#*apparently something similar happened to Caenus as well

[empress-leo]

Okay so I just had to do some research into Tiresias, a generally minor character from Greek mythology. These days he's mostly known for being a blind prophet and for also turning into a woman for seven years as a punishment, but it turns out that there is so much more to their story than that. Because it generally gets confusing about what gender they are, I will be referring to Tiresias (T) as they/them for the sake of clarity.

So first of, the two main stories that are in modern day mythology books are these:

That T was born a man, came across two snakes having sex one day and hit them with a stick, which angered Hera so she turned T into a woman.

That T was born a man, and accidentally saw Athena bathing, so she blinded T and turned T into a woman, but felt bad so gave T the powers of prophecy.

But T may have a much more interesting and longer story than this, including not one, not two, but eight sex changes throughout their life. Now we don't know too much about the actual content of the story, as the only surviving records of the six to eight sex changes that T goes through are either from fragmentary works from Hesiod or pseudo-Hesiod, and a summary of the lost elegiac poem Tiresias by Ptolemaeus Chennus or Sostratos of Phanagoria.

There are references to the story of Tiresias in the Bibliotheca, however this one simply tells the Athena story, which isn't referenced by earlier writers.

However, reconstructing the story of Tiresias as told by Hesiod and Ptolemaeus Ch. we get something which looks like this.

T was originally born female, and early on in life Apollo took a fancy to T, and so went to have sex with them. T agreed on the condition that Apollo teach T how to play music first, which he did, but then T refused to sleep with Apollo, which made him made so he turned T into a man 'so T would feel the arrow of Eros'.

Having been turned into a man, T was asked to mediate an argument between Zeus and Hera, about who had more fun during sex, men or women. T said, having been both, said that women have more fun. As punishment, Hera turned T into a woman.

After been turned into a woman, T laughed at a statue of Hera and Hera turned T into a ugly old man as punishment.

Zeus took pity on T, and turned T into a woman at the 'bloom of her youth'

When T was bathing one day, a man called Glyphius tried to rape T, but T is too strong and strangles him. Since Glyphius was a favourite of Poseidon, he takes T to court who turn T into a man as punishment. They also took away T's skill at prophecy.

T attended the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (The parents of Achilles. This is the wedding which kicked off the trojan war) and judged an apparently unrelated beauty contest to the one with Eris and the golden apple, this one between Aphrodite and the Graces, Pasithea, Euphrosyne, and Cale. T chose Cale as the most beautiful, and as punishment Aphrodite changed T into an ugly old woman, though Cale took pity on T and gave them a really good head of hair.

[...] at this the goddess became angry and changed T into a mouse, and this is why mice eat very little, as they had once been an old lady, and also why mice are prophetic.

Now this gives us with some questions, but one main one. How did T become a prophet? Well, this ties into the version of the story with Athena, recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. As a man, T sees Athena naked and makes T blind as a punishment. T's mother, the nymph Chariclo, begs Athena to change T back, but Athena refuses. Chariclo then washes T's ears, which gives T the power of prophecy, because T can now understand the cries of the Augury bird.

Another question is why, if T had judged that women have more fun during sex, would she turn T into a woman as punishment. Now you could argue a certain more assaulty reason, but the punishment makes much more sense if we put the story about the snakes before T mediates the argument.

The story goes that T, as a man, comes across a pair of snakes having sex and hits them with a stick, causing them to break apart. Hera objects to this, and so turns T into a woman as a punishment and T becomes a priestess of Hera. Then T mediates the argument, and T turns into a man. This isolated version of the story is one that survived to most modern mythologies.

Now there are several more things, but we really don't know too much about anything to do with Tiresias really, as the best work we know of which details his whole life is fragmentary at best and completely lost at worse. There are a ton of miscellaneous notes and facts about him. Apprently Zeus gave T a lifespan seven times longer than that of a human. He might've been blinded for knowing the secrets of the gods. He frequently communicated with the dead in order to tell his prophecies, and when Odysseus went to the land of the dead T was the only person that recognised him. Not even Odysseus' mother could recognise him without drinking a special drink. The word Tiresias was also a by-name for a prophet in ancient Greece. He was a reoccurring character in Greek Tragedies, most notably in the Bacchae, where he joins in the bacchic revels. He also assists Oedipus in the murder investigation of Laius, the previous king, and dies after drinking tainted water and getting shot by Apollo.

Tiresias is characterised as an extremely old prophet who communicates with birds and the dead, and has knowledge of the lives of Men, Women, and the gods.

That's fucking badass, and it pains me to know that'll we'll never know more than that.

source: Supplimentum Hellenisticum

#mythology #greek mythology #long reads #long post #ancient greece #ancient greek #tw: r*pe #Oedipus #Tiresias #genderfluid #trans #Would they count as trans? #I suppose they're not willingly trans #so maybe not #characters #funnily enough at the end of the passage about Tiresias there's a footnote #*apparently something similar happened to Caenus as well #like what #how often do the gods changes people's gender on a whim #moral of the story #piss off the gods to get a free sex change #or wash your ears to become a prophet #or both!

[300iqprower]

I mean if we’re saying bunyan doesn’t deserve an ssr alt we could also say that someone like ryoma or nobu didn’t really deserve one either, esp over getting a new gudaguda servant like monkey or whoever who have also been teased, except even more so bc they were already gold servants alongside also being welfares like bunyan. I feel like it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges? Like if making a bronze to a gold is bad, then giving a welfare a swimsuit (nobu) or a silver a swimsuit (ushi) would also be bad and I don’t think that’s really what you were going for? Like I get being disappointed bc it’s not a servant you care for, like in the case w charlotte, but she was well received by most of the fan base and it really wasn’t that early to give her a swimsuit- caenus and sei both got one the same summer, and they were implemented AFTER her.

From what I’ve heard, it does seems like there’s legit legal concerns about the rider and assassins from lwm as well since they still have irl relatives around (similar to something that happen w Armstrong iirc) which I GUESS I why they weren’t implemented….. though tbh I don’t know how true this is since edison is in, and there was a whole thing where one of nightingale’s great grandnephews found the r/grandorder subreddit and that his relative was a waifu back in the day. At the very least, including them in the third ascension means they weren’t left out completely so it isn’t the worst case scenario.

I think the issue is at the end of the day some servants are just going to be favored more than others. It sucks, but it’s not necessarily complete bs pandering if that makes sense? They’re going to want to make content not just of servants who sell the best, but also of the ones they like most. At the very least I’d say bunyan alt and summer charlotte are small potatoes to say, having a 900th saberface when we could have gotten an original design ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sorry if this is incoherent I get why you’re upset it just seems like….idk summer kama and charlotte were at least in the general timeframe for summer alts. It’s be a problem if we got a like, summer morgan or koyan this year though.

First off, I agree with everything! And also YOU FOOL! I THINK RYOUMA ALSO DOESNT DESERVE THE ALT! The only reason that one doesnt upset me is because of something else that already exists that DOES upset me: The asinine way this game has welfare vaulting!

But for real I probably seem way more upset about SBunyan than I actually am, looking at my timeline. I'm not much more offended by it than I am Lancer Ryouma, actually. It's just SBunyan's issues are a lot more clear and dry, so I ended up illustrating them even though I'd say it's one of the least offensive faux pas FGO has made lately.

Side note, I also think there is in fact too many Nobus. Maou is in the same spot as Ryouma where there's a left behind Welfare that turns this new one into the only real option for newer players, and they both seem to have an attitude of "Right, this SSR version? This is the serious one. This is the REAL one; not just a gag character, but their actual true selves in all their glory gag or otherwise." although apparently it was NOT guda4 that had the serious Maou content I've seen, that was a disappointment...

As for the legal issues, that sounds like fuckin garbage. And I'm not directing that at Type Moon for once. Family Estates are the definition of parasites I swear to god. That said, if that's the case they shouldn't be so cloak and dagger and make clear "hey, we get you want these, but turns out we can't risk it" rather than tack them on in a way that so far it seems I'm definitely not the only one to see as exactly that: tacking on. A large part of that is no doubt how from the announcements they made there was this base assumption that they would be adding new Riyo servants to the friend pool. Not only was the servant(s) not added to the friend pool, it was a limited SSR alt of a character that was already in the game even if as a bronze welfare. If I actually cared about LWM servants as much as the people I see talking about this did, I'd probably be livid. This is a general problem with these companies across the board: They're so busy trying to cheat and scam their audience that they'll never willingly be transparent about things. In the words of one of my favorite Jimquisitions "The video game industry, more than other entertainment industry, operates with as much cloak and dagger as it can FUCKIN muster!" And the end result of all that secrecy is anger and frustration as they refuse to be open with their own audience until the damage is already done. That more than anything else a reoccurring thing of my complaints: Speculation. And why so much speculation? Because they never tell us anything about how the sausage is made. To the point they're a modern company who openly doesn't officially credit their writers and has even used that as a way to praise itself. And we all know what it means when they don't want to talk about how the sausage is made.

But that's all getting off track. The point I wanna highlight in your (perfectly coherent dont worry) response is

I think the issue is at the end of the day some servants are just going to be favored more than others. It sucks, but it’s not necessarily complete bs pandering if that makes sense? They’re going to want to make content not just of servants who sell the best, but also of the ones they like most.

You're right. It's what's gonna happen. I'd be an idiot if I honestly thought it was otherwise. But this is a BIG BIG BIG thing, Bunyan sized you could say, about a personal creative philosophy I have and why I rail so hard against ensemble franchises like FGO. Lemme dig up a long conversation I had about this years ago....Aha!

“If a story is filled with an ensemble cast of characters, then any character hero or villain who is “developed enough to where you can be certain it is at least one person’s absolute favorite character ever” needs to have a their moment to shine. They need to be treated with a certain level of creative respect, at least enough for them to have a moment that can be their defining one.”

This can mean all sorts of things. It can mean a resolution to their arc, a tragedy they endure that makes their suffering memorable, a really fcking cool fight that makes them look awesome, it could be all sorts of things. It could be Mordred vs Semiramis. It could be Kojiro saving Artoria. It could be Cu going out on his own terms. It could be Arash’s sacrifice. It could be Diarmuid’s rage. 

But with a series like fate it increasingly feels like for every character who gets their moment, two are just...wasted completely. Cursed Arm, Hundred Personas, Jekyll and Hyde, Phantom, Geronimo, Boudica, Lalter, the same comparison comes to mind now as did then: Bleach. The whole reason I loved Bleach as a show so much was because it went out of its way to give every character that moment with only a couple exception, and even with those exceptions it TRIED to give them that moment. Then you get to Part 2 of the series, and immediately the majority of a massive cast gets completely sidelined and treated as afterthoughts for the rest of the saga. That’s the entire reason I stopped watching it at that point. 

Fate is like that from the get go. This is a very very very very subjective criticism, especially considering it’s the hill i’ve chosen to die on, I’m aware. But in this sort of massive roster type thing, when a character inevitably gets utterly shafted, for the sake of hyping up others, my thought is always and immediately “That was someone’s favorite character they just fucked over” and that’s in no small part because a LOT of the time, I'm that someone or at least like that character enough to understand why it could be someone’s favorite. 

....Now, take ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL of that, and put in it in a context where the story is ongoing and actively developing alongside those reading/playing it for years, and instead of seeing the people whose favorite got shafted and accommodating them, the writers/developers choose to rehash and polish up the characters who already had their big moment, often doing so to the same multiple times even as the disparity between characters who got their moment and those who didn't grows exponentially. 

That is why I have unlimited salt works at my disposal whenever this series is concerned. 

#i honestly dropped everything halfway through this just to track down which Jimquisition that line was and make sure i got it right. #It was the one I thought it was 'Anger' #a relevant line from a far older Jimquistion? #'You're not spies you're video game publishers. Stop hiding everything because you're only making yourself look worse' #long post #wall of text #Important posts #fgo #writing analysis #I care way too much yes dont worry I already know #never thought I’d get an ask #also come the fck on if they're only gonna add one bronze servants couldnt it have at least been Archer or Rider?! #Can't it be the one I want just ONCE?!