Chapter three, I guess.
One thing that I’m mentally keeping track of is whether the author has any knowledge of the actual roles of Ancient Greek women. While it could vary from city to city, one of the primary occupations of women was actually textile production, particularly spinning and weaving. Greeks tended to go with the classic “let’s just pin a rectangle around ourselves” technique that saved on fabric (since you didn’t waste it by cutting it up to make it more form fitting) and sewing (since you could just pin it in place and use belt to add shape, and then reuse the same rectangle. This is why you see so many references to “girdles” in Greek mythology btw. They used belts to hold stuff up and look nice). Ancient peoples looooved the rectangle of fabric because it was so versatile and comparatively time saving compared to form fitting tailored garments, so ancient women weren’t as pre-occupied with sewing as they were with weaving and spinning. And boy were they into weaving. Women of all classes did it! The Iliad actually includes a fuck ton of references to women weaving (Helen does it a lot) and it was also one of the primary benefits of female slaves! Since fabric was so in demand, a female slave was basically a two in one fabric-manufacturer/sex object!
I’ve so far seen one mention of weaving and it was in the same sentence as sewing, so I’m mentally taking points off. Honestly, a real easy way to catch a man in drag was to hand him a spindle and see what he did with it since spinning was a female skill in Greece (In Egypt, men wove and spun professionally, but that’s a whole nother region with a whole nother history.)
Back to the story. Odysseus has now gotten into disguise, because he wants to trick Achilles, except he’s already been welcomed into the island and introduced himself? I think Achilles knows he’s here? C’mon, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.
Yes,” Odysseus said blandly. “If Prince Achilles is concealed among the commoners, it would be best not to walk around like royalty. Introduce me
as a traveling peddler bearing trinkets. Tell them I want to trade for leather goods, dried fish, textiles, whatever seems best. Tell them I speak bad Achaian; tell them I’m from up north, and to speak slowly and loudly. I will observe, and together we will snoop out the prince.”
Kind of late to be doing this? I think your disguise is mostly shot at this point? As evidenced by Odysseus saying this TO Achilles? (I guess Odysseus could already been onto him.)
There’s this terrible bit of dialogue that makes me think that Deane watches shitty Marvel movies.
We never just talk to people,” Diomedes sighed. “This man makes everything complicated.”
Odysseus nodded sagely. “When I wooed Penelope—”
“—his wife—”
“—there was an entire ruse involving geese, falsified accounting forms, the Assyrian ambassador—”
“Also he stole her father’s longship.” Diomedes shrugged elaborately.
“He gave it back; he just had to prove he could. Pyrrha, beware this inveterate fox.”
Like. It’s clearly meant to be a funny tidbit and show the relationship with Odysseus and Diomedes, but it just comes off as mildly cringe to me.
“I mean to peddle trinkets,” Odysseus scoffed. “How dare you impugn my character. I heard that the women of Skyros make excellent craft goods
Craft goods?????? I love some craft goods, I got some fingers crossed for weaving!!!
The first three hours passed quietly enough. They went from the spinners’ guild to the woodworkers’, from the tanners’ to the ropers’, from the weavers’ to the potters’, from the wheelwrights’ to the boatbuilders’, and Achilles introduced the head of each household. At each guildhouse, Odysseus muttered and gestured, and Achilles introduced him as a northern tinker who was looking to barter and also looking to deliver a message to a
male version of herself.
I’m going to nitpick here and point out that guilds as we think of them don’t really exist until the medieval period? Associations of crafts people probably did exist throughout time but I don’t think this Bronze Age Greek island is going to have a centralized guild for all boat builders with a building and everything.
Odysseus dropped his absurd fake
accent and told a long story about how he had made friends with a pod of
dolphins as a boy, and how kind they were to him, and how they sometimes
followed his ships around the sea. He chittered like a dolphin, clicking and
whistling, to demonstrate his mastery of their speech.
“You must think me a very young girl indeed,” Achilles said mildly.
“All virgins who dwell in these parts secretly love dolphins,” Odysseus said.
I…. I honestly don’t know what to with this little conversation. Uh. Is this a reference to little girls liking dolphins? I’m honestly baffled as to what is going on here.
In Achilles’s experience, men of any age
were dangerous and fickle creatures, as likely to throw you down a well as
to be of any use
Again, very fucking funny from ACHILLES of all people.
This next section is…. Weird. I don’t know what to do with it.
About a mile down the road she had to stop and clutch her stomach. A dull ache had begun to radiate out from her lower belly, cramping and spasming. Usually the dried fish was safe, but perhaps the olive oil had soured. She said so, frowning.
“Perhaps you lost track of the moon,” Diomedes said. “My girl lost track
of the moon once, during the War of the Seven. We woke up absolutely
covered in blood.” He laughed.
“Ahem,” Odysseus said. “The lady may not want to imagine being absolutely covered in blood.”
Achilles gritted her teeth and pressed on, and the pain faded.
