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Post by Alatariel on Jul 4, 2021 14:57:13 GMT -6
Yes! I do hope you continue with this and elaborate on the true nature of Dionysus and give your own spin, too. This gave me Pirates of the Caribbean vibes, like a doomed or cursed crew because of one fateful mistake. But it can be whatever you want it to be. And I know I'd love to see it.
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Post by RAVENEYE on Jul 5, 2021 8:46:54 GMT -6
Thank you all for the constructive remarks. Now that the contest is concluded, I think it's time I post some explanation. I've quite obviously missed my mark in several aspects of the story. I have made a few mistakes, one especially glaring, which detracted from the entry significantly and gave people the wrong idea of whom it's about. I'll start with the fatal flaw: Pelias here does not refer to King Pelias. It was a poor, rushed idea on my part. I was drawing close to the deadline. I needed a random Greek name, as I realized that I couldn't really make that part sound natural enough without referring to the person by name (which up to that point I'd been trying to avoid exactly so that I'd not give the reader the wrong idea). I just chose Pelias and went with it. In hindsight, reading the reviews, it was probably the biggest mistake by a pretty wide margin. With that out of the way, below be spoilers, so proceed only if you've given up on trying to interpret the story on your own (which I would not hold against you). This is supposed to be the intro to a retelling of a myth. The narrator is one Acoetes (at least in some versions), who is an ordinary human featured in a myth (which was, as far as I remember, allowed in the contest), albeit not a very well-known one. There are several versions of the story, so I'll spare the details for the most part. The gist of the story is that a couple of Tyrrhenian pirates find a young man on the coast. They take him to be a prince, based on his fine appearance, and kidnap him in hopes of a high ransom.
As it turns out, however, the young man is not a prince but Dionysus himself (who is, by the way, a much deeper, more interesting, and more nuanced character than his typical modern drunk party god depiction, but I could go on about that for hours, so let's skip it). Acoetes, the pilot of the crew, recognizes some hint of this and warns the rest of the crew to release him, but of course they don't listen. What exactly befalls the pirates is up to the exact version of the story you're reading, but generally some pretty freaky things happen, for example ropes turning into snakes, ivy overgrowing the ship in a single night, the sound of ghastly flutes heard from nowhere, to mention only a few. Their final fate can also differ, but in most versions Acoetes himself is spared. Omigosh! I see now! Okay, that would be a fantastic story to read, for sure. I'd love to see what you do with it. It could even be turned into a horror or a really dark fantasy if set in the modern era. Anyway, I hope you keep working on it and share it with us in the future. |
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You add them to your profile as you do them around the forum.
