Full Interview with Charles and Vlas Parlapanides
Courtesy of Greek Hollywood Reporter.
Anoushka Subbaiah: Firstly, I'd like to congratulate the both of you on creating this powerful and just really thoughtful show. When grappling with something that's as fabled and learned as Greek mythology, I feel as though it would be quite easy to slip into the comfort of what is tried and true, but I think Blood of Zeus has an almost self-aware gaze to it. I think an example of this is an interview you did with Kate Sanchez, where you pointed out that there are no defined villains in the story. I think you managed to pay homage to these treasured character tropes, but I feel like they were seamlessly deconstructed at the same time. I was wondering if you could tell me more about that.
Charles Parlapanides: That’s very well said, by the way.
Vlas Parlapanides: That’s a Swarthmore question!
CP: Very astute. Listen, we preface this with a simple statement that we always say: this isn’t our story, this is Greece’s story. We’re standing on the shoulders of this incredible body of literature - and though we say ‘literature’, it was never written down and written out like literature. As we’ve mentioned to other people, there was never an ecumenical council, like in the case of the Bible, where they said that this is the one definitive version, but instead there are all these various iterations. They’re these amazing stories that have endured for thousands of years. If you look at our pop culture, the fundamental background of say, Star Wars, and superhero movies is derived from Greek mythology, and it’s these same tropes recurring.
And part of it is that these gods were anthropomorphic deities. They were flawed. They were like us. They weren't all knowing and all powerful and always, you know, righteous. And so that makes them incredibly human. I think that's why these stories have endured.
We always say this project is half driven by our passion for Greek mythology. We feel that it is ripe for adaptation now more than ever, but when you pitch Hollywood executives and producers, they don't necessarily feel that way. They may say they have an affinity for Greek mythology. They may say they love these stories, but there is this feeling that it's been adapted again and again, and it's kind of been there and done that. So part of it is finding a fresh way in.
And the one thing that we said we wanted to do is to kind of reclaim or at least repurpose the “hero's journey” because everything in popular culture now is antihero, antihero, antihero, antihero. And whenever you deal with an antihero, then the villain has to be an even worse version of that antihero. If you, you know, do Breaking Bad and Walter White. He's a drug dealer, and so then Gus Fring has to be a drug dealer for the cartel. He has to be even worse than Walter White. And there's a part of us that just misses that hero's journey. We grew up with Star Wars and Luke Skywalker. But part of it is that your villain is always a reflection of your hero. So if we're going to do a traditional hero's journey, then we also wanted a sympathetic villain. In fact, we said, we don't want villains. We want antagonists.
And to be honest, when we were first writing the scripts, it was brought up that Seraphim might be too sympathetic. He still does a lot of terrible things. He still kills, you know, without hesitation, but aren't the best villains the ones that you empathize with and understand where they're coming from? I think that only helps the material. So it was just kind of this combination of all these different things that we'd always been talking about. And again, it's this rich body of work that we're able to draw from. People think the show is an incredibly rich world with rich characters, but much of that is the source material. We can’t even take credit for that, in our opinion.
VP: And we have great respect for that source material. We wanted to treat the material with a certain amount of respect while also bringing something new to it. And the way we were able to bring something new, well it's right there in those opening credits. It's this idea that, you know, Greek mythology was an oral tradition and it had been passed down from generation to generation in that way. It wasn't written. So, what if one of these tales had been lost? And what if we postulate that this is one of those tales? And so we were able to maintain a certain level of respect for those tales, for those tropes, for all the different gods and characters that we all love while also telling a story that was original.
And in doing that, it also allowed us and gave us creative liberty to explore themes, to explore characters. We weren't beholden to those stories, so we could further delve into characters and go down a path that maybe we wouldn't have been able to, if we’d tried to stay completely true to those tales mythologically.
CP: It’s very telling and wise that you used the word ‘deconstruct’, because if you really look at the kind of underpinnings of this story, it's really a deconstruction of the Hercules story - but you can't pitch Hercules. Again, people are tired - all due respect to Ryan Gosling and the Rock who’ve played different iterations of him - of it.
