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Random big thoughts

This movie felt like it was made for high school English teachers to show but then 95% of the way through making it, they were like actually nevermind and added in some f-bombs and a few (like 2-3 nonsexual nudity) shots of asses to solve the problem. 

Odysseus hates the gods and at times barely believes in them, but also refuses to push back against anything that could be seen as a prophecy. It’s so fucking weird because it’s equivalent to a modern atheist being like “Christianity is dumb and probably a crock of bullshit, also don’t lie because it’s a sin and God will be mad”.

I wrote this down verbatim, “An Odysseus that hesitates about returning to Ithaca is like the sun hesitating to rise” and I do believe I cooked with that. Same is true with a Penelope that doubts Odysseus and a Telemachus that doesn’t need a father, which this movie has.

Here’s the thing, up until Odysseus lands in Ithaca, the movie is fine. It isn’t good, it isn’t horrific, it’s a little cringe and a little irritating for me as an enjoyer of the Odyssey, but it wasn’t bad. If I turned off my brain from know-it-all Greek mythology enjoyer Asha to action movie enjoyer Asha, I think I could have had a decent time. However, it all falls apart when Odysseus returns home, any ounce of characterization is crushed to bits and it just sucks and makes no sense. Reminder, I honestly enjoyed the Troy: Fall of a City miniseries so accuracy is not always my hill to die on but god, I would like the hill to at least be in eyesight.

Random little thoughts (in no order)

UGLYYYYYYY ass costumes like I knew they were bad but it’s such an eyesore. There was not a single outfit that I was like “that looks nice”.

This is one of the first movies I’ve ever seen where I wanted MORE gore and MORE things that made me sick to my stomach. Like, show me Odysseus’s men starving, show me blood spraying down when men are taken by Scylla, show me more soldiers drowning. 

They massacred the characterization of every woman (fork found in kitchen, Nolan can’t write women, but still)

There’s a lot of things in this film that changing from poem to movie was pointless. My most memorable example of this being that Eumaeus is visually impaired, Eumaeus also at one point says Odysseus was like a son to him. These aren’t huge deals and don’t affect the plot but to those amongst us who enjoy the Odyssey, it’s just annoying.

Iphigenia is sacrificed by Agamemnon before Odysseus leaves Ithaca?????????

There’s a lot of time and plot spent centered on Argos (yeah the dog).

Odysseus only has 3 ships the whole film, holyyyyy budget cuts. 

On Calypso’s island, Odysseus forgets everything because she keeps drugging him with lotus flowers. He doesn’t remember how he got to her island, doesn’t remember his family or Ithaca until she like… weans him off and he starts to remember that. He basically feels none of the time pass.

Half of Helen’s face is physically scarred from the Trojan War, it’s implied that Menelaus mutilated her. There’s a disgusting line where Menelaus says, “this is the face that launched a thousand ships, although now it would maybe be five-hundred.” GROSS

The Laestrygonians look like cybermen and no I will not elaborate.

There is a scene where Athena’s temple is destroyed in Troy and it’s implied that whatever happens to the temple, happens to the god. (like a soldier wacks off Athena’s statue’s head, it switches to a scene of Athena being held down and nearly decapitated) It’s a neat idea but in a movie where the gods are ridiculed by the main character, it just doesn’t work.

No Achilles or Anticleia in the underworld SIGHHH

No Nestor or Peisistratus SIGGGGGHHHHHH they hate to see yappers represented.

Telemachus and Odysseus’s reunion is so ass, like there’s no bout of emotional resonance at all, they’re two worlds apart.

Telemachus sucks as a character Tom Holland you are British how did you make Telemachus so fucking American. No one talk to me about Telemachus he sucked so fucking bad in this movie.

No wedding bed anything insane and might I add fucking crazy. Again, this is classic Odyssey stuff.

At the end of the movie, Odysseus and Penelope travel west(?) and leave Telemachus as king of Ithaca, to honor the fallen soldiers. This is the Greek mythology equivalent of retired American couples moving to Florida I think.

The Cyclops

The cyclops doesn’t speak to Odysseus (the men don’t even know it’s a sentient being until after they stab it in the eye) which means we get no “Nobody” scene which is already a travesty because I fear that’s classic Odysseus. And I do feel like the cyclops being more of a monster ruins the whole point of it being about breaking xenia. If Polyphemus is just an unnamed monster, what makes him any different from Scylla or Charybdis???  

Small thing to be pissy about but to get past the cyclops they tied hay to their back instead of hanging from the bellies of the sheep.

We also get no scene of hubris from Odysseus, again this is classic Odysseus.

