Moony

Like I said I am a bit divided. On one hand it is a great way to express creativity to imagine the protagonists of greek mythos in situations not mentioned in their myths and create scenarios in one's head. On one hand one uses the excuse of "the ancients did it too" kind of thing and up to one point it is a right hypothesis given how many ancient writers, each for their own reasons, created stories that do not necessarily correspond to mythical counterparts (and if they do, we have lost them so we cannot confirm) but on the other hand one must be very much aware that in antiquity they meant something different than what it means today.

Ancient writers created stories based on their personal beliefs and religion or tradition (kinda similar to how many christian traditions have been created by christians or dunno shinto traditions by shinto believers etc.) so to equate someone's pleasure with antiquity and its meaning seems too outstretched. Also it seems like treating the ancient religion like a "fandom" and that is an interestingly complicated matter. On one hand it is a creative way for people to come in contact with the past. On the other hand though it would be equivalent let's say in a post-christian era, people start...shipping biblical people or people mentioned in muslim tradition etc. that do not have fully documented historical credibility and claim it is "shipping". For the ancient greeks their mythical characters were their religion, their ancestry and their legendary past. It was their reasoning of moving around the Mediterannean and their expansion of culture; it was their own reasoning for their very existence up to one point.

Therefore although I do like to see people explore the possibilities (sometimes their ideas are very well based or well-supported with arguments as well almost entering the sphere of interpretation rather than just "fan shipping") but I cannot say I am being ecstatic with this obsession over them. Especially nowadays that for some reason we started shipping literally every character that happens to be in the same frame and narrative as someone else (let's say people involved in the Trojan War or the Odyssey). It is as if two characters are not allowed to exist in the same frame anymore for people unless they are somehow romantically involved

It is as if two characters no longer can have chemistry without someone casually thinking they must be making out in a dark corner. True some scholiasts of ancient times (particularly late roman and early medieval times ones) kinda opened the path for this by speaking on some "pairings" that do not always correspond to ancient sources to our knowledge but I thnk nowadays is being blasted out of proportion and again it feels as if just because these stories are now to the sphere of "fairy tale" for nowadays people with different set of beliefs, that means it is automatically free game to do whatever with them, ignoring or reducing the importance they had to the people in the past

So as far as I am concerned I am happy to explore the pairs of greek mythology (or any mythology in general) even through the lenses of "modern dialog" or funny situations or stuff like that but I usually stick to the pairs of the actual ancient sources or things that scholiasts mention that have some sort of correspondance to ancient sources. Which is why you will see me writing my own fanfictions and retellings even adding random dialogs or stuff like that but by n large I will not "ship" characters that do not exist one way or another in the ancient sources as a couple together.