Today I spent about an hour around/with Rob and I'm gonna write about it.
He recognised me from last night, came up and talked to us where I really lost all ability to calm or filter myself (which was, admittedly, already very little). He told me he's been seeing a lot of my Tweets and I asked why he followed me. He said he thought I had "a lot of fun and interesting things to say." I did not expect that, literally at all, I was trying to see if he knew my handle, @/pqdres, was for San Diego's baseball team, so I derailed myself from that conversation a bit lol oops.
The night before this he signed my S10 DVD cover on the plastic protector I had, so he offered to sign it properly when he noticed I had it with me again tonight:
I know I just kind of bulldoze over his words, (He said “Thank you for all the Twitter love”) but it’s because I had a script in my head and.. I'm sure a lot of you guys get it, lol. He didn't seem bothered, which I really appreciate.
He took individual photos with everyone who wanted one (like half the people in the bar (which wasn't even that many) had no interest in him) and when we were taking mine he asked for someone to shine an overhead light so we could get a good picture together bc I offhandedly said I needed to turn off my front flash.
I met him again, a little later at another bar (like Charlie and Glenn in October, he just kinda was walking around and hitting up various bars Four Walls was advertising at) and I apologised for my constant presence around him. The reason I stuck around was because I had one last request for the night, something I very much owed to @macdennissurvivor. I told him Emma was the person who got me into the Sunny fandom, and I would appreciate if he could say hi to her on camera. I started recording and then he said 'Nope give me your phone' and then went on a walk and recorded a 20 second video for her on my phone. I think that moment was a fundamental tilt for me.
I know I criticize this man a bit, but god-fucking-damn-it if he isn't the creator of my favourite show in the whole world, one of my favourite characters of all time, half of my URL, the reason I am writing and creating as much as I currently do, the reason I have made actual, real, deep friendships in the past few years, and he took so much time and patience with me, he recorded a whole video for my friend because he does fucking care. He sees us, this part of the fandom, and he appreciates it: that we’re a community and truly connect through his show. Words really can't express my emotions. Thank you Rob, for this.
okay tumblr’s exclusion from the twitter social media ban list is hilarious but genuinely we do not belong on there. if a real human person asks “where can i find you on social media” and your choice is a swift death or revealing your tumblr, most of us would simply expire. half of y’all change urls every week like you’re in witness protection. just imagine for one second attaching your wholeass government name to your latest two am clownposting and tell me that didn’t send a cold chill down your spine. the only place i ever want to see the words “connect with me on tumblr!” is on the ao3 profile of an author i’m actively stalking. anyone in the world can follow me except anyone i personally know. antisocial media.
something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.
it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.
and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.
on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.
edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.
Perseus, Daniel Ogden
Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet