Liv speaks with author and classicist Natalie Haynes about all things Medusa and Natalie's new novel about the tragic Gorgon, Stone Blind. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
Oh hi, hello, and welcome. This is Let's talk about Myths baby, and I am your Medusa obsessed host Live. We are truly in the golden age of mythological retellings. There are constant, constant releases of new novels based on Greek myths, and frankly, it's pretty exciting, pretty exciting for me, a person who just wants people to know more about myth and but also, you know, hey, if they find my guests in the process, all the better. Of course, it's also a bit tricky for me, a person who speaks with authors about their novels and is asked by all of you amazing listeners whether I have read all of the varied novels. It's become one of those things where I actually have to turn down most because as much as I think some of you might enjoy it, this podcast just isn't dedicated to speaking to fiction writers. I like to keep it primarily on the ancient sources and academics, and they're fascinating fields of expertise, and from a personal standpoint, I just can't have myth be every moment of every day of my life, so I don't have time to read most of these books, I have to go elsewhere. So as much as I would love to talk to every single person who's written in mythological retelling, let alone read them, it just cannot be done. There are, however, exceptions, books where either because of the author or the way they have gone about the retelling, whatever it is, it means that I absolutely, without question, have to off them on my show. This is obviously one of those cases. Not only has Natalie Haynes been my favorite author of mythological retailings for Kauwhite some time now, but her latest was about Medusa. I mean, could I ask for anything more? Absolutely not. It is a novel by Natalie Haynes about Medusa. It is like she wrote it for me. So of course I sat down with Natalie Haynes talk about all things Medusa and her novel Stone Blind. If you haven't read Stone Blind, not to worry. This is also just a fascinating look at Medusa and the characters that surround her, both directly and indirectly. But also you should probably read. Stone Blind's come out in North America this just this week, and it's already out in the UK and other areas, so check your local bookstores. With all of that said, and before we jump right into this conversation with Natalie Haynes, I do you want to recognize that the publisher of this book in North America is HarperCollins Us. Employees of HarperCollins Us are currently on strike and asking for a fair contract. Not only do I support union striking for better conditions and paper broadly, but as a person who started out in book publishing at one of the major publishers, and a person who knows just how much those employees get paid versus the work involved and the money publishers make, I absolutely and without question stand with the striking union of HarperCollins Us. Conversations Bringing Medusa Back to Life with Stone Blind author Natalie Haynes, Well, thank you for doing this again. It's nice to speak with you again. Believe a four years. How is it really I was trying to work out when it was and I was no, I can't, I just can't do it. Yeah, you were one of the first people I ever had on in like a conversation episode of my show, which is now something I do like all of the time. Um, but amazingly I started with you and Bettany Hughes. So it was like, yeah, it was like a very big start to that, but it's become a normal thing I love. Yeah, No, it was very fun. It was quite the way to to start out a new system of record, like just even having other people on my show. But I think I started it with a bang and it went well. People really love it. So but I mean, obviously I was happy to speak with you about any book, but Medusa is my like love of loves, so it doesn't Yeah, no, I don't. I don't have her anywhere. Uh yeah, No, I mean I'm absolutely fascinated by Medusa, and I'm just gonna jump straight into talking about stone Blind because Yeah, the the thing that really was so exciting to me is I think that I mean, I have a lot of theories about Medusa that runs through my head all the time. I've done, like, I don't even know, six episodes on her, probably because there's always something new to theorize on. And I feel like you kind of distilled every theory that I have ever had about her into a novel um in a really perfect way. So, I mean it's like everything I think about her, everything I used to like, all the facts I used to defend her in any form that I need to, because weirdly it happens often is like put into this book. Um, so I don't even that's a perfect way to start, I think, and also slightly rambily. Um. But so let me like, before I go off on all of my theories that are in your book, how did you want to approach Medusa? Like, how do you think about her in terms of the ancient sources and kind of what did you want your version of her to be? Well? I decided and I would write her novel when I had finished her chapter in Pandora's Jar. So I'd written a nonfiction chapter about her, thought about her essentially from the outside in quite an analytic way. Um. And then after I finished that chapter, which is about I don't know, nine thousand something words long, a friend of mine asked me what I was working on. I was like, I was so angry, and she was like, wow, I just don't know what's going to happen when you find out about the next two thousand years of misogyny. And I thought, if I'm this cross after I written all those words, I must I've got more to say. I'm not done here. So I knew I was coming in from a position of feeling really outraged for her um, but considering how much I had already written about her, I was surprisingly not ready for the fact that when I came to it, there was so little literary material to go on. I had sort of blithely assumed that when I sat down to start writing Stone Blind, that it would be the same process as writing A Thousand Ships, which very much basically, here are all your narratives. Some of them are theatrical, some of them are epic, some of them are and I would just be choosing my way through what I wanted and what I thought would be most effective in the context, and you know, inventing to fill in the gaps essentially, And I suddenly realized that that would get me roughly, I don't know, four pages. Oh, and there were there were loads and loads of visual arts that I could use, of course, and do use extensively in the book, but that was just a really different process. I'd written about art in Pandora's Jar against the Outside, and I'd stolen the outfit that Themis is wearing in A Thousand Ships comes from a vase painting, for example, So I had done it before, but I didn't realize just how much more of a visual medium I would be working in while writing a novel. Is the first time I've ever done it, and so it felt at the beginning, I felt a bit untethered. You know, It's like, how am I gonna How am I going to weigh this character down in time and place without a sort of a narrative backstory that everyone already trust even if they don't have it. And it was quite It was quite strange. And then I sort of realized I wrote the first chapter um where Medusa is a baby is sort of delivered to her sisters to look after, and I was like, Okay, well, yeah, maybe this will Yeah. But almost immediately I realized I wanted it to be another polyphonic novel, that it wasn't going to be just a single I had been so confident that this time I would break the habit of a lifetime of novel writing, and it was just within minutes I was like, no, I can't do that, because I don't want to write it all in the first person. And I knew so hard that I wanted the voice of the Gorgona and to be in the first person. It literally never occurred to me it wouldn't be. And then of course there were so many other narratives that I could throw in, some of which work beautifully. I felt in the third like Danas chapters, Um, she's so sort of calm in the face of everything that's kind of lobbed at her. Telling her in a sort of close third person really worked. But if you think I could resist telling a story from the perspective of a chatterbox crow, it's like we haven't met you know that. And the snooty olive trees, I mean, they were just so much fun to do. Well. That leads into more questions. But I want to talk about Medusa more, especially because I mean, Medusa is so fascinating because of what you're saying, like, there are really so few no, I guess well though, there are so few sources on her, but even in the few that we have, the actual details are like almost non He gives you a line in the theogan three organs um steno euralian Medusa and the first two are immortal and the third one is mortal, And that's a wretched face. That's it, dude. It's literally like family saga is right here, and you just put it in four words. She lay with the side, She lay siding in a field of soft flowers and suffered a willful fate. And you're like, that's all. That's the oldest surviving stories we have on Medusa and looks again, yes, like any of it's a longer version, but of course of it is very much focused on the Perseus narrative, which is less interesting. What I found actually really interesting was when I came to properly think about that there are two particular ours paintings that have a big secret starring role in this novel. Yeah, once in the Match Party Museum in New York, and you for sure can um because it shows Perseus in the act of decapitating Medicas. So his sword is literally curving around her neck. It's a it's a curved blade