But if you really know the Hercules myth, this is a deconstruction of it. In the myth, Hercules’ mother was a queen. She was married to the King, but Zeus disguised himself as the King, and he impregnated her. She ended up giving birth to twins, but no one ever talks about Hercules’ brother, Iphicles. When we were approaching this story, we said, "Well, in Hercules, the King is very understanding and he considers it a great honor and takes Hercules under his wing.” Part of us then asked, “What if the King didn't feel that way? What if the King hated the fact that his wife, you know, “cheated” on him and bore the son of a God? And is there any way Iphicles and Hercules end up becoming friends?” He (Iphicles) does become kind of a minor hero in Greek mythology, and he goes on to journey with Jason and the Argonauts. We then thought, “Is there a way Hercules and he could be adversaries?” So all we really did was take Hercules, deconstruct it, and rearrange its dramatic components. But then you have to give it a new name, because if you said, “We want to pitch a re-imagined version of Hercules”, then forget it. They won't even take the meeting. So what we had to do is deconstruct it and then pitch it as something new, but really we're just using that same sandbox that the Greeks already created.
VP: I agree. You know, Blood of Zeus is the perfect amalgamation of deconstruction while also being respectful to those Greek mythological tales.
AS: Yeah, it definitely seems like you’ve made space to explore this idea of “the other”.
CP: That’s the hope. People don't realize that there was a lot of intermixing there in the Mediterranean. And, you know, if you know anything about Egyptian mythology, there's a lot of gods that both cultures claim and because there was commerce between the two, the stories were exchanged. You know, to be clear, we're making a fun animated show that's meant to be cool and entertaining, but there are other things that we can explore, you know, and why not? It's just like Swarthmore, like there are so many great ideas in this world. Why limit yourself to a few? Make the scope wide and you know, and introduce them. And so that's been the great part of it.
AS: Yeah, I think it’s definitely important to give in to the nuance and complexity of it all. In the aforementioned interview, you established that the show unfolds in a post-mythological era where some characters have fulfilled their canonical arcs. Was this narrative decision a way for you to diverge in some capacity from classic Greek mythology? And for those who may not be as familiar with Greek myths, are there any other elements of the show that wander away from convention?
CP: That’s a very wise question, because doing that allowed us to use all of the canon of Greek mythology and have creative license because Greek mythology just kind of ends - it isn’t like Norse mythology, where they have a Ragnarök storyline and an eventual end of times. Basic Christianity overtook Greek mythology and then it just disappeared. That leaves the door open to say, “Okay, all of these things happened in the canon and now here comes our story. Our story is after everything you know!” And so that’s a way to find creative license.
There's a couple of things that we kind of shied away from. One is that, you know, Hera and Zeus are actually brother and sister. We never say that, just because incest is kind of a hard subject for the modern world. There are little things that you modulate, but this is one of the big ways we used our creative license. What’s also great is that we know whenever we want to, we can reach back and pull stories out from that mythology. I won't talk about seasons two and three, but there are storylines from the past that are definitely going to affect what happens in the show.
We were surprised by how much people actually do know about Greek mythology. We always worried, “Is this too inside baseball? Is this going to just be like an easter egg that's buried that nobody even gets, do we need to explain something more?” But I actually think the audience is smarter than we anticipated, which was nice.
VP: Part of the fun of the show is that people who are familiar with Greek mythology are able to watch it and be like, “Oh, that was actually something that was in Greek mythology. Oh, this part of the story over here is something that the guys created.” So there’s a certain level of fun when you can identify which is which.
I would like to add that oftentimes, once you really know the characters and once you really know what they want, the story just kind of flows out from that. And that’s inspired by Aaron Sorkin, where he spends a lot of time finding out exactly what the characters want and how they go about getting what they want.
So we spent a lot of time with our main characters, with Heron, with Zeus, with Hera, with Seraphim. What they want and how they go about getting what they want, definitely defines their character. And that brings the story to a certain place. And again, the beauty of having an original story is that we're allowed to take that story there, let the characters lead us there in an organic way, because we're not beholden to what happens in the mythological tales, but we're still in that familiar sandbox. We have a world that's embedded with these beloved characters, the Greek gods, and these beloved creatures. So, you know, as writers, it was so much fun to get to play in that sandbox and to be able to tell the story that we told.
AS: I think placing those little easter eggs is such a great way to have this sense of dialogue with viewers and create a kind of knowing between the two of you. I want to talk about the visual fabric of the show, which is gorgeous - that’s an understatement. There are these micro-movements and expressions that stay with you - a favorite of mine was when the soul of Heron’s mother, Electra, sort of moults from her body. How did your team decide upon the level of detail that the animation is going to be narrowed down to? How do you know when to step away?
