The Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 429 – c. 347 BCE) has the speaker Phaidros in his dialogue The Symposion say that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Contrary to Aischylos, however, Phaidros insists that Achilles was the eromenos and Patroklos was the erastes. Here is what Phaidros says, as translated by Benjamin Jowett:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroklos—his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroklos was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aischylos has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is more divine; because he is inspired by God.”
very happy to learn that the ancient Greeks also had seme-uke discourse
Not everyone in classical Athens, however, agreed with the view that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Notably, the writer Xenophon (lived c. 430 – 354 BCE) wrote a response to Plato’s Symposion in which he makes the speaker Socrates specifically argue that Achilles and Patroklos were not lovers. Here is what Xenophon portrays Socrates as saying, as translated by Hugh Tredennick:
“Besides, Nikeratos, Homer has made Achilles exact his famous vengeance for Patroklos not because Patroklos was his lover, but because he was his friend and was killed. Also, Orestes and Pylades, and Theseus and Peirithous, and many others among the greatest heroes are celebrated in song for having jointly performed the greatest and noblest exploits, not because they slept together, but out of mutual admiration.”
I know some people hate comparing ancient writing to modern fandom but come on
The Athenian orator Aischines (lived 389 – 314 BCE) says in his oration Against Timarchos that, although Homer does not explicitly describe Achilles and Patroklos as lovers in the Iliad, the poet clearly knew and intended for educated audiences to understand that they were lovers. Aischines declares, as translated by Konstantinos Kapparis:
“First I will talk about Homer, whom we count among the oldest and wisest poets. Although he has mentioned Achilles and Patroklos many times, he hides their love and the name of their relationship because he believes that the abundance of their affection will make this clear to the educated members of the audience.”
I’m crying this is like one to one what modern ship discourse is like
The fact that Aischines could treat it as axiomatic that Achilles and Patroklos were in a homosexual relationship in a speech that was meant to be delivered in front of an Athenian jury clearly demonstrates that, by the time Aischines was writing in the late fourth century BCE, this must have been a fairly widely accepted interpretation.
excuse me WHAT
the seme/uke discourse is eternal and inescapable. yaoi forever
“i think some people are basically coming around to this, like, greater comfort in owning up to being a pervert about something. shout out domino club “being sickos about X” sort of thing, where sickos is the meme of a pervert looking in on something that excites him. the author is sickos about a subject, and indulges himself; the audience are sickos about his indulgence, self recognition via the other - yeah haha sweat really IS that hot, thanks for putting it into disgustingly indulgent words so i can see what you see. i think when writers are afraid to be perverts that they make bad work. they make the work that can’t stand by itself, collapsing on interrorgation or challenge; or too many contrasting and unconfident voices have averaged out to a sort of perversion of the commons, indulging only the safest and most unoffensive fetishes to render on the screen. because when art displays the common fetishes of heterosexual matrimony, fast cars and big guns and big-but-not-gargantuan breasts, labouring under capitalism, even such apparently inoffensive things as such as sexless wholesome romanticism, perfect bodies that refuse to fuck, a prioritising of soft uwu safety over any kind of flavour - these absolutely are fetishes. every day you are smothered in the common perversions of so much of society, endless generic creators indulging their endless generic fetishes while denying that they are in any sort of way perverts.”
— —“Good Writers are Perverts,”
typed up in a fugue by Average Urotsukidōji Enjoyer for Domino Club on itch.io
Kink isn’t shameful because of the weird sex stuff. That part’s rad. It’s shameful because it is technically improv.
Okay but the day I realized that writing dirty talk was basically just “Yes, and” but horny is the day I walked directly away from my keyboard into the back yard and stared at the sky for a while.
fidgeting restlessly in your chair as your eyes keep darting to the big sweet soft marshmallow sitting innocently on the table next to you…
it’s not right in front of you. the chair you’re sitting in is cocked at an angle, to the table, so if you sit primly with your hands clasped in your lap and look straight ahead, like you know you’re supposed to, the plate with the marshmallow on it is just in the corner of your left eye. there is a mirror, along the wall that you’re facing, and you’re sure he’s watching you through it. you lock eyes with yourself, and set your jaw; you are determined to show him how good a girl you can be.