sworder heartpack um, and she's asleep, you know her, she's beautiful, she doesn't have snakes for her. This is just the weidth century of us. Yeah. So she's got this beautiful dark ringlets. Her eyes are shut, so they're just depicted with a tiny curved line for each one. And it just felt to me that it was a really ambivalent portrait of what's supposed to be presumably a hero overcoming a monster. You know, we see loads of vase paintings with Heracles, Hercules doing exactly that. It looks like he's having a whale of a time. You know, think of that fantastic part where he's got brought the pig back for Eurystheus, and Eurystheus has got the panic on him, so he's decided to hide in a pot on the side of a park for massive meto sexuality, and Heracles is holding the pig over him and it's sort of it's not quite making a kissy kissy face, but it might as well be. He's sort of cowering away from it. It's like that vase painter is having fun, and what's more, Heracles is having fun. But you look at this base painting of Perseus attacking Mejica, and it looks a lot like what it is, which is a young man decapitating a woman while she sleeps, and he even looks like he's like he's sneaking out on tiptoes. Absolutely look sneaky. It's so yeah, And then isn't there like I don't know, if it's the other side or there's one where then her head is in the bag and that one's in the British music. Okay, yeah, and it's really similar, like her head missing and later, yeah it's seconds later and the head is as you said, it's stuffed into this bag. So again the lack of humanity that he displays. In my view, I don't think you are I as the first person to notice this. I think those Fars paintings look ambivalent because the painter was ambivalent. It is a difficult story. She's a goddess. She is in the theogony, you know. Okay, she is mortal, so she's not technically a goddess, but she's part of a family of gods and goddesses and so she makes her way. There are very few mortals in the medea Is. Also, they're also mentioned as a daughter of someone connected to God's granddaughter of the Sun. I guess she is part of this God's story, um and and she belongs there. And I think that probably explains why you know, the wretchedness of her face as far as he's a disconcerned, is that because she's mortal, she can be killed, and therefore when Perseus embarks on his slightly petulant quest to bring back the head of a gorgan. It is Medusa who's clearly the the target. Um, but that doesn't suggest to me that there's approval going on. No, I think, yeah, I think her story within Perseus is one of those ones where, like on the outside, we're expected to think of it as a heroic act. He's a hero, this is Greek mythology. But really, yeah, when you're in the sourcing, like, there's nothing to suggest that there's any good reason why he did this. It's one of the things I tell people all of the time in my daily life, probably to the point of annoyance of just everything we think we know about Medusa as her this monstrous thing or or like something that needed to be killed or required death or was like causing trouble, like all of that is an invention of the last however long, and all based in misogyny and entirely right, like something new and different for Greek mythnology. Is this the first time that's happened? Unfolds massive Papyrus roll worked. Oh wait is it? But what both of our careers are based Yeah, it's it's one of those things, Like I just think even just the idea of why Perseus goes to kill her is so anticlimactic in this really interesting way of just it isn't for any valiant reason. It's literally just an attempt to get him killed off. Like it's just literally a thing that that you know that Polydectes thought was going to be impossible, and I it's it's just so fascinating. Um and I so I've I've covered her in many different forms on the show, but I have another a book that's called I Think The Medusa Reader, and it kind of breaks down all these French sourcing on her from the nature world. Harry Hason's movie The Clash of the Times movie from Whenever It is one I think responsible for this because in in that version, then he goes on a noble quest to bring back the head of a gorgon so he can kill a sea monster and rescue a princess. And it's like that we understand how that narrative works. But of course rescuing Andromeda is a side quest on the way home. In every ancient source that mentions it, it's incidental to the fact that he's gone to get the head of a gorgon because a petulant man has asked him for one, and that's it, you know, there is nothing noble about it at all. Actually, and I think that is hiding behind these bars paintings too, that what we can see is this isn't you know. I mean you can see in the petulance of Eurystheus with that Heracles potum, that the payback for asking for a petulant thing is is to be punished, and that he is corwering away. And so I feel like that same slightly, you know, judgmental attitude is in play when we see Perseus um, you know, bravely conquering a monster. Where how is she a monster? Because you don't like what she looks like? Oh she's killed loads of people? Okay, name four? Oh wait what she's already been killed. I've never been able to find a convincing So she's this great monster, and yet who does she kill? Well? Once Perseus is using her head as a weapon of mass destruction at one point, an entire island of people at a time. Thanks to OVID, we have that story from the Metamorphoses, But in terms of having agency and making the choice herself where's this, you know, island cabinet statues that we would expect her to live on. It doesn't exist. Yeah, yeah, everything pre ovid is. I mean, that's another one. It's like, it's hilarious hearing all of these words come out of you, because I just I see these things all of the time, just like she doesn't hurt anyone until her head is off of her body, Like there is no evidence that she has ever harmed anyone in all of the ancient sources pre Avid and yeah, it's it's She's just such an It's so fascinating because I'll go back to what you said about Clash of the Titans though, because not only I think is you're right, is that responsible for this idea that like the heroic nature of his quest included that or and the whole point was to save Andromeda. But I think it also gives her the monstrosity that we think of now too, Like she is this the idea of her being like a kidner, Like I feel like his version of her, Yeah, it looks like what we think of as a kidnap. She's got this like snake bottom half because he'd already done wings earlier in the movie with the heartpies. I think he couldn't be able to do them again, which they would be different as a choice. Yeah. I love the fact that snaky tailed Medusa from the harry House and has cast a long shadow because Lego Medusa has a snaky tail. So many Medusas have that now, like as if it's cannon, it's fast. I mean, you know, I don't I don't particularly mind it. I love that there was a Ray harry House an exhibition in Edinburgh, um, in the UK two years ago, I think, um. And it was quite chastening to discover that the model for Meducer was sort of you know, like about a foot a foot and a half tools like I sort of you know, the most monstrous things she might remind you of as a sort of slightly bad tempered cat or something like that. Okay, it's not quite as scary now, but I mean it is a brilliant depiction, but it's incredibly dehumanizing. I think loads of people remember it. I think that is the moment from Cash of the Titans where the skeletal warriors are in Jason and the Argonauts, the thing that gave people the heaps when they were a kid, and so I see that you know, absolutely did its job correctly, but it's cast along shadow, and so people are very quick to think of her as a monster, when, of course she is a monstered woman, and worse than that, she is a monstered rape survivor um and an ignominious beginning to a long and continuing saga in which when women speak out about harm done to them, they are rendered by society outsider the monster, the thing that has done things wrong. So I feel really strongly about her that she um should be reconsidered as in context as a sister, as a daughter, and as a protector. Because the truth of the matter is, if you have the ability to turn things to stone with a single glance and there are no named victims of you whatsoever, you must be trying really hard not to do that. So yeah, I'm afraid, like the big, softhearted person I am, it only makes me think that she is more lovable, more beautiful than before. I agree entirely. Yeah, I spent a lot of my time defending her as whenever necessary. But that that leads to another really interesting point, and I'm curious where you think about it. So one of the things that I kind of stand by and I recognize that it's not explicit in the ancient texts, um, but is this idea because a lot of people will aim that it's Avid who invented the rape survivor narrative, and I I would say that it is actually more president he see it um not explicitly but implicitly due to the phrasing of how it happens, the words used, but also the fact that it's Poseidon. I think it's like, I mean, one doesn't really clarify in a lot of those cases, like whether something is consensual because he's just not really concerned with it um, which I think does not imply that it was understood to be consensual in the ancient world. UM. But also like Poseidon was almost never with somebody consensually, which I think you kind of right into his character pretty strongly. Yeah. Yeah, So, like, I mean, what do you think of of I guess Poseidon? But also how do you consider it that Avid invented