CP: We have to give credit to our director, Shaunt Nigoghossian. He just did an incredible job. One of the things that we discussed when we first started is, “What is going to be the visual style of the show?” And what we talked about was making it cinematic.
You know, people always say, “This (Blood of Zeus) is an anime.” We don't disagree because anime, traditionally, is hand-drawn, two-dimensional, and from Japan. Ours is hand-drawn, two-dimensional, and from Texas and South Korea. We understand the purist argument, but one thing that is kind of a tried and true trope of anime is a lot of static shots, where there’s a beautiful drawing and the camera slowly pans over it as whole conversations unfold. And then they’ll cut to a static image of something else. But what we told Shaunt is that we wanted it to feel as cinematic as possible.
And for him, that means seeing those reaction shots. A lot of the time in animation you have these static shots to save money and labor - but for Shaunt, and for us, we wanted to sell the moments so that they land emotionally. Those little reaction shots and moments of surprise - that’s the cinematic language we all speak now because we all consume so much TV and movies. That’s how a kind of storytelling is done. It's slightly different in animation, but Shaunt brought that cinematic approach here and it helps sell moments. When she (Electra) realizes she's no longer in her body and her soul is being taken away, you should feel that. And you could do it in the more traditional anime sense and maybe have, half as many shots. And then those individual shots would maybe be kind of quote, unquote, better looking They always say in animation, never press pause because you'll hate the frame you see. In anime, what they do is they do less shots, but they make it more beautiful, but we took the approach of “no, let's just focus more on the emotion of storytelling.” And even if you hit pause and each shot might not be a perfect frame, hopefully as you watch the show, you'll just be caught up in the emotion of it, you know?
VP: This is the first project we were involved creatively throughout the entire process from inception of idea to the completion of the show. Every little moment mattered to us. And as Charlie said, the big emphasis was all about emotion. It's about the characters and what they want, and really kind of understanding what that emotion is and making sure that the audience is tracking the character. We had these great discussions with our director, Shaunt, who we were very blessed to work with. We would explain to him: this is what's happening. This is the emotion. We feel that we need to milk this or milk that. And the beauty of working with him was he was able to visualize, that he was able to take that and not only make it cinematic, but make it resonate.
We have to give credit to Shaunt for that and the creative and talented artists at Powerhouse Animation who contributed. We took on what Spielberg once said: best idea wins. So with every facet of the show, the best idea won whether it was what this helmet should look like, what the shield should look like, what this moment should be, what the soul should look like. Till the closing credits, there was always an attention to detail and that's something that is important to Charlie and I, and thank God it was something that was also very important to Shaunt. And since it was very important to all of us, it became very important to everyone else that worked on the show. And so everybody just, you know, raised their game, to a very, very high level. And I think it shows in the final product.
AS: Definitely. I think there's this sort of delicate interplay between beauty and hyper violence on the show. I mean, there are these scenes that should be painful and grotesque to witness, but they're so visually-striking, and even elegant, at the same time. Are there any kinds of anime that you looked to for guidance during this particular stylistic approach?
CP: It's interesting though, that approach comes from Swarthmore, from reading Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane in a religion course I took there. And that's something that we talked about ad nauseum with Shaunt, about the sacred and the profane and the juxtaposition of the two. Now listen, we love Cowboy Bebop. We love Ninja Scroll. If you watch anime, it's pretty violent. I think our show is less violent than some of those shows, but sometimes I feel like, “Oh my God, are we desensitized?” Because there's people that have watched it and said, “Oh my God, it's so gruesome!” I think we're not as bad as some other shows, but that element is very much in the milieu of anime. So the idea of having the sacred and the profane and the juxtaposition of the two is something that we always felt was appropriate for this. And it comes from Eliade’s book, and from a freshman year class I took at Swarthmore.
VP: It's something that we wanted to explore and we just think that there’s something fascinating about the sacred and profane. We feel that the show is violent, but it's not gratuitous. It was a violent world. It's not gratuitous. And while it is violent at times, there's also an inspirational component to the show. And we feel it's important to have both.
