perevision (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
perevision) wrote2005-10-02 10:39 pm
perevision) wrote2005-10-02 10:39 pm
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and so to bed.
Marvellously unproductive day. Forgot to mention yesterday that I had finally done the school projects page, and only realised today that I'd forgotten to put a navigation bar at the bottom of the page. Gah.
Also, a little essay thingie which is going into the Companions site.
In this comic, naked is somehow important. Nudity isn't quite so important--just people going about with no clothes on. Nakedness in a Greek boy context, and especially a Companions context, is more significant.
When I was younger I think I had this vague idea that the Greeks did their more prominent deeds naked. Sports were undertaken without the burden of clothes, as was army training, but I thought they went to war that way, and performed all their great deeds likewise. Sex is actually one of the last things I think about when I see a Greek nude, as hard as that may be to believe.
Most frequently, heroes were depicted in this way when performing feats of heroism. Obviously in real life they couldn't have gone to war in only helmet and sandals, as lovely as that thought might be. But that's how they were represented. At this point in the story they were supposed to be perfect. In their moment of greatest nobility. Of course, the obsessively aesthetic Greeks refused to show their heroes and gods with a bloody great load of armor, clothing and miscellaneous trappings hanging off them. Nothing was allowed to stand between the heroes and those who worshipped them; certainly not reality. Nakedness was as much a sign of identity, a mark of the hero, as Heracles' club or Perseus' winged helmet. A naked statue says "Behold me in my greatest glory--I have nothing to hide."
Here in Companions I've somewhat tweaked the nakedness issue. These boys are no more mythical than anyone else; they lived through their stories, far from unscathed. Being naked represents the raw emotion they experience on waking in a new world. It also usually means character exposition (I have EXPOSED them, ha ha ha). There are important things happening when someone's naked. So watch this space.
In other news...![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bex_x3d, are you back from your trip yet? I owe you Howl's Moving Castle and a meal at Eat and Two Veg.
Also, a little essay thingie which is going into the Companions site.
In this comic, naked is somehow important. Nudity isn't quite so important--just people going about with no clothes on. Nakedness in a Greek boy context, and especially a Companions context, is more significant.
When I was younger I think I had this vague idea that the Greeks did their more prominent deeds naked. Sports were undertaken without the burden of clothes, as was army training, but I thought they went to war that way, and performed all their great deeds likewise. Sex is actually one of the last things I think about when I see a Greek nude, as hard as that may be to believe.
Most frequently, heroes were depicted in this way when performing feats of heroism. Obviously in real life they couldn't have gone to war in only helmet and sandals, as lovely as that thought might be. But that's how they were represented. At this point in the story they were supposed to be perfect. In their moment of greatest nobility. Of course, the obsessively aesthetic Greeks refused to show their heroes and gods with a bloody great load of armor, clothing and miscellaneous trappings hanging off them. Nothing was allowed to stand between the heroes and those who worshipped them; certainly not reality. Nakedness was as much a sign of identity, a mark of the hero, as Heracles' club or Perseus' winged helmet. A naked statue says "Behold me in my greatest glory--I have nothing to hide."
Here in Companions I've somewhat tweaked the nakedness issue. These boys are no more mythical than anyone else; they lived through their stories, far from unscathed. Being naked represents the raw emotion they experience on waking in a new world. It also usually means character exposition (I have EXPOSED them, ha ha ha). There are important things happening when someone's naked. So watch this space.
In other news...
bex_x3d, are you back from your trip yet? I owe you Howl's Moving Castle and a meal at Eat and Two Veg.