclus, Achilles, and Race

After going through most of every tag related to Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend: Achilles is ALWAYS portrayed as golden-haired and with significantly lighter skin, while Patroclus looks more traditionally Mediterranean. Is this because Achilles’ mother is a goddess? Because that would be assuming that the Greek gods were all much whiter than the Greek people, which logically doesn’t make sense. And because Achilles is such a godlike character, this portrayal of him idealizes light-skinned, light-haired people even more and says that they should be worshipped by people with darker skin (much darker, in some pictures–like, they may be from the Mediterranean but they’re still white, y’all). And this continues to feed into this idea that Patroclus was some quiet, needy weakling who just lived for Achilles and was totally subservient to him, when in fact if you’ve actually read the Iliad, you know that he is actually a fantastic warrior in his own right and no one but Hector can take him down and that besides that he’s very opinionated and a strong character. Ugh.

So long story short, when I get around to casting my webseries, I’m going to try to stick with my original conceptions of golden-hair Patoclus (Patrick) and POC (probably Hispanic) Achilles, which I now realize goes against the vision of everyone else in the Achilles/Patroclus corner of the internet.

[numptiewarmth]

the boys at peleus' court: we dem boyz

[scarbordoefair]

Achilles brainworms time.

So what if Thetis loathed Patroclus so much she took him to the sea-nymph caves to get him away from Achilles?

[rchardpapn]

The world is too quiet without you nearby. — achilles + patroclus