CP: I was reading an ancient history book, in which after the Persians attacked Greece, the Athenians went to their former allies that provided shelter to Xerxes’ army, and you wouldn’t believe the way they killed them! They stoned the King's children in front of him, and then they took the King, trapped him within a tree trunk, and covered him with honey so that insects and animals would eat him. And I'm like, “These are the Athenians! These are supposed to be like the high intellectuals of the ancient world.” So, you know, kind of knowing this was part of that world, we felt that it was okay to be true to that time. So we thought it worked. Netflix wanted it to be epic, and to have action and violence. And so that's why that's all in there.
AS: Yeah, I also feel like Greek mythology is sort of a really great canvas for this kind of stylistic approach, just because there's almost this inherent poetic quality to it. Like, you're learning about these violent things and myths, but at the same time, they sound sort of beautiful. They sound quite metaphorical.
CP: No, it's very true. They were metaphorical. They used them to understand the world and to understand phenomena. They're just great stories. They're very tragic, inherently. And so I think that's just imbued in the material. You know, someone was telling us, “I can't believe the scene where they dropped the baby off a cliff!” I didn't even think anything of it. Cause we were like, “Yeah, there's like six stories where that happens. That's not even that uncommon, like Hera throws Hephaestus off one as well!” To some people, it seems very shocking, but it still cann be beautiful and poetic.
VP: I would say we stayed true to the mythological tales and that's part of it and that's why it worked. In the tales, they showcase extremes: there's sometimes extreme violence, but there's also extreme sacrifice. You know, there's great love, or exaggerated anger. So innately these things are in those tales. I don't know how and why exactly it works, but it does.
AS: As a member of generation Z, the body of greek mythology that I knew and loved was Rick Riordan’s popular Percy Jackson series, which remains a kind of comfort reading for me. I’m very nostalgic about it. I think, as a 13 year-old, I was really charmed by Riordan’s modern and humorous rewriting of legends that could, you know, often feel solemn and high-stakes. I mean, this is a universe where Ares drives a Harley Davidson, Dionysus wears hawaiian shirts and drinks Diet Coke, and Mt. Olympus is located on the 600th floor of the Empire State building. Aesthetically, Blood of Zeus could not be more different. I’m curious about what the both of you think of this americanized, satirical narrative landscape - what qualms do you have with it? What can you appreciate about it?
CP: We have no qualms whatsoever. And my daughter, who is 12, has read all the books and she loves them. I've read, you know, half of the first book, but anything that promotes Greek mythology and Greek heritage, we're all for.
VP: I agree with Charlie, anything that can get kids to read, either by themselves or with their parents. One of my best friends reads the stories to his boys - how beautiful is that? That's a memory that they're all going to have and share. That’s why we do what we do. It really kind of makes you smile because you're making people feel a little bit better, and you're giving them something that can be inspiring in some ways. So, yeah, we don't have any issues with it at all.
CP: To be honest, we're grateful, because I think part of the reason why your generation has an affinity towards Greek mythology is because you did love Percy Jackson and you knew who these characters were. I actually think we’re beneficiaries of it, that our show benefited as your generation tuned in because of Percy Jackson.
AS: Interestingly, a similarity between Blood of Zeus and Percy Jackson is the humanizing of larger-than-life deities. Through starkly contrasting vehicles, I think both of these series challenge power structures, one example being through female characters who have traditionally been willfully misunderstood and deflated into wearisome tropes. My favorite imagery from the show included those stunning, lavender-tinged stills of Hera where her face is contorted into rage and grief - they exude this quiet and piercing feminine power. It reminds me so much of Aphrodite’s depiction in Percy Jackson, where her forces of love manage to be tender and debilitating at once, completely overshadowing the more brute, one-dimensional strength of her male counterparts.
CP: That’s a very interesting point. Part of what ends up happening when you do animation is that you have so much information on the page that you're trying to get on screen, and one thing Shaunt wanted to do is, not only give certain gods and goddesses a color, but give sequences of theirs that same color. So we understand that this is their moment. We grew up around Greek women, and all the Greek women we've ever known were incredibly strong.
We've always talked about how, for us, the Greek woman is a warrior, is a mother, and is a goddess. And so that's what Alexia. Electra, and Hera represent, and we wanted to try and make them as strong as possible. There are different iterations of Greek mythology, but there's one story where Hera was initially the queen of the heavens. Part of us felt like, “Oh, wow. Like, you know, if she was queen of the heavens, she must've been strong enough that her other siblings listened to her. So what if we could have a situation where Zeus is powerful, but she’s really the kind of puppet master helping to prop him up?” We just looked for little clues within mythology to speak to her characterization.
