NOtes

SELENE:

  • Bibliography: Wikipedia: Endymion Source
  • For this story, I really wanted to establish Selene as the baby of the family. She loves attention and wants her older siblings to love and admire her, so her story is all about showing how capable she is. I also wanted to depict the dynamic between the siblings and how they are always interrupting each other, but overall support each other’s goals and accomplishments.
  • The romance of Selene and Endymion has been told in several different ways, and there’s especially some confusion on who Endymion’s parents are and what he does. I chose to portray him as a shepherd boy, to give him a sort of innocent and humble vibe. Selene falling in love with a random farm boy wouldn’t be that dramatic, so that’s why I made Zeus his father. It gives Eos and Helios a reason to be impressed by their little sister.
  • Instead of making Selene completely smitten and lovesick with Endymion, she is partly doing it just for attention and fun. She thinks it’s fun to date mortals and does whatever she wants because she knows she won’t get in trouble. All of the siblings don’t take anything too seriously, and just love a good time and a good story.

HELIOS

  • Bibliography: Wikipedia: Cattle of Helios Source
  • For my second story, I wanted to continue the theme of tricking mortals while also establishing Helios' character. I chose this one specifically because Selene and Eos are both going to have love stories, so I thought it would be fun to have Helios be in love with his cattle.
  • I really wanted him to look and talk like a tough guy, but be a softie at heart. He loves inflicting pain on mortals, but his first priority is protecting his sheep and cattle. I also wanted his sisters to defend and stand up for him, because it's important to show that this family sticks together.
  • The story of Helios and his herds is told a bit differently in the Odyssey. Odysseus's men originally kill all the sheep and cattle and I started to write the story that way but stopped. I really wanted my storybook to have a lighthearted feel the entire time and in order to do that I needed the animals to survive. They matter so much to Helios, so if they died it would make the whole conversation darker. I chose to have the cattle be kidnapped, because it still is an urgent matter that Helios can be upset about, but I needed him to get his babies back.

EOS

  • Bibliography: Wikipedia: Eos Source
  • I wanted to end Eos's story with a big bang, considering she's my favorite goddess and the last one in my story book. Both Helios and Selene have lighthearted stories that show off their personalities, so I had to do the same thing here. I wanted to show Eos as being the most dramatic of all of them, and the most troublesome.
  • Eos was cursed by Aphrodite to love young men, including mortals. Similar to Selene, I knew I had to make this story a love one too, but I didn't want it to follow the exact same format. I thought the perfect way to do this was to focus on Aphrodite, Eos, and Ares instead of the mortals. Selene's story was about mortals and Helios had both mortals and the olympian Poseidon in it. It just made sense to have Eos interact with two olympians.
  • I didn't have a lot of information on how it all went down, so I mostly had to create my own story on how Aphrodite found out about Ares and Eos. The curse placed on Eos was written very seriously I assume back in the day, but it's sort of funny when you read it today. I figured it made the most sense to have the siblings laugh it off, because they don't take things too seriously anyways.

Header: Mount Olympus: Flickr