this rape narrative or or that it's although I don't I don't think would have even occurred to of it to think in those terms, particularly because I'm afraid much as we might like it to be different. The phenomenon of consent is a relatively recent one, um. And so I don't you know, you can see the ugly arguments that this view of other human beings leads to in historical text just as much as my theological ones. I am thinking. I guess of the million dialogue in Thucydides, where the debate is between essentially, do we allow this city, which has asked to become neutral, to do that? Or do we go there kill all the men and enslave all the women and children, which is the Athenian punishment and quite a used by other people to not just the Athenians across a long period of history, um revolt or treachery or whatever, um. And the millions essentially say, don't do something as terrible as that, because basically, one day you'll be on the receiving end of someone with more power, and don't you want to kind of set a precedent for being merciful? And the Athenians offer a kind of Mighty's right argument. It's a presented to us essentially as a Nomas versus pussiesst debate. So the law versus natural law, So the law is a road sign which says don't turn right, and you can obey that or not obey that. But if turning right takes you straight over a cliff, then gravity would be pussis given a go. See how it for what's out um, And the Athenians essentially argue for this. They say, it's in our nature, as the stronger party, to do whatever the hell we like, and it's the nature of the weaker party to put up with it. And although it's presented very in a very kind of brutal and chilly way by the Athenians in this debate, UM, I don't think it's a particularly unusual way of thinking um in the ancient world. Indeed, it probably isn't a very unusual way of thinking now, I'm afraid UM. So, I don't think there's any question of thinking in terms of consent um, in terms of sex really um with either very young women in the case of Medusa, or indeed very young men in the case of Ganymede. Consent simply isn't does. It just doesn't come up in our ancient sources, and until really recently, honestly, it wasn't coming up very much in classical scholarship. By that you would get I own books which sort of cheerfully defend the notion of being raped by a god because usually something good comes of it, by which they mean usually a demigod child or you know, you get to live quite a long time if hero doesn't turn you into in someone and on, and it's like, well that I'm gonna have to stop you there, suggest that you think about this again. Um So, I think it's really important that we reassess these texts within the values of our time. But I think there's a huge and important space between doing that and attributing our values to the past and assuming that characters created in the past could possibly have known what those values would be. People who don't argue against slavery in the ancient world would include, for example, Jesus. So even by our standards, we would think, but surely everyone can agree that slavery is wrong. But it simply didn't occur to Aristotle to feel that way about it, and he was pretty smart. Um and you know, so I think it's important that we retain this distinction and the idea of consent. Of course, when you live in a world with slavery, and I always say when I talk about slavery in the ancient world, because it's really important that we remember it. There are more slaves in the world now than there were in the ancient world. I do see we have a lot of population now that it is worth considering when you live in a world which has slavery and doesn't question slavery, I think asking people to think about consent in any context is probably it's a step too far. You've already dehumanized huge chunks of the population, so of course you'll continue to do so. Yeah, that's very it's interesting, it's it is fascinating the way I mean, Fortunately things are changing now, but yeah, I mean I have a book of mythology that's like twenty years old, and the author, who is obviously a man, the way he describes what happens to Medusa and Athena's reaction, it was like one of the most horrifying things I've ever read, just in terms of like the level of disdain he has, and and also like it doesn't remotely and he's clearly describing the OVID version, which I think of it is pretty clear that it's like a violent act by force. Yeah, he's He's very like, this is not, you know, something that she liked and and this author rewrites it as something that Medusa did really intentionally, and like that Athena, you know, I saw that. I don't know it was really it's interesting to me where I was like, you made it worse than of it, Like you added misogyny that's not even in the ancient text, and it's incredibly common. I'm afraid. Yeah. The example I always give is the Odyssey where Telemachus hangs the slaver woman who he and his father decide have been conspiring with the suitors, although of course they are slaves so they don't have consent. There is gonna be no possibility of consent, because that's what it means to be an enslaved person um. And when Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey came out, she accurately translated the line where he hangs them all from the same length of rope. She translates the word for these female slaves as the female slaves. The word in Greek is the word for slave in the plural and feminine, with the article in the plural and feminine to match the female slaves. And when I reviewed that excellent translation. I tracked down I think four or five different translations of the Odyssey from the twentieth century and I think one from the twenty one, and every single one of them had translated it as Harlot's husses slatterns, I mean, essentially had added in some misogyny to justify their hero Odysseus's behavior. It's like, well, it's a sufficiently disturbing piece of behavior that inspired Margaretward to write the penell appeared. So you know, I'm fine with us just acknowledging how horrible it is. And yet over and over again you see that translators, I'm sure, not from any kind of position of malice, just decided they should make it clear what I see this was really doing well, very well done for that. But we might call that editorializing. So you know, it's a little bit more honest, I think if you do it in a novel than in a translation. Um. And obviously when I come to editorialize, for example, Perseus or as you say, Poseidon, um, I think it's you know that it's in plain sight, it's right there. There's no point I'm not pretending that this is a translation of a missing text found you know, by me, that survise from the world. I'm presenting you these myths which I have been steeped in since I was welve when I started studying Latin, fourteen when I started studying Ancient Greek. So I've spent my whole adult life and then some here. And it's like, but I am also alive now in the twenty one century and steeped in the feminism of my mother and all our four mothers. So yeah, this is the text you're going to get from me. Mm hmmm. Yeah. Well, that, I mean brings up some important characters that I'd love to talk about too. I mean broadly, I think I really enjoy your use of Poseidon and Zeus, so I'm curious, like, I mean, they're just sort of the versions I think of them, um in terms of their behavior. But how did you want to go about handling any of the gods? I would say, and Percys too, like what was your sort of intention with It? Was a lot of fun to do, actually, because I realized that I was thinking of those that bars painting, the one you mentioned with the Kibsis that's in the British Museum is a case in point, really, but the one in the met just as much. Where he's he's wearing wing sandals. Those have been borrowed from Herms. He's wearing a winged hat that's the cap of darkness that belongs to Hades. Looks like it's hermes Is hat, but it is not, at least according to our literary sources. It's hades Is that he's wearing, so shoes from Hermes, hat from Hades. The cabesis is alone from the Asperides um. It's a sacred item carrier, so it's gold and silver tassels, so it's much stronger than a regular bag um. The sword the hard pay belongs to Zeus. Again, it's alone from the Asperides and on the um met VARs, although he doesn't have the backpack. On that version, he is looking behind him and consulting with Athene, who's behind him. So it's like, well, there are five different gods or sets of gods involved in this process of decapitation, and there are two ways of looking at this, and I think probably both of them are are true. The first, of course, is to say this young man is incredibly favored by the gods because look at them all queue up to help him. You know, this is truly a son of Zeus because all these other gods are offering him assistance. But the other way of looking at it, and equally valid, is just how useless is this young man that's so many gods have to help him? How much help does heracles have when he's off on all his tasks? Almost none the time of anything, he's got hindrance because here is hurling further obstacles at him constantly, and whenever she gets the chance, even if it's the weather, she'll do it. So yeah, you know, and yet he still manages to complete all these labors pretty well, not entirely, but pretty well single handedly, and you know, job done, thanks very much. Perseus needs all these deities to assist him. Well, that speaks to me of a man who is rather helpless. So the fun thing about writing him was trying not to make him helpless, because, contrary to the response of some of my readers, I