Greg S > Recent Status Updates

Let’s remember the Iliad: “Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone, ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard he hooked him…”

I get it. We’re doing a mm romance with all the tropes and bells and whistles but sometimes it feels a little forced to me. I’m tired of these tropes. I crave a more natural story. But I understand. It’s a winning formula. Take the lowest person and match them with the highest acclaimed person and create the highest conflict like some science experiment.

I find it interesting how the author use contemporary romance tropes, medieval tropes, but nothing of ancient Greek tropes. I get it but its such a anachronistic mixture.

Here is the nobility trope. Men resist sex and women are virginal maidens. Is this from European Medieval chivalry tales? — “…the dull look on her face as she poured his wine. I did not wish for such a thing.”

The anxiety is constant. Angst. Angst. — “I was shy and silent with all but Achilles…”

I went back to the Iliad to remind myself that ancient greeks had a lot of battles, blood, and slaughter. — “But he showered tears of blood that drenched the earth, showers in praise of him, his own dear son,
the man Patroclus was just about to kill on Troy’s fertile soil…”

could you be more specific? isn’t this a christian thing? — “I made the peasant sign against evil.”

jesus, if this is alluding to that famous scene in the Iliad then this paragraph is even worst than I thought.

what a confusing paragraph.

is it a genre thing? i have read this exact description and vague metaphor in this exact phrasing a hundred times before.

weird all of a sudden. — “I thought I saw anger. This pleased me.”

what does that even mean? what’s genius about being honest?

i understand what the author is trying to say but ridicule and honesty are not mutually exclusive.

forced proximity trope and help me heal from trauma trope.

This is another reminder that authors can write anything if they’re confident enough. Figs are gross. Writing that “it’s burst of grainy sweetness filled my mouth;” is not going to convince me otherwise.

Wait, that’s not true. Just a few paragraphs ago he was having a lot of feelings so this “when I saw him was the only time I felt anything” is bull.

Did the Ancient Greeks have the concept of ghosts? I don’t think, right? People would go to the Underworld after they died. They couldn’t go wandering around the Earth

Green-eyes, of course. If I only read books then I would think pretty people only ever had green eyes.

Ok, that doesn’t make sense, but whatever. We’re going to Phthia now?

Wait, so he escaped his weapons trainer, and had his dice on him? That means he brought the dice with him to the training session. Why would you bring dice to a weapons training session? Wait, he go to training and then run away or is he running away from his room and never went to the training?

I also want to make another point that the aristocratic women of Sparta, or the Spartan Heiresses, were wealthier and in certain ways more power than the two Kings. Aristotle talks about this.

The spartan king (there should be two!) is not laconic enough.

You can’t claim to be a comrade of Herakles. Heracles was ancient history by this time. Whatever, whatever!

I’m always tired when the author makes the main character the saddest, feeblest, ugliest, least popular, most miserable person around. I’ve read too many YA books, maybe.

I know what the author is trying to say but I’m confused by the tense in “I corrected myself.” You corrected yourself back then? Or you are correcting yourself now in your reminiscence? — “I had never seen so many men inside before. Not men, I corrected myself. Kings.”

Ok, so already I have a problem. Sparta was a Diarchy so they had two kings. So you can’t write that Tyndareus was King of Sparta. A King of Sparta or one of the Kings of Sparta, maybe, but not “King of Sparta” singular. But maybe, maybe, the author will clarify that later.

Jeffrey behaves the same way as Oliver but the author depicts one as good and the other as insufferable. “And stay away from Oliver—“

Good grief, the author lays it on thick with Oliver. Why would Mr. Penderwick disapprove of the erudite film student? If someone shares their passion, it’s disrespectful to shame and ridicule him for it. Don’t yuck someone elses yums.

Nick is depicted full of red flags. Why is the author trying to tell me he’s wonderful?

Initially, I was excited, now I’m a little bored by the lack of a central idea. Suddenly we have a lost dog? I’m 131 pages in and I have no idea what this book is.