The Suitors

Antinous called beggar Odysseus a “platelicker” and then after a few times I swear on my life he said “platelicka” it was insane and I wish I was joking 

This movie creates a lot of Antinous lore that I think is fairly unnecessary since Antinous already had lore (Eupiethes’s pirate background) but let me explain the Antinous lore to the best of my memory.

So Odysseus holds a lottery for his army. A young Antinous and a younger Sinon draw lots and Antinous draws the lot that indicates he will fight. Sinon, maybe 13 years old, swaps their lots because he wants to go to war with Odysseus. Antinous (probably 16-18 years old) tries to protest but Odysseus won’t let them change back. Antinous interprets this as “Odysseus knew he might not come back and wanted me to be in charge of Ithaca”. 

Penelope is in the hall right before Odysseus starts killing, inaccurate but why I mention this here is because she doesn’t let Melantho come with the women to safety. She leaves her in the hall to die in the slaughter. Now if you know me you know I am an Melantho ENJOYER and so I hate to see my girl done badly (maybe the Melantho shit will be it’s own rant).

Antinous x Melantho I CALLED THAT THEY WOULD DO THAT A YEAR AGO

In the end, Odysseus doesn’t kill all the suitors (although he does kill Antinous). Insane because to make things right in Ithaca Odysseus HAS to kill the suitors. It’s the reason that he kills the 12 disloyal maids in the poem because if they live, they represent his own failures blah blah blah whatever I hate it here.

The gods (or lack of)

Athena is the only god with form we see and I’m going to be real honest with you, I didn’t have the brain power to try to figure out what was going on with her. 

Zeus does destroy the ship after the sun god’s cows thing and let me just say if you can’t handle flashing lights this is not ur film because the lightning goes CRAZY and not in a good interesting way but in a “my retinas are burned out” way.

No Hermes and no Aeolus sorry my plot scaffolding kings.

“Asha, did you like anything in this movie?”

Probably surprising but yes. When Odysseus’s men are turned to pigs by Circe, she has to physically mold them from man to pigs so she like… rips their hair out and pulls their ears and pushes up their noses until they turn to pigs which was so fucking fascinating to me. I hated the Circe scenes with her and Odysseus but goddamn Nolan you cooked with that body horror. Like, if the ending of this movie wasn’t hot garbage I would recommend it for that scene alone.

I also thought the scenes pre-Trojan war in Ithaca were cute, newlywed OdyPen and Odysseus being like a father figure to the younger men of Ithaca (maybe 2 mins of screen time altogether, not much to write home about but I enjoyed the scraps we got).

Soundtrack was good occasionally

Main Situation

So, back in November I wanna say, I was running an event where we would create Black edits of Dionysus from Hades Game. It was really fun! But apparently, people had a problem with that, and I ended up being told about it. I admit it made me extremely angry because while I am used to antiblackness from the Greek Mythology space on here, they don't get to potentially ruin everyone else's fun with their bigotry. Not in the safe, pro-Black space I'm building here, not this time.

Someone in particular, who went by @/Opal0684 , decided that they wanted to misunderstand my belief of "Afro-Greeks are real and always have been, and you don't get to say we aren't allowed to depict mythological figures as such, especially when it does not overtake the endless depictions of them as white," as "Greeks are Black".

This is a common misconception, one that I am starting to believe is on purpose, as it deflects blame from their true issue, which is that I'm depicting their favorites as Black. Anywho, they decided to go on the aforementioned racist run in my notes. A run that includes the sentence "saying Afro-Greeks are impossible isn't hating on anybody, it's just historically accurate." 😐🙃

Margaret chose to reach out to me directly. A respectable act! But when I asked her to overtly confront and disagree with said racist Opal, because she has a history of agreeing with said user on her own page, she dodged it altogether. Now, a peer of hers, @/galusandmalus, at the time accused me of not showing her comments and therefore her perspective. So, this time, I will show you the full conversation and you can come to your own conclusion.

Now, idk about you, but me? If I didn't want to be seen as agreeing with my past sentiments in front of someone harmed by them, especially if I see them as bigoted and inaccurate, I would loudly disagree! Instead, after I blocked her for this and publicly showed that I would not be forgiving her, Margaret took the time to rebrand to @/starweaverblog. You can also find that evidence in this same thread.

"Mean girl drama". Suffice it to say I firmly disagree with you, Ms. Jeanne, that that's what I was experiencing here.

Next Situation

As mentioned earlier, I do not believe that people who willingly cavort with racists can avoid that they, too, are racist. We will address some of those things here.

