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autumnalwalker · 9 months

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Incorrect Quotes Tag Game - Ships Edition

Thank you for the tag, @rickie-the-storyteller.

And here's the Quote Generator.

Passing the (no pressure) tag to @ceph-the-ghost-writer, @sleepyowlwrites, @on-noon, @words-after-midnight, @albatris, @ahordeofwasps, @oh-no-another-idea, and an open tag for anyone else that wants to make the OCs they ship say silly things.

I only have two canon ships in my stories, so here we go:

Empty Names, Sullivan and (the "dearly departed") Carnette Bridgewood:

Carnette: I can't take this anymore, someone needs to take me out! Sullivan: In a dating type of way, or an assassination type of way? Carnette: I don't know, surprise me!

Sullivan: I think we should kiss. Carnette: And I think you should die but we don’t always get what we want.

Sullivan: Are we fighting or flirting? Carnette: I'm pinning you against a wall with my hand around your neck- Sullivan: Your point?

Sullivan Love is weakness and an evolutionary mistake. Road: You are literally making a Valentine’s day card for Carnette. Sullivan, pointing his hot glue gun towards Road: You’re on thin fucking ice.

Carnette: Are you ready to commit? Sullivan: Like, a crime or a relationship?

Carnette: The first time I saw you, you stole my heart. Sullivan: But I'm a kleptomaniac, so that doesn't mean anything.

Carnette: I don't know how to tell you this, but... I love you. Sullivan: That's great, Carnette. Especially considering the fact we've been married for 6 fucking years.

Sullivan: That was so hot, Carnette. Carnette: I literally called the person who just flirted with you a degenerate dog and told them I hope they get dragged through the streets. Sullivan: I'm so in love with you.

Sullivan: I would never say that my partner is a bitch and I don’t don’t like them. That’s not true… My partner is a bitch and I like them so much!

The Archivist's Journal, Lin and Maiko:

The Archivist: I know you love her. Lin: I am not in love with Maiko! The Archivist, staring at Lin: I never said who... Lin: *realizes* Lin: Shit. Well, anyways-

The Archivist: Hey, Lin, are you free on Friday? Like around eight? Lin: Yeah. The Archivist: And you, Maiko? Maiko: Umm... yes? The Archivist: Great! Because I'm not. You two go out without me. Enjoy your date! Maiko: Did they just-

Lin: My hands are cold. Maiko: Here, let me hold them. Lin: My lips are cold too. Maiko *covers Lin's mouth with her hand*

Maiko: Lin and I are no longer friends. Lin: MAIKO THAT IS THE WORST WAY TO TELL PEOPLE THAT WE’RE DATING!

Lin: So... what would you do if you were in bed with me? Maiko: Depends. Is your bed comfortable? Lin: Yes. Maiko: I'd sleep.

Maiko: Well, Lin and I finally did it! The rest of the squad: *gasps, shocked expressions, etc.* Maiko: That's right... We kissed!

#I decided to have some fun and arrange the quotes in something like a chronological order for the relationships #Given the Bridgewoods' loose connection to mortality the heart stealing might have been literal.#The marriage was a business arrangement and the falling in love came later.#Sullivan got access to the Bridgewood family name money and arcane secrets.#Carnette got a willing test subject for mad science experiments and a conversation partner who wasn't terrified of her.#character tag game #writeblr #writers on tumblr #tag game #writing tag games #incorrect quotes tag #incorrect quotes #oc ship #empty names #the archivist's journal

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deathlessathanasia · 2 years

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I freely admit to be as susceptible to bias as anyone else, and I also admit that imagining my favourite mythological figure chained forever to her rapist in a marriage she never wanted is… unpleasant, to say the least, so the way I read the myths might very well be influenced by this. That said, considering how all-pervasive the idea of Hera having been raped and forced into marriage by Zeus is, the Greek sources supporting it sure are scarce. The following are, to my knowledge, the only Greek accounts concerning Hera's marriage that show reluctance or unwillingness on her part:

In explanation to the passage in Theokritos’ Idyll according to which "women knew everything. They know all about Zeus marrying Hera.", a scholiast gives us the following account, based on a treatise on the sacred traditions of the city of Hermione (the author of which, incidentally, is not a woman): "He (Aristocles) reports that Zeus wished to unite/mix/mingle (μιγῆναι) with Hera from the time he saw her alone, apart from the other gods. Wanting to be invisible so that he was not seen by her, he changed himself into a cuckoo and perched on the mountain which then was called Thornax, but now is called Kokkyx, and that very day he caused a terrible storm to break out. Walking by herself, Hera arrived at the mountain and sat down there, where today is located the sanctuary of Hera Teleia. She saw the cuckoo flitting about, and it perched on her lap, trembling and frozen by the storm. Looking at it, Hera pitied it and took it under her mantle. Zeus suddenly changed his form again and grasped Hera. When she refused to copulate with him because of her mother, the god promised to make her his wife. Among the Argives, who honour this goddess more than any others of the Greeks, there is in a temple a statue of Hera seated on a throne, holding in her hand a sceptre on which is perched a cuckoo."

Regarding the afore mentioned statue and its connection with this myth, Pausanias relates: "The presence of a cuckoo seated on the (statue's) sceptre they explain by the story that when Zeus was in love with Hera in her maidenhood he changed himself into this bird, and she caught it to be her pet."

The two sources differ quite a bit in the way Hera came across the metamorphosed Zeus, but they obviously refer to the same Argive tradition. Since the account of Aristocles is much more detailed, I'll focus mostly on it. It's evident that deception is involved, and the story is clearly reminiscent of similar tricks Zeus employs in other myths. I have occasionally seen attempts to reread what he does here in a less odious manner, mostly by trying to pretend that his intentions towards Hera are not necessarily sexual in nature. That is, of course, absurd and naive (read: deliberately obtuse) in the extreme, and easy to refute by simply looking at the text. The verb μίγνυμι doesn't necessarily refer to sexual intercourse (though this is definitely one of its meanings), but the context really doesn't leave much to interpretation. Now clearly we don't deal here with an act of rape in animal form, since Zeus does abandon the disguise before seizing Hera. The text also makes it explicit that she refuses to have sex with him, though it’s worth noting that the reason she gives has nothing to do with her wanting to remain a virgin forever or whatever other nonsense. In fact, it has nothing to do with her personally at all; her concern seems to be their mother, which is certainly odd. What does Rhea have to do with this? Karl Kerényi and Robin Hard understand the mention of the mother and Hera's reluctance to sleep with Zeus as a reference to the fact that they are full siblings, children of the same mother. That has never stopped Greek deities before, but in lack of anything else, I guess this explanation is as good as any. Whether the promise of marriage is meant to be a sort of compensation for the rape or a way of reassuring Hera and persuading her to accept Zeus's sexual advances the text doesn't say and is something I can't even begin to guess. I suppose one could be charitable (the way people would doubtlessly be if such a myth was told about Hades and Persephone) and choose to believe that she accepted to sleep with him once she received the guarantee of a socially sanctioned and official union, just as one can choose to read it in a more unpleasant (though realistic) manner.

Then, we have a late and odd story from Ptolemy Hephaestion. Or rather, we have a summary of it related in the Myriobiblon of Photius: "The author (Hephaestion) speaks of the Achilles son of the earth and of all the Achilles who have been celebrated since Trojan times; it is this son of the earth who, when Hera fled from the union with Zeus, received her in his cave and persuaded her to marry Zeus, and it is said that this was the first marriage of Zeus and Hera, and Zeus promised Achilles that he would make famous all who bore his name. It is for that reason that Achilles son of Thetis is famous.".

Not much I can add here. I know of no other source that mentions this Achilles son of Earth, nor of any other source according to which Hera needed to be persuaded to marry Zeus by a third party. That aside, I don't see any allusion to rape and forced marriage here, though Hera's initial unwillingness is not up to debate.

Had these been our only (or even the most popular) sources on the subject, the persistent claim that Hera's marriage was not consensual would certainly make a good amount of sense. However, the cuckoo myth is specifically a local one, and the account given by Ptolemy Hephaestion is so obscure that it took me literal years to come across it, and I only did so accidentally. Other than these, there are traditions that do not, in fact, suggest rape or forced marriage.

First, of course, we have Homer, who has little occasion to say anything about how Hera ended up married to Zeus, but who does instead allude to "that time they first went to bed together and lay in love, and their dear parents knew nothing of it". This could have been a pre-existing tradition, or it might be Homer's own invention, no way to tell and ultimately it matters little, since the idea of a secret premarital tryst between Hera and Zeus is attested in several local traditions as well. If it was an ad hoc invention of Homer, it sure became influential for such a small reference.

So back to local traditions then, there is this Boeotian one related by Plutarch and quoted by the Christian Eusebios of Caesarea: "they relate that Hera, being brought up in Euboea. was stolen away while yet a virgin by Zeus, and was carried across and hidden in this region, where Cithaeron afforded them a shady recess, nature's own bridal-chamber. And when Macris----she was Hera's nurse----came to seek her, and wished to make a search, Cithaeron would not let her pry about, or approach the spot, on pretence that Zeus was there resting and passing the time in company with Leto. And as Macris went away, Hera thus escaped discovery on that occasion, and afterwards calling to mind her debt of gratitude to Leto she adopted her as partner in a common altar and common temple, so that sacrifices are first offered to Leto Μυχία, that is, 'of the inner shrine'; but some call her Νυχία, 'goddess of night.' In each of the names, however, there is the signification of secrecy and escape. Some say that Hera had secret intercourse there with Zeus, and, being undiscovered, was thus herself denominated Leto of the night: but when her marriage became openly known, and their intercourse first here in the neighbourhood of Citliaeron and of Plataea had been revealed, she was called Hera Τελεία and Γαμήλιος, goddess of the perfect life, and of marriage."

In this instance we have abduction followed by sexual intercourse, which I would normally find a seriously dubious situation, to put it lightly. However, seeing how Hera appears grateful for not being discovered by her nurse, it doesn't look like she was an unwilling participant here.

The Samians, of course, had their own traditions. As well as claiming Samos to be the place where Hera was born and brought up, "She is also said to have been deflowered by Zeus on Samos, as reported by certain scholia to Book 14 of the Iliad, which comment on the premarital union of the two and connect it with a local ritual which took this form: for the sake of Hera, it was said, the Samians assembled all their marriageable daughters in secret, but then the nuptial sacrifices were carried out in public view before all the world." (The Hera of Zeus: Intimate Enemy, Ultimate Spouse - Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge and Gabriella Pironti); the Iliad scholia (to which I don't have access so I must resort to the writings of modern scholars) also relates that "after Kronos had been sent down to Tartaros, Hera was betrothed (as a presumed virgin) to Zeus by Okeanos and Tethys but promptly gave birth to Hephaistos, having anticipated her marriage by lying with Zeus in secret on the island of Samos; to cover the deed, she claimed that the birth was without benefit of intercourse" (Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources - Timothy Gantz) (as I understand it from various sources, in this scholion the conception out of wedlock of Hephaistos is given as a reason for his physical deformity). It also seems that Zeus and Hera were said, again in the Iliad scholia, to have slept together in secret on Samos for three hundred years: "Parthenos and Pais, "virgin" and "girl," in the Hera myth by no means had the simple meaning of being without a man, without the brother-husband! Rather these names meant secret love-making with him, such as Homer knew about and was the subject of a special tradition in Samos. There it was related that this condition lasted for three hundred years." (Zeus and Hera: Archetypal Image of Father, Husband, and Wife - Karl Kerényi); "Most of the local legends and rites that are recorded in connection with the divine union refer to the first prenuptial intercourse between Zeus and Hera rather than to their wedding. It was claimed, indeed, on Samos that the pair had first slept together on that island in utter secrecy for three hundred years." (The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology - Robin Hard).

This premarital intercourse of Hera and Zeus might also be alluded to by Kallimachos in the following fragment (this is how, as far as I know, most scholars interpret the text, though differing opinions do exist) regarding a Naxian prenuptial custom: "And already the maid had been bedded with the boy, even as ritual ordered that the bride should sleep her prenuptial sleep with a male child both whose parents were alive. Yea, for they say that once on a time Hera - thou dog, thou dog, refrain, my shameless soul! thou would sing of that which it is not lawful to tell".

Nonnos has Aphrodite claim that she had "joined Zeus in wedlock with Hera his sister, after he had felt the pangs of long-lasting desire and desired her for three hundred years". This tells us nothing about how Hera felt about it all, but, well, she did keep the robe she wore "when she came to her brother a virgin in that secret union.". She seems so weirdly nostalgic about it, too: "the embroidered robe she wore was her oldest, still bearing the bloodmarks of maidenhead left from her bridal" (wtf Hera?) and she decides to wear it during her seduction of Zeus in order to "remind her bedfellow of their first love". I don't know what to make of this (other than Nonnos being a weirdo as usual) but it doesn't seem like her first sexual experience was traumatic or unhappy, since she keeps such an... unusual memento of it.

There are, of course, quite a few other texts that mention the marriage of Zeus and Hera, though they give little to no detail about it and they certainly don't provide any insight into how Hera felt about it and whether she was willing or not. For example, we learn from Hesiod that "Last of all he (Zeus) made Hera his fertile wife, and she bore Hebe and Ares and Eileithyia, sharing intimacy with the king of gods and men.", and from Pseudo-Apollodoros that "Zeus married Hera and fathered Hebe, Eileithuia, and Ares". These very simplistic accounts seem to suggest (though this need not necessarily be so) a rather usual, regular marriage. In contrast, even Hesiod mentions the abduction of Persephone by Hades, and Apollodoros does not shy away from mentioning instances of rape and other such things: he does specify, for example, that Porphyrion tried to rape Hera, that Asteria and Metis did not want to have sex with Zeus, and that Hades kidnapped Persephone. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but if Hera's forced marriage were as common a fact as people make it out to be, it is at least a bit surprising that not even the Bibliotheke says anything about it. Diodoros of Sicily relates that "Men say that the marriage of Zeus and Hera was held in the territory of the Knossians [on the island of Krete], at a place near the river Theren, where now a temple stands in which the natives of the place annually offer holy sacrifices and imitate the ceremony of the marriage, in the manner in which tradition tells it was originally performed.", but again this doesn’t tell us much, nor does the story according to which Gaia brought golden apples at the time of their wedding. In Aristophanes' Birds it is said that "the Moirai formerly united Olympian Hera to the King who governs the gods from the summit of his inaccessible throne." and that "Rosy Eros with the golden wings held the reins and guided the chariot; 'twas he, who presided over the union of Zeus and the fortunate Hera.” which, if nothing else, is a nice image.

In any case, Hera's behaviour in the myths hardly looks like that of a woman who hates her marriage and wants nothing to do with her husband, so those who argue that, actually, Hera persecutes Zeus’s mistresses and children not because she is angry about him sleeping with other women but because she is upset about having been “blackmailed” into marriage and other such nonsense are objectively wrong. Even when she is so angry with Zeus that she leaves Olympos and refuses to return, she still can't stand the idea that he might take another wife. As Pausanias relates it: "Hera, they say, was for some reason or other angry with Zeus, and had retreated to Euboia. Zeus, failing to make her change her mind, visited Kithaeron, at that time despot in Plataia who surpassed all men for his cleverness. So he ordered Zeus to make an image of wood, and to carry it, wrapped up, in a bullock wagon, and to say that he was celebrating his marriage with Plataia, the daughter of Asopos. So Zeus followed the advice of Kithairon. Hera heard the news at once, and at once appeared on the scene. But when she came near the wagon and tore away the dress from the image, she was pleased at the deceit, on finding it a wooden image and not a bride, and was reconciled to Zeus. ", to which Plutarch adds the detail that "with joy and laughter (Hera) herself led the bridal procession, and gave additional honour to the statue, and called the festival Daedala, and nevertheless from jealousy burnt the thing, lifeless though it was.”

Anyway if people want to imagine that Hera never wanted to marry Zeus and that she only acquiesced out of shame after being raped that’s fine with me, though I’d say that inferring all of that from the sources we have is, perhaps, reading a bit too much into things. Also, it is certainly interesting that the idea of violence, trickery and unwillingness in the context of this particular relationship is so eagerly emphasised by so many, to the point that different traditions are hardly ever mentioned, considering how the much more blatant violence, trickery and unwillingness in the Hades-Persephone myth are constantly glossed over and rewritten into love and consent.

#woops this is a bit long and a lot incoherent #but I'm kind of getting sick of people forever throwing the same myth in my face no matter where I look #I swear 80% of Greek mythology retellings I've read so far #involve Hera being raped or otherwise harassed into marriage #which is fine if that's what you want to work with but...#even those stories that have Hera be in love with her husband use the rape variant and I don't understand?#like... you don't even need to erase the rapey elements from the myth?#you could simply choose a variant that has no rapey elements?#personally I have no desire to read stories where women fall in love with their rapists #and the secret relationship idea is so much more intriguing anyway #ramblings #hera #zeus

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