Latinx. Super nerdy and wants to do good. I don't tag things correctly, so if you need me to, send me an ask.
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So you mean the whole of Marvel’s Phase 4 was about grief and what’s the worst (or best) loss can bring us? I still can’t believe I realized this just now rewatching Thor.
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WANDA MAXIMOFF APPRECIATION WEEK
day 05 - favorite hairstyle/outfit
↳ wandavision decades -
in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.
The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it’s not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can’t hunt, but instead, making a point about war.
Artemis was, among other things–patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood–the protector of young girls. That’s a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.
There’s no contradiction, though, when it’s framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.
Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.
And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.
Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.
It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.
(via alyssumflowers)
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apparently europeans have the impression that US Americans never learn the metric system.
like our science curriculum from day one is entirely done in the metric system. we just don’t use metric in our day to day lives.
yeah actually we kinda just do it for the bit :)
I have had people try to gently and kindly explain to me the workings of the metric system, as if Americans are having trouble with the concept of a base ten system. like no. we get it. we were taught this when we were like eight. it’s just that like. we don’t really wanna do it that way. for the bit.
It’s like formal and informal tense.
(via tahthetrickster)
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