Um. As a woman with stomach issues, I’ve never had a man mention menstrual cramps to me when my stomach clearly hurts
. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a man bring up periods of his own volition around me (barring middle school mockery around PMS but that’s from children in throes of puberty who have zero boundaries.) What a fucking weird conversation. Ah yes, Achilles is so womanly, these men automatically start talking about periods around him. Really, what the fuck.
Patrocles mention. Odysseus brings out a sword that Patrocles gave to Achilles (and it has his deadname on it!) and the woman they show it to is really interested and they now think she’s is secretly their missing cross-dressing prince. The game is afoot! Of course, this Achilles is way too smart to be tricked by these stupid men.
Achilles is really afraid of Odysseus and Diomedes stripping him naked, he keeps talking about this. Like, why are troons convinced everyone is out to strip them, none of us want to see that.
Toward the lumberyards, and the hunting preserves, and the king’s vegetable farms and vineyards. As she walked the ache was getting worse, a dull throbbing on
either side of Achilles’s pelvis where the muscles attached, as though some subtle poison had made its way deep into the sockets of her thighbones and set everything to swelling and scraping.
Spoiler alert, he’s growing a womb.
You have no idea where to find him, do you?” Achilles said. “Is the plan just to wave nice swords around until you run into someone who gets hard? ‘Oh, swords, I love swords, let me show you my meat sword’?”
“Not exactly,” Odysseus said. “We came here with a lead.”
Ah yes, because Achilles is the pinnacle of brilliance and has never been hungry for glory in of the myths around him. Sure!
It turns out Odysseus and Diomedes have been onto Achilles this whole time, (Athena told them) and were just trying to figure out if he cut his dick off yet or not.
“Are you a eunuch?” Diomedes asked. “That would explain why you have the semblance of a woman.”
This is actually kind of funny, ngl.
Achilles passes out and wakes up with….. A VAGINA
The woman helping Achilles makes a comment about the men being afraid of a little period blood, because she just thinks Achilles has started his period.
Skorpia was staring down at her, brow furrowed. “Pyrrha. Stop. You’re in
my hut. Those men of yours are outside. You’re bleeding all over my floor.
I didn’t know it was your time of the
month. I didn’t know you had a time,
actually; I thought you were like Damia.”
“I’m bleeding to death,” Achilles hissed. “They poisoned me. I’m dying.” She tried to struggle, but Skorpia sat on her, shaking her head.“Stop it. It’s just blood! You look perfectly fine to me.” Skorpia partially withdrew her weight, frowning. “Promise you won’t start thrashing again?”
Something about her tone of voice—half-confused, half-amused— calmed Achilles, and she nodded assent. The bigger woman lifted off her and stepped back. “Your clothes are ruined. Have you really never bled before?”
Achilles looked down and felt suddenly faint. She peeled back her bloody tunic. Brown and purple smudges smeared her groin and knotted in her pubic hair, but—that was it. It had vanished. She reached down and grabbed for it, but— “Ow!”
“Maybe don’t claw yourself?” Skorpia still looked perplexed. “It’s not even that much blood, you’re just a wild animal. Calm down.”
Sure. That’s how women think, a woman spurting massive amounts of blood between her legs and passing out is just indicative of a normal menstrual cycle and not a miscarriage or another serious matter. I know my period always begins with a fainting spell as I bleed to death. I think this is meant to imitate the reaction of young girls when they get their periods for the first time but like…. Getting your first period can be scary even if you are expecting it, I think Skorpia should be be a bit more baffled if this nineteen year old woman (as far as the story says she thinks) is apparently getting her period for the first time, that’s VERY late.
(Also, brown blood is a thing and normal. But purple!?!! What’s going on with that new pussy of yours?)
Odysseus tells Achilles that Athena called him her daughter, so Odysseus seems to be halfway on board with this whole nonsense.
The sacred grotto of immortal self-created Aphrodite was beneath the women’s quarters, accessible by a long ladder through a hole in the floor of Damia’s bedroom. In ordinary times the hole was covered, but twice a year, the women reserved to Aphrodite gathered in Damia’s room and stripped off their clothes, showing that they had been born unlike other women. They showed the scars where their shame had been cut away, or, if they had not yet submitted to that ritual, they stood naked, and for a moment their
shame was a badge of honor that showed what they had survived.
Everywhere else they had been outsiders, but in that room they were kallai, the beautiful ones. Twice a year, the kallai descended the ladder into the cave, which rumbled as waves crashed against the roots of the mountain, and in the dark, lit
blue by a sacred species of glowworm, they told their stories and shared the signs by which the goddess had called them.
Lol. I’m not at all surprised at the trans cult of Aphrodite stuff, I was expecting it. Not only was Aphrodite born in a very non-conventional way, arising from sea foam created by the dismembered penis of Ouranos, she’s also the mother of Hermaphroditus, a beautiful youth who was sexually assaulted by a nymph named Salmacis, and who successfully prayed to be merged with him, creating the first hermaphrodite. I am amused by this in combination with the idea that these troons are closer to the goddess because they are “made” women. And also their name meaning “the beautiful ones.” The jokes just write themselves.
She slid her hand slowly down her belly, bracing herself for the inevitable shock of her penis, but it never came. Her fingers slid over the curve of her stomach and down the sudden turn inward. The skin was raw and irritated, smarting to the touch, slick and dense with tiny flaps and folds, and then curved sharply in. It was gone. Everything was new, yet more familiar than she could ever have imagined.
You know, I’ve never really thought about how to describe my vagina, but I don’t think I would have gone with “slick and dense with tiny flaps and folds.” It doesn’t have THAT many flaps and folds. I like the word “cleft,” if I must. And the pubic mound comes after the stomach and before the vagina, it’s not just stomach and then BOOM, VULVA.
Achilles immediately shows off his new pussy to Damia. Who is not happy and very jealous.
“How could I not?” Achilles turned, baring her body to Damia, and for an instant their eyes met—then Damia’s eyes hardened
and slid away, averted from Achilles’s nakedness.
“Please put on a robe,” Damia said, pointing to the linen chest. Her voice
was suddenly empty.
Achilles moved sideways toward Damia’s gaze, and Damia’s eyes slid away again, refusing to look at her.
“Look at me! My mother answered my prayers. I’m even bleeding.”
“Put on a robe.” Damia turned her head away from Achilles, walked to the linen chest, pulled out a white robe. She tossed the folded wad of cloth over her shoulder. “You are naked.”
Achilles caught it. “We’re always naked with each other.”
Damia’s shoulders tightened, and her hands bunched. “I always told myself that this might happen, but in my weakness I never truly believed.”
Achilles slid into the robe in confusion. “Why won’t you look at me?
You told me to worship the gods. For a year now you told me to believe. Now I am proof—”
Damia spun suddenly. Her eyes flashed. “Yes! You are proof. I have to be Deidamia.”
It made no sense. It was not fair. “I prayed tonight,” Achilles said. “Why are you angry? If it’s envy, I can pray for you too, and my mother—”
Damia stepped back as if struck. “I am not a goddess’s daughter,” she snapped. “I am a mortal. The gods destroy those who demand too much. The best I can hope for is the knife, and it will reshape me only a little. I’ll bleed once. Thanks, flint. Thanks, immortal Aphrodite. Mortal Damia can
only hope so much.”
There’s something about this whole exchange I find kind of interesting tbh. I actually found an essay about this by another MtF while I was looking some other stuff up, so I knew this was coming. And I’m kind of struck by the defining aspects of envy and unhappiness that transgenderism seems to always have.
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...vy-and-maya-deanes-wrath-goddess-sing.106568/
This is the essay btw, it’s about trans envy lol.
What do we do with trans envy?
It's one of those ugly feelings that seem enmeshed with the very experience of transition. I'd wager that there are few trans people out there who have never felt its bite. All too often, the source of it is a fellow trans person, one perceived to be better at passing, lucklier in their transition, more likely to live the deep and fulfilling life that so many other trans people seem to struggle to achieve. All too often, the joy of watching other trans people flourish carries a poisoned sting of why couldn't it have been me?
Envy seems to be such a constant thread, envy of born women, envy of trans people who pass better, who get the surgeries, who seem to somehow be happier than you. There’s something deeply fucked up about longing to magically gifted something you’ll never have. I lurk a lot in the SRS horror thread, and this magical gifting of a new set of working genitalia is just not possible, no matter how many people want to sell it, and just creates more festering envy and unhappiness in its wake.
Rage surged up in Achilles, drying her throat and curdling her stomach.
She felt her lips curl back from her teeth and—too late—felt the hate reach
her eyes. “I thought,” Achilles said coldly, “that I was beautiful in youreyes, but I see now that I was only beautiful when we were mirrors of each other.”
“That is correct,” Damia said, equally icy, drawing herself up to her full height and looking down at Achilles with haughty emptiness. “We were twinned in an egg, but we were not the same. The gods chose you to be like them; they chose me to worship them. Rejoice, Achilles. You have been given what we all pray for. You are not kallai. You are kunai now, a woman
like the rest.”
“Then I am sorry,” Achilles said, keeping her voice steady and hard as flint, “for intruding. I know that this room is the threshold of the sacred cave of the kallai. I would not want to infringe on your kind.”
Interesting though, that there is this gap between actual women and those who long to be one that only literal divine intervention can cross, and like…. It seems to me like everyone involved here knows what a woman really is, and the author is either subconsciously or maybe even consciously processing their own feelings on this matter by having Achilles magically made into a real woman and her trans girlfriend lash out. Idk. “Your kind.” Food for thought.
"May you never be reminded of me, then." She stepped past Damia and through the doorway, and suddenly her limbs felt charged with a terrible grace, and she knew that Damia was staring after her. Let me look as beautiful in her memory as she in mine, she thought, and let the memory of my beauty sting her like a cut that never heals. It was horrible to feel this rage, horrible to think that the person who had loved her most at sunrise was her enemy at moonrise. "Perhaps," Achilles said in parting, "I'll pray for you anyway."
This is clearly meant to be deep and edgy, but I’m just exhausted by this whole thing.
The chapter ends with Achilles preparing to reveal himself and dramatically answering “who is Achilles?” With “we’re about to find out.” Very Marvel-esque dialogue once again.
