Anghraine

I was getting pretty tired of Ovid, but there’s nothing like grading to make me appreciate his general murder and mayhem.

Tagged: #i like teaching literature #i do not like assigning grades

colorwheels14 responded to this post:

I get the sense that tumblr is in love with the modern reinterpretations, rather than the Roman version.

I replied:

I’m not sure, tbh—well, they’re not usually thinking of the Roman version but the Greek versions and claiming that Persephone actually consented/wanted to go/something or other, but I don’t think it’s exclusively modern reinterpretations.

heget said:

little me reading picture books of mythology loved this myth, then hermes’s birth and theft of cattle, and a distant third was orphesus and euridice

I replied:

Little me mostly felt sorry for Demeter/Ceres :(

(But my faves were always “anything with Athena in it,” lol.)

moggett responded to this post:

True! But I remember being annoyed her transformation wasn’t even a story of her own, just an adjunct to somebody else! 😠

I replied:

That’s very fair! The Metamorphoses doesn’t even explain why it happens or who causes it, the sisters are just mourning and then, wham, poplars.

My girl Liriope is mostly just present as Narcissus’s mother, so she has a pretty bad go of it as an adjunct to someone else’s story, too :(

I take short breaks between one horrific story and the next, and I thought … okay, if there were an Ovidverse campaign and all the players were demigods, how would I build one?

…And now I have a character sheet open and am trying to decide between aasimar paladin and storm sorcerer. >_<

Tagged: #running over a name i really like (even in the actual character has a terrible story) sealed the deal

It’s really easy to imagine the Metamorphoses as a D&D campaign with a truly malevolent DM.

Tagged: #alternately: it's a beautiful day in greece and you are a terrible god #idk it alternates in this really peculiar way between genuinely awful things and d:os style hilariously awful things #with little flashes of 'surprisingly not awful' things here and there #kind of begs to be a game #i know there are a ton of games that use this stuff too but ... idk. a very particular kind of game

Onto Book 2 of the Metamorphoses and “Phaëthon and Phoebus”! This one is interesting because I didn’t really dislike anyone in it? Or at least not their actions?

Sure, Jupiter kills Phaëthon, and you understand why Phoebus is so upset about it, but also Phaëthon was burning up so much of creation that even Pluto was going wtf??? down in Tartarus and Earth herself begged Jupiter to do it. Phaëthon was kind of annoying, but just in a kid-out-of-his-depth way.

IDK, it was interesting to read one with a bunch of gods in it and people having semi-decent motivations for their actions.

Tagged: #in fairness a bunch of phaëthon's relatives get transformed for no apparent reason #but we don't know who did it so ... #also interesting: if anyone is at fault here it's phoebus for making such a rash offer to a mortal boy #but i think the narrative is /very/ sympathetic to him while describing jupiter as 'fashioning excuses' #so if anyone is coming off badly it is—yet again—jupiter #aka celestial augustus

Back to my Aeneid notes, and I really love this description of the morning star:

Like the Morning Star, loved by Venus
As no other star, when it rises from Ocean,
A sacred light in the sky melting the dark.

Eärendil!!!

Tagged: #look this has reminded me of tolkien multiple times but ESPECIALLY this passage