I’ve decided on the Thursday feature

It’s going to be the myth retellings.  So what I’ll do is this coming Thursday, I’ll continue the Hades myths with the tale of Pirithoos.  Then I’ll move to Admetos and Alcestis.  However, rather than abruptly narrate Heracles dropping by for Cerberus, I’ll set that one aside, so after Admetos and Alcestis, I’ll move on to the life of Heracles, and so I’ll get to Hades’ appearance during the Twelve Tasks in the course of the larger story.

Other than that, I don’t really have anything to say tonight, other than that it’s going to be a little weird re-adjusting to not having Blogging101 anymore.

A weekly feature does sound like a good idea…

…considering that my Thursday class gets out at 7:45, and I like to write my blog in the evening.  (Seriously, it’s currently 9:00, and I’m only just now having dinner.  And usually I have dinner about 6:30 or so.)

The one problem is that I don’t have any idea what to make the weekly feature about.  Any ideas?

The only idea I have, off-hand, is to regularize my posts re-telling Greek myths onto Thursdays, and write them before I leave for class–or whenever–and then post them when I get back and/or schedule the posting.  But the main problem with that idea is that I only had plans to do a few myths, the ones involving Hades.  So that leaves the question of what to do for the rest of them.  Again, if anyone has any ideas, please share them.

Words Crush Wednesday – Homeric Version

I wasn’t originally planning to do the “blogging events” assignment for Blogging101, but I couldn’t think of anything to write today, so I decided I’d do the “Words Crush Wednesday” thing.  (Whether I keep at it will probably depend on if I have anything I actually want to say on future Wednesdays…)

For the moment, I’m going to focus on some of my favorite passages from the Iliad.  Because that’s how I roll.  This is from the end of Book 3, Robert Fagles translation; Helen speaking to Aphrodite, following the duel between Menelaos and Alexander.  (I’m sticking with Fagles’ name transliterations for the quote, naturally.)

“Menelaus has beaten your handsome Paris
and hateful as I am, he longs to take me home[.]
Is that why you beckon here beside me now
with all the immortal cunning in your heart?
Well, go to him yourself–you hover beside him!
Abandon the gods’ high road and be a mortal!
Never set foot again on Mt. Olympus, never!–
suffer for Paris, protect Paris, for eternity…
until he makes you his wedded wife–that or his slave.
Not I, I’ll never go back again.  It would be wrong,
disgraceful to share that coward’s bed once more.”

Unfortunately, then Aphrodite put a scare into her, and she went back anyway…

I guess I’m socially ignorant.

Today’s Blogging101 assignment is to link your blog to your various social profiles, if any.  Okay, so I don’t have any, and I don’t want any, either.  Fine and dandy, the assignment does say “if” after all.

What bugs me is that I have no idea what some of the things they mention even are.

Seriously.  I’ve heard of Pinterest and Instagram, but I haven’t the faintest idea what they are.  And I’ve never even heard of LinkedIn or Path.

If I had more time, I might follow the links on the assignment post and find out, but I have another 30 pages to read today, so I don’t feel like I have time tonight.  Maybe tomorrow, if I finish my class reading while I’m doing my laundry…though I’d rather use that time to start working on the next Hades post…

My Disturbing Addiction (It’s not what you think!)

So, tonight my brother and I went back to that closing comic book shop that we went to on Saturday.  Not because they had dropped their sale below 25% off everything, but because he was in earlier today and they were starting to run low on Figma Link, and he wanted to get one before they sold out.  (But earlier he was with our father, and he didn’t have the nerve to buy collectibles with an audience.  Not that I would want my parents knowing how much I spend on anime/game/manga/etc. merchandise, either.)

I had two things in mind I wanted to see if they still had.  The Figma of Mikasa, the heroine of Attack on Titan, and some Vocaloid artbooks.  (Yeah, I know.  But some of them have really cool character designs!)  The artbook I was especially interested in was gone, and the others were too expensive to buy at only 25% off, and the figure also seemed to be gone.  Until about five minutes before we were going to leave, when it was suddenly on the shelf again.  Seriously, I had stood right there, looking at that shelf, and they had two Figma of Levi and a Nendoroid of Levi, and only $120 statues of anyone else.  Then after looking around a while, I go back over, and suddenly there’s a third Figma, and it’s the lone Mikasa they had on Saturday.  And she’s $5 cheaper than Levi.  I just sort of stood there for a while, staring in disbelief.  And then I decided that it was obviously Fate at work, and that I simply had to buy her.  (Or at least that that made a good excuse.)  Of course, now I feel like I need to go back and get the Figma of Eren, the hero, though that one isn’t really as good, I don’t think…but if they still have him when they drop below 25%, I know I will.  (After all, Mikasa will be lonely without him, right?)

There was also a case towards the back where they kept all the really expensive statuettes, most of which were of American comic book characters.  (The lone exception being a statuette of Twilight Princess Ganondorf.)  I hadn’t really paid much attention to most of it, as I’m not particularly interested in American comic books until they’re adapted into movies. (Or television shows.)  But as I was looking at one and wondering what it was–turned out to be Tony Stark in civilian clothes in Iron Man 3, when he was in that kid’s garage–I noticed that the one next to it, of Agent Romanov in Captain America:  The Winter Soldier, had rooted hair.  (Hence my certainty about which movie she was from, since the hair was straight.)  And as I was wondering “who’d go to the trouble of rooting hair on a statuette?” that was when I noticed that Tony’s clothes were made of cloth, and that there was a wrist joint.  Those two weren’t statuettes:  they were dolls.

Now I suddenly want them.

Because I am totally addicted to doll collecting. Well, that’s not even quite it.  But, for example, that Mikasa Figma I got?  There’s another store in town that carries statuettes of her in a cool action pose, for about half the price (well, half the pre-discount price) and the statuette is much larger.  But I’d rather have the Figma.  Because I can move it around and change its pose and its facial expression.  I consider myself too “grown up” to “play” with the toys I collect, and yet they’re way more interesting to me if they do more than just sit there.  (Of course, in the case of Attack on Titan, I told myself I absolutely would not buy any merchandise until the story was over, because otherwise it might turn around and bite me.  (Bad pun totally not intended.)  But who knows when that will be?  And the Figma was really cool, with all sorts of extra doodads and bits to do effects and stuff.  Once I find a place in the house to set up a photo studio, I’m really gonna have a lot of fun with all those extras…)

I am so going to get that Agent Romanov doll if she’s still there when the store’s clearance drops to about 50%.  The facial sculpt was really accurate, too; it looked amazingly like her.

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Yeaaaaaah, that was a pretty crazy rant.  Er, not rant.  Ramble?  Uh, whatever it was, it was pretty out there.

And I’m going to say that this fits(ish) the assignment today for Blogging101 to change up the blog’s style, since I promised myself I wouldn’t talk about my toy collecting habit on here.  Besides, I just changed things up yesterday with that huge fiction post, anyway.  Well, fictionalized myth.  Retelling of a myth?  Whatever you call it.

I must be getting tired.  My words are falling apart.

Hoo boy….

Why did it have to be today?  Blogging 101 wants us to respond to a Daily Prompt.  Okay, fine and dandy, but today’s Daily Prompt (https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/pleased-to-meet-you/) is about the leads of two different books/movies meeting for the first time.

I’m a reformed fanfic writer.

I’ve written that.

A lot.

I’m not diving back into that pit.  If I do, I might not be able to leap back out again.

Of course, my Greek myth-based writing could still be considered “fanfic” of a sort, since I’m working with pre-established characters, to a certain extent.  Hmm…so have I written any scenes in the Greek myth-based stuff that would be the first meeting of the heroes of different works?

Technically, I kind of have.  Achilles is the lead of the Iliad, Odysseus is the lead of the Odyssey, and I’ve twice written about their first meeting.  But since both characters are also in the other epic (and an assortment of other ancient works) I don’t think that really counts.  Especially since in both cases I was following a pre-established tale regarding their first meeting.  (The same tale, in fact…)

Let’s see…any others?  Hmm…Orestes is the lead of a number of surviving tragedies, and he shows up in book six of my quasi-young adult novels, but…he doesn’t meet any other protagonists other than those he meets anyway.  Helen is the lead of at least one surviving play (can’t really call it a tragedy) by Euripides, but the only other protagonists she meets are Orestes and Odysseus, so…yeah, that’s no good.  Well, technically, Eurysakes may have been a protagonist (Sophocles is said to have written a play named after him) but the play is lost, and even its contents are uncertain, and my Eurysakes is definitely unlike the traditional one.  (And I am shamed to admit that I like mine better.)

So…yeah, not going to write a tale of first meetings.  But I will admit that I like cross-movie/same-casting confusion.

So ever since I saw The Hobbit:  The Battle of Five Armies, I’ve wanted to see the Doctor riding a giant eagle into battle.  With Ace behind him, ready to toss canisters of Nitro 9 at the enemy.  I bet Ace would love that.

New theme

Today’s assignment was to try out other themes for the blog, and this one was really pretty.  I’ve always liked the traditional Japanese woodcuts.  Doesn’t really mesh with what I’m usually talking about, but I didn’t see one related to Greek mythology, so…

I don’t know that I like it putting the entry’s tags at the top instead of the bottom, though.  That seems off-putting to me, but maybe that’s just me?

My dream reader?

I’ve got no idea who that would be.

Someone as weird as I am, I suppose.

Or someone who can read my novels and give me feedback to improve them.  That would be good.

I don’t think I’m fulfilling this assignment very well.  (Or at all?)  But I guess Blogging101 isn’t the kind of class that gives grades, is it?

Anyway, since the assignment also said to do something new (to my blog) I’m also including a photograph.  It’s of the awesome conchoidal fracture on an enormous marble in the collection at the museum where I volunteer.

Though I used the museum’s camera, I took the photo myself.  (That’s the tip of my thumb holding it up.)

I want to find a marble like that for my toy collection.  I don’t know where to find a marble that size, though.  And ideally it would have an incredible fracture like that, which would have to mean a well-used marble.  So I guess I’d have to look around at the local antique malls and hope to find something.  But that can be dangerous, financially, ’cause I might find something even more interesting, and expensive…

My Own Private Mess (Blogging101 Introduction)

I started this blog in August (well, actually, I started a different blog on a different site in August, and copied all my entries here when I realized that no one seemed to use that other site) but I thought maybe it was time to see if I could actually convince anyone to read my posts (most have 0 views) so I’m trying out the Blogging101 course.  And today’s assignment is a self-introduction.

I’m not gonna give out my real name, obviously, but I’m using the nom de plume of Charlotte for my novel(s), so let’s go with that for now.

Originally, I planned to do an on-line diary of the year between 39 and 40, in the hopes that I could somehow publicly shame myself into finding a way to get a boyfriend (or whatever) at long last.  That, of course, does not seem to be happening, but I’m trying to keep to my original plan of posting every day, regardless.

Most of the time, I’ve had nothing to say, because my life isn’t very interesting.  (Today, for example, I spent the morning writing, read Euripides fragments as I ate lunch, then after lunch I went over to my brother’s place to play Hyrule Warriors.  Nothing newsworthy there.)

The rare exceptions to the tedium are when I have something to say about my fiction writing, my class work (working on a Master’s Degree in History), or about Greek mythology.  (Almost exclusively the Trojan War, in fact.  I’ve been somewhat fixated on it for nearly an entire year now.  Which sounds unhealthy when I say it like that.)

I’ve tried to keep my more eclectic interests (video games, anime, Doctor Who, doll and other toy collecting) to a minimum on the blog, because if I let them take over, then I won’t talk about anything else…though they still pop up more often than I’d like.  Besides, I’m thinking that if I ever get my house shaped up enough to make a small photo studio in some corner or something, then I’ll probably start a photo blog about my toy collection.  And that, of course, would encompass the other three as well, since I have a lot of toys related to my other interests.  (I even have a lot of dolls tangentially related to Greek mythology!)

As this post shows, I have a tendency to ramble, and then the post sort of peters out.  Which would probably frustrate potential readers?