don't think he is helpless. Actually, the problem is that we always see him in context, almost always see him in context with Athene. When we see him in the context of his mother, he doesn't seem anywhere near as helpless, And similarly with Andromeda, when she sees him, she doesn't see him as someone helpless at all, But most of the way through the book we see him um as he is in some kind of scene with Athene and with Hermes, and asking them to understand his motivation in anything is like asking you will me to understand what Aunt thinks. These are gods that live on Mount Olympus. Their lives are so long, so unmeasurable, so uncuttable, that our lifespan is just like blinking to them. So what on earth would be the point in trying to understand how humans do anything? What would be the point? They'll be gone in a minute. You know, I've just literally just heard you say I don't want to do it like and then now you're dead, So what difference does it make? And so he and she don't understand each other at all. And the delight of writing those scenes, which I think are some of the funniest scenes in the book, Um was being able to have this total clash of understand He can't possibly hope to understand her. She's a deity, she can't be bothered to try and understand him. He's just a punimmortal. So this total culture clash was I mean, it was just a lot of fun to write, because it made me once I'd realized that the the joy would be in trying to work out what he didn't know and when he would reveal this ignorance to God to just assume everyone knows everything all the time, because why wouldn't you? It really, it was those scenes were all fun to write. Yeah, I can, I can definitely, you can tell you had fun writing those ones. And and particularly like I think, just Athena Broadley because her character I did, I've got no poker face at all at all. And you can hear every time I'm typing, you can, and on the audiobook you can hear it even worse. I'm you know, I know that people's response to Athenie is going to be quite layered, because sometimes she's really funny. Sometimes she is, you know, the perpetrator of absolute horror, and sometimes she is the recipient of horror. And so I don't really like trying to delineate people into you know, this person's a villain, this person is a hero, this person is a victim. It's like an awful lot of people can be all of those things at different times their life, and sometimes more than one of those things at the same time. And so I had an absolute bull writing her um, which makes me feel a bit guilty really, but you know, it is what it is, huh. I mean she she is so fascinating though, because she is such a complex character, and like, and I think what you just how you just described all of that though, the characters who can be so many different things. That's so especially true for Greek mythology because and this is something I say so often on the show, but like you know that these stories weren't developed in the way that that we developed stories now. They didn't have the same intention, the same background, any of that, and so like they weren't I mean other than the heroes, which even their version of what heroes were is different from what we would think of today, but other than even say them, like everyone is just serving their own purpose in each one of the stories, Like no one is inherently good all the time, and no one is inherently bad all the time. I think about this a lot, when you know so many pop culture reception, various things comes to Greek meth always making hades the villain, absolutely right, and because he's been again, I'm afraid it's tainted by Christian thinking that the god who lives in the underworld must be the devil because it's the same thing as hell, and the fact that there are the Elysian Fields as well. It's like, is everyone's underworld, mate, Honestly, unless you get actually deified and go popping up to Mount Olympus, is everyone's underworld. But we're determined to make him evil, so and sometimes that really plays to a strength, So it works incredibly well, I think in Disneys Hercules, because you know you've got James Woods. Why wouldn't he be evil? That's exactly what we've all turned up for um. But other times, yes, I agree, you're just like you understand that he's okay, nothing, never mind, it doesn't matter, we'll talk another time. Yeah, yeah. And I think Athena is such a good character for that, and I think she appears that way really strongly in your book, where you're like, she's fun she's funny, she's really she's really dry in a way that like she's got quite a unique personality, but also she does horrible things because she's a Greek goddess, and like there's horrible things that happen in mythology, and it doesn't make the character bad, it just makes them a god or just part of a Greek myth. I mean, she's completely a moral and all my all my versions of Greek gods are a moral, and I don't think that's my invention. I think it goes back to at least the Iliad, you know, where the Hermeritic gods are completely a moral incredibly petty um. When I used to teach this a very long time ago, just say, they're like super powered toddlers. That's they have. They don't want or not want anything with any grandeur at all. It's entirely petty every single time, and yet they want it with the profundity that you and I can only begin to dream of, because we can only want something really, really intensely for a few months, weeks, years, whereas they can do it for millennia. So you know, our feelings obviously are going to be more intense, and you get that. I think with Perseus responding to Athene in particular, but Hermes as well, is that he, you know, the petulance in him it comes from I think it's just an absolute sense that he's not being hurt, that he's not understood. And of course, you know, he's a doted on child by his mother and his sort of honorary grandfather, and so he's used to being heard and the terrible pain of going from that to being just absolutely ignored. Um. I think it comes across in him as as petulance, but it's a quite a profound psychological scarf. So yes. But as the as the book progresses, I think he in some ways he becomes more like Athene in ways that I don't think she would have ever noticed. And I didn't intend when I was writing it, but I realized once I finished it, when I did the audiobook recording, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, sometimes these things happen. M Well, one of the things it was sort of surprised me reading it, and I it plays into what you mentioned about how you attempted or thought for a moment of doing a book that was just in one point of view and then decided to go with that so many more now fair enough, so you fit in so many different points from mythology, like far more than I was expecting. When Gigantomicky comes to mind is the most obvious man. That was fun to do based on the pergramon altar in Berlin and um, so at the risk of destroying the magic. UM. Then I was writing that chapter in January, I think of one, and I had begun it and I wanted to write it closely based on the pergramon altar, with some necessary changes UM which I won't today discussed because I don't want to suppoil the end of the book. UM. And it's a long time since I've been in Berlin and we couldn't travel. You know, Britain was in lockdown. Germany was in lockdown. The museums were shut anyway, and Britain had just in its many spasms of leaving the EU, UM had finally done that. And so you know, it was just these huge problems with trying to transport goods in and out of Europe to the UK because we'd suddenly added like ten million pieces of paperwork to it. And I was like, well, I really wish I could see these pictures up close, but I you know, the pictures that I took it so long since I was last there, they were on a film camera. You know, they're probably my mom's house. That's no good. I don't want her to go to the post office. You know, she's not as young as she was. Um. And so I was like, really, and there were no detailed close up pictures online that I could find. And I found this incredible looking book that I really really wanted, and it looked like it had really good close up photographs in it. I thought, well, I'll order it from the museum and by the time it turns up, I'll probably have finished the scene, but I can go back and make changes later and that will be okay. Um. And so I ordered it from a closed museum in a lockdown country to be sent across a newly erected trade boarder where things were being you know, delayed from weeks at a time, to another lockdown country. And it was here forty eight hours later. Oh my god, this has gone surprisingly well, everybody. So I just that here, like, oh my god. Thank And so the details of that that sequence the Guygantomicky are all taken pretty well or taken from the programon Altar. I had to track down a place in Flagra where which is one of the locations given for the Guygantomiccky. So I found a place with pictures online because obviously I couldn't travel to Greece either. Um that that looked like it would be a good scene for God's versus Giants battle, and and so it all came from there. Oh, that's wonderful. So did you always want to cover as many myths as you could sort of fit into the narrative or did that come up as you were writing. I wanted to cover as much of Producer's story as I could, and I knew the right way to do that very quickly wasn't just to focus on her and her sisters, but was to expand the narrative accordingly. And of course I've done that with ships, which seemed like a more plausible version of that because you knew straight away you have the