Propagation

One of the things that I really enjoyed about the "Epic of Gilgamesh" is that Gilgamesh is a shitty person. Like, he's a king and two-thirds divine and all that, a warrior among warriors, his experiences could not be more different from the average person, and yet none of that saves him. I think the messages about grief and mortality hit as hard as they do because he's so selfish and privileged and awful at the beginning, before being irreversibly changed by friendship and love and loss and regret. He has all of this classical "greatness" and that does not spare him. He has been changed and chooses to change, and there's no miraculous reward for that. None of the widespread pain he's caused and is still capable of causing his subjects spares him either. There's something striking in seeing this greedy, cruel, mythologically "heroic" figure be so deeply humbled by a universal tragedy; to see him essentially crying out, "Not even me?" and receiving the firm answer of, "No, not even you."

I can’t even explain why I love this so much

me anytime i'm analyzing a piece of media: but y'know what if. we compared it to the Epic of Gilgamesh

So excited for this!