Black Hat Brigade: Episode 37

[wingedbeast]

Wide shot on a Colosseum. In the center is a large, clay sculpture of a man in recline. Camera pulls back to reveal that the building is but a model on a table.

Standing over the model is a woman in a loose royal blue robe with gold trim. An owl perches upon an outstretched arm.

Athena: If we're going to keep employing half-mortal children to do our jobs for us, we may as well start a camp.

Accross the table stands a woman in a robe with greens and reds and silver trim.

Artemis: Really? You're trying to link the legends up to the Percy Jackson series.

Athena: The books, only, not the movies.

Artemis: Well, good for that, at least. But, still. We're above that kind of thing.

Athena: I'm can be a fan-girl if I want to. I'm a goddess, who's going to stop me?

Voice of Susan Pevensie: I certainly won't. It needs to be addressed, of course, but it's still quite an entertaining series.

Both Athena and Artemis visibly startle.

Camera pulls back further to reveal that Athena and Artemis both stand upon a table overlooked by Susan Pevensie. Susan Pevensie wears a black baseball cap and a form-fitting black t-shirt. She has a light amount of makeup with black lipstick.

Athena: Okay, this is simply not acceptable. You are a mortal character. We are deities!

Susan: We've already discussed the treachery of imagined characters. You aren't the deities.

Artemis: But, within the fictions, indeed we were. We were powerful and could do as we wished.

Susan continues, regardless: In fact, even during the time of ancient Greece, you were the characters, based on the deities, used in stories. Those stories could be alegories about humanity's relationship with the deities in question, about the forces over which those deities had sway, or just entertainment. But, you were not, widely, believed to be the deities, themselves.

Artemis: That doesn't matter, within the fictions, we had the power! We did as we chose! This setup is exactly counter to-

Susan: What you chose to do is important.

Athena: Oh no, we're not getting wrapped up in this. We're not about to-

Susan: Have your power dynamic upset. Believe me, I more than understand. But, there's a point to be made, here. Did you, in your myths, act like the great and the wise, with long plans and a purpose?

Another voice sounds from below the larger table: Or did you act like petty, little things that just happened to have power?

Athena grimaces in anger, looking over in the direction of the voice: Oh, great, more confrontations.

A sizeable spider (relative to Susan) crawls up to the surface of the table: No, really. I was a skilled weaver. The worst I had done, the absolute worst I had done, was, maybe, be a bit too boastful. And, you do this to me?

Athena: You lost the competition. Get over it.

Arachne: Or I won the competition, the stories vary. In one version, you wove a tapestry of the gods dominating humanity (a pretty damn petty choice in itself, I might add) and I wove a tapestry of various times that gods were entranced or seduced by the gods.

Athena: But, in some of those stories, I brought you back to life.

Arachne: After you touched me to fiddle with my brain and force an unnecessary guilt upon me. However the stories work out, I live a life of dedication to a craft. I expand my craft, I practice my craft, I make myself good at my craft. Then, people go and give you the credit.

Arachne: How would you like it if people took all your hard work and ignored it because giving credit to someone more powerful is safer?

Athena: Now, that's not fair. It was a story about hubris and the need to be humble.

Susan: To make the point clear, though, it was a story about hubris and the need for humility in a society that, historically speaking, wasn't exactly the best about respecting the less powered or the underprivileged in the society. That impacts the stories. The makes her question perhaps unasked, but not invalid or unfair.

Athena: Then, it's about Ancient Greek views on humility.

Susan: Time has moved on. These things change and the stories have a new social context in which to be explored.

Arachne: And, in that social context, humility doesn't just have to point upward. Where, Athena, is your humility?

Athena: Excuse me? I should be humble, now? I am a goddess, *the* goddess of, among other things, crafts. Even the best crafters should-

Arachne: Be given the credit for having put work and time and practice into their crafts rather than having shot out of Daddy's head already full of skill. You didn't earn a bit of your skill, Athena. I certainly earned mine. I had to, because I was a mortal.

Artemis: Alright, I get it. You're angry. But, shut up about it. We're deities, you're not. Sometimes, life just sucks for someone and that someone's going to be the person without power. It might not be right, but where the gods are characters that stand in for some fundamental matters of physical or social reality, it is a true-to-life moral.

A male voice comes from somewhere beneath the table.: Oh that is just so much of my feces!

Artemis: You just had to bring him into this.

A spectral stag rises through the floor to hover in front of Artemis: You weren't the representation of blind forces of nature or uncaring facts of civilization. Find me, I dare you, the metaphor for that that works with you turning me into a freaking stag for accidentally getting a glimpse of your naked form.

Artemis looks over to Susan: You're defending peeping toms, now? That's low.

Susan: Did you punish all men who stole looks at naked women without their permission?

Artemis: No, but that doesn't change the fact that he did look at my naked body without my permission. And, hey, I'm a goddess, more sacred than-

Susan: No. You don't get to be more sacred than other women. And, you just dropped the notion that you operated as the metaphor for an uncaring reality, so we're not going back to that. You didn't act like someone with greater concerns. You acted like a child with power and no sense that other people are, in fact, people.

Actaeon: And, I'm not okay with dying for the moral that one is morally obligated to not upset those who are powerful and spoiled. Do you know how it feels to be ripped apart by dogs? They start eating before you're dead, you know.

Susan: Neither Arachne nor Actaeon were perfect. But, they didn't need to be to deserve better than what the stories give them. You can't be our moral equals while you're... well... pathetic with power. As small-minded as you were in your stories, that's all you could ever be, pathetic with power enough that people feared to point out how pathetic you were.

Susan: But, there is an alternative.

Artemis: This is how this goes, it's a whole formula. I see this, all the time, in the wilds.

Athena: That would suggest you see it working. Let's at least hear out the alternative.

Susan: Thank you. The alternative is that you grow, grow up, grow beyond your cultural snapshot. The uncomfortable part of that is making amends to those you have wronged, per chance, by subjecting them to consensual full body modifications.

Athena: And, what would we get out of this?

Arachne: You would get to grow up. You would be able to have a respectful relationship with other crafters, one that uplifts both you and the crafters.

Actaeon: You can expand your interests to the concerns worthy of, well, anybody, let alone deities.

Susan: And, you can be better representations of your realms, rather than the limitations of a culture's limited ideology. For instance, how happy are either of you with having virginity as your key identifying characteristics.

Artemis: No, no no no no no. I am not going to be pulled into this on the promise of getting to have sex. *That* would be beneath anybody, let alone deities.

Susan: Artemis, you are the pure, virginal, immortal goddess of the wilderness. I've seen the wilderness. I've studied it. It rests on the three pillars of scatology, pornography, and eschatology.

Susan: Athena, you are the goddess not just of craft-work, but also of intellect and strategic warfare. Sex happens within the mind, with the body being the tool of that particular exercise. Why should you be cut off, completely, from such a common part of the human intellect?

Arachne: It really goes down to the Greco-Roman views on sex. You know, always with a dominator and a dominated.

Actaeon: But, I can think of, off the top of my head, four Greco-Roman deities that would be the best ones to challenge that notion of sexuality. One of them is Aphrodite, who is already all for a view of women's sexuality that doesn't diminish women, two of them are you two.

Susan: And the other one helped arrange this meeting.

A woman in a Grecian robe of mixing oranges and yellows appears, walking over to the models, and sets down a model of a court house.

Athena: You're the goddess of anger and revenge, not of justice.

Nemesis: You say that like they're not related.