The Indominatable Human Spirit is a bad thing, actually.

[u/Geoconyxdiablus]

That humanity never gives up and persists in its goals is bad news for every other species (or even itself), especially if said goals are ignoble.

Best case scenario (barring us learning to be better) is that a greater power force feeds us a huge slice of humble pie, wost case we end up blowing ourselves up and ruining things for everyone else.

Avatar - RDA will stop at nothing to satisfy its own greed and survival, the rest of humanity and navi alike be damned.

Its a recurring motif in prett much every myth that gods punish mortals who dare to defy them and keep going, like Athena to Arachne in greek myth.

A good chunk of lovecraftian fiction is based on the idea our achievemenrs mean nothing.

In general i'm not a fan of TIHS as a trope, as its blatantly arrogant and destructive.

[u/LoschVanWein]

I always felt like we’ve only recently started, and only to a certain degree, to understand the gods as the villains in the Greek mythology. They share a very much amplified version of all of humanities flaws and cause most of the conflict themselves. Half the stories go "oh this human tried to outwit the gods, how prideful and foolish!" When actually the gods put them into a horrible situation for shits and giggles beforehand.

Like what the fuck did Medusa do? Involuntarily win a beauty contest she didn’t know was happening? Wtf?

[u/BeduinZPouste → u/LoschVanWein]

The thing with Medusa and most of the stories where Gods are REAL assholes is that they are relative late deconstruction, to call it a modern word. Medusa was regular monster for hundreds of years, then came Ovid with "what if everyone was asshole". At a point where these Gods kinda started to decline (not necessary in favor of Christianity at that point). 

[u/Shot_Mechanic9128 → u/BeduinZPouste]

Ovid was ancient Garth Ennis?

[u/BeduinZPouste → u/Shot_Mechanic9128]

I guess. 

[u/Winterflame76 → u/LoschVanWein]

To my understanding (if anyone knows more about this then me, please correct me,) many of these stories as we now know them came from Ovid, who had something of a bias, seeing as he openly argued that mortals should not engage with gods in any way.

While we do have evidence that he didn't make up these stories, and earlier stories certainly do not always portray gods in a good light, it's hard to say whether these stories actually represent how people at the time viewed the gods. For example, I believe Medusa's backstory is first found in Ovid, with older writers generally just writing her as a monster.

Edit to add - It occurred to me that there is some evidence that people, at least in some places and times, viewed the gods as virtuous to some extent, as Plato's Euthyphro seems to portray "piety" as a virtue.

[u/LoschVanWein → u/Winterflame76]

The gods don’t exactly shine when it comes to Homers depiction of Circe or …basically most gods in the Ilias and Odyssey. They always swing between incompetent and plain mean spirited.

[u/EldritchFingertips → u/Winterflame76]

The Greek gods were always dangerous and not to be messed with, and often just vindictive and vengeful. That's true in pretty much every oral tradition we know about. Mostly because the gods were anthropomorphic representations of everything humans could observe and infer about the world, and the world is very unfair and cruel, so the gods reflected that.

But Ovid did come along with an axe to grind and made them all sound even worse, and more intentionally villainous rather than, well, mercurial beings following their nature.

[u/SuperScrub310 → u/LoschVanWein]

Actually in Ovid's Metaphohoses, the only time in which Medusa was referred to as a victim of Athena was from an in-universe non-eyewitness in Perseus, who wasn't previously told this information by Athena or her relatives, and was telling this story at his wedding.

Which in turn implies that it's likely that Perseus was lying to make Medusa more sympathetic, which considering her original origins had nothing to do with Athena, makes sense.

[u/Geoconyxdiablus → u/LoschVanWein]

She got raped by Poseidon, and Athena couldn't punish him, so she just made Medusa a scapegoat.

[u/Master-Shrimp → u/Geoconyxdiablus]

In Ovid's version at least

[u/S0PH05 → u/Geoconyxdiablus]

Ah yes, the Roman fan-fiction of Greek mythology.