𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

reference:

« I'm an awful coward, Antigone. »

andromeda's uncle starts a fight to claim her as his betrothed from perseus (who we have just seen in book 4 essentially strike 'i'll save your daughter's life if you let me marry her' as his marriage bargain) ->

perseus uses the head of medusa (whose experience of rape we have also just heard about in book 4, along with her transformation by minerva, who couldn't stand to look at her in the aftermath of the rape) to turn a bunch of people who look at her to stone, including andromeda's uncle and his men ->

minerva visits the muses to see a new spring in their neighborhood created by the hoofstomp of pegasus (whose birth from medusa's severed head we've also just seen in book 4, an event which minerva now says she personally witnessed) ->

the muses telling minerva about how they're still disturbed by the mental image of a man who tried to assault them ->

the muses telling minerva their rendition of the story of ceres and proserpina, which starts with venus catching sight of dis as he surveys sicily after an earthquake (just like we saw jupiter doing in arcadia after a fire in book 2, immediately before he encounters and rapes callisto) ->

and getting the idea to extend her dominion of erotic control to the underworld by getting cupid to intervene with his arrows (the ones he used to shoot apollo and daphne, spurring on his attempt to rape her in book 1) ->

ordering him to make dis desire proserpina, who venus is mad wants to be a virgin goddess like minerva (to whom the muses are telling this story right now, whose complicated pull towards and repulsion by medusa and her rape has been extensively thematized, whose rescue of a girl that neptune was trying to rape in book 2 further muddies her relationship to other women's sexual victimization) and diana (whose rejection of callisto after she was raped we recall from book 2, whose followers daphne and syrinx we might also now compare to proserpina in their earnest desire to emulate diana's virginity and whose pursuit by attempted rapists in book 1 we may also recall, whose own suggested vulnerability to sexual violence is implied in the experiences of her virgin companions as well as in the actaeon episode of book 3, where diana responds to actaeon as if in danger of sexual violence but where, in actaeon's horrifying transformation, we also see that goddesses have recourse to their own kind of metamorphic violence inflicted on human bodies) ->

and by the way ovid specifies that dis is proserpina's uncle (so maybe we think about andromeda at the start of book 5) ->

proserpina's abduction takes place in a beautiful grove (where almost every other act of sexual violence in the metamorphoses so far has taken place) ->

the water nymph cyane tries to prevent the abduction by throwing herself and the waters of her spring in the way of dis' chariot and, when dis violently plunges his scepter into her waters and opens the ground beneath her to pass through, it deals an "inconsolable wound in her silent mind" and causes her to weep until she becomes nothing but water (and the keen focus on her psychological distress might remind us about the focus on callisto's powerfully impacted emotional state after being raped in book 2) ->

when ceres arrives at cyane's spring looking for proserpina, cyane wants to tell her what she saw but lacks the ability to speak (just like we have already seen in the aftermath of a number of sexual violence-related metamorphoses, like io in book 1 and callisto in book 2; and, by the way, will see this theme made violently mundane in the mutilation of philomela in book 6, whose tongue is torn out by her rapist so she can't tell anyone) ->

nevertheless, cyane manages to indicate non-verbally what's happened by buoying proserpina's fallen belt on her waves (similar to how we saw io, metamorphosed into a cow after being raped by jupiter in book 1, use her hoof to write her name in the dust and thus communicate her identity to her father; and again we will see a pinnacle of this motif in book 6 when philomela weaves her story into a tapestry to tell her sister) ->

when the nymph arethusa tells ceres that she saw proserpina in the underworld, confirming that she has been installed as dis' wife, ceres is stunned "as if turned to stone" (and here we might wonder if medusa's petrification powers have always had something to do with a stupefying impact that sexual violence, or perhaps specifically witnessing the evidence of sexual violence [?], can have on a person) ->

when ceres confronts jupiter about the situation and he justifies the situation in terms of marriage alliances (the same language used between perseus and andromeda's father when bartering her hand in marriage for her life in book 4) ->

meanwhile, the underworld denizen ascalaphus witnesses proserpina eating a pomegranate, preventing her from returning completely from the underworld, and she transforms him into a grotesque owl (a situation not unlike the actaeon episode of book 3 in that a goddess is observed in a compromising position by a potentially threatening mortal man, and in this case ascalaphus sees his threat through, and the goddess is able to retaliate by inflicting horrific metamorphosis; in fact, the complicated position goddesses occupy with regard to the dangers posed by mortal men might also make us think of the muses' earlier account of their attempted rape, how they were able to escape by flying away, how the man jumped off a tower after them and fell to his gruesome death, how they are still haunted by the fear of assault) ->

