Mythology Monday: Ambrosia

July 27, 2015July 9, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

“Mmm . . . this is sweet. What is it?” I took a longer sip.

“Yours? Sparkling white grape juice.” He grinned. “Did I mention that I’m afraid of your mother?”

I rolled my eyes and finished the glass. It didn’t taste like any grape juice I’d ever had, but that wasn’t surprising. Everything in the Underworld had a richer flavor. Hades made his way around the room, greeting the souls between dances. I stayed close, keeping an eye on the ballroom for any demigods. When another glass found its way into my hand I smiled. I could get used to having servants.

The next time Hades invited me to dance a grin stretched across my face. My teeth felt tingly, and all the dancing was making me dizzy. As he led me through the simple motions I gave him an appraising look.

“You look nice tonight.”

Surprise flitted across Hades’ face. “Thank you. You look lovely as well.”

“I always kind of figured you’d be ugly.”

Hades blinked. “Excuse me?”

I giggled. “Well, you know, in books and movies you’re always, like, deformed or something crazy. You know, like a reflection of your soul?”

“Ah, I take it you mean my ugly and deformed soul?” Hades kept his voice light. He held me at arm’s length and gave me a quick once-over. I felt a ping of power pulse through me.

“No. That’s not what I meant.” I touched my hand to my forehead, trying to make sense of my jumbled thoughts. “I don’t think you or your soul is ugly. You’re actually pretty hot.”

Hades raised an eyebrow. “I see. Not so fast.” Hades intercepted a champagne glass from a tall Lethian and studied the liquid carefully. After a cautious sniff he took a small sip, and his eyes widened.

“Something wrong?”

I jumped at the sound of Thanatos’ voice. I hadn’t realized he was behind me.

“Somehow Persephone was given ambrosia instead of grape juice,” Hades replied.

Thanatos raised an eyebrow. “How much did she drink?”

“Is this a god thing?” I asked, growing annoyed. “Talking about people like they aren’t standing right there? What’s ambrosia? Some kind of poison?” The thought should have alarmed me, but I found it very difficult to care at the moment. Everyone looked so nice, and the music was so pretty.

“It’s just a divine drink,” Hades assured me. “It’s not poisonous. Well, not in the traditional sense of the word.”

“Do you think someone gave it to me on purpose?”

Hades frowned. “I can’t imagine what purpose it would serve. It was probably just a mix-up, but Thanatos, would you mind interviewing the Lethians who were in charge of our drinks?”

“Sure. Did you want me to take her to her rooms?”

Hades stared at me, considering. “Do you drink? In the living realm, I mean?”

I shook my head. “I’m boring. Mom always asks me to promise her not to drink anytime I go out.”

“Demeter does that?” Hades sounded surprised.

Thanatos let out a low whistle and shook his head.

My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t lie. My mom wasn’t lax. She didn’t trust me. She just knew if I promised not to drink, I physically wouldn’t be able to do it.

“That bitch!”

Thanatos snorted, and Hades raised an eyebrow.

“Water for her.” He motioned to a Lethian for a refill.

When our glasses arrived, Hades tested my drink before passing it to me. “I’ve got her, Thanatos. Go on.”

Thanatos studied me, looking so serious that I giggled. “Hades, she’ll only embarrass herself. Let me get her out of the—”

“She is right here and she doesn’t want to go back to her room. She wants to dance and have fun.”

“Yes, Thanatos, you’re being rude.” Hades’ lips twitched as though he was suppressing a grin. “See to the Lethians.”

“I really don’t think—”

“What exactly are you worried about?” Hades asked.

“You’re a lot taller than Thanatos,” I observed.

Thanatos met Hades’ eyes with an unreadable expression on his face. “If someone got close enough to switch her drink—”

“To what end?”

“Compromise her judgment? Lower her guard? Should I go on? She’s vulnerable.”

“She is right here,” I grumbled.

“Yes, you are.” Hades grinned. “I need you to stay with me until you’re safe in your room. Would you be willing to do that?”

“Sure.”

Hades gave Thanatos a look. “Satisfied?”

Thanatos made a noncommittal noise and signaled a Lethian from the crowd.

Hades shook his head when Thanatos disappeared into the crowd. “He worries too much.”

“You’re not worried?”

Something flickered in Hades’ eyes but it was gone before I could interpret it. “It was probably an innocent mistake. But still . . . I’d rather not have you out of my sight.” He held out his hand. “Still want to dance?”

Time passed in a blur of color and light. People laughed and danced around us, the spinning arcs of the skirts making me dizzy.

“I can’t dance another step.” I giggled, clinging to Hades so I wouldn’t trip and fall.

“Let’s get some air.” Hades led me out of the ballroom. The party was scattered all across the Underworld, but we found privacy in the grove of trees. The trees stretched into the sky, their branches arching and spilling over, sheltering us from view of any of the other souls wandering the Underworld.

“You’re trying to stop me from making a scene.” I stepped away from him into the center of the clearing. I spun around, holding my arms out. “Whoa.” I stopped mid-spin, waiting for the clearing to do the same.

“You should probably eat something.” Hades caught my hand. “Think of something, anything at all.”

I imagined pomegranate seeds and a plastic baggy full of them appeared in my free hand. I put six seeds in my mouth. An owl hooted in the distance.

Hades laughed. “You’re going to need more than that. What’s your favorite type of bread?”

“I’m a goddess. Do I have to worry about hangovers?”

“Your metabolism will change when you come into your powers. As far as alcohol is concerned, right now you’re a human.” He suppressed a grin. “Ambrosia gets even gods drunk, so you’re in trouble.”

I sat down on the cool grass. “Have you ever eaten one of these? They’re delicious.” I offered him a seed, and he took it, sitting down beside me.

“I’ve tried everything. I was there when your mom came up with this one.” He leaned back, studying the sky.

I followed his gaze. The sky was empty, faintly glowing with the same soft light that filled the Underworld. It was never quite dark here, but never bright enough for my tastes. “You guys really need to get a moon.” I tilted my head back further. “Where are the stars?”

“This is the Underworld. The sky is just a decoration.”

“Stars are pretty.”

“Stars are tragic.” Hades turned to face me. “Most of the stars are nothing but reminders of love gone horribly wrong, or men challenging the gods.”

“I thought they were gas giants.”

Hades waved his hand. “Semantics. The constellations they form are nothing but sad stories. Why would anyone want to have a constant reminder of tragedy hanging above their head?”

I thought about that for a minute, studying the blank sky. “Did you play a part in any of those tragedies?”

He met my eyes and something in them set my heart beating uncomfortably hard. “No.”

I smiled. “You’re nothing like I pictured you.”

“Yeah, let’s not go down this road again. If you start talking about how my hair should be on fire, or how evil I should be, I might take Thanatos’ advice.”

“You’re not evil.”

“You don’t think so?” Hades asked, studying my face. “After what I did to you?”

“You saved me.”

“I could have handled it better. I could have taken a second to think, found some way that wouldn’t tie you to me.” He hesitated. “But when I saw you, there was just something about you . . . ” He trailed off and looked at the sky. “Maybe I didn’t want to find another way. What if I wasn’t just impulsive, what if I was selfish? What kind of a person does that make me?”

I burst out laughing. “Do you always over-think things so much? You saved my life. That’s about as selfless as it gets. Being down here isn’t convenient, and being married is a little weird, but it’s just a few months. It’s not like you get anything out of this, and I’ve been such a brat about it.” I shook my head, enjoying the wave of dizziness that accompanied the motion. “Thank you, Hades. For everything. Really.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek, giggling at the surprised look on his face. “I owe you, big time.”

“I don’t think you understand.” He reached toward me. I blinked when he brushed a strand of my hair behind my ear. “It’s not just a few—”

“Hey, Hades! Persephone!” Cassandra called. She laughed when she found the grove. “Oops, hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Of course not.” Hades stood, brushed himself off, and extended his hand. I lay frozen, hand touching my face where the ghost of his fingers had brushed against my skin.

“Persephone.” His voice was gentle. I looked up and grabbed his hand. “We should get back to the party.”

~@~

Ambrosia was the divine drink (and sometimes food and sometimes perfume for Aphrodite) of the gods. It is sometimes used interchangeably with Nectar, a divine drink. Other times Nectar is the drink and ambrosia is the food. Other times Nectar is the food and Ambrosia is the drink. For my purposes, Ambrosia is the “golden Nectar of the gods.” Persephone drinks a glass in book one, and it gets her very, very drunk very, very fast. In my series it’s the only drink that can actually get gods drunk, and the impact it has on humans is even more pronounced.

Depending on the myth, Ambrosia is either created by the earth in a sort of atmospheric offering to the gods and carried to Olympus by pretty gods, or Ambrosia was a nymph who was assaulted and turned into a grape vine to escape.

In mythology, the drink could turn mortals immortal, heal, and restore youth. It could also keep corpses fresh and life like for all time. Demigods drank it on occasion with no side effects, but the food/drink/perfume was jealously guarded from mortals. Tantalus was sent to a special place in hell because he tried to steal it. More on that in an upcoming Mythology Monday.

That’s not to say that Ambrosia was never given to mortals, just not without a gods approval. Achilles was anointed with Ambrosia (except his heel) in some versions of the myth, and Psyche was annointed with Ambrosia at her wedding so she could marry Cupid.

Liquids like Ambrosia pop up in all kinds of lore. I use it more like fairy wine. There are references to ambrosia on Egyptian statues of Anubis. “I am death…I eat ambrosia and drink blood.” Creepy much?

For Real Friday: Super Special People

July 24, 2015June 30, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

No, I could think of some who had it worse. Normal humans who knew about the gods. How many books had I read, or movies had I watched, where some normal teenager discovered they were special or had some ability that set them apart? Mortals craved that distinction, that power. They dreamed and wished and wondered. How much would it suck to realize all those things you’d dreamed of and hoped for were real, just not for you?

~@~

Growing up in the nineties, I was bombarded with super special people. Mutants, superheroes, vampires, and pretty much any other unique species. Most of the time the agent into the story was someone who thought they were normal, right up until they figured out that they were secretly a super special person.

There’s nothing wrong with that plot line. The idea that somewhere within you lies this untapped potential to be something better, something more, it’s not a bad thing. Personally, I can remember the day when I realized I was a lot happier with my life as it was then I would be if I found out I was really a super hero, or a lost princess, or some random alien species. But I never stopped wanting something that each and every one of those characters had.

The super special coloring or marking they had.

There’s always something. An unusual (yet conventionally attractive) birthmark. Unusual (and once again conventionally attractive) hair or eye colors. Glowing symbols that appear on your forehead when you shout out magic words. YA protagonists could never just be average looking. OR worse, when they were “average looking” they were always described as too thin and had three or more guys chasing after them at any given time (I’m looking at you Vicky Austin). And I kept the trope going. My gods and demigods are very attractive people. They’re gods. Unrealistic, unobtainable beauty just kind of made sense. But it’s not something I plan to keep up with outside of this series because I remember hating the way I looked because I had nothing that set me a part, nothing special. It wasn’t until I had a kid and actually got upset when her eyes changed from blue to brown (at 18 months, that six month thing is a lie) that I realized how deep my bias against the way I looked went.

The thing with super special markings or coloring is, as cool as it was, in a way it was just as damaging to me as the unobtainable models and movie stars I’m surrounded by every day. It made being normal, not having some super special (but don’t forget conventionally attractive) thing that set me apart seem like it wasn’t normal. I couldn’t see myself in the books I was reading or the shows I watched, but I wanted to. Books like Twilight and the Hunger Games would have meant a lot to me as a kid. And I’m still luckier than most. Ever notice how often the super special hair color/eye color/symbol code the character as white? Even when they don’t. I got an email complaining that I’d white washed the demigods by turning them gold. And despite the fact that gold skin/hair/eye tones can exist across every ethnicity, I completely understand how the reader got that impression. We’re so used to it that we don’t see anything else.

It’s entirely possible I was just over sensitive as a kid reading those books. I didn’t beg my mom for plastic surgery so I could look like a super model, I begged for purple contacts so I could look magic. It is entirely possible I’m just weird. But on the off chance that it’s not just me, I’m going to try harder not to fall into that trope in books I write outside of the Daughters of Zeus series.

Way Back Wednesday: Special Markings

July 22, 2015June 30, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

I grew up on L. J Smith and Sailor Moon. Every single show I watched or book I read marked their supernatural beings with some super special physical marker. Be it unnatural beauty, purple eyes, or crescent moons on their foreheads. So naturally when I wrote my gods, I had to follow suite. So my gods are ridiculously attractive ala L. J Smith and my demigods have a very distinct look determined by the ichor in their blood.

There are more examples of this than I can detail (though do chime in with your favorite ones!) but I thought I’d share this extremely funny comic that toys with that trope.

Mythology Monday: Ichor

July 20, 2015June 30, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

“How will I know who’s a demigod?”

“By sight. Halflings have ichor running through their veins.” When I looked at him blankly, he sighed. “The golden blood of the gods?”

“I have gold blood?” I asked incredulously. At this point, why not, I thought ruefully. Hell, I can probably fly.

“Not in color,” Hades clarified. “In essence. Though it does affect their appearance.”

“How?”

“They look gold.” At my disbelieving look he sighed again. I thought about offering him an inhaler, but he continued. “Gold hair, skin, eyes—they practically glow. Surely you’ve met a demigod, either here or on the surface. It’s a useful marker we decided on long ago. Accidentally killing or cursing another god’s child is rife with political complications.”

~@~

Ichor is the golden blood of the gods and is deadly to humans. The blood is enhanced by the divine diet of nectar and ambrosia. Actually, it’s been hinted at that the gods are immortal because they only eat and drink nectar and ambrosia. As in if they would become mortal if they ate human food. Food is often binding in mythology. Mortal food makes souls mortal. Food from the Underworld makes souls, living or dead, bound to that realm. I didn’t stick to that line of logic in my story. Persephone eats both the food of mortals and the food of the Underworld with no ill effects.

There’s an interesting myth about a man named Talos who was created either Daedalus or Hephaestus with single vein of ichor nailed to his spine in such a way that it was stopped up from entering the rest of his body. Oh, and his body was made of bronze and had wings. The ichor made him super strong so he could protect Europa and her island.

When the Argonauts sailed past Talus threw rocks at them to protect his island. Medea either convinced him to remove the nail holding the ichor contained within his body, or removed it herself, releasing the ichor and killing Talus.

In my books, Ichor is responsible for giving demigods their golden coloring. It’s also the source of the gods divinity and power. Ichor is going to have a pretty important role in the next trilogy, I’d tell you more, but you know… spoilers.

For Real Friday: Unrealistic Relationships

July 17, 2015June 15, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

I remember the day when I figured out that I would hate every single character I was in love with if I met them in real life. The soulmate trope is often accompanied by love/hate the love/hate relationship trope until the two characters mutually agree they’re in love, at which point they become sappy, uninteresting, and obsessed with one another. I knew I didn’t have the patience or the inclination to get involved with a love/hate relationship. If I hate someone, I hate them. There’s no romantic tension, no hidden attraction. They have done something that makes them unattractive to me on that level until they either drastically change or enough time passes by without them around that I forget why I hate them. That may just be me though. I don’t know.

The love/hate thing is actually kind of dangerous, because it often plays into the aggression is sexy myth and it teaches women to ignore their instincts. Even if a guy isn’t actually dangerous, if you don’t like him, can’t stand to be around him, and do nothing but argue if you’re near each other, chances are your relationship won’t be a happy one. I was very careful with this in my books. Persephone and Hades snark at each other a good bit when they meet, but I was very, very, very careful to keep it about circumstance. Once she got to know Hades, she liked him. The circumstances under which they met sucked. But personality wise they were never incompatible.

I was a lot older when I figured out that the other side of the coin was equally unrealistic. All the romances I’d read or watched featured this unbelievably romantic guy who would go to the ends of the earth for his significant other. He’d be obsessed and didn’t actually appear to have a life outside of who they’re interested in beyond the basic trappings that were used to show what an amazing guy he was for that particular girl (his job showed he was stable/creative/whatever, his family showed he cared about people, and sometimes he’d have a pet). Whatever personality he had when the love/hate trope was going on vanished into the relationship once he got the girl. It wasn’t until I started dating that I realized that, while romantic, this trope is every bit as damaging as the love/hate trope.

When you are in a relationship with another person, you are in a relationship with another entire person. Even if they’re your soulmate. Trust me, I married my high school sweetheart. I met him, we clicked, and lived happily ever after. If soulmates are a thing, I found mine and we knew it instantly. But he’s a complete person with or without me. He has a life and if I wasn’t in it, maybe it wouldn’t be as awesome, but he wouldn’t wither away to nothingness because he’s a healthy human. You want your significant other to have a life outside of you.

There have been a few points since I met my husband where for some reason or another we were all we had. We’d just moved to a new place where we knew no one, a job change took one of us away from everyone in our social circle, random emotional stuff like say, giving birth and all the chemicals that come with that that make you feel like nothing outside of your little family matters. We celebrated when those moments ended because while we love each other lots and lots it gets super super frustrating to be the only person in a relationship with a life outside of it if you ever say, want to hang out with your friends, enjoy your hobby, or just be away from that other person for a minute. We’re always there to lean on, but your significant other shouldn’t be all you have. That’s not healthy. Which is another thing I was careful to convey in Persephone. She and Hades have full lives outside of one another. They have friends and family and hobbies and purposes that don’t revolve around their relationship.

As for the last part of the trope. It’s cool to be with someone who wants to move the moon and stars for you, but they should never have to. Gender reverse that particular expectation and consider how uncomfortable it makes you. There’s a reason for that. If someone loves you, they shouldn’t expect you to give up some major thing that makes you you for the sake of your relationship. If someone loves you, they shouldn’t want you to sacrifice something that makes you happy so you can prove how much you love them. If someone loves you, they shouldn’t want you to do something impossible, frustrating, or difficult just to make them happy. It means a lot when they do, but it shouldn’t be an expectation. That is why I didn’t set up my series as Persephone having to choose between the living realm and Hades. She at a certain point had to choose between having a normal life and being a goddess, but it wasn’t actually a choice and Hades was never part of that equation. He was a given no matter which life she stuck with. I also never had them make massive, life changing decisions because of each other. They influenced each other’s choices, sure. That’s pretty typical of all relationships, but if you look closely, there were never choices they made because it was the only way they would work. Every character in the third book made the assumption that Hades was willing to destroy everything to save Persephone but he outright explained that wasn’t the case. He wanted to save her, and acknowledged she was worth paying that price but he also explained the lengths he was willing to go to had more to do with saving the living realm and the Underworld from Zeus. Remember, he can’t lie.

I love reading romances. I like watching romances. I love the love/hate dynamic and the extreme love dynamic. Just know it’s not a realistic expectation to bring to your own relationships. If you did find that exact relationship you read about, you’d hate it because those models work in fiction but in real life they aren’t healthy. So read, enjoy, but know you deserve a relationship that’s better than fiction.

Way Back Wednesday: Soulmates

July 15, 2015June 15, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

Orpheus and Eurydice’s souls poured into my hands. They felt the way candlelight looked. Tenuous and flickering, but aglow with energy that, left uncontrolled, could destroy everything in its path. They resonated with one another. Two parts of a whole, reunited as one.

Joel had been right, or rather, it seemed his long lost myth had been accurate. My mother hadn’t been sure of the origins of that myth. She had little to do with the creation of humans. Her energy had been focused on sustaining them. The souls had been Zeus’ department.

I used Orpheus’ soul as a guide to mold Eurydice’s renewed soul back into her body. His soul flowed effortlessly into her to fill in the missing connections. The souls merged easily, the trouble was getting them to split apart. I pulled more power from the Reapers, shoving each soul back to its rightful place.

~@~

Without a doubt L.J Smith influenced my view on soulmates more than any other writer or bit of media. The silver thread she described at some point in every series she wrote, but particularly in Nightworld is the thing that pops into my head if you say soul mate. I honestly can’t even quantify how much her work influenced mine. I read her books over and over and over again when I was younger. Her words have been hardwired into my DNA.

There’s no reason to include any other sources in this list. If you haven’t read everything there is to read by L.J Smith, do so. Her books don’t stand up to the test of time that well if you read them through a modern sense, but here’s the thing. Young Adult literature has changed. We have Harry Potter to thank for that, but before the Harry Potter series got long and complex, you couldn’t get something of that quality published for children. YA was barely a recognized genre and formula was king. When I (and most other young adult writers of today) was younger, we had a tiny section of the bookstore devoted to YA books. That section held over a hundred babysitter club and sweet valley books, some stuff by Judy Bloom, Deane Coontz, and Caroline B Cooney (but most book stores actually put those with the grown up books, at least here in the south) and then there was a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of shelf space dedicated to the books with dark spines. R.L Stine, Christopher Pike, and L.J Smith were this section, and L. J Smith was the only woman of the big three. Children’s fiction had a lot more variety as did adult fiction, but I promise you, every female YA author you’ve read has been influenced by L.J Smith, she’s all over Meyer’s work, and I catch references to her all the time in literally everything I read. Read it so you can catch them to. You owe her a debt if you enjoy the supernatural romance genre.

Mythology Monday: The creation of man

July 13, 2015June 11, 2016 / kaitlinbevis / 3 Comments

“There’s a myth about broken souls,” Joel said finally. “I’m surprised Orpheus hasn’t heard it. As crazy as he is about all that stuff.”

I leaned against Joel, and he draped his arm over my shoulder. “What is it?”

“When the gods created humans, they didn’t look like us. They had four legs, four arms, two faces, and one soul. They were complete and happy. But they were too fulfilled. Too powerful.”

“They were a threat,” I murmured.

“Exactly. Zeus split them in two saying that men would never amount to anything if they spent half of their lives searching for their other half.” He gave me a significant look. “Some people get lucky and find their soul mates, but the rest will always be searching to fill that void in their lives.”

“Do you think the gods have soul mates?” I winced at the wistfulness in my voice.

“Why would they need them?”

~@~

Once the titans were defeated, Zeus and his siblings divided their roles. Zeus took the domain of the skies and of Olympus, the palace/mountain of the gods, Hades took the Underworld, Poseidon too the ocean, Demeter became goddess of the harvest, Hestia became goddess of the hearth and home, and Hera became queen of the gods.

Zeus was terrified of having children. He’d seen the pattern of divine children killing their parents and decided it wasn’t for him, so when his first child, Athena, was born, he ate her. That lasted for all of a day before she popped out if his head fully grown, wearing full armor, in the world’s worst migraine. After that he gave up and had a ton of kids. Then the gods created humans. Prometheus and two other Titans who did not take sides during the Titan war helped to fashion humans out of clay and Athena breathed life into them.

Humans didn’t used to look like we do now. They had four arms, legs, and two faces and one soul. But they were too happy and too fulfilled and didn’t fear or worship the gods enough to be useful. So Zeus cut them in half, into us. So long as humans spent their lives searching for their missing halves they could never amount to anything.

Zeus also tormented man by giving some men more intelligence, strength, and power than others, and by creating a perfect woman. Pandora. He sent her to Prometheus’s brother, Epimethius. Prometheus had warned him to never accept a gift from Zeus, but at the sight of her beauty he couldn’t resist. He gave her a box and told her she must never open it.

Naturally she did and in it all the horrors of the world flew out. Evil, mistrust, sickness, worry, the only good thing in the box was at the very bottom, hope.

The humans fell into a half-existence. The world was harsh and unforgiving and the humans were hungry and cold. Prometheus saw their suffering and brought them the gift of fire. Zeus saw this betrayal and punished him by staking him to a boulder. Every day he is picked apart and rated by an eagle only to heal overnight and begin the torture anew the next day.

I’ve made lists!

July 11, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

So in case you didn’t know, Persephone is on sale for 1.99 right now. And it’s doing really well! I’m number My sales rank at the moment is 402 so I’m just here with my writer’s group jumping up and down. #1 in Greek mythology books and kindle books and 8 in YA fiction and literature with ALL these writers!So forgive me in advance for the 8 million tweets, fb updates, and whatnot that are coming, because oh my gosh!

