Unbetitelt

Odysseus: Because Percy is about to retrace the Odyssey and I'm a sucker for Percy being confronted with his father's mean side. Throw in Penelope, too, because Odysseus won't do it otherwise and the girls at camp deserve to have an actual adult woman around for once.

Herakles: Would be a very logical choice, and it would be a cool character arc for Percy to start admiring Herakles during SoM and then learn about his less glamorous stuff during tTC.

Perseus, Jason, or Theseus: All could have interesting dynamics with Percy. Perseus with being his namesake (and throw in Andromeda too because the girls at camp deserve to have an actual adult woman around for once), Jason being the original Fleece-seeker, and Theseus being the most famous demigod of Poseidon.

Sappho: Have I mentioned before how the girls at camp deserve to have an actual adult woman around for once?

Colonial America, maybe.

The way Europeans talk about North America when they say it reveals everything about the way they think.

To them, history here didn’t start until they arrived. Not until the so called real people with real culture and real architecture and real timelines stepped off a boat.

Everything before that gets treated like fog, like background noise, like a blank landscape waiting to be drawn on.

Like the Europeans arrived here and just found a land untouched by human hands ready for them to Manifest (European) Destiny in, instead of, like, a continent full of nations older than most European countries, with civilizations, trade routes, astronomy, agriculture, laws, stories, cities, innovations, relationships to the land that go further back than many of the languages used to belittle them.

When Europeans say “America is big,” they don’t even mean the actual land full of over 500 nations of distinct peoples.

They mean the unmarked page they imagine they wrote on. When they say “Europe is old,” they mean “ours is the old that matters.” The implication is always that Indigenous history doesn’t count as history at all, that Indigenous people were somehow outside the timeline until colonialism kicked the clock into motion.

I’m tired of watching it walk by unchallenged and seeing it drift by unchallenged.

North America wasn’t waiting to be discovered.

It wasn’t empty wilderness.

It wasn’t without time or culture or memory.

It was already ancient when the Europeans arrived.

Treating Indigenous people like footnotes or shadows just makes it embarrassingly obvious that a lot of Europeans still don’t see them as real people with real history, real innovation, and real presence.

Colonial America, maybe.

The way Europeans talk about North America when they say it reveals everything about the way they think.

To them, history here didn’t start until they arrived. Not until the so called real people with real culture and real architecture and real timelines stepped off a boat.

Everything before that gets treated like fog, like background noise, like a blank landscape waiting to be drawn on.

Like the Europeans arrived here and just found a land untouched by human hands ready for them to Manifest (European) Destiny in, instead of, like, a continent full of nations older than most European countries, with civilizations, trade routes, astronomy, agriculture, laws, stories, cities, innovations, relationships to the land that go further back than many of the languages used to belittle them.

When Europeans say “America is big,” they don’t even mean the actual land full of over 500 nations of distinct peoples.

They mean the unmarked page they imagine they wrote on. When they say “Europe is old,” they mean “ours is the old that matters.” The implication is always that Indigenous history doesn’t count as history at all, that Indigenous people were somehow outside the timeline until colonialism kicked the clock into motion.

I’m tired of watching it walk by unchallenged and seeing it drift by unchallenged.

North America wasn’t waiting to be discovered.

It wasn’t empty wilderness.

It wasn’t without time or culture or memory.

It was already ancient when the Europeans arrived.

Treating Indigenous people like footnotes or shadows just makes it embarrassingly obvious that a lot of Europeans still don’t see them as real people with real history, real innovation, and real presence.

Can we talk about how Rick Riordan read about demigods and inmediately chose to call them half-bloods?

First of all, it's not a word that ancient Greeks used: those who were considered "superior to mankind, but inferior to the gods", to say it somehow, were called demigods or heroes. Pretty sure it started being used during the Middle Ages, as... literally, as a term, to call those who were of "mixed race" during the colonization of America. It originated from that, and it many negative connotations: pretty sure it could be considered a slur. And he KNOWS this. At least, I want to think he does. I mean, explain this:

Yeah, Rick, it's good that you wanna point out the discrimination Indigenous and African people suffer, but I think Piper' and Carter's discomfort with that name could be erased by simply not calling them that. It is really unnecessry. Sure, you could add a scene in which someone calls demigods that, be it with ill intentions or just as a misconception, but both ways could serve to show the characters' upsetness before such name.

Don't you think, Rick, I don't know, it comes to my mind... that there are better ways to call the children of gods? I believe that throwing this word around like it's nothing in a children's book is... questionable, to say the least. It minimizes what the word half-blood meant. What it was used and is still used for.

"Oh, but he does call them heroes and demigods!" Oh, so he IS able to not use a racial slur for his literal childrens book, huh? Not to mention, he STILL called it "Half-Blood Camp" and the term that is used the most is still that one.

I've counted just The Lightning Thief, but the word half-blood is said like 60 times, the word hero is said like 50 and the word demigod is said only 6 times.

It doesn't really matter if it's the corruption of sacred rites, or entertaining the idea that elections, court rulings, basic freedoms, constitutions can be defied or denied if you don't like the results or you don't like what they defend. It's all about tearing up the structure that makes our life as we know it possible.

But you're only saying that because you don't think Greek Mythology deserves to be treated with any type of respect for it's cultural background.

Nolan rejected the expert in re-constructing Greek Armour, then procedeed to cast not a single Greek for the production, then he littered the places of Greece where he filmed, and had a scene where Odysseus talks to an stranger. The stranger speaks greek and Odysseus, the greek, does not understand him.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Part of that is a theme Nolan was entirely uninterested in — at least compared to “war is bad and watching your friends die is sad.” But a huge theme of the Odyssey is foreignness and how can be dangerous, the way to act when facing alien cultures and people who don’t act the way you think they should. Odysseus himself is spurning his own Greek culture and customs at every turn (which is its own massive issue), so of course the movie couldn’t explore this theme, but…it’s such a big focal point.

The Importance of the Phaeacians:

So many books of the Odyssey are spent exploring xenia (which the film calls “Zeus’s law” and also grossly misinterprets, which is its own post). For so long, the formula is “Odysseus and his men arrive on a foreign island, whoever lives there violates xenia in some way, the Ithacans escape but with some casualties.” It’s one of the most formulaic aspects of the story.

Which is why it’s very pointed that he recounts all those awful violations of xenia while he is a guest of the Phaeacians. Who are foreign, whose island is strange to him, but who follow xenia to the point of self-detriment.

Like, it is prophesied that the Phaeacians will someday help a man hated by Poseidon (who is their patron god) and in doing so lose his favor and doom themselves. They know this prophecy. They know that the degree to which they welcome and help foreigners will someday destroy them. They hear Odysseus’ story and realize that Poseidon hates him. And they send him home with an honor guard and a ship full of treasure anyway.

Isn’t that important? That Odysseus tells a story about the danger of people who are different and foreign, only to receive his greatest blessings and ultimate happy ending thanks to the help of people who are foreign, but not actually so different from him after all.

The Importance of Odysseus telling his story to the Phaeacians:

Here’s the thing: the most classic books of the Odyssey, the ones everyone thinks of when they first read it — the Lastrygones and Polyphemus and Circe and Scylla/Charybdis and the cattle — all of those are told in first person by Odysseus.

Wily Odysseus of many tricks and tonuges. Odysseus, known for his many disguises and lies. Odysseus, the least reliable narrator imaginable even before you consider that he has extra incentive to lie to the Phaeacians!

Because Odysseus is their guest. He’s extra incentivized to 1. Guilt the Phaeacians into being nice to him, and 2. Not admit to any of his own wrongdoings when it comes to xenia and his attempts to exercise guest-right.

There’s a ton of classical scholarship investigating Polyphemus the Cyclops especially — because Odysseus outright says “my men wanted to just rob his cave, and boy do I wish I listened instead of doing the proper thing and following xenia!”

That statement sounds so unbelievably suspicious in the original Greek that many scholars feel the intended reading is that they did exactly that. Polyphemus killing the men and refusing to follow xenia may have been partly or completely motivated by the fact the Ithacans broke that pact first by stealing from him. And no, that wouldn’t excuse the cannibalism, but…Odysseus killed the suitors under those exact same circumstances. They ate his food and took his stuff and invaded his home, so he killed them.

But this isn’t even the only case where Odysseus’ words are deeply suspect! For example, with respect to Scylla and Charybdis, he got extensive advice from Circe, and her words as paraphrased by Odysseus are outright contradictory. Circe opens with “I will tell you of both, then make your choice,” but ends by telling him directly “Scylla is the right choice — better to lose six men than all of them.” Circe told him outright “You are treating monsters and gods like mortal warfare — your weapons and wits won’t help you here,” but Odysseus then mentions armoring up to try and fight Scylla anyway. Circe starts telling Odysseus how he might listen to the Sirens if he wishes, then stresses the importance of their knowledge.

It’s possible Circe spoke misleadingly, or that Odysseus ignored her warnings. It’s also possible that he is putting words in her mouth, as part of his story to the Phaeacians, in order to excuse his own actions.

There’s every chance Odysseus lied about a full quarter of the Odyssey’s events. But the film removes that ambiguity, or at least the agency involved in the lies, by instead having Odysseus be slowly regaining his memory after Calypso drugged him with lotus. (Also an insane departure from canon.) And that’s far less interesting and longer to tell than a clear narration with potential for outright lies would’ve been.

The Importance of Odysseus telling his story:

Bards, storytelling and song are also terribly important to the Odyssey as a text. We see how these can be sources of anguish, tools for comfort, or just the way history is remembered and passed on.

The value placed on the oral tradition is why the Odyssey and Iliad survived until the modern day at all! They were so important and beloved that many many people wrote them down during times with little written record.

Which is why it’s insane that bards are barely present at all in the movie. The one in Ithaca I think gets to say less than 20 words in the whole film. (I know Nolan said he was trying to pay tribute to rap/hip-hop, but the issue remains that the bard didn’t get to say anything of substance.) The bards from Sparta are cut altogether. So is the act of poetic recitation by both a Phaeacian bard and by Odysseus himself, because he doesn’t meet the Phaeacians in the film. And it’s not just narratively significant, but culturally too.

It was a widely held belief in Ancient Greece that bards and poets became possessed by the gods when composing and performing their works. That’s how important and holy song and storytelling were to their culture. It was divine. It was worship and celebration and historical record all in one.

There’s a reason the first scene we get on Ithaca is a bard regaling the suitors with tales of the Trojan War! It’s because the stories told by bards are important. You had to do something wonderful to be remembered like that. It’s contrasting Odysseus with both the suitors and with Telemachus, who sit and listen to stories rather than live them.

In conclusion:

Axing the Phaeacians doesn’t just remove a highly important plot point that introduces narrative ambiguity. It undercuts the themes, the viewer’s understanding of events we don’t have factual knowledge of, and undermines a huge part of Ancient Greek culture all in one go.

Ancient myths were told by travelling bard. They were sung to please an audience. To praise a king, to teach children lessons, to entertain the people of the time.

The ancient versions were not written for us. They do not match up to our societal expectations. They do not teach lessons that we consider useful. They tell tall tales rather than histories.

Which is why adaptations very much can and should change things.

It's not a book from a few years ago that they're remaking into a new medium. It's an ancient and well-known story that they're recrafting for a new audience.

Medusa is the perfect example. The original story is a warning of the dangers of messing with gods (The even earlier original has her born a monster with no backstory at all). Today we switch the perspective of the narrative, and she is a victim of higher powers treating her as an object, as many women are today.

It is for the same reason that while in the original Odyssey Odysseus spends a year with Circe and has 2 children with her, in almost any modern adaptation he refuses her advances. Because Odysseus and Penelope's loyalty to each other is a consistent theme of the story, so we adapt it to fit our definition of loyalty.

These myths are meant to be passed down, shared and changed for a new audience to enjoy and learn from.