proserpina's companions, the sirens, being metamorphosed by their own wish into birdlike creatures so they can fly around in their search for the goddess but retaining the ability to speak by retaining their human heads ->

arethusa returning to tell her story of once having been diana's weapon-bearer (a position in the entourage specifically mentioned during the actaeon episode in book 3, leading us to perhaps realize arethusa herself might have been present at the scene) ->

arethusa's zeal for hunting and athletic pursuits contrasted with her rejection of sexuality and her discomfort around her own beauty (just like other followers of diana we have already met, daphne and syrinx in book 1, callisto in book 2, diana herself in book 3, and what proserpina could have been had she been able to see through her aspirations to virgin goddess status; all of these women, except diana, become victims/survivors of sexual violence) ->

arethusa's account of bathing in the river alpheus, realizing the river god wanted to rape her, and being chased by the god, all placing tropes and observations from the voice of ovid's narrator in prior rape episodes into arethusa's own mouth (e.g., she is tired from the hunt when she comes to the river, like callisto was in book 2 when jupiter decided to rape her, like diana was when actaeon saw her bathing in book 3; another idyllic setting at high noon, a setting in which so much sexual violence in the metamorphoses has already taken place; bathing scenes recall diana's bath in book 3, hermaphroditus' bath in the spring of salmacis in book 4 which is the setting for her to assault him, liriope's rape earlier in the same book by another river god who envelops her with his waters, but also the bath scene where callisto's pregnancy was revealed to diana, leading to diana's expulsion of callisto from her virginal group; a chase scene recalls daphne running from apollo and syrinx running from pan in book 1; a simile where arethusa compares being chased by alpheus to a dove being chased by a hawk, recalling the same comparison made by the narrator about apollo and daphne in book 1; the image of alpheus exhaling onto arethusa's neck as he chases her again repeated from the apollo and daphne chase in book 1; arethusa calling upon diana for aid during the chase, echoing daphne's call for help from her father during her chase in book 1, syrinx's call to her fellow nymphs in similar circumstances in book 1, the girl who would be turned into a crow by minerva when she calls for aid in similar circumstances in book 2, and possibly even proserpina's calling for her companions and her mother while being abducted earlier in book 5, but also diana's refusal to help callisto after she had been raped and minerva averting her eyes while medusa is raped in book 4) ->

leading perhaps to a bit of a surprise when diana does intervene and not by transforming arethusa (as happened to daphne, syrinx, and the girl who became the crow in similar circumstances) but by hiding her under a dark cloud (which might somewhat ominously recall the dark cloud jupiter created to disguise his rape of io in book 1) ->

arethusa using another simile to compare her fear, hiding from alpheus in the darkness, to that of a lamb or a hare, hiding from wolves and hunting dogs (again subsuming the tropes of ovid's narrative voice, as well as the theme of hunter/hunted role reversal that echos through multiple episodes of sexual violence involving diana's huntresses, but most explicitly thematized in daphne's book 1 episode and callisto's in book 2) ->

arethusa's metamorphosis ultimately not being caused by alpheus' violence but by her own terror at remaining hidden in the dark, since she dissolves into water from the force of her own fearful sweat (a bookend to cyane's liquefaction by tears) ->

alpheus trying to merge his river waters with the water arethusa has just metamorphosed into (again, recalling liriope in book 4 who was raped by a river god enveloping her in his water) ->

but diana facilitating arethusa's escape by splitting open the earth for her to flee through (not unlike dis' method when maneuvering around cyane; a reclamatory reversal or uncomfortable echo?) ->

According to sources a new boyband has been formed at Bootcamp with 5 solo contestants thought to be more promising as a group.

The boyband made up of auditionees: Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik

(Liam being one of this years re-auditonee’s) The boyband are yet unamed.

Please feel free to include me in your banquet/feast.

Lets stay in touch about this suject.

[ID: Photos of an oxidized copper plate, an oxidized copper pipe, and oxidized pennies. End ID]

Gen-Z got a chunk of the Carboniferous, and now all their memes are about how pathetic and small today's dragonflies are.

Nostalgia Content [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

aye can i get uh………ingredients on my crepe

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jellyfish?

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you want jellyfish?

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you want fucking jelly fish?

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