Well.

[past]

1. Every time we meet a woman or enslaved individual that, y’know, had some semblance of agency in the text, Nolan has just… removed that? Circe’s commanding presence & how she genuinely overpowers Odysseus? Gone. Helen actually stealing the show in Book 4 where she walks down into the room and controls the conversation re: Odysseus & Troy? Gone. Utterly Gone. Lupita Nyong’o gets 0 chance to speak on her own terms and its actually so depressing. Also I’m genuinely unsure here but it seemed like Circe & Calypso’s divine status was… nonexistent?? They’re both goddesses but apparently not to Christopher Nolan 🫤

And this treatment extends to Odysseus’ slaves, specifically Eumaeus & Eurycleia (eurynome & philoetius not appearing in this goddamn film ifg). Almost every action taken by Eurycleia in the Odyssey is attributed to someone else in Nolan’s adaptation, she gets 0.2 seconds of screentime, its actually absurd. I think she has two lines in the whole movie. Eurycleia. Odysseus and Telemachus’ nurse. The woman who canonically organizes the doors to be locked during the suitor’s slaughter? Who canonically helps secure Telemachus’ provisions for Pylos? fuckin. Not There. And Eumaeus (who literally perfectly models xenia to a disguised Odysseys while living in extreme poverty) notably Does Not Get To Do That in Nolan’s odyssey, instead he’s like. injured I guess? I’m so fuckin confused as to why that happened, it just made the plot more convoluted. Medon is also just not there at all. Medon who is actually the fuckin best?? My underestimated king??? Where Is He.

2. oh my god everything abt the scene with Polyphemus makes me want to claw my eyes out (except maybe his eye? that looked kinda cool idfk). yknow how polyphemus appears, speaks to the crew, and they let their guard down? how the polyphemus episode represents the world outside of greek customs like xenia? how he fucking talks to them? he talks to them and his neighbors? yeah. in Nolan’s odyssey, there are no neighbors. there is no existential mirror/cyclopean foil to ithacan society. there are no other cyclopes. He doesnt even fucking talk 😭😭 <- i mean he gets one line but the audios so distorted that without captions i had no idea what he said

3. Anticleia reunion scene? Nonexistent. Laertes? Nonexistent. Allegedly still around. Sir Not-Appearing In-This-Film. Book 15 reunion between Telemachus and Odysseus? Nonexistent. Reunion between Odysseus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius? Not there. The fucking marriage bed scene? The goddamn marriage bed? NOT THERE. screams into a bag

4. ODYSSEUS “DIDNT WANT TO RETURN HOME” 😭 they keep fucking saying this over and over again too and. No he very much did. No home means no guaranteed kleos guys. his sons life is in jeopardy but Ok christopher shitlan do whatever the fuck you want, i guess

5. every time i heard them say “our civilization is collapsing” or “they say the peoples from the sea are attacking” or “our age of bronze is ending” not only did i feel my soul die a little more inside but i also kept thinking “man, this sounds a lot like the white supremacist belief in ‘western civilization’ just superimposed onto a falsified image of the late bronze age” and thats because It Is.

strange decisions:

1. boar scar apparently occurred when odysseus was an adult???

2. elliot page’s sinon gets one helluva backstory which i guess was kinda cool if you ignore elliot page getting brutally slaughtered in the first 30 seconds of the movie? not sure how to feel about that

3. travis scott kept showing up randomly which was like. fine i guess? genuinely im not sure what the difference between him & phemius was supposed to be. i didnt even see phemius. tbf i was taking notes this whole time so maybe i missed him? but travis scott shouldve just been phemius idfk why he wasnt

4. The Phaecians are just not there guys and i have no idea why. odysseus’ wanderings are being narrated to calypso?

5. the crew mutinies at scylla instead? odysseus tries to sail towards charybdis??? this was a bizarre sequence

6. no nestor or peisistratus. somehow telemachus sails to the 100% inland palace of menelaus. who needs a chariot when you’ve got a Boat i guess

7. half of my notes just say “what happened to show, don’t tell” because the amount of exposition made me want to slam my head into the wall

highlights:

1. anne hathaway and tom holland had a very good dynamic, i feel like they really captured some of the tension between penelope & telemachus, ie penelope running the house for 20 years and still assuming some of that authority vs. telemachus trying to grow up/assume control of the household/establish his own kleos. loved that dynamic tbh. one of the better parts of the telemachy sections

2. lupita nyong’o was great in the uh. 30 seconds she had on screen. im so serious helen was fucking robbed in this movie

3. himesh patel fucking carried every scene he was in on his Back

4. rare cicones appearance

Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that's so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn't cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?