For Real Friday: Identity and Perfection

July 10, 2015June 6, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

Scott Westerfeld linked the Pygmalion myth with plastic surgery and brain damage in Uglies, and it was beautifully done because in one fell swoop he nailed the two reasons why the Pygmalion myth is so pervasive in our culture. We’re terrified of being forced to become something we’re not or being replaced by something or someone that can fill our role better that we can. The fear behind this myth is why it keeps popping up as a cautionary tale in AI stories or Frankenstine stories or Pinocchio stories or any other inanimate object turned to life story. If you want to know a cultures fear, study its stories.

But there’s something else that makes it into the cultures stories. Longing. And that is where the second variation of this myth comes along. It is just as popular, just as pervasive, and the beauty industry absolutely thrives on it. We want to be remade. Reshaped. Plucked from our ordinary lives by a rich stranger and remade into a better version of ourselves. We want the make up, the surgery, the weight loss miracle. We want more.

And that’s fine, when the wanting is healthy. It’s okay to want to get into great shape and look wonderful. It’s when we cross the line from healthy wanting and unhealthy obsessing that it becomes a problem. Its when girls look at models who’ve been given the pygmalion treatment, reshaped, retouched, recreated so much that the models don’t even recognize themselves, and starve or despair because they can’t become that, that it becomes a problem.

It’s a problem when a person looks at their significant other and tries to reshape them to meet unrealistic expectations.

It’s a problem when parents put so much pressure on their kids to make them better, smarter, prettier, more perfect, that the children snap.

It’s a problem when schools are so focused on the perfect score they forget about the people the numbers represent.

Pygmalion is alive and well in our culture and that is why I hate that myth. Because it’s not a myth. It’s our reality. And rather than see it for what it is, we romanticize it. Reshape it. Remold it until it tells the story we want to hear.

And that’s a problem.

Way Back Wednesday: Pygmalion

July 8, 2015June 6, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

I could never name all the Pygmalion references and tropes that popped up when I was growing up. It’s a myth our culture is obsessed with. But I’ll try to hit the highlights.

My Fair Lady/Pygmalion

Both versions of this play, the original and the now famous production pictured above influenced my perception of this myth. Eliza was no man’s statue and she resented being remade as much as she didn’t. She’s a pretty complex character. The original ending leaves her stranded between two world’s, something only hinted at as a potential outcome in the movie. That always resonated with me for some reason, and it works as a theme in a trilogy that’s going to focus so much on demigods.

The reshaping an already living person to fit an idealized version of them was revisited in a lot of other media before and after My Fair Lady. Namely

— The Taming of the Shrew

— She’s All That

— The Princess Diaries

— Anastasia

— Vertigo

— Greece

— Josie and the Pussycats the movie

— Jem and the Holograms

— Aladin

— Pretty Woman

— Literally every other movie or book that features a character needing a makeover and etiquette lessons to pass themselves off as something they’re not. Usually at some point in the story the disturbing/sexist/classist implications of this are explored and the person doing the shaping either figures out the person is perfect as is or the person figures out how to use both who they ARE and the skills the learned to be someone else to be a better version of someone true to themselves.

This variation of the trope was beautifully subverted in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series.

Frankenstein

Obviously subverted but echoes of the myth are there loud and clear.

Pinocchio

Possibly the only version of this myth that isn’t disturbing, inherently sexist, classist, or fetishy. Yet I still hate it. Seriously, the move scared me when I was little so much that I only remember fragments of it.

Pixel Perfect

Disney’s answer to the Pygmalion myth. I don’t remember much of this other than the girl who liked the guy the entire time was super upset to find the hologram he’d made had her ears. I actually thought that was an interesting touch though. He pulled all the bits of the hologram from features of people he knew.

Also the same girl tried to be like the hologram, which really added layers upon layers to the myth.

A whole slew of anime:

Chobits, Dears, Ghost in the Shell and others followed the theme of creating perfect women or AI interfaces being made real. I watched a lot of anime in my teenage years. Some of these series handled all the implications and complications of this trope well, others were more interested in hyper sexualizing the myth.

And of course: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Of course there’s a callback to the myth with the robot girlfriend and the Buffy Bot. But Dawn also fits the myth as do the slayers themselves. There are a lot of Galatea echoes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer