Disrupting the Trojan War: Part 3 - "When the Trojans confused neurodivergence with madness, they missed their best chance to save their civilization from collapse."
These are only problems if you decide to make them such. This is especially the case with your examples of slavery, which is a positive chance to be educational about history, and the case of Cassandra, which isn't about being neuroatypical, but rather is a curse. You can make her that if you want, and you can change the story to make them not believe her for some other reason, but that's only a problem if you make it one.
I enjoy seeing an interesting neuroatypical character as much as anyone else on the spectrum, but doing so with Cassandra - to me - seems like a mistake, as the core trait of her situation was the contrast between Apollo's curse and her powers, not that she herself was unusual.
Personally, if I were to write the Iliad in a more modern way, with the angle of any of the main chracters being NA, I'd go with Achilleus and Oddyseus. You don't have to change their characters, or their defining situations in the story, to do that.
I wrote this whole long response, but it disappeared when it asked me to log in.
Long story short, that one change both strips her of her importance to the core of the story, and guts her core character trait. It doesn't make sense, unless you don't want Apollo to look like the asshole he is, and Cassandra goes from being important to an unimportant background sister who just happens to have ASD. It's not *her* anymore. She's been replaced and relegated to unimportance.
If she kept her powers and still have gone through what she did with Apollo, and on top of that had ASD, that'd make sense. That adds a new facet to a character without gutting core character traits.
Sorry you lost your first response. I hate when that happens.
What fascinates me about Greek mythology is that there were many different versions of these stories, and no one version is definitive. Euripides has Cassandra warning of disasters at the birth of her brother, Paris, which would either require her to be very much older than Paris or to have had her powers even as a child. Whether you prefer a version where she gets powers through a traumatic encounter with Apollo or one where she's born with them, I think both stories are equally valid in retellings today.
Thanks so much for the feedback. I love the idea of giving some of these traits to Odysseus, who is already notable in the original sources for thinking differently than his companions, or to Achilles, who has been interpreted in lots of different ways.
Cassandra is a rough example, but I have drafts of a Theban Cycle story that features Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, as being neuroatypical and also having prophetic powers. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to present this story, but it's a lot of fun and she's a great character in it.
Thank you for the mention!
These are only problems if you decide to make them such. This is especially the case with your examples of slavery, which is a positive chance to be educational about history, and the case of Cassandra, which isn't about being neuroatypical, but rather is a curse. You can make her that if you want, and you can change the story to make them not believe her for some other reason, but that's only a problem if you make it one.
I enjoy seeing an interesting neuroatypical character as much as anyone else on the spectrum, but doing so with Cassandra - to me - seems like a mistake, as the core trait of her situation was the contrast between Apollo's curse and her powers, not that she herself was unusual.
Personally, if I were to write the Iliad in a more modern way, with the angle of any of the main chracters being NA, I'd go with Achilleus and Oddyseus. You don't have to change their characters, or their defining situations in the story, to do that.
I liked Greg's interpretation. I see it as a way of looking at the Cassandra story from a fresh perspective rather than making a problem.
I wrote this whole long response, but it disappeared when it asked me to log in.
Long story short, that one change both strips her of her importance to the core of the story, and guts her core character trait. It doesn't make sense, unless you don't want Apollo to look like the asshole he is, and Cassandra goes from being important to an unimportant background sister who just happens to have ASD. It's not *her* anymore. She's been replaced and relegated to unimportance.
If she kept her powers and still have gone through what she did with Apollo, and on top of that had ASD, that'd make sense. That adds a new facet to a character without gutting core character traits.
Sorry you lost your first response. I hate when that happens.
What fascinates me about Greek mythology is that there were many different versions of these stories, and no one version is definitive. Euripides has Cassandra warning of disasters at the birth of her brother, Paris, which would either require her to be very much older than Paris or to have had her powers even as a child. Whether you prefer a version where she gets powers through a traumatic encounter with Apollo or one where she's born with them, I think both stories are equally valid in retellings today.
Thanks so much for the feedback. I love the idea of giving some of these traits to Odysseus, who is already notable in the original sources for thinking differently than his companions, or to Achilles, who has been interpreted in lots of different ways.
Cassandra is a rough example, but I have drafts of a Theban Cycle story that features Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, as being neuroatypical and also having prophetic powers. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to present this story, but it's a lot of fun and she's a great character in it.