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Skippy Granola posted:Orpheus I've heard a bunch of different versions of the Orpheus story and the only difference of any significance in the ones I've heard is the exact reason that Orpheus turns around at the end; sometimes Eurydice trips, sometimes Orpheus runs out of willpower, making him the one that trips at the finish line. In my personal favorite version Orpheus understands Hades to mean that he can't look at Eurydice until he, personally, has left the underworld, and he performs admirably; feeling pretty good about his success, Orpheus turns around to help Eurydice across whatever passes for the threshold to the underworld, and Hades goes, "Nope, that totally counts, you lose dodongo." It's just so cartoonishly petty compared to the usual "go big or go home" attitude Greek gods take towards dick moves.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:59
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Desfore posted:I'm not 100% sure about this, but when I was told the story, Samson's power comes from his faith in God, and his long hair was one of the stipulations of being a Nazirite. When Delilah cuts his hair, God basically forsakes him until Samson asks for one last chance to kill a bunch of Philistines. Ultimately, same diff. One way or another, the long hair was a symbol of his faith in God, and allowing it to be cut for any reason aside from God saying "You know what I changed my mind you look like a jackass, give it a chop," meant his faith wasn't strong enough and he didn't deserve the crazy strength anymore.
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Aug 31, 2014 05:18
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Kratos: Classiest man of the classiest land.Bobbin Threadbare posted:Of course, considering that Medusa was raped and then punished for being raped in at least one version of the story, Athena is still going way over the line (potentially). But then blaming the victim has been a problem in gender politics for millennia, so as sad as it is, it's not unexpected. I think I read somewhere it's sort of an illustration of the difference in attitudes towards women between the Greeks and the Romans. In the Greek version, Medusa was so traumatized by her rape that even the mere thought of being touched by a man was repugnant to her; Athena took pity on her poor abused priestess and turned her into a Gorgon as a boon so that she would have the power to make sure it never happened again. In the Roman version, no one really gives a poo poo how Medusa feels about the whole thing, the important part is that she has a vagina and a penis went into it, so she's naughty and deserves to be punished; and since obviously the only thing women want or are good for is being pretty for men and having sex with them, turning her into something so ugly that it just straight up kills anyone who looks directly at it means that she's failing at both things and is clearly the worst possible punishment for a woman. The Greek version isn't hugely popular these days, since by and large Western society agrees with the Romans re: the place of women. Dr. Buttass fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 05:15
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Samovar posted:Edit: Oh yeah; Minotaur - it literally translate to as 'Bull from Minos', doesn't it? 'Cause that's where the whole labyrinth was located and where what's-his-face went to with the ball of yarn, yes? It does mean "the bull of Minos", but you're off on the rest of the details. Minos was the king of Crete when the story happens, and to a certain degree it's his fault. See, he was competing with his brothers for the right to rule Crete and actually be king proper, so he asked Poseidon to lend a hand. Poseidon says, "Okay, sure. Here's a white bull, I want you to sacrifice it in my name." This should have been fairly simple instructions to follow, but Minos said, "That is the best loving bull I have ever seen in my life. I'm going to keep this bull. I'll just sacrifice one of my own. Bulls are bulls and Poseidon won't know the difference, right?" This is what we in the business call Hubris. Now before I go on, you're going to notice that Hubris is something of a theme in Greek mythology. The Greeks have very definite ideas about Hubris and none of them are all that forgiving. To a certain degree our own modern definition of hubris applies but mostly to the Greeks Hubris more or less means not obeying the will of the gods. This does not necessarily refer to a conscious decision to defy said will; sometimes, not being prescient is enough for the gods to call Hubris. What Minos did was Hubris, because he thought he knew better than the gods, but, on the other hand, if a giant eagle had come along and eaten the bull before Minos could get to it, this would still be Hubris and Minos would still deserve to be punished, because reasons. Okay, back to the story. Poseidon is obviously not happy about this decision but, for some reason, letting Minos actually lose the conflict with his brothers doesn't seem like the right punishment (you can tell by the way Minos is king in the rest of the story). Instead, he calls up Aphrodite, who makes Minos' wife Pasiphae fall in love with the bull. Do not ask me how, but somehow she managed to convince Daedalus to make her a wooden cow to hide inside. The bull, being a bull and therefore not that bright, decided that a real cow was totally right in front of him and he should gently caress it right now, even though it didn't seem to be moving or breathing or even smell much like a cow. So it goes to town, blissfully unaware of the fact that this weird cow's pussy is way tighter than it should be. Nine months later Pasiphae gives birth to a grody little thing with a bull head. Poseidon laughs in Minos' face and says, "That's what you get punk!" Minos thinks the little bugger is just so loving ugly and he can't stand it, so he goes to Daedalus too, and Daedalus, again roped into the royal family's stupid bullshit, builds a labyrinth to hold the Bull of Minos. The bit with Theseus and the thread comes later, so I'll wait and see if it comes up in the game before I butcher that story.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:54
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kalonZombie posted:I think people just forgot that part of the myth and, over time, just attributed "extreme ugliness" to "having a kinda scaly face". There actually were quite detailed descriptions of the Gorgons at one point, which got truncated to "really fuckin' ugly," and then good old-fashioned sexism gave us the innovation of the Sexy Gorgon. I forget most of the details but I believe the list included wings of some description, brass claws, sizeable fangs which may also have been brass, a swollen tongue the size of a melon, and the infamous hair (which, as mentioned, may or may not have been exclusive to Medusa). quote:He doesn't pop up until 2, like a lot of the other greek heroes, so go ahead. Right on. So, the thing about King Minos is that, quite apart from pissing off Poseidon, he was just sort of a dick in general and the whole Minotaur thing didn't really teach him his lesson (are you surprised? I'm not surprised). There are a couple of different versions about the how and the why, but the short version is, Minos' son Androgeus got dead, and since in every version Athens is at least involved, as far as Minos cares it's Athens' fault. Now, when a beloved prince of the realm is murdered and/or sent to an untimely death, the one thing a good, reasonable, responsible king would not do is immediately go to war. Minos was not a good king, or a reasonable king, or even in the same neighborhood as a responsible king. Minos declared war on Athens. Minos won his war against Athens. Like all winners, Minos got to make some demands, and, because he was still Minos, Minos was a giant raging dick about it. Minos demanded that seven young men and seven young women from Athens be chosen by lottery and shipped off to Crete every year (or seven years, or nine years) so that they could be chucked into the labyrinth and subsequently eaten by the Minotaur. After a couple such lotteries Theseus, son of Athens' king Aegeus, approaches his father and offers to sort this problem out once and for all. They arrange that the ship will leave flying black sails, and if Theseus is successful in his endeavor he'll change to white. So Theseus gets put on the list of sacrifices for the year and off he goes to Crete. Sometime between the point where he arrives and the point where he gets sent into the labyrinth he meets Minos' daughter Ariadne, who goes completely gaga for him. She decides she didn't really like her brother that much and gives Theseus a ball of thread to mark his path and a hearty "good luck!" Every version of the myth I've ever read glosses over the part where Theseus blunders around the labyrinth looking for the Minotaur, because frankly that poo poo is dull. They all skip to the mighty battle, and I don't blame them. This is the part where Theseus wins the fight and kills the Minotaur, incidentally. Then it's time to start giving that thread a tug, but first, he goes to track down the other kids, half out of nationalism and half because "gently caress you Minos". Seeing the little cadre of sacrifices coming back out of the labyrinth with all their bits still on and claiming to have killed his wife's son is apparently not something Minos is prepared to deal with, because by all accounts Theseus is allowed to take his ship and the other Athenians and go home. Ariadne, still drooling over the Athenian prince, hops aboard herself, but en route Theseus decides he's not really as invested in this relationship as she is. "She's gotta go," he mutters to himself, and hey would you look at that there's the island Naxos right over there. Theseus makes a short potty stop and "conveniently" forgets to wait for Ariadne. But, that's not the only thing he forgets; he also forgets to change to the white sail (sometimes as punishment for abandoning Ariadne, and sometimes because he's just an absent-minded dunce). So when Aegeus sees black sails on the horizon, he thinks his son is dead and is overcome with grief. Aegeus just can't take it and he throws himself into guess which sea (hint: They named it after him it's the Aegean Sea).
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Sep 4, 2014 03:32
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kalonZombie posted:Probably all of them, but definitely not in a row. I've learned from Ratchet and Clank that I need to have at least one LP's worth of break before moving onto the next game in a series. But my favorite part about your styles is that you're the LP equivalent of a keg stand!
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Sep 8, 2014 00:17
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That book is Goddamn incredible. I don't think I've ever heard of a video game novelization where they actually included the health meter in the narrative. Incidentally I think the rolling pin in Psychonauts is in one of the houses where you need a different item to get inside.
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Oct 23, 2014 06:14
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tlarn posted:Centaurs are always hilarious to me, but it takes some explanation to show why I find them funny. Horse gills!
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Oct 31, 2014 05:20
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That whole line about Athena despising peace just reminds me of this one time, years ago, when I was watching that old Disney Hercules cartoon, and Ares is bitching out Athena for giving his Dogs of War ridiculous poodle haircuts, and Athena (giant loving shears in hand) just looks him in the eye and says something like, "That wouldn't be a very wise thing for the goddess of wisdom to do, would it?"
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Nov 20, 2014 22:57
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morallyobjected posted:You're welcome. Oh my God you even found the entire episode, why would you actually do that. Even odds this one scene inspired the entire God of War series.
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Nov 22, 2014 07:02
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Despite being commanded by Apollo to do this, the Furies are still invoked and hound Orestes to Athens. That's kind of what I was trying (and failing) to get at earlier when I was talking about hubris. You're basically screwed if you put so much as a toenail out of line with the gods in Greek mythology, for any reason up to and including "the gods said to"; you don't get off with a warning unless you're under so much duress that your mitigating circumstances have mitigating circumstances. Dr. Buttass fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 00:34
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Pvt.Scott posted:Haha, what? The gods just say "shoulda read the fine print, sucka," after Kratos does their dirty work. Then they won't let him kill himself because he has to replace Ares, but he still apparently gets to have horrible nightmares for eternity. I think, after watching this game and hearing everything everyone had to say about Greek mythology, you should probably not be so surprised. I mean we have already established that the gods believe "you guys brainwashed me" is no excuse for that kind of behavior.
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Dec 17, 2014 11:29
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