Greeks, the Trojans, and the gods if you wanted them. Um. But with Meducer, it's like, well, what happens if we take this story and it's all focused on this single person? And very quickly it became clear that Athene would be a sort of antagonist or a dual protagonist I suppose, if you prefer and that then the story of how her character develops would become in some ways as important as how Reducers develops. And so there were just so many voices to include, But the majority of the extra voices come from Athene's life story rather than just from Reducers. But if somebody is your nemesis to use it in its modern rather than its Greek goddess, we need to know why. You know, it's not good enough to just say as you know, ancient Greek man writer would have said, and indeed did say, oh, and then Athene was angry with her, and so this it's like, well, that's that's not going to cut it here. This is a novel now, it's not just a poem. I can't just dazzle you with my beautiful metrical arrangements and then move on to something else of its style. Um, you know this, this requires actual cause and effect. So I wanted to show you both of them in the round, and as many of the characters as I could really in the round. And even you know Perseus, who who is not a particularly sympathetically drawing character, UM, I think he still deserved his context. You know, he said Dan I needed to be brought into the story from my perspective anyway to explain Perseus, because really his his redeeming feature is that he cares about his mother, and that's not the worst thing anyone's ever done. So I didn't want to miss out any of those parts of the story. And then generally, just when I was thinking, um, you know, is this too much? Are they going to be too many people, then something like a chatterbox crow would turn up and I'd be like, Oh, everyone's going to let me have this one. No one's going to make me cut this one out. This is going to be too much fun. So yeah, they all sort of they all felt necessary as I went along, um, to illuminate the story sort of as as fully and as roundly as I could. Well, And once you've had that many like it, it seems like you it's sort of you might as well add more, especially when they come up naturally, like I really enjoyed the snakes. You know, suddenly we're getting individual snakes perspective in her hair. Um. I was curious because you used so much Greek in there, Um, whether like your publisher anyone else was worried that people weren't there wasn't take too long to figure out they were the snakes. Yeah, No, there weren't. I mean, there's in the UK version there's a snake that goes down the page of drawing a snake on a page, and I guess I don't know if that would be in the American version because I haven't seen a finished copy yet. Um, it's not in the art I can tell you the advanced so it probably wouldn't be. Yeah, So I don't know, but it does there is. They are mentioned in the list of characters at the front, which I think will have survived the any But again I haven't seen the finish copies, so I don't know. Um, but yeah, I mean it's always a risk. It's always a risk that people won't guess something. But I would much rather be baffled than bored as a reader and view so I think by that point people will probably trust me. Um. But you know, we'll see. The crow has the good grace to announce itself Hello, I'm a crow basically, um, and the snooty olive trees similarly get they sort of reveal their characters quite quickly. Um. But it was just irresistible to me to keep you know, I thought I thought I would spend more time. I thought I we spend more time with the Andromeda storyline, I think than I did, because such big things happened to her. But they're so big they sort of defy too many pages. It's like it would throw the novel off off center. So her story is told in the third to give it again that slight distance, because you know, she's a smart cookie. I think Andromeda, she's she's She makes a good play through THEO and I felt like it deserves she deserved the chance to, you know, make choices that improved her prospects as far as she was concerned. I mean, obviously, my opinion of her choices is that she would be better off a journeying to a nunnery. But you know, anachronistically but fair, I think so. Yes, I guess she could have gone off and become a servant of Artemis or something. Yeah, that might have been a little bit better, but you know, for me, But I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell her how to live. I've done enough of that writing a novel. She was allowed to do whatever she likes after the end of the pages. Yeah no, And I'm I'm I'm curious to see the finished copy in North America, and obviously we'll be buying one the use of I mean, there was just so much, and there as somebody who who obviously like knows all the myths like the back of my hand. It was so interesting to see so many different ones, including you know, the Feistus and Athena bit with the birth of Eric Ponius, and just the way you kind of incorp reading so much of her story to explain, to explain Athene like as a character was it was very interesting and unexpected. Um, how did the hardest thing to do, actually, in the whole technically it was the hardest thing to do is to impose a timeline on a god. And it hadn't really occurred to me just how necessary it would be and therefore how difficult it would become. But in the end I couldn't write. I couldn't write the first of the Athenia chapters until her because there are all these stories about her that appear in all these different sources, never altogether in the same place, often within the same poem or even the same visual artwork. They are self contradictory. You know, she is holding or wearing a thing that she will acquire as a result of the thing that she's currently doing. And it's like, I have a question, No, never mind doesn't matter, um. And so she was extremely difficult at first to work out. And then in the end I basically just made a huge list of you know, cool stories that Athene is in, things that she does, things that are done to her, things that she is interested in, and so on, um, that were from the grandeur and scale of the gigantomackey to this tiny little reference um that she is the goddess who invents the flute. Um. And I went through this huge long list of stuff, and then basically I picked the stories that I thought were most important, most integral to the meducer story, some of which were easy because they contained them both, and some of which were more difficult because I felt they would illuminate it in a different way. And then I imposed an order and said it goes this way, um. And at that point it all suddenly became much more manageable, because you know, obviously some of her scenes are with Perseus, so his timeline dictates those, but they can't contradict hers. And it is virtually impossible to find an ancient artwork any kind of coherence is even attempted on the subject of the gods and what they do, because of course, you know, it's the perfect illustration. These stories bubble up across two thousand years and across many, many thousands of miles um, and so of course they are contradictory. UM. So yeah, imposing any kind of order on a thing he felt like a slightly blasphemous goal, but it was worth it, I think. Yeah. It's always my first recommendation to people when they're trying to understand Greek myth is like, don't try to figure out a timeline. It's only going to hurt you, and it's going to be more confusing than it's necessary. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's really satisfying, like the people who spend all their time looking at the timelines of the Odyssey where the flashbacks within flashbacks. It's fantastically complicated, um and really good fun. But man, you are onto an absolute loser if you try to do that. You know, there's there's a moment in the Odyssey where Ciarus he says to Odysseus, oh, you know, don't go through those wandering rocks. I think because Jason went that way and he only got through because here helped him. And you're like, okay, great, so now I know they are. And so sometimes when there are human beings involved, you can impose an order, but it will always betray you. You will always find yourself suddenly painted into a corner going no, hang on a minute, why I think with that alart to you with Athena and her face just because there is also narratives around her face is being born of hera because she was mad that Zeus had athena, But then her face just helps Zeus berth Athena. And you're like, well, what do we do with this? Yeah? Yeah, well, thank goodness they're immortal, because otherwise this would be interredibly confusing. But yeah, I mean, you're right, of course, these things are completely circular. It's the horrible US, isn't it eating its own tail? And you do just have to impose an order. Um. And I'm reasonably careful to not let the gods get ever involved in the idea of time. You know, occasionally I'll be like, oh, this is quite pressing. Why that kid that is technically yours is about to drown? Um. But they can either do really imminent or forever and other than that, I don't really allow them to get too tangled up in time. In a way, it was it was a much more central theme of the book than I expected it to be because I thought the theme of the book when I read that chunk ind I tho't theme the book would be mortal versus immortal. Um. You know Meduca is mortal, her sisters are immortal. How will that be for them? And almost immediately it became clear that the thing that would be important in their relationship wouldn't be they know that she can die and she knows that