you think how it would feel to bite into it, lips pursing around it; you can see in your mind the way it pinches, squashes, almost kissing you back with its softness, the way your teeth would leave smooth little tracks across its surface, drawing thin little peaks in the negative of the gap between your incisors. you think of the gentle billowy flavor and your mouth wets with saliva.
you sit on your hands.
but it will only be a few minutes, right, before he comes back with another one. it’s not as though you’re choosing not to eat it. you just have to wait, just a few minutes, before you get to feel it soft on your tongue, squishy between your teeth, sweet and mild and sticky, and if you can’t wait a few minutes then what will you be? a silly little girl who can’t be left alone in a room with a marshmallow? (your jaw is slack.) (it would make two bites, and you would open your mouth and gently push the second bite past your teeth, and suck the last touch of sugar off your fingertip as your lips closed around it.)
you’re swaying back and forth in your chair a little, anxiously, shifting your weight from buttock to buttock and thigh to thigh. you realize you’re not looking at your own eyes in the mirror, any more, but at the marshmallow, reflected next to you. eyes front, now. good girl.
you swallow. you see your reflection’s throat working. you’re still sitting on your hands, not because you might reach out and grab it, if you don’t, but because - just because. your eyes dart to the left, again. no, don’t look at it. there’s no clock in the room, you realize. but he has to be back soon, right? you won’t have to wait much longer.
you’re still swaying, first to the right, then to the left, and you realize that every time you sway to the left your eyes flicker, your neck cranes just a little, and you have to snap back upright and take a deep breath and nod, firmly, and look straight forward.
you can still see them both, out of the corner of your eye, the marshmallow in the mirror and the real one, the one so close to you that you could touch it, the one that was already promised to you, it’s yours, you can eat it whenever you want -
you pull your hand back. you hadn’t realized it had slipped out from under your thigh. you cross your arms in front of you. you bounce your leg. your mouth is so wet. your tongue slips out, quickly, dartlingly, and moistens your lips.
he’ll be back soon. you know he’ll be back soon. he has to be back soon, with another one, a real nother one, and then you can have them both and you can be a good girl.
a whine rises in the back of your throat. you bounce up and down in your chair, twice. you want it.
he’ll be back soon. you know he’ll be back soon. he has to be back soon, with another one, a real nother one, and then you can have them both and you can be a good girl.
you’re staring at it, on the table. you look back at the mirror and it’s there, too, and your mouth is open and your eyes are wide. there’s a little trickle of drool, leaking down from the corner of your mouth.
he’ll be back soon.
porn is when there are a lot of descriptions of textures and fidgety body language and wordless noises people make with their mouths and urges flowing from, or expressed within the body as, physical discomfort, happening to a cute girl or maybe boy. and maybe some kind of struggle between id and superego. any genital bullshit is strictly secondary
Do you ever think about how pornography, like science fiction, reflects modern day economic anxieties? Asking bc I just saw one where in order to stay in an Airbnb she had to wear a chastity belt and she didn’t even leave a bad review after
these days the pizza guy is too busy working for three different apps to even fuck you
One of my favorite pornos (for nonsexual reasons) was this one about 4 women working as interns under one dude. They all know that only one intern is getting a full-time job, so they all decide to suck it out of the manager’s dick, which devolves to an orgy. At the end after they wipe the cum off, the girls argue about who’s getting the job, when the manager says “Girls, girls! You were all great, but the company’s shutting down and we’ll all be laid off at the end of the week.”
I started a sideblog for a kind of cursed project that amuses me. Basically, it’s intentionally bad forced masculinization captions in the style of unintentionally bad forced feminization captions, with what I think are some very good choices of pop culture characters. Check it out if that sounds appealing to you.
*speaking to discord mods* You are aware, good sir, that Scooby-Doo is a fully sapient adult dog capable of perfectly intelligible communication, and therefore passes the Harkness Test, and in many versions and incarnations Mystery Inc. are teenagers, so if ANYTHING, the art I posted in #nsfw is unethical on SCOOBY’S part.
It’s actually a really good example of cultural translation that the “stuck in wall” porn trope from Japan, land of thin walls, became “stuck in laundry washer” in America, land of home appliances
