“Penelope Unravelling The Web,” By Willy Pogany

She

he was right to fear the helmet: it makes it impossible to tell father from foe.

The last image was the first image and only one I meant to make. starting thought (that I don't think I communicated well tbh): "A shot looking up the walls of Troy where Odysseus is dangling Astyanax from the top by his heel, reminiscent of Thetis dipping Achilles, ready to plunge him into his namesake, the river Scamander, brimming with Trojan blood below, while the Achaeans watch in expectation. And the walls are cyclopean, of course!"

you know. standard classicist mental illinois.

maybe one day i'll be better at art and think of a better way to communicate that concept? dipping the baby in the river to cement his legacy? idk. i'll probably come back to it someday.

just giving up on the idea that i might finish ANYTHING this week. cassandra and iphigenia etc

I just think they’re neat

Jon Bernthal / Rossy de Palma / Sevdaliza / Adrien Brody / Tamino / Sofia Coppola / Elisabeth Moss / Andy Samberg / Damiano David / Alba Flores

Pelops and his ivory shoulder

?????

Speaking of how Troy 2004 has personally offended me:

They took sandpaper and went to town on Hector. Smoothed out all his imperfections because how can good man also be bad man sometimes oh no my brain can't deal with that.

Also they didn't make him nearly as scary as he should be. Hector in the iliad is the. Scariest. The achaeans are terrified of him. Like he's the guy that walks on the battlefield and people run for their lives. He can lift boulders. He gets his ribcage smashed and gets back up like ten minutes later (granted, that's apollo, but in the god-less universe of troy they could've used it to make him even scarier) He doesn't go home all clean, he goes home and talks to his wife and holds his son while covered in gore. It's stressed that nobody but Achilles can beat him. He nearly burns the ships. He boasts and commits hybris after killing Patroclus.

Hector is the unbeatable war machine that makes mistakes sometimes, that morphs into a loving, smiling dad when he sees his son. The unbeatable war machine that's keeping an entire city safe, that gets scared and runs for his life when he knows he's in actual danger. That in the second-to-final moment has to be tricked into bravery, to stand and fight, so he has the chance at the final moment to recover from that and be supremely brave again and run straight to death, with his mind set on glory. Because he's extremely human right to the end. And his pride is as huge as his feeling of duty and love.

Also they took away that great scene where he's like "fuck your bird signs" he was such a legend for that in the iliad.

Gaston de Latenay, Nausikaa scans by Book Graphics blogspot/2014

🌿🏺 Classicstober '23 Week 2: Icarus, Achilles, Asclepius, Pandora, Theseus, Arachne, Helen.

i straight up do not believe that odysseus did everything he did to get back to penelope and telemakhos. or even that he did everything he could. wanting to return to them is not the whole story. i like the myth about odysseus pretending to be mad to get out of the war for lots of reasons, but one of them is because it's an attempt to escape the narrative, foiled by his love for his son, but also because there is contrast to what we know of him long after the narrative has sucked him back in. odysseus is no less kleospilled than anyone else! he fights for his pride; he makes mistakes; he gets worn down; he delays his homecoming, in ways that are and aren't his fault, all the time. he wants to go home. he doesn't just want to go home.

but he does try. by leaving ogygia he willingly goes back into the narrative one more time, and he never gives up until he finally returns. isn't that compelling enough? do we have to sand it down?