The punishment of Prometheus (he was chained to a rock and had his eternally-regenerating liver torn out by an eagle every day) has always been a popular topic for Western artists, and why not; it’s full of action poses and furious birds and gave everyone the chance to draw hands. A real win-win! And yet: Over time, folks got a little sloppy, and eventually, more often than not, Prometheus and the eagle looked like boyfriends on the cover of a supernatural-themed gay romance novel. Which is its own sort of greatness!
Here’s how things were supposed to look:
A terrifying, massive bird is actually wrenching physical pieces of liver out of Prometheus’ side. Gross!! Also Prometheus’ face is covered in claws and he’s clearly unhappy with the situation. He’s nude, yes, but in a heroic sense; he’s writhing around in fairly straightforward pain, and probably wishes he wasn’t getting his liver eaten. Theme: COMMUNICATED.
Mm: a little bit less the case here?
Definitely there’s some good torture happening in the background, and the look on Prometheus’ face is still “I wish this eagle were not ripping my flesh,” which seems historically accurate, but he’s also a little lither, a litte younger, a little more sexy reclining than strictly necessary. This is a slippery slope.
Which leads to:
I cannot sign off on this! The eagle’s claws are resting gently on Prometheus’ iliac furrows (I WILL NOT CALL THEM “CUM GUTTERS,” THAT IS TACKY), who is arching his back and leaning against his own hands in a way that suggests more of an erotically-induced attack of the vapors than any sort of organ loss. It could almost be the cover of a gay death metal album. Like, is the eagle trying to rip open some skin, or is he just whispering secrets into his abs??
“Maybe this will get better,” you say, because you don’t learn:
This is just “My Boyfriend’s Back”!!!! That is all this is! This is just, Oh, My Old Boyfriend, Who Was An Eagle By The Way, Is Dead, And My New Boyfriend, Who Is Even Sexier, Is Here To Role Play
Moving on to Some Day My Prince Will Come:
he is WAITING with LONGING and that eagle is SOARING up to meet him!! they will kiss somehow!!
And that, pals, is how we wind up with this:
This is NORMAL, DAD, if you can’t ACCEPT US then maybe you should just GET OUT, this is my BOYFRIEND and he’s an EAGLE and I like to get CHAINED UP and PASS OUT while he clambers all over me and if you can’t UNDERSTAND THAT then maybe you just don’t UNDERSTAND ME
[Images via]
I just now realized the liver is not where I thought it was in the human body.
I too, am deeply confused. Grey’s anatomy has been lying to me for years.
No, you were probably right! Those eagles are aiming high because it’s meant to mimic the wound on Jesus’s side during the crucifixion. Thanks, college art history!
I guess I thought it was more abdomen and less under the ribs? But Google assures me that I am totally wrong about that.
You could do worse: the eagle in the third painting clearly thinks it’s on the left. It’s like they’ll hire anyone to be an eagle these days.
Reasons I Would Make An Excellent Liver-Eating Eagle And You Should Consider Me For The Position
It seems that in effort to liken Prometheus to Christ’s, the artist took liberty and assigned the former Situs Inversus. Creative licenses indeed.
I had no idea where the liver was, so I’m glad you said this, because I totally would have thought “so that’s where the liver is” and then embarrassed myself publicly in the future.
Upper right part of the abdomen, partly covered by your ribs! Not on the left near the armpit like Eagle #3 clearly thinks it is.
The only reason I know where my liver is, is because I injured once when I crashed my bike. Do not recommend. Did you know that when you breathe your diaphragm pushes on your liver? It does.
CUM GUTTERS 5EVAH
I am the person who got to do the 69th thumbs up, this is the greatest moment of my life.
Mallory, I would take your Art History class and write kick ass papers under your tutelage. I just need you to know this.
50 Shades of Osprey: coming soon to a theater near you!
Chained up, passed out, and clambered on by an eagle is a deeply misunderstood sexual orientation. It’s pretty tragic.
I really wanted to like this but it’s at 69 likes so I’m commenting instead.
okay well now because of rule 34 there is definitely going to be an eagle-shifter romance so i’ll just sit here and wait for someone to send me the amazon link with that last picture as its cover art
Chuck Tingle is probably on it already.
He responded awfully quickly to Brexit https://www.amazon.com/Pounded-Pound-Socioeconomi…
The “Customers Who Bought This Item” section includes Shrill by Lindy West! You guys are buying Chuck Tingle’s books?? are they good??
I bought “My Ass Is Haunted By The Gay Unicorn Colonel” for blogging reasons and aside from the fact that the title is very misleading (the main character’s ass is haunted, but by a normal unicorn; he has a one night stand with the gay unicorn colonel for haunted-ass-related reasons) it’s pretty much what you’d expect!
lol @ the reviews:
“I picked this book as a protest. I didn’t think I’d actually GET it.”