Around that same conversation in November, I had to deal with @/gemsofgreece (another person that Margaret and other peers publicly have interacted with) on what was an incoherently racist rant talking about the "hopefully small African American Woke Community", trying to colonize Greece and its stories in a way akin to Western Imperialism". It begs the question why someone would even answer a question that begins with the ask "why are foreigners obsessed with-" 🤔 unless... why are the "foreigners" obsessed with WHAT 🤔

Now I will admit, that phrase was kind of hilarious and we did have fun with that. Anyway.

Another person trying to pull the argument that I said "Ancient Greeks were all Black" and not "Afro Greeks existed in Ancient Greece". The overt tones of fear of Great Replacement- a white supremacist belief- ring quite loud. 😐 I'm going to be real. If that phrase doesn't also sound like a hysterical line right out of a Fox News/right wing network headline to you... Idk. But to me, it speaks for itself.

Next Situation

There's both a lot and nothing to say about the casual racism of her and Galus' peer @/katerinaaqu. From witnessing her live on someone's post casually saying that "North African Diomedes' dreadlocks and dark skin haunts her" (and I do know someone- @droodlebug -who also saw her say that, live), to subtweeting about my fanfic being insulting because I dared use an Ethiopian singer's works in an AU where I made Patroclus Black, that means absolutely nothing to anyone or anything because it's FANFICTION... Like. 😐 Just racist over silly shit that could be kept in her head, digging holes for people who won't publicly defend her.

I truly believe if you just ASKED any of these folks directly- and she has been asked- "do you believe that some people in these stories can be depicted as Black", they're going to give you the runaround of how it'll only be acceptable "if" and "who". And it's not hard to tell why someone would do that. Because apparently you have to have permission and follow certain rules to draw people Black in these stories for fun. I wonder why that's not expected of white depictions? 🤔 I wonder what those rules will be? 🤔 I wonder why this energy isn't being expended under the creative pieces of everyone drawing Anglo Saxon blondes? 🤔

Last Situation

This is getting long. So! In case you feel like all of my notes here are solely directed towards my personal experiences of antiblackness, I understand. If I cited to you the creators of all the whitewashed Hades Patrocluses, we'd really be here forever, so I won't do that. Just know that it is very normalized to be antiblack in this space.

But, for proof that the culture of the space itself is not just antiblack, but racist as a whole, there are other users who have been harassed, some to the point of silence and leaving the app, for depicting any of these mythological characters as anything other than white. Dionysus-drawers like @mcsiggy seem to be a common target (Dionysus must be a favorite lmao); really all you have to do is draw a piece of that man and his wife while Not White and if they see it, here comes the microaggressive complaints.

There was also an entire anti-Asian campaign online with @/alatismeni-theitsa (yet another peer) because people had the audacity to enjoy the depiction of Hermes from Hades as Chinese or some other sort of Asian (because apparently South Asian Dionysus is cool, but THAT'S ALL!) Because I'm not of that community, I don't want to speak for them. I just wanted to let you know that while these folks seem to really hate Negroes, the smoke is available for anyone that isn't white! And once again- there's a term for that!

I'm just exhausted of the very obvious culture of white supremacy in the Greek mythology and Classics spacebeing denied. I don't know how anyone could walk into it and not notice it's a Whites Only space (except for the Approved Tokens), with anyone who does enjoy diversity pushed to the outskirts for safety. These are not connections made by happenstance; you can only be a comfortable bigot in a space where bigotry is deemed comfortable. We could at least be honest about it!

In Conclusion

I'm well aware that I will probably be called a bully for pointing out these people's acts. So be it. 🤷🏾‍♀️ If the violence of racism isn't harassment, why would pointing it out be? "Why do you have all this" well I wouldn't have to if people believed in Black people's pain and experiences when they said it 🤷🏾‍♀️

And you, Ms. Jeanne, said that you'd take perspectives as long as they weren't anonymous. I don't feel the need to call out racism anonymously! If the racism was public, the response should be. You- any of you- can always find me here and ask me questions and I will answer you outright- I literally do this every day. For free! And I know what racism looks like because I experience it. Every day. For free!

I am firmly against the idea that racists can seek out white forgiveness for their actions. That's unacceptable. While I understand where you're coming from, you do not get to make the call that Margaret isn't racist- she doesn't get to make that call! Not when you've got users of color and witnesses who could beg to differ! "Not racist" SINCE WHEN?

And while these are just racists kekeing on the internet, my genuine concern here is YOU, Ms. Jeanne, because you said that you're a professor. A teacher! Your word and your beliefs will be passed down to your students. And I worry that you might be spending time with folks that will reflect poorly upon you, or whose beliefs might slip into yours.

What gets taught to the next generation becomes normalized. And those students are gonna have peers of color. You may have students of color! You publish books! People are gonna read what you say, internalize the things that you believe! So I would like to believe you would choose to do the right thing.