So, I've told you I've been doing some research for this new story I'm working on. Well, I was looking last night at the main Olympian gods, the twelve that were the major players in the Greek pantheon. Now, I knew that Zeus got around. I mean, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo and Artemis, Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Perseus, the Fates, the Muses, and Hermes are just a small sampling of Zeus' many offspring.
However, Poseidon was just as willing--and culpable--when it came to littering the Greek countryside with bastards. Some of his more famous offspring were Theseus, Triton, Polyphemus (the cyclops slain by Odysseus), Pegasus, Orion, and Arion, a horse he fathered with Demeter that could talk to humans. No mention of how he came to be in Wilbur's barn.
You know who didn't have a lot of bastards running around doing heroic deeds--or any deeds for that matter? Hades. Poor guy. He loses a bet with his brothers and gets stuck in the underground, where for centuries to come people will associate him with the devil and his kingdom with hell. And then when the poor bastard gets horny, he finds himself a luscious young bride and then gets in trouble for kidnapping her and dragging her down to his realm. Okay, so maybe Demeter's anger was justified, but still. Poor bastard just sits there for all eternity with dead souls wandering around lost and moaning and all that, and he only gets to bang Persephone during the winter months. And then everyone thinks he's a bad guy.
And then, to top it off, as if we haven't kicked him in the godly nuts enough already, Persephone has a couple of kids--with Hades' brother Zeus!
No wonder he liked it so much when Orpheus played his harp for him. And no wonder he was kind of a dick with the whole Eurydice thing. The guy was constantly having his cheerios pissed in. Or, his ambrosia-o's.
Anyway, this past week kind of sucked. Nothing I tried to do in the lab worked, and even when I went looking for a simple reagent yesterday, I couldn't find it. All I was looking for was a bottle of aniline, and no one had one. How the hell did all the aniline disappear? This spate of bad luck didn't lead me to want to write very much, so I did a lot of reading up on other various aspects of the story. I want to be entertaining, yet accurate--or as accurate as one can be when he's dealing with a fantasy story based in mythology.
So, it seemed like I spent more time this week doing research than I did writing, but I did at least get the first chapter finished. It'll probably need a re-write and a bit of smoothing over, but it's done. That's out of the way; the female character has been raped and the foundation for the story has been set. Now we can get into the meat of the operation.
I ended up just over 3000 words, which is pretty good. The chapter is only 8 pages long, which is a nice intro into what's happening. As for my magnum opus I'm reading over and smoothing out...yeah...not much there. Maybe once I get into the swing of things with the writing, I'll be able to switch it up some and do some smoothing over.
Oh, and remember last week when I said that the ancient Greeks dressed pretty sluttily, according to the costume pictures I've found. Well, I've also suddenly discovered just how often the women were naked. I mean, how long did Calypso "force" Odysseus to fuck her? Seven years? I can guarantee she was probably without proper attire for, oh, all of those seven years.
Perhaps I was born at the wrong time. Of course, at the ripe old age of 33, I'd be well into my dotage in ancient Greece. I think I'll stay here and now, thank you very much.
1 day ago
8 comments:
Until recently, I had "gallons" of aniline in our stockroom, a remnant of my predecessor's rat pack ways. This aniline was packaged around the time you and I were learning to walk. I got rid of it.
I like the progress bar. Nice touch.
Magnun Opus. Is that Tom Selleck's car that turned into a robot on that one show?
Odysseus was maybe a willing participant. He had a wife (Penelope?),but the symbolic nature of Odysseus to men (the extreme effort men go through to accomplish their goals, or some rubbish like that) makes me think that a) if he really wanted to get away from her, he could or b) he really liked to screw the nymph, and g-o-o-d.
Besides, she saved him; he owed her a good fuck for that, don't you think?
But more importantly, remember the Hercules cartoon from years ago?
Yeah you do. And the one character would say, "Hey Herc, Hey Herc"
I need to go look that up on the Youtube.
Poor old Hades. It can't be fun to have your own brother cut your grass.
Have you read Dan Simmon's Olympos? I bet you would LOVE it.
I was planning on studying Greco-Roman Literature Post Grad...the funny thing when I was talking to the phone to the Greek head of Decree College in Athens, she found the idea ridiculous.
She wanted me over there to teach English to her grade school students.
She suggested I go to an American college in Athens.
Don't feel too sorry for Hades - he had kidnapped (with his brother Zeus's help apparently)his niece after all, imprisoned her in his subterranean lair and was raping her. How Fritzl of him!
As for Ancient Greek dress, it really varied from region to region and among the different classes. At a certain point in history Athenian noblewomen were kept as heavily covered up as women in Taliban Afghanistan.
Hades as the victim? I've never hear it put that way before. :-)
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