they can't, but would be she experiences change and they don't, because it's a necessary corollary of immortality. I think that you're unchanging. And the Gorgons are a lot less lofty than the Olympians literally and metaphorically. They live on earth. They are creatures of the sea, the sky and the land where they live. But their parents are see gods and they have wings, so they're completely liminal creatures and they are still your reality. And then are still obviously um immortal and unchanging in a way. But then the attention of the book came with well, what happens if you give those goddesses a mortal creature to care for. And the answer is they learned to change because that's what love means. Um. And so they gradually and neither of them wants it, and yet it happens to them just the same. They learn exactly what love means, even though they didn't particularly intend to, because they realize they're frightened for her when she gets hurt. Um, And that's what it means to to be mortal. M hmm. Yeah. And so it turned out to be much much more about the passage of time than I realized. But perhaps that's just because I'm getting so old I can't quite tell. I mean, also, writing it in the pandemic means that time has become like a baffling thing to navigate. Like, yeah, like an accordion, right where sometimes it's really really long between two points and then sometimes they're right next to each other. You're like, dude, stop doing that. No one wants to hear the accordion, now stop it. That's how it feels. Yeah. Yeah, Well, so that brings up another thing that I that I find so interesting about Medusa and was really satisfied by how you handled it. But the idea of her being this mortal with an immortal family has always I mean, it is just inherent fascinating, and I've always kind of wondered whether there was any thought process behind it in the ancient Greek world, like whether they tried to ever navigate why that would be, because it feels to me like either there's this big reason that we don't know, or it's just explicitly to allow Perseus to kill her. But that also feels too simple, and so I mean, how did you approach like explaining why she would be this singular mortal character. Um, I don't think I did. Really. I basically treat her as though she's a mutant. Yeah, that's essentially the mindset that I had. It's like, well, what would happen if you had a sibling who is just somehow weirdly different from you? And I can literally hear the metaphorically hear the voice of my big brother sniggering right now, um and saying, yeah, we've all had to live through that. But what do you do when that? Um? When that when that happens, when that sibling comes A lot and I think a lot of the time we're so bamboozled by the people were closest to. They're so utterly other than us. Even as we grow up in the same world, and my brother has a fantastically good memory for our childhood, I can remember almost nothing, So when I need to know about what it was like when we were kids, I have to ask him, um, And then when he says that, I'm like, oh, yeah, of course that's right, But I haven't remembered it on my own. So, you know, we have this completely different way of of approaching even our own kind of communal memory, quite aside anything more external than that. So I think perhaps it is just the case that everybody ends up feeling that way about the people they're closest to that they also could not be further away. You know, those boundaries between us exists, even though there are times with the people we love when they just dissolve and it's like we're inside each other's hearts. So we're inside each other's minds. We know. I know everything that you're thinking right now. You know, my brother and I can't play scharards with other people because we win so fast it's just embarrassing. And yet it um, you know, we have this completely different outlook on life. And so I think I wish I could explain it to you in a sort of myth us sense, Why why there would be this distinction drawn? My guess is that it's it doesn't come up at all until relatively late, which is when Perseus comes into the story. That originally and archaeologically we can see gorgon a these gorgon heads all over the place in the area world. And that's not particularly unusual because heads and sort of grotesque heads, particularly somewhere between a mask and a face. Um, they're drawn by everybody. You know, all cultures have these kinds of masks or or extreme faces as far as I can tell um. And you know, even if you give a kid a piece of paper and a yellow pen, they'll draw the sun and it will have a smiley face, and it will have, you know, the sort of emanating rays like a lion's main exactly like a gorgon would look if you asked them to draw. And those I suspect, And so I think most probably what happens is that we get these gorgon air, these protective heads. They're apotropaic, I think from their locations. They're not just designed to be scary they're also designed to protect um, much like the evil eye is used now in jewelry or key rings or whatever in Greece or in Turkey. And then the bodies come come Secondarily, we get Gorgon's a little bit later than we get these original often, as I say, quite monstrous heads. The heads I think are designed as a sort of emblem or talisman against the fears of the natural world. The very wide mouth with the lolling tongue represents the noise of thunder. Perhaps the massive snakes looks like you know, snakes, but also like a lion's main the tusks obviously reminiscent of wild war and so lots of things that can kill you in ancient So I think the heads exist as a sort of reflection of contemporary fears or a manifestation of contemporary fears, in order to make them a bit more manageable um. And then they're followed by bodies, which have to be a bit monstreakers look at the faces, so they get wings. And then I think, probably, and I can't of it, but I believe it that. You know, people said, well, how can we have what all these heads separated from these bodies we must need somebody with a sword, and that's perseus role in the story. So but then by the time we can have a long form narrative version of it which is offered, the story has been going around for hundreds of years by then, and so you know, it's mentioned of the gorgon head in the Iliad and one in the Odyssey. Um, so it's already hundreds of years old. And then at that point it's like, oh, well, you know, now we need this hero to have a monster to overcome. Well, that's not the way I see it. I'm afraid I see it as us needing a man with a sword to separate a head from the body. So yeah, m hmm, Yeah, it's just it's generally so interesting to compare the those those images of just the heads with with then he Seeid's version or take on it where he explicitly says that one was mortal. And then to get to the pottery that we talked about the beginning, where you know, other than the wings, she's so inherently human. Um. And I also because she gets the same beautification process in the fifth century that art and the Greek world generally does. So if you see earlier pieces of her, she looks much stranger and more extreme or grotesque. She gets prettified in the fifth century, like everybody gets prettified in the fifth century, which in a way is great because you get beautiful art, and in a way, of course, it's horrible because it portrays a mindset which says that people are good on the outside if they're good on the inside, and vice versa. Um. But I mean, of course, that does in turn reveal that Meduca is presumably meant to be a beautiful human being. When we see her painted, Donivar was looking like a beautiful young girl, because we know for sure this is happening at a time when beauty is seen as being an external. Beauty is seen as a reflection of your internal good character. You know, you can see that in which Plato dialogue is that the Hippias major I think when they talk about beauty, um and gloriously. He says, at one point of beauty it's difficult. It is difficult, yeah, really good point um. So yeah, but if you look at some of the There is a beautiful, beautiful gold at the Archaeological Museum in Corfu, which I think is six century BC. And it's huge. It's the pediment from the Temple of Artemis, so it's about thirteen meters across. I can't do that in y odds. I'm so sorry, America. But it's vast. And I knew this because I've written about it in Pandora's Jar. And yet still, when I walked around a corner and saw it, I didn't even gasp. I laughed out loud. And she's massive, and this version of her, she's so strongly must lee arms they're cycling, her legs are cycling. She's got you can't see much of the wings because it's I think it's sandstone that it's made of, and it hasn't spired beautifully, but you can see a few feathers lurking behind her, so her arms are pumping. She's probably flying rather than running. But the muscles in her legs are absolutely incredible. And the thing I love about her most is that actually she's got this amazing belt made of winding snakes, which is just beyond cool. But additionally, on top of all of this, so she's properly she looks like a deity. She looks super other. She could not look stranger or more like she's undergoing her epiphany, which I think is probably what we're supposed to. And she's got these beautiful round cheeks, little chubby cheeks, and just like in Pindo and he calls her, you know, she's got beautiful cheeks, beautiful cheeks produce you like, she does have beautiful cheeks. And because I'm really lucky and I don't only view beauty through the prison of people I would like to have sex with, at some point I can see that this