a continuous dialogue of past and present

i’m sorry but it is absolutely a conservative impulse to believe that an ancient work has some kind of “purity” that can be “desecrated” by adaptation. think about what you are saying. why do you think adaptational change or reinterpretation is an “offense” to “culture” that must be answered for? what could motivate a person or movement to designate a certain story as “sacred”? when you do this, are you conjuring an idealized past? in the same breath, does this position modernity as a threat?

there is a really really famous in ukraine epic poem that is called eneïda (ukrainization of aeneid) written by ivan kotlyarevsky in 1798 that is famous for being the first ever published work in modern ukrainian language, and it is, as you can imagine, a ukrainian re-interpretation of virgil's aeneid, with aeneas being a zaporizhzhian cossack and other wonderful cultural references— anyway, the thing is, because of it being so famous here, the original aeneid is a lesser known one, and currently i have an ancient rome obsession so i want to talk about the aeneid frequently, but every time i have to say it like "so in the aeneid- no not the one by kotlyarevsky..." and well, i think it is beautiful

btw if anyone's interested you can find the english translation of kotlyarevsky's eneïda here

@sksjjsjwjejsjwos

OMDSS YES IVE HEARD OF THIS ITS ON TBR LIST with a ton of other books unfortunately ☹️☹️

the last stage of sexting is imagining a life together

feminist retelling shoulsnt be the woman does some girlboss shit femist retelling is she does the same stuff except u actually give a shit abt her perspective and thoughts and feelings as a human being this time

"this is an inaccurate adaptation" okay but is it good "this didn't happen in the book" does it make sense in the context of the new work though "they totally changed the plot" and is the new one good or bad "it's completely different" not what I asked "they changed all the stuff I like" then I get why you wouldn't be into it but I'm asking about its own artistic merits "this character is meant to be blonde" I couldn't give less of a fuck

the erasure of the rape element in mythological retellings is so heinous it borders on misogyny

it’s the idea that because rape as an act is misogyny, that talking about rape or including it in stories is also misogyny. as if acknowledging that women were denied agency and dignity somehow further denies us agency and dignity. when really, acknowledging the ways women were/are denied agency and dignity affirms that we are entitled to these things. a feminist story isn’t just a story in which no bad things happen to women. bad things do happen to women. pretending they don’t, and especially trying to superimpose that conviction onto the past, just because it isn’t as fun to dwell on, is not a feminist position.