Problems Of The Gods…
Chris is as baffled by his daughter as he is by the Greek gods
Any conversation with my daughter Maya these days tends to be mythical. I know the notion of being able to have a proper conversation with a teenager is probably a myth in the first place, but since she’s been studying Ancient Greek mythology at university, much of her conversation involves exactly that.
Maya doesn’t take her Greek Mythology lightly. She positively resents it. Gets very angry in fact, mainly about “inconsistencies.” Now, while any story involving a man getting his liver pecked out daily (Prometheus) might seem inconsistent, , it would be more accurate to say she gets mad at fan stories about Greek myths, rather than the original myths themselves. I previously had no idea the ancient Greeks had a fanbase, but they do, and some of these fans create modern day comic book stories about Greek gods. In fairness, Maya actually loves these stories, but in a very cross way.
In summary, Maya’s more miffed about myths about myths than she’s miffed about myths. And that’s no myth.
For instance, she has this particular problem with stories about the Greek god Apollo, and I quote, “In the evenings, he’ll tell everyone his job is to pull the sun all the way round the Earth every single day forever, but then he’s around all day long, doing absolutely nothing.”
I can see her point, but there’s a lot of me in that story – I tell everyone I’m a busy writer, but then also hang around all day doing nothing. Snap! It stops there though because I don’t have the body of a Greek god… more the body of a creek frog.
She also has a problem with Helios, who identifies as the sun itself. “If he’s the sun, why does he need Apollo to drag him around the Earth every day? Why can’t he just go under his own steam?”
Apollo was so busy, he did everything and nothing
I resisted the urge to point out that I have to take her everywhere every day and why can’t she just go under her own steam, but I thought better of it, because she’s very frightening.
Another of her pet inconsistency problems is with the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite.
Even in original myths, Aphrodite is confusing – being portrayed as extremely beautiful, kind, loving and maternal, but then giving a young lady named Psyche a really hard time for being a bit more beautiful than she is.
That isn’t very kind and loving, is it? In the comic version, Aphrodite is apparently portrayed as so completely and utterly weird, that Maya doesn’t “even want to talk about it.”
When Maya’s not furiously destroying her favourite stories, she likes to relax, and a student relaxing sounds very much the same as snoring. As per Apollo, who as we know did everything and nothing all day every day, Maya seems to be on much the same trajectory, heading towards a university degree while mainly asleep.
Students and gods, eh? What can you do?