#aithra

Even tho a mother is the most important person for a child’s moral, emotional and intellectual development.

Forgive the Greek mythology brainrot but this is how Danaë and other mothers in mythology should be viewed, as complex people who loved their children and have a massive impact on what they become when they’re older. Most ancient writers did write them like this (most of their work lost *sigh*) but Modern retellings either fridge the mothers for more “drama” or the mothers are just eternally doting and loving with no personality of their own. Or in rare cases like Demeter they get villainized.

(Slight spoilers)

Their version of how Aegeus killed Androgeus:

Minos falling in love with a pet monkey:

Theseus being Theseus:

Aethra getting a letter from her son:

Zeus being a badger:

(The guy to the right of him is Ares btb)

Finally…Theseus and Ariadne being kind of cute:

Aithra Brunel

It was told of Laodice that, when Diomedes and Acamas came to ask for the restoration of Helen, she was seized with the strongest of desire to have to do with the latter, who was still in his first youth. For a time shame and modesty kept her back; but afterwards, overcome by the violence of her passion, she acquainted Philobia, the wife of Perseus, with the state of her affections, and implored her to come to her rescue before she perished utterly for love. Philobia was sorry for the girl’s plight, and asked Perseus to do what he could to help, suggesting that he should come to terms of hospitality and friendship with Acamas. He, both because he desired to be agreeable to his wife and because he pities Laodice, spared no pains to induce Acamas to come to Dardanus, where he was governor: and Laodice, still a virgin, also came, together with other Trojan women, as if to a festival. Perseus there made ready a most sumptuous banquet, and, when it was over, he put laodice to sleep by the side of Acamas, telling him that she as one of the royal concubines. Thus laodice accomplished her desire; and in due course of time a son, called Munitus, was born to Acamas by her. He was brought up by Aethra, and after the capture of Troy Acamas took him home with him; later he was killed by a bite of a snake while hunting in Olynthus in Thrace.

It may be that the dear lovely-named daughter of Phoenix went to the bed of Zeus beneath the brow of Ida and bore you, greatest of mortals, but I too was borne by the daughter of rich Pittheus, who coupled with the sea-god Poseidon, and the violet-haired Nereids gave her (Aethra) a golden veil. And so, war-lord of Knossos, I bid you to restrain from your grievous violence

Let’s start with Danaë, in mythology she raised and protected Perseus, sacrificing so much and went through hell just to protect her baby, some sources have her hiding him while she was imprisoned for 3-4 years which is insanely impressive. Danaë as a mother made Perseus the man he was, she loved and protected him to the bitter end, which starkly contrasts how Acrisius treated her, how he abused and imprisoned her for the sake of his own survival regardless of his daughter’s life. Danaë broke the cycle of abuse and proved herself to be better than her father. Perseus’s motivation was to protect her as she protected him, she moved the story along without getting killed.

In the movie she dies before she can even raise him, she’s just the incubator of the male protagonist and not her own character, it isn’t helped by the fact that they completely change her story where she wasn’t imprisoned, she isn’t even Acrisius’s daughter in this movie but his wife (ewwwwww) bc ig they wanted to adapt Alcmene’s story. That’s not even to mention that the only full scene she gets is where she is raped by Zeus as he was disguised as her husband (and of course she was sexualized), but of course Zeus’s actions aren’t portrayed with the gravity and disgust it should’ve had since he literally raped her, and Perseus makes amends with Zeus at the end of the movie as if that mf didn’t rape his mother and let her get killed.

Ok now with Aithra (I will admit I’m not as familiar with her), she was a princess, she raised Theseus to be a hero and a king, in the movie they’re just… poor ig, nevermind that their lineage is important to their characters. She guided Theseus to his father’s weapons, she causes the story to unfold, she raised him to be the man that he is and she encouraged his worst attributes by helping him kidnap the teenage Helen, she was allowed to be a heavily flawed character. Shetook her own life in grief over losing her son. In the movie she’s just the loving mom who gets graphically murdered by an invading army (who are supposed to be the Cretans ig?) in order to motivate him to fight them. In the original mythology the death of innocent Athenians who were strangers to him was more than enough to motivate him to fight against Crete and kill the Minotaur.

Y’know what’s funny? Immortals was written by the same guys who wrote Blood of Zeus, can’t say I’m surprised bc both have the same problems in terms of writing women.

Yeah it’s so dumb and I’m glad I’m not the only one who made the Reddit atheist comparison, what’s crazy is that the gods interacted with mortals a lot during the heroic age, so to deny their existence is like real modern ppl denying the earth is round.

Also it’s amusing how between this and Wrath of the Titans, Hollywood wants to make a Titanomachy movie so bad yet instead of like… idk using characters that actually participated in the war as protagonists they use Theseus and Perseus, even tho their stories are more interesting bc they’re so small scale, their goals throughout their stories is either for the sake of their family or city, but if they failed the world would move in without them, so there is genuine stakes bc if you read these stories for the first time you don’t know what will happen, but by stripping that and making them the saving the world action hero types they remove everything that made them unique. Also isn’t it ironic that both Perseus and Theseus are mamas boys (in very different ways) and they start their quests for their sakes yet these movies fridged those mothers?