monstrous god is beautiful and it's not difficult to see at all. Well, I always think of those. I think there's sixth century the b Ocean Pottery where with the horses, Yeah, the horse but is no, there's ones where it's her sister is like um protecting her and Medusa's head is already off and there's like a tiny pegasus coming off of her next sea. Yeah. They're like very black figure and very unique looking. And I just love that one because the the sisters are so clearly protecting her. It's too light, but they're like you can see the fury directed at Percys and he's like running away like a little coward, and they're just they're such beautiful pieces. But the way they visualize the Gorgon's is this, it's almost like a combination of that beauty and you know, quote unquote monstrosity. By that, I just mean not human because their their bodies are pretty human, but their heads, like the snakes, it's as if they have like three big snake hairy. I tend to go with extreme as the word to describe them, and sometimes grotesque, but the same, the same things are present in this um, in this pediment, in in cor food, because she is still alive or perhaps immortal. You know, it does look like an epiphanic image from art that we see in the ancient Near East, so perhaps at this point she has become a goddess, but she for sure still has her head because it's attached to her body. And yet on either side of her she is flanked by her own offspring, by Pegasus and Chris, who are traditionally born from her severed neck as the children of Poseidon, something which I excluded from my telling of it because I thought it was probably a step too far into weirdness for a non very nerdy audience, which is, you know, don't me wrong. I'm here for the nerds all day long. But I felt like I didn't want to make things just unreasonably difficult. Um. But yeah, I mean she is. She has shown therefore, in this extraordinary setting as being supremely powerful. As I say, she seems to have transcended mortality at this point and have become a goddess. Um. The belt, I'm told by the very brilliant theologian Francesco Stabrico Pulu, Professor Francesco stab Polu the snake belt is a symbol of great power of a god or goddess in the ancient Near East, which is her specialist area. Um and so, and there we see her with her with her offspring. That's extraordinary piece. And then also she has a leo panther. You know, there's lovely somewhere between a leopard and a panther lion and a panther um hats on either side of her, and they've got the most beautiful swirlly fur. I cannot recommend enough. Now I have to go to Corfu, honestly do. I'm so sorry for your loss. Oh yeah, it'll be so difficult. Another burden Greece. It's so difficult to travel there. I never want to. Yeah, it's that's I love that because I love this. I mean, I don't someone I don't want to say I love the story of Pegasus, but I love that Pegasus is her child. It's unfortunate, you know. The only way that he gets born is once her head is gone. So it is so nice to have a version where she is contempor yes, like where she actually knows that she has children at all. Yeah, And it was interesting to me that you left that part out, and I do think you're right, Like, I couldn't imagine weaving it into that part of the story because it ends up like it's not comedic. But it's difficult to not present. It's really hard to do it any other Yeah, it's it is really interesting that there are there are moments which you don't notice until you come to write them where you're like, oh, yeah, this can't possibly work outside of the context of ancient poetry because it's just too weird, you know, sometimes you don't Sometimes there as a classist, you sort of forget because none of it seems weird you've been talking about for so long, and yeah, exactly, and then when you're like, oh no, hang on, Yeah, sorry, this is actually quite weird, and you know, sometimes it takes another person to notice it because you don't at that time. I knew immediately that it would had written about that part of her life as a mother orbit to an imminently deceased mother in Pandora's Jar, and I knew it wasn't going to fit into Stone Blind. But it goes that way sometimes, you know, I really wanted to write about Hamione in A Thousand Ships as Helen's daughter. There's an unbelievably beautiful and tragic of his poem about her, and it just did not fit. It just took the focus too far forwards in time, and then it meant wrenching it back instead of taking you back. You know that that narrative is supposed to have lap over you like waves, and I just couldn't make work. I had to desice these things happen. Yeah, yeah, well, and I mean yeah with with Pegasus, I think I do also think you kind of left it almost if I recalling correctly, but like it's almost like it could have happened. We just don't know about it. Like it's not like it was explicitly not it's not ruled out for you. Yeah, generally with my writing, it's full of Easter eggs for big mess nerds or I think I found them all. Yeah, I would say you should probably get a special egg to register this, I think, Um, but yeah, I don't. Very often. I'm much more likely to make a little oblique hat tip to something than I am to cut it out. Yeah, I mean I think, no, no question, this is the book I've read that has the most mythology inside it, or most that I'm like. I think it also proved to me just how long I've now been doing this and how much I'm steeped in myth because I was like, oh, there there's not a thing in this that I did not know happened in it really satisfying way where I was like, I think, like mythology really well, yeah, here you go. Yeah, I was proving to myself quite a bit. Um well, I mean, God, Medusa is just I could definitely talk about her forever, and I'm just trying to think of is there are there any other characters that you really we're thrilled that you're able to include or really enjoyed writing about. Oh. I enjoyed doing almost all of them, even the monstrous bits I quite enjoyed. Um. So you know, there were moments where I thought, this isn't necessarily going to be other people's favorite kind of character in this book, but they very quickly occupied space. I mean, dan I, again such a forgotten character in Greek myth. We're sort of, you know, she's sort of the punchline really to and sometimes you just managed to impregnate someone like this and you're like, well, but imagine if that was a person. So you know, she's so sort of sweet and long suffering, and so she is a very there's a very kind of passive and meant to her, which I felt like the narrative kind of required, um, but it does. It does mean we have these sort of two versions of motherhood of Danai to Perseus and then Cassio Peter Andromeda, and these two versions there are almost all the way through the book. There are relationships stalking other versions of themselves through the book. There are good and bad brothers. There are good and bad mothers, or different types of mother at the very least, from the absence to the really present, to the you know, unable to age to the unable to accept um. And so those kinds of things were quite interesting. But I didn't think I'd really written about sisters in any great depth until this book. And so actually just writing the three Gorgans, writing Stano and Ner really as well, it's just the delight because it's a really particular kind of love I think siblings have for one another. Even if you know they are older or more immortal um and she is younger or more fragile, then it still isn't a maternal relationship. You know, they have a different response to her um And I really love doing it. And there were other stories like the Gray you know, the three Gray ladies, the spirits of the sea, who disgustingly to our minds, share a single eye and a single tooth and take it in turns to insert one or both of these into their faces. You know. That was the first really kind of laugh out loud slash squeam squeamishly cry chapter in the entire and it was like, oh, yeah, no, this is this is getting a beer, This is going to be a ball. But honestly, I really loved writing the Hisperides, even though just deciding on the numbers was oh my god, could one source agree with one other? Source. But I realized I had seen so many times variations on a scene of a man comes into a grove and they're un naked ladies present, or some men come into a grove and there is a naked lady present, and you know, there are some really beautiful artworks that describes some incredible Renaissance art and and there are some incredible artworks that that notice that that's actually a bit creepy. I am thinking of Artemisia Gentileski and the creepy old man watching is it's Susannah. I think they're watching bathing. But the delight of taking that scene and and switching it and saying, well, what would happen if there's a beautiful naked young man and a bunch of pervy girls just start happen and start laughing at him, steal his clothes, do the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, they are basically mean girls, and why wouldn't they be, You know, that's the that's the sort of perk of being them, I suppose. Um. So, yeah, there were scenes like that which were so much in dialogue with not just ancient myths, but more recently. Only if Assis could refer to the renaissance as recent but you know what I mean, more recent reception of those myths and to be able to say, all right, extremely, you know, sexist male artists of five years ago, what does it look like if a boy isn't It was just that I had a ball doing it, No I can imagine. And I to go back to the gray I I I think I love them too much and am too sympathetic