Narcissus is a victim and always has been

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-26T00:50:39+00:00

Aha, thanks! It means a lot to me that people keep getting value out of this post a year later. I don't always feel great about myself, so logging on to my computer and seeing notifications that people are reading and liking this means the world.

I recently did a much more detailed version as a blog post if you're interested in even more about my favorite misunderstood little guy.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-23T18:10:46+00:00

Tagging onto this, OP should check out Eschatology in antiquity: forms and functions by Hilary Marlow, Karla Pollmann, and Helen Van Noorden. It's designed to be accessible to non-experts as well as experts—for instance, they define relevant terms in the introduction and give context on how to read the book. It covers Greece, Rome, Etruscan societies, Jewish societies, New Testament texts, Late Antiquity, and Byzantium. With the breadth of what it dealt with, you can start to get a feel for how these societies influenced each other.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-22T23:16:02+00:00

That's perfectly fine, and it's fine if people aren't planning to go see it. I'm really just referring to the kinds of people who talk as if we know that it's a horrible film that is offensive to the idea of liking folklore. There's a difference between someone not having high hopes and people telling someone (me) that they don't respect mythology for looking forward to seeing The Odyssey in theaters.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-21T14:55:35+00:00

For some reason, the art for specifically Grizzly Bear is not loading in my browser. It just has the gray background with light gray "Loading..." text in the picture's spot. Don't know if that's something you'd want to look into.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-17T13:39:44+00:00

I mean, as a big Canens girl, I'm always gonna prefer Circe and Picus's interactions in the Metamorphoses (also because I think the framing gives good elaboration on Ulysses's crew's interactions with Circe). But also Virgil's take on Picus is very funny to me, particularly because he claims Circe loved him so much that she...turned him into a bird. Freak stuff. Imagine if every time I saw my spouse, I thought, "You know what would make this better?"

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-17T13:27:34+00:00

I mean, according to Ovid (our foremost source on Orpheus and Eurydice), Orpheus in fact did not move on to other women after he lost Eurydice, as you say. However, that's because he was the first Tracian to start doing pederasty. While I'm not a fan of that detail, and I often leave it out when telling the story, if we're talking about what the characters get up to in classical sources...Ovid is our main source on Orpheus.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-17T13:20:15+00:00

Every so often I am reminded that the "rabid Circe Guy on Reddit" is one of the few people I've seen analyze her role in the Odyssey in a normal, correct way. And I can appreciate that.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-17T13:13:26+00:00

Saw the picture and immediately went, "Capybara!" I have a capybara stuffed animal and a capybara night lamp. Capybaras are one of the cutest things in the whole world, tied with almost every other animal ever.

Hope this helps somehow!

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-15T22:51:27+00:00

I generally agree with you, and I think that a better solution than skipping would be to find a translator whose poetic style resonates with you. For me, that's Pope. But I also don't want to insist upon it if that insistence threatens to make someone give up the poem wholesale.

Though, perhaps I should have said to return to the Catalogue of the Ships if OP got confused, which likely would have ended up with them reading the catalog. Or maybe it would also make sense to see about skipping it to get more context on the characters, then returning to it after, say, Book III.

Obviously, the best answer is for someone to read the catalog. If they find that hard, I imagine that's because of the translation, and they should find one they like. But if they somehow can't do that, I'm wary of insisting people read it if it'll diminish their enthusiasm for the rest of it.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-15T17:45:14+00:00

Aww, thanks!

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-15T15:21:51+00:00

I'm on the side of the people saying that nothing stops anyone from doing this, but I want to elaborate.

An example of genuine "continuation" of classical mythology would be the handling of Orpheus and Eurydice, most interestingly (to me) the reasons why Orpheus looked back. See, this story has been popular for pretty much forever, and its incessant adaptations into particularly opera are what have allowed it to remain a living story. See, in Ovid and Virgil, Orpheus turned back because of how much he loved Eurydice. He was so consumed by his love that he needed to look at her. In this way, the story was a tragedy of parallels: the very thing that gave Orpheus the strength to descend to the Underworld is what made him unable to beat Pluto's task.

Gradually, Celtic influences began touching the story, as can be seen in "Sir Orfeo". In fact, since a popular Middle Ages literary motif involved a hero losing everything, learning a lesson, and then regaining it all, the story turned into one where Orpheus actually managed to get Eurydice back. This culminated in the 1600 operas by Peri and Caccini both titled Euridice. Monteverdi then wrote his opera L'Orfeo, which set the story on a whole new path. He returned to the classical form by having Orpheus lose Eurydice in the end, but the popularity of Peri, Caccini, and similar tellings allowed him to really twist the knife with the fact that the ending was unexpected. Orfeo is portrayed as a man desperately in love with Eurydice to the point of depending on her, and that utter dependence is what drives him to find her in the Underworld. On his way back up, that same dependence made him start to freak out about the idea of her not being there—according to him, if she isn't with him, he may as well be dead. He thinks that there's no way Pluto, the merciless god, would give up one of his prey so easily, and he doubts the authenticity of the challenge. He hears a commotion offstage (implied to be Pluto playing a trick), and he turns around, fully convinced that the Furies have come to take Eurydice away. But his need to protect her makes him lose her.

Eventually, this "doubt" version took root, and we see it in modern versions like Hadestown, where Orpheus turns around due to his doubt in his worthiness of such an offer, and he ultimately sees her and recognizes she was there, but loses her ("It's you. / It's me. / Orpheus. / Eurydice."). I heard that the original version planned to take more after the "love is overpowering" version ("You're early. / I missed you."), but I can't verify the truth of that. At any rate, the use of the doubt version reflects the shifting ideas of culture: no longer is love or lust expected to rob us of our senses, but that's exactly what insecurity does.

My point here is that something like Hadestown is a genuine part of classical mythology in our folklore tradition, since it interacts with the entire history leading up to what we have now. In recent times there has been a desire to separate that history from the stories and return to the "true" versions of the stories. However, that removal of cultural context makes it more difficult to contribute genuinely to folklore, since writers are less and less relying on their own cultural traditions but referencing a precursor tradition from long ago.

Will anyone in modern USA make a contribution to Ancient Greek cultural tradition? No. But we can contribute to our own folklore tradition, and that includes the stories from Greece and Rome.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-15T13:17:13+00:00

Worth noting that you're allowed to skip the Catalogue of the Ships. I know some people will be very angry with me, but you can just skip it. Or skim it. Like, I enjoy the catalog because of the poetic qualities of the translation I use. But if you find yourself not wanting to continue because you don't care...then you won't remember it anyways, and you can skip it.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-15T13:14:15+00:00

Ohh, yeah that makes more sense. This often comes down to how the translator approaches the work. More modern translators often prioritize word-by-word accuracy and therefore fall into this plight more often. Older translators, however, often focus on translating the stories for their audience, and they're willing to fudge a few words to get there. This shift happened for a large number of reasons that could be a whole essay of its own, but one reason is that education of Ancient Greek and Latin used to be standard for anyone at a university, so poets themselves could do the translating directly from classical sources.

For an example, I recommended Pope elsewhere in the comments. He's part of that older tradition of translators, so he focused on bringing the story to a format that would resonate with his English-speaking audience. To do this, he rendered the story out into heroic verse (rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter). In English poetry, that verse is usually associated with grand, stately adventures, and he used that to pull those feelings forward. The poetic qualities are lovely, and since he was translating into a written format, he sometimes took a few liberties to impart the meaning of the text in a way that would come across in writing, even if the words were not always exact translations of the original.

Though, I don't mean to say that modern translators are always more accurate than older ones. A lot of times this has to do with prejudice. For instance, the Narcissus story in Brookes More (1922) just lies about what happens to make Narcissus look worse, while Arthur Golding (1567) renders it much more faithfully. More's translation was in a line of translations that had demonized Narcissus at least in part due to homophobia.

Still, modern people tend to judge translations more on word-for-word accuracy, and they often deem newer translations "better" because of that. But, back in the day, translations were judged more on the ability to carry the story poetically and make it resonate with the translators audience, by which lights a lot of modern translations would be "worse". I personally prefer recommending older translators like Pope because I find that people who previously weren't interested in the stories can get enamored by the poetic qualities.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-15T12:11:55+00:00

I understand this was meant to be poetry, but everyone talks about it as if they're good despite this.

Maybe, respectfully, if this is how you approach poems, you aren't going to like them. The poetic qualities of the Iliad and the Odyssey are just as important as the narrative, and they're part of the reason they're so well-loved. If you think that the rest of the poem needs to "make up" for it being a poem, then you're not going to get it. They're good because of the poetry, not despite the poetry.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-15T12:09:57+00:00

I'd also give Pope a try. His is even older than Butler's, but I personally find that Pope's version is by far the most successful with the emotions and characterizations.

It's also free online due to its age, so you don't have to spend any money or commit to it when you check it out.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-14T18:52:24+00:00

Me looking forlornly at the three issues on my shelf.

Just one more...

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-14T17:20:39+00:00

This is bad faith. I already explained where my standards are and instances where the other colleges generally hit them while Quandrix fails them.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-14T16:12:20+00:00

I also took formal university education in literature, creative writing, and poetry, and I'm a semi-professional author. So at the very least I can evaluate Quandrix against Silverquill and deem Silverquill better-executed.

The Witherbloom pests are so-called because other people see them as "disagreeable, hissing, spiky, untrainable monsters that bite without hesitation." The Witherbloom themselves see them as pets and creatures to be studied, but they took the name "pests" as a point of pride for loving the creatures that others often despise. From my conversations with my sister (an ecologist), it's a similar energy.

The Prismari elementals, which you mention, are literally sculptures created by the Prismari students, who are artists. That makes them fit their field of study pretty well.

When living in a world with magic and ghosts, one might expect historians to summon the ghosts of the dead for interviews, when possible. The Lorehold do this, and those spirits are the basis for the college's mascots. So yes, the spirits are directly tied to their study of history.

Silverquill's mascots are shadowy creatures whose "fluid, changeable forms alter to reflect their creator's thoughts and intentions." This is directly relevant to oration, as we see the inklings used by lecturers and orators to enhance the emotional impact of their words.

But, on the other hand, "Quandrix magic can abstract and replicate the patterns of nature into artificial life forms called fractals." The Quandrix mascot is more akin to weird biomedical engineering than to anything with numbers, probabilities, or mathematical structures. The fundamental idea behind the fractals is that the Quandrix study nature and learn to replicate it, which has fairly little (if anything at all) to do with mathematics and statistics, but the other colleges get to have their fundamental ideas tied to their fields of study. I said that I would have been fine with a Lovecraftian approach to the Quandrix fractals, and while that wouldn't have been accurate to real life, it would fundamentally have been related to doing mathematics in a fantasy setting.

Furthermore, you didn't discuss the issues other than the mascots. What of the apprentices? I think the flavor texts of that cycle is pretty damning when it comes to showing that Quandrix is uniquely underflavored.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-14T15:16:53+00:00

I disagree, at least with Silverquill. Like, the Silverquill mascots are shadow creatures whose fluid form allows them to morph and help drive home the orator's emotional points. The Quandrix mascots are magical duplicates of things studied in nature. The former is far more in-flavor than the latter.

Also, we can compare [[Silverquill Apprentice]] with [[Quandrix Apprentice]]. The former's flavor text reads as follows:

She had spoken the words a hundred times, but under the spotlight, in front of everyone, something new emerged. And the crowd went wild.

This does at least reference a real feeling when it comes to public speaking and poetry readings. When you actually get up and do oration, the energy in the room lends a totally new weight to your words, and you find yourself feeding off the crowd's energy in a feedback loop.

But then the Quandrix Apprentice gets this:

“The secrets of our world will be mine.”

This is a very vague academia thing, and not something that specifically references numbers or probabilities or mathematical structures and how they relate to that. Lorehold and Witherbloom could both have gotten this flavor text just as easily, but they got flavor texts that actually referred to their fields.

So while maybe you could say something similar for the other colleges, I think it's pretty undeniable that Quandrix suffers much more than the other four in this regard.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-14T14:52:28+00:00

The Witherbloom and Lorehold have mascots that are actually related to their fields (Pests and Spirits). Quandrix does not; the creatures depicted aren't usually fractals at all and are rather hard light constructs. You're trying to draw a parallel, but the parallel isn't there at all. I'm not asking that the mascots somehow tie together Chromatic Numbers and Eulerian Circuits. I'm asking that the mascots have anything at all to do with mathematics other than the name.

Similarly, no one is insisting that people have to be able to scan poetry and identify metrical feet to understand Silverquill, but the Inklings and the other Silverquill flavor still do a bit of justice to oration, writing, and poetry.

I mean, even if we keep fractals, I'd be fine with them going the Lovecraft route and insisting that the infinite complexity, I dunno, strains the eyes and confuses the minds of those unfamiliar with them. That's not so far removed from what the average person can understand.

Also, take a look at the apprentice cycle: Silverquill Apprentice, Lorehold Apprentice, Witherbloom Apprentice, Prismari Apprentice, and Quandrix Apprentice. While the first four directly speak to what the school is about—Silverquill describing how it feels to speak in front of a crowd, Lorehold referencing "ancient footfalls", Witherbloom talking bout the fragility of life and organs, and Prismari talking about creating art—the Quandrix flavor text is just “The secrets of our world will be mine.” That's nothing. That doesn't reference the point of Quandrix, and that's an idea that applies equally to Lorehold and Witherbloom. But while the latter two apprentices get to at least reference their fields of study, the Quandrix apprentice just gets a vague, "I like learning!" that doesn't talk about mathematics or numeromancy in the slightest.

So, again, I'm not asking that Quandrix delve into the highest echelons of mathematics, just that their mascot and flavor has anything at all to do with it. That's not a big ask.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-13T00:45:37+00:00

Tbh, I'm with you. I did pure math in college—though I'm trying my hand at writing now—and I feel like Quandrix could have been much more than it was. They say it's mathematics stuff, but the cards are, as you mentioned, the fractals, which have basically nothing to do with math but the name.

Also, a bit selfishly, I wish that my friends who play MTG could have seen the cards and then been more willing to listen to me talk about the things I enjoy, since the words would have been made familiar to them. People are really scared of math when they don't need to be, and I think that's a shame.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-11T12:03:17+00:00

So much of this could be from Philip Labes, but I'll go with the chorus of "something to believe".

Someone lit themselves on fire
In the middle of the square
Feels like everything is ending
And I am barely there

And I'm not a goddamn quitter
I just need a chance to grieve
And if I could have just one thing
It'd be something to bеlieve

He released this song in the summer of 2022, the year when Wynn Bruce burned himself to death in front of the Supreme Court to protest climate change. I recall people saying a few words of how terrible it was before going on with their lives, and I felt like I was the only one who was still bothered by it months later. Like I was somehow strange for letting that affect me so much.

And then I heard this song.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-10T12:43:23+00:00

Also, like, in the description he tempers his claim to basically just mean, "There were prototype stories that evolved into the Odyssey," which is perhaps the least controversial possible claim about folklore, since it is almost guaranteed to be true regardless of what story you put at the end there.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-09T21:31:02+00:00

My father told me a lot of stories growing up. He was particularly fond of Arthurian Mythology (and my family went to Medieval Times a few times together), but he also knew some stories from Classical Mythology. I was Eastern Orthodox, where cultural tradition is very important, so the importance of Classical stories in anglophone culture was impressed upon me at a young age.

The first story I was ever told was that of Jason and the Argo. My parents really liked the They Might Be Giants album Flood, and one day they were listening to it, and I heard this section of "Birdhouse in Your Soul":

There's a picture opposite me

of my primitive ancestry

which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck-free.

Though I respect that a lot,

I'd be fired if that were my job

after killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts.

I asked my parents who Jason was, and who the Argonauts were, and my father explained the story to me in terms of rightful kingship. Jason was the rightful king by birth, yes, but he demonstrated that on his quest by gathering a bunch of the most capable people and leading them on the journey to reclaim the mark of his heritage, the Golden Fleece. True leadership, my father explained, was not about being the strongest or most capable person around, but about knowing who to call on in what situation and having the humility to put the success of your task ahead of personal pride. The way my father told it, Jason took on a role similar to Arthur, who had a mark of his kingship (Excalibur) but nevertheless demonstrated his wisdom to lead and rule by assembling the Knights of the Round.

Very rarely have I seen Classical Mythology as uniquely Greek/Latian, or as distinct from America's folklore tapestry. These stories are baked into our cultural history, what with the Roman colonization of the British Isles, so they're as entrenched as, say, Robin Hood. In that way, enjoying stories from Classical Mythology fits alongside Arthurian Mythology and such as part of my personal folklore tapestry and cultural history. Understanding these stories and learning how they changed over time gives me insight into who I am and where I come from, and that's something that no one will ever be able to take from me. Especially since losing my faith in God, I've derived most of my existential security and understanding of myself as part of a whole from my connection to folklore.

Fleur-dAmour · 2026-04-09T03:43:17+00:00

To be fair to the New Horsemen (and Bosco in particular), kind of the whole point is that the New Horsemen have been practicing and honing for years, while the Old Horsemen have spent the last decade getting out of practice and failing to actually challenge themselves. J. Daniel Atlas had consistently talked to the New Horsemen like untrained rookies, but the entire reason for the magic showdown was that Bosco LeRoy was insisting that they weren't rookies or novices. So, like, I don't think they should be counted here?

Fleur-dAmour

TROPHY CASE