#riddy

so when i was first watching the episode where orpheus actually realizes that riddy and caenus are a thing, i was rambling to my ex girlfriend about why i wasn’t a fan of that story line (though i love caenus and riddy as SEPERATE characters.)

Her initial response was “if i died, would you not want me to move on?” maybe it’s just me, but that’s a crazy response to me expressing the fact that the point of the myth is kind of taken away with kaos’ interpretation.

i was going on another rant about why i’m not a big fan of the version of the myth where orpheus lives and later has a kid and she said something along the lines of “damn let the man move on”

I finally watched KAOS and I am in awe. What a masterpiece of a show. I am completely mesmerized by it. And because gif making is my new love language, here are some gifs from episode seven.

I had to play with POV in a scene study for a writing class and figured I'd share for all the KAOS heads on here.

Horrors punctuated Riddy’s sleep. The ashen statues in the secret underground lair. Hades hurting that poor boy. Did he kill him? Wasn’t he already dead? And why were those people who were supposed to be Renewed down there? What was wrong?

It wasn’t just what she saw in the Underworld, but her life that haunted her. The abandonment she felt when her mother gave Riddy up to become a Tacita. Her refusal to help Riddy on her last day on Earth. But what if there was something more going on? She woke with a start back into the black and white of her Underworld dorm room.

Caeneus for his part never even attempted sleep. He sat at his desk puzzling over what it could all mean. Riddy, that place, that man he wanted so desperately to help. And why did Riddy collapse in a heap while he felt nothing? A knock at the door and when he opens it’s exactly who he hoped it might be.

“I can’t sleep,” she announces.

“I can’t sleep either.”

All I can think about is that place, what Hades did…” Riddy barely hesitates before asking, “Can I come in?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Caeneus almost bashfully steps aside to let her in.

Riddy immediately clocks the wall of sketches. “Is that your mom?” she asks.

“Uh, yeah,” he replies, almost uncertain himself. 

“I’ve been thinking about mine, too.” Riddy is a burning fire against Caneus’ calm waters. “She became a Tacita when I was five.”

“Oh, wow,” he offers, a ripple against the flame.

“Yeah. Cut out her tongue, gave herself to Hera. Great honor, right? Serve the gods,” Riddy continues with her special brand of snark. Even in death she is all defiance, but she shifts to solemnity when she admits, “I wouldn’t accept it. I would curse the gods every night. Maybe that’s why I felt so much pain in that place.” She is running with a theory and plows forward. “It’s for bad people, for people who dishonored the gods.”

“Well, if that’s the case then I would have felt it, too.” Caeneus reassures her. “I… dishonored the gods.”

“How?”

Caeneus goes quiet for a moment. He has implied this to Riddy, but not outright told her. The calm waters hide the current beneath.

“I changed. Well, I… I would say I just… I became myself.” He says this like he just puzzled it out and not like it’s the core of his very being. Like who he is and was is a jigsaw he can’t always complete. Or perhaps he did complete it, but Hippolyta shattered it at the River Lethe. 

“But that’s not how the Amazons saw it.”

As he tells her this he can see his mother in their trailer at the Amazon camp. They used to play games.  She would help him tighten his spear for hunts. She taught him so many things in those days.

“When boys come of age they have to leave the compound. If they ever return, they’re executed. My best friend had just been sent away. He was the only person who knew how I felt.”

Despite the time and death between, the memory rises fresh to the surface. On a walk back to the compound drawing a freshly caught hare, Caeneus heard a familiar voice whisper his former name, “Caenis.”

“Leos?” Caeneus found his friend crouching in the mound of dust and shrubbery to his right. Or perhaps her right. He was, after all, still playing Caenis then. But as he knows now, he was actually Caeneus all along. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he scolded, afraid of what could happen if he were caught. But if Caeneus was afraid, Leos looked petrified. Life outside the compound was not kind, and Leos just wanted to come home.

“When are you going to tell them about you?” Leos asked.

“You promised, Leos,” Caneus’ voice cracked as the words came out, but then they heard voices and he hurried Leos off offering his own hat as a parting gift.

“Never tell anyone. Not if you want to stay here.”

Those were the last words he heard Leos utter. Later that afternoon he heard Leos’ mother wailing in the clearing at the center o the trailers. When Caeneus peaked out the door, he saw her clutching Leos’ body. A spear like they very one Caeneus used on the hare bursting from his unmoving chest.

Caneus’ mother saw his shock as he closed the door behind him and she knew it was time to talk to her child. There were plans set in motion. There were things to be said.

That night, she poured tea and sat down across from her baby who was no longer a baby and prepared for the beginning of the end. With a deep breath, she launched into it.

“Caenis, you’re my flesh, my blood, my bones. I know you. Do you understand me?”

Caneus looked at her unsure what she meant. Afraid of what she meant. His mother pressed on.

“When you were small I thought it was just a phase…” She searched for the words to help him understand that she understood. “The form really doesn’t fit the content… does it?” 

Caeneus did not want this conversation to be real so he simply asked “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Her words were soft, solemn, serious. “You have to leave.”

“No. I don’t want to do that.” Realization became one thousand daggers and his desperation seeped through. “I’m an Amazon, mom.”

It was so complicated and yet so simple. “You can’t be.”

“But I am.” Caeneus could not bear a fate like Leos’. Was this the fulfillment of his own cured prophecy?

“I have a friend in Krete. She’ll help you.” She felt so helpless being able to offer him so little, but it was at least more than the other boys got. “Your male name would be Caeneus by the way.”

It was unbearable, being so thoroughly seen by her. The realization she might have known for longer than he did. The form really doesn’t fit the content. He hated her for those words. He adored her for them. He would miss her with his entire soul.

“It… you could pick something else of course.” She did not  want to presume his preferences.

She seemed serious but somehow so casual. Was she discarding him? Was something dead between them? He held back the question he was afraid to know the answer to until is pressed itself past his lips.

“Do you hate me?”

 He didn’t know it was possible but somehow she pierced right though his soul.

“The opposite,” she said with such tenderness he almost snapped in two. When he began to cry she simply stood up and held him. There was a knowing in her. A knowing beyond the tragedy of having to send her daughter who was actually a son away. A knowing that she wasn’t just sacrificing a life with this child. She was sacrificing this child’s life. Not yet, but soon. And hopefully, not in vain. And hopefully, not forever.

“My mom’s prophecy actually foretold that I’d be a boy,” he says returning his attention to the woman in his room. The dead one he feels so close to despite the mere moments they’ve shared. “When I was born she’d been relieved, you know. Thought there’d been a mistake. But there aren’t any mistakes when it comes to prophecies.”

Riddy for all the speculation and fire she charged into the room with remains still. Intent on Caeneus’ words. Simmered down to a candlestick or a lantern. Burning for… him. 

“I used to curse the gods, too. I still do,” Caeneus continues, his still waters rising to a steady rain. “Yeah, humans do terrible things to each other in the name of Olympus. But I don’t think the gods care about us at all.” The depths of anger and grief were rising, but somehow Caeneus remained contained. Quiet. It made him seem more powerful in a way.

“My mother loved me. I know she did.” He is a dam fit to burst. “But she betrayed me because of them.”

“Yeah, fuck the gods,” he concludes.  Riddy scoffs at that. He took her deviance a step further and she had to release the air to diffuse the tension.

“I mean it. I hate them.” Caeneus shakes his head and let sit hang. Here he is. Laid bare.

“Same.” The note comes out of Riddy’s mouth in an even tone. Like a warning. An announcement. Caeneus looks up at her as she cups his face with her hands and closes the distance between them with a kiss. There was no thought behind it, just a need to be as near to this person as possible. Once she registers what she has done,  she drops her hands and pulls away slowly. “I’m sorry. I—“