“This erotic tale is 4,200 words of sizzling human on monetary unit action, including anal, blowjobs, rough sex, cream pies and living pound love.”
I just
I came down here to make a Chuck Tingle joke but you beat me to it. Do we know if Chuck Tingle writes historical romance, or will the myth need to be translated onto a prehistoric space planet first?
He does tend to frame his dinosaur stories in modern settings, like the one about a T.Rex law firm that gangbangs their human employee. This could open up a whole new world for him!
A large part of me is tempted to write a pseudoacademic paper on how Chuck Tingle has become the literary voice for the 21st century, with his love of inherent absurdism, skewering of today’s ideas of the proper ideas of sexual love and fulfillment, and of course political topics. (Also as an excuse to bash Jonathan Franzen, because why not?)
Would read.
Frankly, would read that rather than Jonathan Franzen any day of the week.
“Pseudo”
Please write this?
I’m sure you guys have already seen this, but it had me laughing the whole way through:
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11759842/chuck-tingl…
God bless Chuck Tingle.
I mean, birds are basically dinosaurs ANYWAY
All I could think was “Does your fandom have wing!fic yet? No? Give it time.”
Sam Eagleton: Oh no, you have touched my wings and now I’m mega horny!
Prometheus: That’s the plan, Sam. *Oops, Oh My” play is background*
Huh. I can think of avian shifter romances with magpies, ravens, hawks and swans but no eagles. Pretty sure Kim Dare has an eagle shifter character in her avian series. And I think Nalini Singh has some eagle shifter characters – or maybe they’re hawks. IDK. Can’t think of any eagle shifter heroes / heroines though.
Well it doesn’t have the right cover, but there is a gay romance series with birds of prey shifters:
I wonder how many other books there are in the Symbiotic Mates series
Goodreads informs me that there are seven! Including the long-awaited release, Cullen and the Kindred Spirit!
Goodreads has a list of bird shifter romances (of course it does) – http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/30398.Bird_Shi…
And I just want to say that I genuinely love Kim Dare’s avian shifters series – especially the first one, Duck! It’s a gay male, bdsm avian shifter retelling of the ugly duckling – of course I love it.
I just checked that list and YES it has Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes on it! My bff and I were obsessed with this book. Goodreads says it came out in 2004 so we must have read it in 2004 or 2005 (age 14-15); Goodreads is mentioning an entire series and I think there was only one sequel which we didn’t care for. I *think* I tried to read it when I was older and couldn’t get through it.
So, so many of my favorites from that age are unreadable now. Or only readable because of my fond memories of them. I don’t think that shape shifter romances existed when I was an adolescent (or if they did, they were not available in Midwestern libraries / bookstores) but I read the hell out of a lot of objectively terrible bodice ripper type romances in the late 80s / early 90s (and some time travel romances).
Yes! I was so into that book around that age. I can see how it might not hold up.
Please don’t go. We cannot live without you. This is proof.
A little taken aback that one of the last things I’ll learn from The Toast is the phrase ‘cum gutters.’
I mean, also iliac furrows, but one of those I’m going to forget and the other is going to stick with me and it’s not going to be the right one.
I read it as Lilac Furrows every time, which doesn’t help with the gay eagle thing.
Oh, is this not what it says?
Oh.
Totally read this as Lilac Furrows too. Twice.
I was happy not knowing the phrase Cum Gutters. Toast, why?!??
Lilac Furrows: totally my new romance novelist nom de plume.
I would like to thank the toast for the phrase cum gutters, because informing the straight gym junkie men i live with of it cripples them in screaming horror and i love that power
Some A+ dick ribbons all around. Bravo.
My favorite was the half-circle metal dick….g-string? That artist was pushing brave new frontiers in dick ribbonry.
Combo dick ribbon-chastity belt.
He levelled up to dick harness, but the boyfriend with the bow didn’t even merit a ribbon, he only got a grudging, floppy burlap pouch.
grudging, floppy burlap pouch
Bravissimo
In general balls are kind of grudging floppy pouches too.
My favorite is the attack-of-the-vapors purple sash that is just flying in the wind with a will of its own. It looks like it just arrived in the nick of time to protect his modesty, like a superhero.
Bit worried that the dick ribbon in #2 looks like it’s vanishing straight into his skin and also there’s no room for an actual dick, though?
Maybe the eagle ate it first. (And then carefully draped the dick ribbon back over Prometheus’s crotch with its beak, I suppose.)
I will miss the ability to regularly comment on dick ribboning. GODDAMMIT
I love how most of the ribbons are just creeping through his legs to gently cup the dick. Trying to be the least obtrusive a dick ribbon can be without actually showing any dick.
MALLORY YOU’VE CALLED THEM CUM GUTTERS IN THE PAST DON’T GET ALL HIGH AND MIGHTY NOW YOU’RE LEEEEEEEAAAAVING US.
*pours coffee* *patiently awaits the Chuck Tingle novelization*
Pounded In The Bird By My Own Butt. No, wait –
Also I love how the Someday My Prince Will Come painter clearly just wanted to paint a fantastical landscape but had to slap a Prometheus on one of the rocks at the last minute when his editor was like “Will our audiences understand this? Where’s the story?”
Usually these paintings seem like an excuse for artists to get some time with ripped naked dudes (for modeling purposes of course!). This is like the opposite of that!
At the last minute when his editor was like “Will our audiences understand this? Where’s the story?”
I am really going to miss the weird and slightly disdainful looks that I get from my colleagues when I randomly cackle at my desk.
“I asked for a painting of Prometheus!”
“And that’s what you got.”
“What about the eagle?”
*scribbles* “It’s right there, see? Bam. Prometheus, Eagle, done. That will be $15,000 please.”
WHO WANTS TO MAKE A GAY DEATH METAL BAND WITH ME?
Um, me. Can it have 69 layers of crunchy guitars?
How could it not?
Me! Me! Me! (tragically failing in most requirements for being in a gay death metal band but I’m a very supportive person!)
Malloy, without even reading the whole thing I am just excited to comment because that first picture is, weirdly, one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE art things! It’s in the Philly art museum, and it is massive, and whenever I go there it stops me dead in my tracks. Thank you for making me think of it this morning and get excited about a bird eating a dude’s liver. Good god will I miss these art history-themed posts.
I’m in the burbs and I clearly remember being taken on a field trip to the art museum and standing in front of that picture for a long time while they told us about it. It *is* really massive (think: wall sized) and amazing and I still love it. good job field trip planners.
Did we go to high school together? Because, samesies!
I suspect it’s a common experience around here 🙂 If the 80 in your username is your birth year we were probably there around the same time.
And I thought I was so subtle!
I wish I could explain how much I love those enormous paintings of over-wrought scenes. It’s so much a better viewing experience than having to squint an crane at tiny things. (PS I think that first painting is high-quality on several fronts, not just the one about how torture-y it actually looks.)
I’m a liver transplant surgical NP and this painting is the home screen (and the lock screen) on my phone! And yeah, no one ever knows where the liver is. . .
Artists REALLY got into the whole “erotic encounters between BIRDS and hot men women” genre.
Prometheus and the eagle, Leda and the swan…I’m sure there are more
This is clearly the companion piece to: http://the-toast.net/2016/06/06/women-who-are-dat…
See also: http://the-toast.net/2015/10/20/the-abductions-of…
Ganymede
Tangentially related, but I suddenly feel a need to recommend looking up Terry Goodkind’s chicken.
Just Terry Goodkind’s chicken. Google will do the rest.
Thank you for that advice, because this alone is worth it:
“Her power, her magic, was also a weapon of defense. But it would only work on people. It would not work on a chicken.”
Prometheus #2 is unquestioningly in a student film.
“Oh, no. My liver. It hurts. So much. Ow.”
Is it wrong that I find the first one the most romantic? I mean, sure, his liver is being torn out, but that EROTICALLY CHARGED EYE CONTACT, MAN.
I keep reading “Illiac furrows” as “lilac furrows” which I like because it goes well with lavender passageway
Same
Let me at those washboard abs, ka-kaw, baby
I can’t decide if I’m crying laughing or just crying.
What I get from the above comments is that I’m far from the first person to read “lilac furrows” so thank you for that.
Mallory, was it necessary to use both the phrase ‘cum gutters’ and the word ‘tacky’ in the same sentence?
Don’t try to tell me number 3 is NOT wearing doublesided dick ribbon tape! No way he’s not.
I have decided that straight virgin goddesses handle dick-ribbon physics as a little reward for themselves.
Look, it’s very important to the narrative.
I treasure the idea of Hestia, Athena, and Persephone as English Lit professors, creeping on the heroes of myth.
It would really be the least the heroes of myth deserve, the fuckers.
I feel like I’m back at my middle school lunch table passing around crappy slash doujinshis again. So, um, thanks?
(I WILL NOT CALL THEM “CUM GUTTERS,” THAT IS TACKY)
Just in the nick of time, Mallory delivers the best Toast Stance of them all!!
Does the eagle ever get tired of eating liver? Maybe that’s why it’s a bit un-enthusiastic in some of them?
brb, off to paint a Prometheus draped in bacon and onions
10/10, would view
“Oh, we’re having liver. Again. Like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Great.”
“When I started it was great, free food, an important job, lots of free time and privacy, but I don’t really know anymore. It’s as much a grind to me as it is to him. Sometimes I wonder who’s really being punished here, I mean it hurts him more but he at least still thinks he did the right thing – what did I do that I’m as chained here as he is?”
Um, I just realized I feel sorry for the eagle and I’m hoping Heracles didn’t actually kill him, it was all an elaborate charade.
“Damn gods, always thinking of the human torture, but do they spare a thought for me? Would it have killed them to, say, curse him with the removal of an unspecified organ a day? I could do with a nice kidney pie. Even entrails would be a welcome change, but noooooo, liver AGAIN.”
Of all the things The Toast has given me, the most surprising has been a deep (possibly abiding?) critical interest in dickribbonry in western art.
And I shall gleefully embrace my own tackiness and dang well call them cum gutters because Mallory also taught me I was free to tell judgy types to go suck an egg…so.
Ortberg, go suck an egg.
….
#sorrynotsorry
#butreally<3
I am with you on this – on a truly great recent holiday to Vienna I found myself nodding sagely at dickribbons all over the place.
I have been… Toasted…
It never before occurred to me to wonder what the eagle did to deserve HIS daily task. I mean, ripping out the same liver every day? That has to get old after a while.
Depends on how much you like liver, I guess.
Is it definitely the same eagle every day, or is there a team of eagles taking it in turns? (Initially wrote “a tram of eagles”, which is a different but highly arresting image.)
No idea, but now I want a tram of eagles to take me to work every day.
Maybe it was a reward for the eagle for a job well done in the past. Kind of like a lifetime supply of KitKats?
I really don’t know about eagle dietary preferences…
I’m going to miss the intelligent yet slightly weird conversations here so much.
Livers are very nutritious so I think it might be an Eagles favorite thing to eat?
In my experience, very nutritious things are rarely also favorite tasty things, but you never know, it may be different for eagles.
(I too will miss the wonderfully weird conversations on the Toast.)
I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that I’m not the only person to think this.
Everything I know about Art, I learned from The Toast.
This is actually true for me.
There are just dick ribbons as far as the eye can see.
they will kiss somehow
Western Art is tasteful they said, it’s high culture they said. I need to go to art galleries and giggle at everything because of this series
#1 also has a more reasonable portrayal of talons atop delicate human flesh muscles than any of the other. Also pubes.
Team Pubes, over and out.
Aw, I’m gonna miss Toast Team Pubes!!
I’ll take “sentences that have never been used before” for $500, Alex.
I believe you meant to say “Sentences that have never been used before, but will certainly be used repeatedly in the future.” I’m certain that was the correct Jeopardy category.
What I have written, I have written.
Mostly because I’ve been saying that since my college Intro to Language class.
I WILL NOT CALL THEM “CUM GUTTERS,” THAT IS TACKY
Cut lines, Mallory. They’re called cut lines. It’s the perfect compromise between stuffy Latin and porny slang!
For…where you cut the leg off? o_O
My favorite parts are the conveniently placed, gravity-defying pieces of cloth over the Promethei’s nethers.
How do you know the eagle is his ‘boyfriend’, i.e. male? Female eagles, like nearly all birds of prey (hawks, falcons, owls), are significantly larger than males. Female golden eagles (which look similar to the birds in these paintings) are often over 30% larger than the males. Basically, if you see a bad*ss eagle in a painting, especially one produced before 1900, it is most likely a female. I think most of the painters you’ve selected would have intentionally depicted a female eagle. In earlier eras, in Europe and the Middle East, if you were an artist or a noble person, you would be familiar with falconry. Anyone who knew anything about falconry knew the females were larger (and therefore deadlier). In fact, the word ‘hawk’ traditionally only referred to female birds. The term ‘tiercel’, from Latin meaning ‘a third’, was used to refer to ‘inferior’, smaller, less valuable males. I think the eagles might be girlfriends…
Oh my gods this is what I love* about the Toast. Intelligent, knowledgeable discussion from which I learn many new things, on the subject of whether Prometheus’s eagle lover is more likely a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
Oh, Toast. Oh, Toasties!
* YES I REFUSE TO USE THE PAST TENSE COME AT ME MALLORY
No idea, but now I want a tram of eagles to take me to work every day.
I have to say this is one cultural meme I don't get. I'm as kinky AF, but bestiality, shifter erotica, inter-species ditto (that sci-fi series by Lisanne Norman, ugh), and furrydom squicks me out. Humanoid species like in Avatar aren't so bad.
I don't know what it is, especially with the fantasy stuff that's between two sentient (consenting) beings, not to mention furries, but there it is.
I just DIED.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/th…
My favourite Prometheus is this one. The eagle is a vulture. I think they’ve been fighting.
That’s not Prometheus and his eagle boyfriend, that’s Prometheus and the creepy old guy down the street who only ever wears raincoats.
(I mean, I love vultures, they are seriously underrated creatures, but… they ain’t pretty.)