VP: She’s not only strong, though it was very important to us that she was strong, and that she had an iron will - our mom has an iron will, and so that was imbued in Hera, but she’s also just smarter, to be honest. It’s really fun to see her kind of “play” Zeus, and that’s something critics have responded to. We have a really cool arc for Hera, and without giving anything away, I think people will be very pleasantly surprised with regards to where she ends up.
CP: Another Swarthmore reference: Professor Hungerford, who teaches Art History there. I took two classes with her, and I remember we studied the Pietà, where Mary’s holding Jesus. Looking at the iconography of that, this is the first time a woman is being regarded in a position of power, holding the child of God. This was the first time motherhood was viewed as something powerful and something worthy. We’re, again, crossing generic Christian and pagan or Greek mythological tropes, but that's something we thought bore importance, to make Heron’s mom Electra very strong. This has nothing to do with our show, but when Christianity came to Greece, the reason they embraced it so quickly is that they believed if someone was really spectacular, they were the son of a God.
VP: It’s why it took root so quickly. I think the popularity of those mythological tales helped Christianity spread, because the Greeks were like, “Yeah, that’s no big deal. We totally buy that.” But, yeah, I’ve always loved that image and all of High Renaissance.
AS: I wanted to know if you have a favorite contemporary adaptation of greek myths where creative liberties are taken, and/or if you have plans for something of that nature in the future?
CP: A great book for anyone out there, especially at Swarthmore, is Circe by Madeline Miller. I was blown away by it. It takes place in the world of Greek mythology, but it’s a reimagining of all the stories she appears in into one narrative. HBO’s in the process of adapting it now.
VP: I love that book. I love the way that the author writes. It’s so beautiful. It’s so poetic. I’m very curious to see how the show turns out and to see what choices they made.
CP: The one thing I was going to say is that I do think, you know, video games have done justice to Greek mythology. I love God of War. Uh, I played all those games. I thought that Hades, the new kind of indie game that's out there, was a hilarious take on Greek mythology. The act of dying and responding is actually part of the narrative, and I thought that was genius. The first video game system I ever had was Kid Icarus, which is just like a fun romp through Greek mythology.
I love how they even use Greek mythology in Wonder Woman. I thought that was an amazing film. I think Patty Jenkins is such a great storyteller and I thought that was a lot of fun. Again, we think Greek mythology is ripe for adaptation, especially to be set in the present day.It's an untapped treasure and I think there are other world mythologies that could be fascinating. I think that many of these stories deserve revisiting.
AS: One of my favorite adaptations is actually a collection of sonnets called Mother Love by Rita Dove that extracts Demeter and Persephone from their well-known myth and moves them across geographical lines and historical eras. The poems just carry these intense and heartbreaking truths about girlhood, domesticity, and sexual violence. She retains the inherent philosophy and lyricism of greek myth while bending time and space.
CP: I love that, because Demeter is a big part of season two. That’s great, I’m going to have to Amazon that.
VP: Can’t wait to read it. And we would love to do a Medusa show at some point, so this could be very helpful there.
AS: Something I’m really interested in is what the devising process looked like in the context of the both of you being brothers. From the interviews I’ve read I get a sense that you’ve continued this oral and familial tradition of storytelling in your own way while writing the show, and I’d like to know more about that.
VP: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’m just very blessed that I'm working with Charlie because he has these great big ideas and it all starts with the big idea, at least in Hollywood. You're only as good as the big idea you’re writing about. So it starts with a big idea and then from there, it goes into just different things, and it’s different for different projects. Sometimes it's like, “Well, what themes do we want to explore?” “What characters do we want to explore?” Sometimes it's an amalgamation of both. The beauty of having a writer partner is going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with different ideas. We just read our scripts out loud and right away, when you hear a good idea you know it's a good idea because you're like, “Oh wow.” Like right away, it peaks your interest. It's alive. Whereas if it's an idea where you're really trying to explain it and it falls kind of flat, you know that maybe this is one you can throw out. I would say we believe in research, whether it's the physical research of reading up on a certain subject or a certain character, or other type of research that Syd Field talks about in Screenplay. That's the research where you have to really know who your characters are. So you spend time just thinking about who they are and what they've done up until the point of when the story begins. It's very important for every writer to know their characters. And then you also think about the story and you think about, you know, what could happen in that story.
CP: It’s in our blood, in a sense. Our last name is Parlapanides. When you see a Greek name with “-ides,” it means they’re from Asia Minor. It’s almost like the Irish.
VP: Yeah, like McDonald means “Son of Donald.”
CP: So Parlapanides means “Son of Parlapan.” and Parlapan means “to speak, or to tell stories.” Essentially we’re the sons of someone who liked to talk a lot. That is intrinsically a big part of our job. Most days in our office we’re just sitting on our desks talking, just talking things through. Because we’re brothers and from a big Greek immigrant family, we’ve always worked together. Us Greeks, we share our feelings, we wear them on our sleeves. And I do think it helps us. In terms of Blood of Zeus being about two brothers, those familial bonds are something we’ve always felt comfortable working with, and it’s something we understand.
AS: This question is mostly posed to Charley. I understand that your relationship with Netflix Executive John Derderian, who is also a Swarthmore alum, was central to sealing the show’s fate and realizing this story’s potential. What was the influence of Swarthmore’s education on your trajectory as a storyteller? What creative seeds were planted here?
CP: I think the answer is twofold. At Swarthmore I learned to work hard. I learned how to deal with adversity and to be undaunted, because what I’ve always felt is that people at Swarthmore, they found a way. You didn't come up with an excuse. You didn't shy away from the work. You just kind of, you know, you pulled your bootstraps up and you found a way to do it. And I think that's been integral to our careers as writers. I know that I would not have been able to do this job if I didn't have the experiences that I've had at Swarthmore. I felt like when I walked out of there, I had this armor on and I was ready to take the best punches the world could throw at me. I just learned to become a voracious reader at Swarthmore. You'll do more reading than you ever would there.
Just learning to read and learning to push yourself gave me the armor and the toughness to deal with our business, because our business is a very precarious business. It's a gig economy. You also have to learn how to deal with rejection and failure. You don't get a paycheck every two weeks. Your next job could be your last.
As a writer, you always have to be generating ideas. You always have to be creative and think of new things to pitch. After being exposed to so many ideas at Swarthmore, I know that I have these places to kind of pull and dig from that I've found to be invaluable. I was an econ major. I took a bunch of theater classes. You would think like, “Well, how does that prepare you for Hollywood?” And to be honest, I can't think of a better way to prepare for it because it was about learning to read and write and be undaunted by hard work. If you have those traits, I think you can do anything you want in this business.
AS: That was a great answer, thank you for that. As a fun last question, do either of you have a favorite figure in Greek mythology and why?
CP: I know in Greek mythologies Zeus was kind of a terrible guy. He would definitely get locked up in the modern world. That said, growing up, I always was just kind of enamored with Zeus. Seeing the original Clash of the Titans with Laurence Olivier, there was this grandiose kind of power. I've always loved Zeus. As you get older and you read more of the stories, you realize he's kind of a bad guy, but because I liked him as a kid, I still have a great affinity for him. There's a line we have in the next season: “He's complicated, which is just a nice way of saying ‘flawed’.” He’s deeply flawed, but he's still my favorite, if you had to put a gun to my head.
VP: You know, it's difficult to kind of say, “Okay, this is my favorite mythological character.” I would say I have a favorite mythological idea. And that idea is that it's important for everyone to be true to themselves. The Greeks felt that everyone had a calling, a task of sorts and that some people didn't pursue that because they were afraid to really be the person that they were meant to be. I love that idea and I think it's also very important for people just to accept who they are and to pursue their passion, whatever that may be, and to have the courage to do that. It's not easy to be the best version of yourself, but I feel that the Greeks always strive to be the best versions of themselves. And they felt that it was important for their fellow Greeks to always be striving, to be the best version of yourself. And, and I've always loved that idea. And I think it's a beautiful one and it's something that's very relatable. So I would say that I don't have a favorite character, but I have a favorite idea.
AS: That reminds me of why Greek mythology was such a source of escapism for me, growing up. Just the thought of being a demigod and having your celestial lineage decide your traits and individual aesthetic for you was something I constantly daydreamed about.
CP: Dovetailing into what Vlas said, it’s a very Swarthmorean ideal. The ancient Greeks believed in striving for excellence, that there was a special place in Hades’ for people that lived their life in fear, and that we should strive to do something that will be remembered.