to them, because I it's funny. I didn't remotely feel any kind of squeamishness. I was just immediately like upset with Percys and I think you had that so well. But also it made me so angry the way he handled it, and I was just like you feel like, yeah, I mean, I definitely know that was the point and it worked, but I just I love them so much. They're so unique. It's one of my favorite things about Disney's hercules that they conflate them with the fates in a way that you get both of them in there. It's it's my favorite. But they are just so unique and I absolutely love that there. Their entire role in terms of surviving sources is just to do this one thing, and yet they have this fascinatingly wonderful single eye and single tooth um, they're just so weird in the in such they would have got loads of narrative. But again that this is what kept happening to me through this book. I was like, Okay, so there's not that much on the Gorgan's, but there's gonna be loads on dan I. Okay, so there's not that much on the gods one, but there's gonna be loads about Andromeda. Okay, well the gry right, okay, well but the hesperity okay. So yeah, this is me the entire way through, Like right, I suppose I had better write it then. So it's kind of joyous because you know, the narrative sections on Athene are a bit more detailed, but even those are often quite glancing. You know, no one spends very long and ancient sources talking about motivation or things like that you need as a novelist. So there was an incredible journey of discovery of finding these just glorious bits of myth which sometimes I sort of felt like we really knew um. But it's like, well, you're right, we know the gry eye from what from Trash of the Titans, where they haven't founta pastic scene. Harry Hamlin. Um, I'm from Disney Hercules, but I'm not sure they had a huge role otherwise in my cultural life. And the reason is because there's almost no material on them. So well, then then I get to do this, I get to give them a voice, and that's going to be really good fun. So yeah, they are very squabbly. Um, and I felt really conscious in the audiobook of that that I didn't have you know, I couldn't give them each a different voice, and well lived in the same place, they kind of different accents. But man, it was funny to do. They're just so fun Like I Yeah, they're really some of my favorites because they're just so unique in this great way. So yeah, big fan of the Gray I was. I was very That was one of my favorite scenes certainly, even if it ended horribly because personally it's my way. I don't know, no, I mean, you you did it well. I just person he gets paid back in the next bit. Yeah yeah, I mean you know he's got some issues. Yeah. No, But and I didn't really appreciate to the relationship you gave Danny and her father because I think a lot of the times, and I can't even think if it's ensourcing or just like sort of the way we've interpreted it, but it seems that he's often depicted as like evil for locking her away, and I think there's like a bit of added complexity there um in your version that was nice to have versus sort of like inherently evil means of locking her up, not that it wasn't, I mean just evil. Isn't interesting to write evil because scared, or evil because old ages frightening, or evil because not having old ages more frightening is just more fun to write. And the same with you know, Poseidon, who's horrible self regard is sort of pinned this incredible vanity is pinned this incredible insecurity when I when I write him, because it's like, well, I don't think it necessarily makes him more sympathetic, but I do think it makes him easier to understand. And when it's a novel, that's something which is important. You don't want just random agents of chaos wandering across the scene and being chaotic because it would just be irritating after a while. So in quite short while, I think so it's like, well why, but why but why, And that's so Yeah, structuring this book is like dealing with my niece. It's like, but why does that happen you? I'll tell you something, Okay, this why almost second? Yeah. That just reminds me too of the inclusion of infratrade. He was wonderful because I feel like she's so often left out of almost everything that features she used to have her Yeah, she was lovely to be able to do because yeah, he is, so their relationship is quite opaque. Um, and so I felt like she would be well, you know exactly how should be that she would be both very quiet and at the same time deliberately opaque, because that's the only way to survive. Yeah, I mean if you're married beside him. Yeah, I like to deal with Yeah. Well, I mean, uh, I usually ask if there's anything you know else that you want to share with my listeners or anything. But I also think we've covered a lot we have. You know, if you come out with any more questions, I'll come back, We'll do we'll do the footnotes a couple of weeks time. There's just there's always so much, Like I I know, I could talk about Medusa forever, but I will not force that upon anyone else. I do it enough for four months on tour so far because the book came out in the UK and September of twenty two. So yeah, I've been doing I've talked about it for very many homes and it hasn't worn off yet. So she's so fascinating for somebody who has almost no sources actually associated with her. Oh but you know what, I will. I will finish this off by telling you so I've sort of made it my case to to like defend Medusa on the internet whenever she comes up. There was a time a couple of years ago where she was like trending on Twitter really often for really weird reasons, and I was like, well, I'm going to wait into this because I love her, and I you know know, I'll her sources. But I I've heard some of the wildest things from men on Twitter when you're defending Medusa because of all this misogyny that that we talked about, you know, it's been sort of placed upon her um. But there were there were a couple of quote choice quotes that really stood out to me with the way that men have taken to seeing her, and I think a lot because of everything that surrounded her for the past couple hundred years. But one man told me that actually, Percys, his killing of Medusa was necessary, uh step, because her death alleviated like a pressure on the earth, like she was so evil that the earth was like required her death. Um. And another said that that she also needed death because she was terrorizing the lands and like presented that as if that was a detail, and it was so fascinating cause I was like, neither of those things are remotely included in any of the ancient sources, Like that's entirely invented. It's what can you do? I mean, you know, if people are determined to find a monster, then they'll find one. I think generally, my favorite is when Freud was engaging with the narrative and his his view was that her decapitation was a metaphor for castration, and it's like, dude, I don't know if you noticed she's technically female, it may not actually all be about your penis, and yeah, it's Freud, so so you know. But it's like, generally, when you get this sort of massive hair or snakes or anything like that, and labyrinth anything where there's a sort of chaos of without a clear route through. It's generally taken to represent women's pubic hair rather than men's, and yet that you know, it's just well this must all be about me, must It's like, dude, I think if you check, you're fine. She is the absolute metaphor for male fear of the female gaze. Yeum, you know. So it's literally being seen clearly by a woman you don't want to have sex with is the same as being turned to stone. It's completely disempowering. That's the only way really to read it. But well done not making it all about your tentity. Thank you for being so on brand. Well you know what that's that's exactly the perfect way to end this, I think, and I think so yeah, and a perfect phrasing on on what Medusa you know, kind of actually represents. So I love that. Thank you so much for doing this. It's been so much fun to talk to you and about Medusa so specifically. I really appreciate it. Oh, it's my pleasure. I love joining you. I'm so glad it's such a thrill. Nerds, Nerds, Nerds, that conversation was so much fun. Like, Geet, do you think I could talk about Medusa for the rest of my life and remain perfectly happy and content. Yeah, me too. This novel was so good, featured so much mythology beyond Medusa and God. It's just great. It's great. Highly recommend. There are even very Greek snakes Paulyphibia. You can follow Natalie on the usual socialist media and find her books in many regions. Remember she's also written The Children of Chocasta about well, the children of Jocasta, and A Thousand Ships about the women of the Trojan War. Oh, that one's so good. And Pandora's Jar Oh, Man, that one's amazing. It's not a novel, but it's fucking fascinating. Oh, let's talk about Miss Baby is written and produced by me Live. Albert Michael Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians and handled so many podcasts related things, from running the YouTube to create creating promotional images and videos, to editing and research. The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeart Medusa. I I wrote, I wrote this too quickly, and I wrote Medusa instead of media. It is I heart Media. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the Asia Mediterranean. By becoming a patron, we'll get bonus episodes and more. Visit patreon dot com, slashmates Baby, or click the link in this episode's description. Thank you all for listening. Gods, these are fun to record. I am live and I love this shit