What counts is often not so much 'would the character do this?' and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?' If you get 'how' part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn't feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?

But it was along the lines of "instead of asking whether something is out of character, ask 'what would it take for this character to do this'"

I got the idea from cowcatchers old locomotives used to have.

Anyways, yesterday I uploaded the model to Thingiverse, and just hours after uploading it, the Community Relationship Manager of the whole website left a comment suggesting I enter the model into a competition that's currently being held on the site.

So I did... and now it's in third place not even a day later. First place is $500, but the competition still has a month to go.

Then the Community Manager contacted me again, telling me they want to feature my model in an upcoming design promotion.

Just, what is happening? I mostly made this thing for myself in, like, an hour, and now it's suddenly super popular? This is all a little bit overwhelming 😵‍💫

Other models I worked on for weeks didn't get nearly as popular. I swear, it's impossible to predict what people will like.

Anyways, if you want to print the wheel guards yourself, you can get the model here or here.

I also made a quiet version you can stick furniture felt pads on.

fandom: KPOP demon hunters ship: rumi/mira/zoey, polytrix, rumi & celine rating: G, general audiences chapters: 1/1 (complete) word count: 9,471

summary:

It occurred to me that I'd never actually drawn these two together, so I decided fixing that would be a good way to end Pride Month.

If anybody is interested in Chinese folklore, here you go!

Have all the old scans I have of stories from my chinese literature, folklore, and popular culture class.

This document that is basically the intro to all of it with a bunch of background info, but also contains the absolute first appearances of Mulan and Butterfly Lovers (which I was talking about in the tags of that other post before) that you can read, as well as some other excerpts on them and some other similar tales:

'Li Marries Virgin Huang with Honor'. A story that just goes through a shitload of examples of similar gender role focused tales with similar people (including Mulan and Yingtai of Butterfly Lovers):

Now. On to the fuckload of other versions of Butterfly Lovers lol

Here is my favourite (Wu Dialect Ballad), and thank fuck I decided to upload it anyway because it was completely illegible lol, but on the share site I can read it just fine. Wonders never cease:

'The Ballad Of Liang Shanbo And Zhu Yingtai's Common Study As Sworn Brothers' (part 1 & 2) and the very beginning of 'The Song Of Liang Shanbo':

More excerpts from 'The Song Of Liang Shanbo' with some commentary:

Two excerpts from the performance ballad 'Yingtai's Grief' (part 1 & 2):

'The Curly Bearded Hero' (a T'ang Dynasty story):

'The Assassin', 'The Highwayman Monk', and 'The Kun-lun Servant' (T'ang Dynasty short stories), as well as a bit of interesting info on the history of knights and bandits in Chinese fiction:

'A Leopard Monk Returns To The Laity Of His Own Accord' (a Ming Dynasty stage drama):

'In A Humble Inn, Mr Li Meets A Knight-Errant' (a Ming dynasty story):

'Wu Sung And The Tiger' (written story and excerpts from Shandong clapper tale [performance poem, regional oral traditions]):

'The Plot Against The Birthday Convoy' (a Yüan Dynasty story, part of 'The Men Of The Marshes'/'Water Margin'):

4 Tales of Illustrious Women, 10 Tales of Women Knights, and some interesting background on each and on women & revenge in Chinese fiction.

In order: 'The Chaste Woman Cui°', 'The Pure Woman Hao Jie E.°', 'The Virtuous Woman Peng°', and 'The Martyred Woman Hu°'; 'The Maiden Of Yue*', 'Lady Jing The Thirteenth*', 'Aroused By A Sense Of Justice*/Cui Shensi's Wife*/The Merchant's Wife*/Zhang Daqing°' (4 versions of the same story), 'The Lady In The Carriage*', 'Hong-Xian/Red Threads*', 'Nie Yin-niang*°', 'Lady Jing Thirteen°', 'Dong Guoqing's Concubine°' (2 versions), 'The Woman With The Incense Pill' (Yüan Dynasty), and 'The Female Knight-Errant' (Qing Dynasty). [*=T'ang Dynasty; °=Song Dynasty]: