Episode 323: Clytemnestra (with Helena Greer)
/We’re joined by author Helene Greer, who is here to tell us about Clytemnestra, or as she puts it, “The Murder Queen of All of Our Dreams”. We also discuss blood curses, sapphic battle axes, and making better Hallmark holiday movies.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of cannibalism, torture, child death, murder, abuse, rape, misogyny, kidnapping, human sacrifice, slavery, sexual assault, the AIDS epidemic, transphobia, and sex.
Guest
Helena Greer writes contemporary romance novels that answer the question, what if this beloved trope were gay? Helena was born in Tucson, and her heart still lives there although she no longer does. After earning a BA in writing and mythology, and a master's in library science, she spent several years blogging about librarianship before returning to writing creatively. Helena loves cheesy pop culture, cats without tails, and ancient Greek murderesses. Season of Love is her debut novel.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends Pokemon Go!
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Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this Episode 323 with a fabulous guest and writer who loves a figure in mythology that we also love. It's Helena Greer. Helena, welcome to the show.
HELENA: Thank you! I'm so excited to be here.
JULIA: We're excited to have you! And I'm really excited to talk about the— the myth that you've brought, or perhaps the mythological figure that you've brought with you today because it is a character that I remember a girl that I had a crush on in high school played in a production of what was it? Iphigenia in Aulis and I was like, yeah. Alright.
AMANDA: This combination isn't working for me, baby. Sure, it’s Working for me!
HELENA: Yeah, she's the murder queen of all of our dreams.
JULIA: Yes. Yes, she is, and it's Clytemnestra!
HELENA: If you're a certain kind of sapphic, you're like, please murder me with your giant axe.
JULIA: Yes. Yes.
AMANDA: Long before Tumblr learned about you know, giant ladies and step on me, we knew about Clytemnestra.
JULIA: We did. We did. Before Tumblr was a thing, we knew about Clytemnestra.
HELENA: It's true. I'm so excited—I have a degree in Comparative Mythology, but I don't get to use it very often. Every once in a while, I'm also a K-12 librarian, and every once in a while, I'm gonna get called to give a chat to the kids who are reading The Odyssey, about like talking about gender roles in The Odyssey. A thing I can just 30 minute TED talk, no prep. And I'm always like, someone asked me to talk about my other hyperfocus interest in this life. So when I got this email, I was like, can—can I talk about my girl? I have a tattoo.
AMANDA: She's beautiful!
HELENA: Isn't it amazing?
JULIA: Incredible.
HELENA: He's my right-hand gal.
JULIA: Let's start with the question of do you remember the first time you heard the story or read the story of Clytemnestra?
HELENA: I'm trying to think when she first came to me. I took a bunch of like—I obviously took a bunch of Mythology and Lit classes in college because that was what I was majoring in. And I think that we—I think I had read the Oresteia at some point. And I was like, I'm on board with this. And then I took a class called Beginnings Of The World, which was like a Multi. We read a bunch of Beginning Of The World stories from all over the world, and we like listens to Faulkner. And we read Joseph and his brothers like it was a very sort of like, multi-dimensional kind of thing, and we did a deep dive on the Oresteia. I don't know how that to the beginning of world, but is there I was 21, right? And I had this absolute passion for the idea that the twin sister of the most beautiful woman on earth was seen in Greek Mythology as like horribly ugly, and it's this figure of everything that was wrong with Greek womanhood, even though—like Helen is the one who, feel like started a war. Like I— not to like put the blame on Helen, but like, her twin sister was just like, I'm gonna keep the lights on while y'all are gone. So just, you know, as a sort of, like, young, queer person in the early 2000s, that like gender politics of it really spoke to me, and sort of the deeper I go, the further in we got together. She and I got together.
JULIA: I love that journey for you. Also, that class sounds great.
HELENA: It was incredible.
JULIA: Yeah, I would want to take it 100%. I guess we should probably start with the story. Just because I know a lot of our listeners love Greek Mythology and are probably very familiar with the Trojan War. But Clytemnestra feels like a character that is very much on the outskirts of—
HELENA: Yes.
JULIA: —The Iliad and the Odyssey. So, can you tell us a little bit about Clytemnestra and a little bit of the background for her before the Trojan War started?
HELENA: Yeah. So let me do a really quick, like, very quick recap of the House of Atreus, because I think, like, even though they're the dudes in this story, the background that they bring to the story is really important. So the House of Atreus started with Tantalus, who was mad that he was not invited to have dinner on Mount Olympus and like that he wasn't really a god. And so he tried to serve the gods, his son, and most of them noticed, and they were annoyed about it. And so they, they put him in Hades, right? And he became Tantalus, where tantalize comes from, and he was doomed forever to like never be able to reach down to get water or reach out to get grapes because he couldn't eat because he had fed his own child to the gods.
AMANDA: Do you ever think about what your ironic curse would be if your name became an adjective? Like I think, you know, Amandizing or something would be, you know, my body is sweaty, but my hands are cold like that. That feels like the thing that would be most likely for me.
HELENA: Yeah, I'm trying to think what it would be like.
AMANDA: You can marinate on that. You can take that away and think about that next time you can't sleep.
HELENA: I think that I would just keep drinking coffee, but never feel the effects of caffeine.
JULIA: Huh!
AMANDA: Terrible.
HELENA: Yeah. So that would be why like Tantalus. So his son didn't have therapeuting degrees. [6:09] Um, had some emotional issues, and decided that he wanted to go and his name was Pelops. He wanted to go and marry a princess. And so he got involved in this horse race where he was at the end of it. If he won, he was gonna win princess's hand. And first of all, I missed a part, which is that Tantalus brought a blood curse down upon the line of his—of his children. Okay?
AMANDA: Classic.
HELENA: So Pelops is going around, boop, boop, boop, gonna win this horse race. And gonna win the princess. Was not like a guy who believed in winning by fair methods. So he like, threw a person off a cliff to try to win. At one point, he came across a king he was annoyed by and was like, I curse you that you will be killed by your son who will sleep with your wife. That went at a pole like he was a dude with some issues. For his crimes, several of them, he was blood cursed, and have a son named Atreus. And Atreus was not a good dude, um, shockingly. So were two blood curses now on the house, right? To be—Okay, Atreus was annoyed at his brother for whatever reason. And invited his brother to dinner and served his brother, his brother's child. So there's a lot of like kid eating happening in this trip familial line.
JULIA: There's a lot of like, hurt people, hurt people happening here.
HELENA: Yes. Yes.
JULIA: And yeah, the cycle of abuse and everything like that. Oof.
HELENA: So you're not supposed to break hospitality law by serving someone their own child. You're not supposed to eat kids. We learned this from dad, grandpa. Atreus brought a third blood curse down upon the house. He had two children, Agamemnon and Menelaus, who are both just the worst human beings in human history. Just like a [8:08], raising the line for terrible people. Meanwhile, whilst that is going on. Leda was a beautiful woman, and Zeus wanted to sleep with her. And she was disinterested in that because she was very happily married to the King of Sparta. And Zeus is not a guy who takes no for an answer. So he turned into a swan and raped Leda. There are a whole bunch of like really beautiful paintings about the rape of Leda. She had two eggs as a result of that rape. And in each egg, there were two children. So four total. Each egg contained a human and a divine child. One egg contained Castor and Pollux are Polydeuces, Gemini twins. Although why we call these people twins when they're clearly quadruplets? I don't know. Whatever [8:59]
JULIA: It's interesting because it's like, it's two sets of identical twins because you could tell they're identical, because they were probably sharing the same exact. So that's interesting and kind of cool.
HELENA: Identical twins, yes. Which is part of my interest in it, because if they looked exactly alike, why is Helen beautiful and Clytemnestra supposedly the least beautiful? Anyway, so yes, so Castor and Pollux are Polydeuces come out of one egg. They go on to become the Geminis. And Helen Clytemnestra are born from the other.
JULIA: What if here—I—I want to float a theory real quick?
HELENA: Yes.
JULIA: What if they physically looked the same, but Clytemnestra vibes, we're just really bad?
HELENA: Or they weren't defined.
JULIA: Oh, yeah, that's true.
HELENA: Yeah, Helped had the glow because she's a demigod.
JULIA: Mmm. Mmm.
AMANDA: Yeah. Which, you know, it's a real kind of nature versus nurture situation, how monozygotic twins, one could be super compelling, and one could be you know, I don't—I don't fuck with that.
HELENA: Yes. So they are growing up with their cousin Penelope who would go on to also marry an important guy in Greek history. And people just keep trying to kidnap Helen. Just over and over again. Just keep showing up trying to kidnap Helen. So of course, you know, the Greek generals make this whole pact that if anybody tries to kidnap Helen, they all go to war. That stops the kidnapping situation. Clytemnestra has meanwhile gotten married, had some kids. But Agamemnon, Menelaus, being their fathers and grandfathers, and great grandfather's children have decided that one of them wants to marry Helen, and one of them wants to be King of Sparta. So they kind of split the difference, right? You get to marry Helen, and I'm going to marry Clytemnestra and become King of Sparta. The problem is Clytemnestra was already married. Agamemnon has zero issues with this, he just murders her husband and children. Because there's a lot of child murder in this story, for reasons that are unclear to me, he does not bring down a fourth blood curse upon their family. But— whatever. So she marries him. She's already not a huge fan. Then her sister goes off, whether or not that's of her own volition or you know, with her own agency is a separate question, I think. But Agamemnon and Menelaus our honor bound to go after her because they made this whole pact. Also, Menelaus is like I want my wife back. So Agamemnon goes with his brother, to get the wife back. However, they are stuck. They can't sail out to Troy, because Aphrodite is—does not want them to destroy Troy because it's her baby. And she says, I—if you—if you sacrifice your child to me, your most beautiful daughter, then I will sacrifice—allow you to take my child. And I'll change the winds. I will allow Poseidon to change the wind so that you can sail to Troy. And Agamemnon writes a letter to his wife and says, send our daughter. If a Janja, she's going to marry Achilles. She's going to be the bride of the greatest hero in, in the Greek army. And so Clytemnestra like puts her on her wedding dress, and puts her on the donkey or whatever and like sends her off to the shore, where the Greek troops are waiting to marry Achilles. But instead of marrying Achilles, she just gets sacrificed.
JULIA: Yeah, she sure does. She sure does. Uh-huh.
HELENA: She sure does.
JULIA: Yeah.
HELENA: And Clytemnestra's unamused by this happening. All our kids have already been killed by this man once, and now he's lied and he sacrificed another one. And he's gonna go and like get her sister back. Even though her sister is probably fine, where she is. Like nothing is going the way that Clytemnestra is excited about it go. So he's off for 10 years, and she is a very good queen. Sparta is running well. The people of Sparta hate her because she's very, very, very good at being a ruler. And in Greece, women are not supposed to be good at seen as manly, right? Her cousin Penelope is off being a perfect woman. She's just weaving and unweaving and reweaving. And that's all she does for 20 straight years. Penelope is perfect. Clytemnestra is a monster who runs Sparta beautifully. Um, she also sleeping with their cousin. But just like, because she's annoyed with everybody.
JULIA: That's fair.
AMANDA: Understandable.
HELENA: So he shows back up with Cassandra, a sex slave, the age that if a Janja would have been or even younger. Maybe the age that the Janja was when she died? Clytemnestra's like, oh, buddy, no, no! So she takes his battle sword and she kills him in the back while he's in the bath.
JULIA: Excellent.
HELENA: Which he had coming.
JULIA: Like not even jus— like, it's everything leading up to it, right? It's not just oh, you brought home this woman who is young enough to be your daughter that you're, you know, sexually assaulting basically as a spoiler of war. But it's everything leading up to it. It's the betrayal of your daughter, it's sacrificing your daughter because of your own hubris, not even like because the Gods like aren't even pissed at you. If the Gods were pissed at him. And it's just everything leading up to that. I would be like, of course, you would want to do a murder at that point. Of course, you would. Naturally.
HELENA: Right! She's like, I've been fine. You're the worst.
JULIA: If only you would die to Troy, you know?
HELENA: Only you would die to Troy. So anyway, then there's a whole thing about how like her son avenges her father, or his father by killing her. And then just like keep it all in the family. He is convinced Orestes, her son, that it is his duty, and god-given right to marry his cousin Hermione, who's Helen's daughter. Helen is his—his first cousin by twice over, right? Because sisters married brothers. So he's first cousin on both sides, Hermione, who's married but like that never sit in dad's way. So he goes and murders Hermione's husband and marries her, and their poor children have three blood curses on both sides. All the way.
AMANDA: Oh no. Is that—is that like exponential where it's actually like four times, four times four?
HELENA: It's a lot of blood curses on the poor house of Atreus going down. So Clytemnestra has been over the years less so now, but for a long time in sort of early feminist thought, was this big figure for a while. Because she had all of this agency and she was demonized for it. And she was seen as the worst possible kind of Greek woman. She also, although it's not really historically accurate, to the weapons that they found in the beehive tombs when they excavated in Mycenae. She's often seen carrying a double-headed axe, which is called the Labrys.
JULIA: Nice.
HELENA: Labrys is the root of the word labia because it looks like one.
AMANDA: Cool.
HELENA: The Labyrs, the sword that she carries, was an early lesbian symbol.
AMANDA: Right on. I think more queer people should embrace weaponry. I—just saying.
HELENA: Yeah. I—you know, I feel like she's a character that had everything possible done to her, right? And was sort of put into a box by Greek mythology. Aeschylus, though the playwright who wrote The Oresteia, used her story as this sort of way to say that Athenian law was better, and old matriarchal law was dead and new male Apollonian law was better. And that, like women had no rights not to be murdered by their children because they kind of just baked children into ovens and like, all of the Animus came from fathers. So her story was sort of like made into this male manifesto by Aeschylus. Her sister, who was her identical twin is seen as being the most beautiful woman in history. And she got written out of the movie Troy. She doesn't get to murder her husband, somebody else does in that film. And so I, I just really felt like there's so many pieces there to unpack, from a power and agency and like, how we see women's beauty, right? How our expecta—societal expectations of how women behave alter how we see their beauty. There's just— there's so much in there to unpack right? Also, Sparta is like the war state of Greece, right? Like she was the Queen of Sparta for 10 years. She ran the—the best military in the Grecian state for 10 years. While her husband was off like standing in front of the Trojan walls like what we do now?
JULIA: Let me in! Let me in!
HELENA: Like stealing people's sex slaves to annoy them and stuff, like, Agamemnon was not doing well, at Troy, right? And she's the person who's seen as like, in the Odyssey, who does see us ghost and talks to Agamemnon's ghost. And he just talks about like, how terrible Clytemnestra is, Like, she's this demon in Greek mythology, even though we would look at her from a modern perspective as like, the entire house of Atreus needed a lot of therapy. This woman was trying to take back her agency, she was raised as like the Forgotten Sister. Like there's so many pieces to unpack about how we look at her and how they looked at her, and what that says. I really liked that she took her future into her own hands, even though she had like two weeks of future after that.
JULIA: Yeah. Wow. One of the things that always struck me about the story of Clytemnestra, was the aftermath with Orestes after he kills her and the Gods put him on trial. Because like, hey, by the way, you killed your mom, and that's probably like, not a great thing. And when he goes to the trial, and the Gods are debating whether or not like what they should do with him, Athena is the one that says, you know, you did kill your mother, and that's not as bad a crime, as killing like your father or another family member. Because it's just your mother, right? And I remember like, as a child, my mind being blown, because I was always like, yeah, Athena, she's great. She loves women because she's like a girl boss herself. Girl, boss didn't exist when I was child, but she was a girl boss. And then I read that and I was like, but Athena, why? Why would you do that? And it just like— it really colored for me the misogyny of Greek mythology, and in particular, the story of Clytemnestra like she was wronged. If a man had been in her position, and the wife had done all the things to him, he would have been right in murdering her in terms of Greek mythology morality, right? But Clytemnestra, because she's a woman that was showing non-womanly like roles and attributes, then she deserves to die. And it—oh, it messed me up for a while. In terms of reading Greek mythology and analyzing it.
HELENA: And the ancient Greek religion, the Furies, thought that matricide was a horrific crime. And they chased Orestes into madness. But the new Greek Gods led by Apollo said that because Athena was born without a mother, even though she had a mother, he just ate her. And she didn't need one that it didn't matter, right? It wasn't a necessarily crime, which is just all of this, like Athenian politics about old mother-based religion, matrilineal religion versus new Son God patrilineal-based religion. And again, like Aeschylus just took an older story and was like, I'm gonna use this to say that men are more logical and superior, and women aren't needed and mothers are not important. Like he took her story and wrestled it into, because the older versions of that story don't have that whole, like, trial thing. He's like a playwright in there. Like, I'm gonna use this for political reasons, because there's this thing going on in Athens I don't like. So her story just got like, wrestled into some dudes, treat us on why men are better.
JULIA: If only we could stop doing that. And I mean, we still do to this day, right? Like, there are so many, like different ways of reading a story and then putting your own beliefs, and your own perspective onto it. And sometimes that's a good thing. But sometimes we do need to acknowledge the original story and the context in which was written you know, so I both love and hate that. I love when it's done with thought, but I hate when it's done thoughtlessly if you know what I mean. But actually, this is a great time for us to quickly go grab a refill, and then we'll be back to talk a little bit more about Clytemnestra.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
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And recipe cards, alcoholic and not for every single one of the episodes Spirits has ever made, and more, and more. patreon.com/spiritspodcast. This week, I'm gonna go ahead and recommend a game that some of you may have forgotten about, but true heads never have and it's Pokémon GO. I have never been more into Pokémon GO than I am right now. I recently reached level 40 which used to be the highest you can go. Now I can get up to 49 and I am just waiting on and maybe even 50, god I'm so excited. They keep introducing new pokes, they keep having new challenges. One time and hanging out with Julia and Jake on Long Island. We made a stop specifically so I could get a legendary Pokemon at a gym. So you know life is great. You're in Pokémon GO and I am enjoying the hell out of myself as I play. So if you want an excuse to maybe take more walks around your neighborhood, and trade little pixels with friends and catch them all, have you considered Pokémon GO? 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AMANDA: Alright, we are back from the refill with new cocktails and seltzers in hand. Helena, do you enjoy cocktails? What do you—what is your favorite go-to beverage?
HELENA: I don't drink because I have two alcoholic parents. But I am currently drinking a sparkling water. But normally coffee is my—my vice of choice.
AMANDA: How do you take it? What is your favorite special coffee treat, to treat yourself to?
HELENA: I am so boring, but it's really like a Hot Latte.
AMANDA: Yeah.
HELENA: I think the Latte is undervalued. I think we get really fancy in our drinks. I'll drink a Flatwhite, but I just—I enjoy a Dry Latte. Not a lot of foam. I'm not like a—not like a huge cappuccino foam person but, I just think that steamed milk and espresso is delicious together.
JULIA: I mean yeah, I love it. Do you prefer a flavor on there? Or you're just like give me that coffee flavor?
HELENA: No, I want it to be coffee flavored.
JULIA: Nice. Nice.
AMANDA: I love that.
JULIA: You and my husband both.
HELENA: Are also the least queer gay because I don't—I just—I want cow milk in it. Like I will settle for soy if there's not cow milk. But like if I'm going to steam milk I want animal products. I mean— I'm a vegetarian too like it's—but I just—I'm always like oat milk, no thank you. I don't.
AMANDA: Listen as an alactose-intolerantt queer person, you are enjoying what I cannot. You are— you are you know, you are repatriating animal products for me. Yeah.
HELENA: I am and I'm also not—I will drink an iced coffee because I live in the south and sometimes it is too hot. But I will hold out and drink a hot coffee until it is like above 90 degrees outside.
AMANDA: Incredible.
HELENA: I'm not the iced coffee in winter queer. I'm not.
AMANDA: Listen there are—there are many flavors of us. And I think it's important to represent for the hot beverage queers out there. I feel like we get much ice beverage over-representation and that's important too.
JULIA: Yeah.
HELENA: I am hot beverage queer.
JULIA: Much like the—the egg in which Helen and Clytemnestra are born in. You can have all the queer people in the same box, but they still might come out different. So—
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Was that a good pull? Was that a good [30:27]
HELENA: Nice segue.
JULIA: Thank you. Thank you. I tried my best. Now that you've given us such a great primer on who Clytemnestra is, and why she was so important to Greek mythology, both in the actual stories of the mythology and the way that she was utilized to comment on Athenian politics. I am curious about how you think Clytemnestra is viewed nowadays. You talked a little bit about the like feminist movement of Clytemnestra. Can you tell us a little bit more about how she is viewed by like feminist scholars today?
HELENA: So it's interesting because we are having this resurgence of feminist retelling. So Greek myths, right? Circe and The Penelopiad. [31:12] Margaret Atwood retelling of the Pelope story. And I keep waiting. I mean, I don't really want them to because I want to write not that there can't be more than one. But I want to write Clytemnestra's story. I don't feel like I'm ready as a writer yet. That's sort of my like my Magnum Opus that I'm like building my craft board. But I keep waiting for her to make like a bigger appearance in modern Greek feminist retellings. And she is not showing up very much. It's interesting. There is just not as much scholarship being done about her. And she's not showing up as much in the modern sort of imagination. And I don't know if—I don't know if we have a group of sort of people who got interested in it because of Troy. And those stories and are more interested in Achilles, and Patroclus, and that story. If we're just sort of more interested in exploring the ways that queer masculinity in ancient Greece has been sort of, erased historically, which is also a wonderful thing for, for writers to be looking at. Her story has been sort of lying fallow for a while, and we're not seeing a lot of—a lot of chatter about her, which is interesting. I do think this is sort of my queer history nerd hat. I think that we have this huge gap in what people were interested in from like, queer liberation theory and queer thought, from the late 70s until we got protease inhibitors in 1996 or so. Because we lost a generation of queer men, and the queer women who were helping them survive, not that no queer women died of AIDS, obviously, some did. But there was an extraordinary trauma toll taken. And then after that, obviously, like, queer writers we're focusing on, like, how do we get right, so that we can get into our loved ones, hospital beds, and stuff? And there's obviously feminists who are not queer, right? Who could be doing feminist theory about Clytemnestra? But I feel like there is this gap of like, knowledge that happened from like, 79 to 96. Let's say when AIDS was really taken off, and until we got some meds, that affects how the kind of scholarship and the kind of person who would be interested in the story of Clytemnestra, which I feel like is in some way kind of inherently queer. What they were—what those people were doing instead, right? And as we're sort of coming back to looking at Greek mythology from a feminist and queer standpoint, other things are interesting now. And so she's sort of like, fallen through the cracks. And I think she's gonna come back because she's such an interesting figure. Like, I don't think that that's forever. So, you know, now we have this feminism and this queer liberation that's coming out of like Tumblr, and these places that is sort of gatekeep-y, and in some ways, there's, uh, there were some problems with first and second wave feminism. No question. Absolutely. Like not—not going to say that there were not. But I think that there is this feeling because like, there was this huge loss of scholars and thinkers, and there's this huge trauma that happened. I think that part of that lack of like a through line of oral history of queer thinking was that part of the like internet backlash with like young, queer and feminist thinkers coming up, is that they, they lost some of that oral tradition from elders that would have been passed down. And so there is a like, we want nothing. Like all of that is, it's very black and white, like none of that past is of use to us. It's all bad. And that happens with every, like generation of youth. And I think that as they come up, they get, you know, more interested in older stuff. But that's not the— the stuff that they were doing in the late 70s when they were like writing about Clytemnestra is not interesting anymore. We got to talk about Achilles [35:29] which is great. I don't want to because I don't care. [35:34] I'm sorry, sorry. I don't care. That's not gonna kill us with a lovely book. I couldn't care less about them. Um, but like, that's kind of where the interest is driven. And, you know, I think there's probably a reason for that. I—maybe my reasons are totally wrong. I'm sort of off the cuff like thinking about that. But I do think there's a like, oh, that's the past. We're not interested in that, that's been looked at. That's what first-wave feminism was doing. Also at some point, the labor has got sort of taken by turfs as a symbol. And I think that we should take it back.
HELENA: Yeah. Turfs are in everything, and we should reclaim everything that they've stolen from us.
AMANDA: We have sword lesbians, we also need battleaxes [36:16]. I think this is an identity that people should embrace.
JULIA: 100%.
HELENA: Correct. Yes. So yeah, I mean, I think that, that I think it's all kind of seep in there. But I'm hoping that she comes back and is of interest because she's amazing. She's my murder queen.
JULIA: And we need more murder queens out there that are not, you know, true crime. subjects, correct?
AMANDA: Yes. 100%, I think it is so important, especially, you know, for me, I was born in 92. And so growing up, you know, the AIDS epidemic really felt like something that was behind us. And that's what American culture is really invested in telling us. And it wasn't actually an epidemic. It didn't actually, you know, murder a generation.
HELENA: I mean, COVID is over, right? So AIDS is obviously over.
AMANDA: Obviously.
HELENA: I say as a person, literally in a house with a person with COVID, right?
AMANDA: Yeah. No, culture is really invested in telling us that it's all fine and done, and you should spend money and go back to being a generative member of a workforce. And it is, it is totally true. And I think it's really valuable to think about the fact that like, thought and criticism and intellectual tradition is generated by people. And you know, thought and access to publication and to education, and to disseminating your ideas is, you know, a finite resource that is limited by lots of things that, you know, we have control over in the world. Every person who commits their knowledge to the public, whether that is using social media, using podcasts, using books is important and is contributing. And each of us kind of taking ownership and feeling like it's, you know, our obligation when it's safe to do so, to add our thoughts to the world is really brave and really important.
HELENA: Yeah, yeah, I teach 10th grade sex-ed as part of my regular day job. And every year, and at the end of our semester, I make them watch how to survive a plague, which is a documentary about the AIDS epidemic. And I always think that the people who would have been, like putting out scenes about how ancient Greek mythology had to do with queer liberation in 1992, were in a basement in Greenwich Village and act up meetings, trying to stay alive and trying to keep everybody else alive. They were [38:29], they were dying, they were, you know, advocating at the NIH to try to get Fauci to like speed up the protease inhibitor meds. And so we lost that generation of people who would have been kind of bringing on that. All of that thought and kind of thinking about that. And we lost what would have happened to the queer kids. I was born in 82. So when I was coming out in 97, like people were still dying all the time. And so I didn't have the people to kind of go, like, here are the scenes about like queer liberation, here's the neighborhood that you go to, here's the bar that you hang out at. I mean, I was 14, so I wasn't going to a bar. But although the 90s were a different time, I was at lesbian bars earlier than I probably should have been. But like that bringing along right is, is not there. And the actual, like written work, and the creative work isn't there. And so a lot of that stuff that was being done, you know, there were these like, beautiful—I'm gonna look up what it is. There were like ballets and plays, and sort of like all of this modern dance of Clytemnestra, and then there wasn't right?
JULIA: Yeah.
HELENA: And then there wasn't.
AMANDA: Yeah.
HELENA: Because the dancers were dying.
AMANDA: And it's that—it's that hierarchy of needs, right? Like when you are you know, when you're concerned with saving the lives of, you know, your peers and community, and loved ones and yourself, art has to be secondary for a lot of people. And you know, if you are lucky enough to survive that, and then you find yourself, you know, wanting a family, wanting rights. Mind to focus on things like hospital visitation and adoption and marriage, I understand how, you know, there is a tendency to get less radical over time. But also maybe those are your priorities and your experience in your teens and 20s and 30s, of growing up in community was no, I need to really focus on the material realities of now, and not like dreaming about what is—what is better for me and what is possible for our community in the future.
JULIA: Getting 100%.
HELENA: I am always the person who's like, why is this weird thing happening? Can we trace it back to the AIDS epidemic?
AMANDA: It is—it is valuable and Helena, you are contributing to the canon of queer literature. Now the reason that we reached out to you is because I inhaled and thoroughly enjoyed your extremely queer Jewish rom-com, Season Of Love. And I would love to hear a little bit about your career as a writer and the kinds of stories that you're interested in. And what this experience of releasing season of love has been like?
HELENA: So I wanted to be a writer all my life. First of all, thank you so much for reading it and liking it.
AMANDA: I love it.
HELENA: Welcome to Team [41:08].
JULIA: Yes.
HELENA: Once you're in, you're in forever, sorry. It's like the Hotel California, but with more magic cats.
AMANDA: It's true. If you like a fat butch representation. If you like queer Jewish artists. if you like Jews who live at a Christmas farm, check out Season Of Love. It's great.
JULIA: Read the trigger warning first.
AMANDA: Read the trigger warnings, and it is Christmas tree farm. [41:29] But it's— it's an excellent, it's an excellent book, and you do a great job of describing trigger warnings to—to help people make good choices for themselves.
HELENA: I keep getting like tagged in these reviews. I don't know what people like I don't need to get tagged to reviews ever. Good or bad.
AMANDA: No, no, no, no. Yeah, people should not do that.
HELENA: People who are like this is marketed, like it's pink and it's covered in little light person has kind of this mid-century modern cover, and it's really cute. And then there's like a lot of very heavy topics. And like I'm a xenial queer. It has a rent title. Like it has a brand lyric as a title. Everyone dies at the end.
AMANDA: You know, it's dark. You know, it's gonna be about abuse in some way. Yeah.
HELENA: I tried, right? I mean, like, because the thing about marketing right now, is that people only are picking up wrong cops. Like, that's all they're picking up, right? And also like and Colleen Hoover, which is incredibly dark, right? So it's not—I mean, the question is, I mean, I—I didn't market my book, The—the lovely people at Hachette marketed my book. But I do get a lot of people who are like, I thought this is gonna be really fluffy. And then like, there's a lot of trauma. And I just like I'm a 40-year-old, queer, like queer stories, have tra— like, there's no trauma at all about being queer. Non, zero trauma about queerness is zero trauma.
JULIA: Yeah.
HELENA: But there is some family trauma. Anyway, please read the content warnings and know what you're getting into if you read my book. I hope you read it. I don't know, [42:48] if you read the content warnings first.
AMANDA: No, it's true. And something I really admire and love about the romance community is how good we are at describing the stories and categorizing them and making sure people make good choices for themselves. Because some of us go to it for escapism, some of us go to it to work through issues that we are dealing with. And every good romance, in my opinion, involves working through something of your own to land at a version of yourself in your life that you are excited about and that you want to pursue. I think that is par for the course in, in what romance reading and writing is.
HELENA: So anyway, I grew up wanting to be a writer. I wanted to be a writer from Thomas Moore. I went to college, my integrative a double degree in creative writing in Comparative Mythology. And my senior thesis was a series of prose poems, monologues from Clytemnestra's perspective. And I wrote this massive, like project, like from deep within, like [43:41] psyche. And then I burned out pretty hard because that was a lot. And I don't know that I was ready to do the kind of internal work and support for myself as a person that is involved in making that kind of art as a 22-year-old.
JULIA: Yeah.
HELENA: So I sort of burned myself up from the inside out trying to write that poetry. And I didn't get into the MFA program that I was trying to get into. And I ended up going to get a master's in library science, which turned out to be great and probably better than an MFA program because you can't make money writing poetry and I hate college students. So I would have been a really terrible college professor. But I'm a very good children's librarian and sex educator. And so I didn't write anything at all from 2005 to 2018. I don't write anything, after having been a writer as like, my core identity for my whole life. And I don't know if I was like, pupating during that time, or like, um you know, appealing or trying to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be if I wasn't going to be a poet necessarily. Not that I could not still be a poet, but um, I was reading a lot of romance novels like a lot, like 200 romance novels a year.
AMANDA: I'm glad I've been good company.
HELENA: Yeah. I read—I read a lot of romance novels. And I was in 2017, during right before Hurricane Harvey hit. I live in Houston. I started listening to this podcast where these three guys play D&D with their dad. And it's really good storytelling. Like, it seems like it's gonna be really cheesy. I mean, I love D&D, like and I love actual pay podcasts. But I listened to a lot of it really quickly because I was stuck in house because of Harvey. And so I listen to like hours of it stuff together.
AMANDA: Yeah.
HELENA: And I was like, sobbing about this gay wizard whose boyfriend is the Grim Reaper, like—
AMANDA: We know it well.
HELENA: And like hysterical. The number of times I stopped my car on a side street, and screamed, Griffin McElroy, at my phone on the top my lungs. Like in just— I was like, so moved to tell stories again. It was like, I don't know some part of me, I didn't write until— like it was about a year before I actually started writing. But some part of me that had been turned off, turned back on. I think at the idea that I didn't have to write Lit thick. I didn't have to write poetry or love poetry very much. I can write stories. Like if Griffin McElroy could make me sob hysterically, about a wizard named Taco, like sob so that I couldn't dry. Then I can write stories that were like fun and campy, and weird, and had all my like little pop culture stuff and my jokes and also be really transformative, and cathartic, and important. And I just started— it started sort of [46:45], just like I got to write stories, [46:27] And then in November of 2018, the day before the midterms, I was watching Hallmark movies to disassociate from reality, as one does. And I was rage-tweeting about the lack of queer representation in Hallmark movies. And I tweeted a plot idea and I was like, here Lifetime, have this for free. And a friend of mine slid into my DMs and was like, you're a writer, you could just write this. And I was like, I'm not a writer anymore. And they said I don't think that's true.
AMANDA: What a friend!
HELENA: So that was [47:22]. Yes, they are a very good friend. I love them very much. And there's a major care turning for some, [47:30] Although whether or not Levi's [47:32] is to be determined.
AMANDA: The DVD until the sequel, am I right?
HELENA: Is—yeah, he's [47:39] sequel. But anyway, I started to Google Docs, that day, November 5, 2018. And I—by the end of Christmas break, I had 40,000 words of the novel.
AMANDA: Wow.
HELENA: Having not written anything in 13 years, 12-13 years. And I showed it to friends, I was like, gonna put it up on Wattpad or like, put it up on Kindle Unlimited and just be like, hey, I wrote something again, this is exciting. But my friends who were writers, who are published writers were like, I think this is something here, you should query. You should try to get an agent. And I did a Twitter pitch contest and I got my agent
AMANDA: Wow.
HELENA: And we went on submission and I sold it to the third biggest publisher in the world. And like all of that was this, every single step of this has been a surprise to me. Like at no point, if I've been like yeah, my books gonna be a Barnes and Noble, let's get. It is a Barnes and Nobles all over the country and bookstores in the UK and it's coming out in Australia in February. And like, I just like what's happening? What's going on? I wrote a book. I mean, several I wrote— I have written several books since then. I am on deadline. I'm supposed to be turning in the sequel to Season Of Love in like a week and I'm hoping [48:50]
JULIA: That is an incredible journey. I love that for you. That's so, so cool. And it's always really nice to hear authors being like yeah, you know, I didn't write for so many years and then all of a sudden it came to me. Because it is like kind of very encouraging in a way. When especially when you feel uninspired and unmotivated. So that, that's beautiful.
AMANDA: Yeah. I also love that hearing other people tell a story really motivated you in that way for— for me as a podcaster. Julia and I work on an actual play podcast called Join The Party. And we have just launched our third campaign, and you know hearing people say that they are inspired by it, that they are moved by it, that they you know are moved to make fan art or write fanfiction, or you know just put more time and attention into building worlds that they feel safe in and inspired by and just like fed by, is to me the greatest compliment possible. What is the response been like to Season of Love? And has anything about it surprised you, or really fed you or you know, motivated you as you went?
HELENA: So I don't read reviews at all unless I get tagged in them. I try really hard to be especially while I'm in the middle of trying to get booked two turned in. Because this was my first book. And like, basically Forever And Always, which is the sequel is like the second novel I've ever written. I don't want to get up in my head about, like whether or not I'm a writer like I just—there's enough impostor syndrome in the world. And so I don't know, like, to some degree, I'm kind of in a bubble, because I'm like, that book exists for readers now. It is out there. I did get some fan art recently, which was incredible. So I will read reviews if a friend like [50:29] them for me.
AMANDA: Smart.
HELENA: Because a lot of times, a review is like really positive. And then it's like, oh, but I fully hated this part, right? And I don't—
AMANDA: Uh-oh.
HELENA: I don't want to know— I mean, I'm thrilled.
AMANDA: That—that's not for you. Yet.
HELENA: I'm a librarian. I tell children, they should hate books all the time, and like, take apart what they like and don't like about books like I'm for that. I support you hating my book. I don't care. But I don't want to know it, because I have to write another book. So I don't really know. Sales numbers are pretty good, my publisher says, and I have an exciting—they commissioned like a pretty big deal cover artists to do the art for Forever And Always. So like, I feel like that is always a sign that your publisher— that your first book is doing well, because like, even though my editors are very passionate about books, like publishing is a business and it's a business that's like, super run on capitalism. And so they're not going to necessarily like put assets into books that if the first one didn't sell well.
AMANDA: Totally.
HELENA: From an emotional standpoint, you know, I think that this book is not necessarily a book that everybody reads and is like, oh, that was fun. It is either like somebody's like the exact book that they've been waiting to read their entire life, or they're like, I didn't really get it. And I think that's fine because it's a—a lot, right? It's sort of like campy, and it's inspired by like Armistead Maupin's Tales From The City. And also by like, But I'm a Cheerleader. And like, it's—it's not necessarily just like going to be everybody's jam, right? It is seasoned with a variety of flavors that may or may not be everybody's jam, which is okay, because, for the people who it is, they're like, oh, God, I feel really, really, really seen by this book. And so anyway, a friend sent me a review yesterday, that was talking about how like, funny and self-aware, and purposefully kitschy it is, which is all things that I was trying to do. Like we use camp to talk about deep trauma. Like that's—that's what we do, especially in, in queer history. And that it's like sort of taking all the tropes of a Hallmark movie and like subverting them to look at them and figure out whether or not they work, which is all things that we're sort of trying to do. And so that was nice because I had been feeling. I'm link deep in this revision of this book, that I had to like break to try to put back together. To try to make it work. Because it's a childhood friends to lovers, to catastrophic breakup, to get back together book. The second one, and it's like, a lot of pieces. And I was feeling like, I don't know how to write a book. I don't know how books work. I don't know what books are, like, I've never seen a book before. I don't understand.
AMANDA: I don't know how to read. I'm sorry, I can't help you.
HELENA: The emotional like, I'm gonna give them back their money for that they've already paid me for this book. And I'm gonna go live in the woods because I can't make these two people's emotional arcs make sense? No matter how much Joni Mitchell I listened to, like, I can't get the vibe, right? And then I just read this review of somebody who like really saw every craft decision that I had made—
AMANDA: Wow.
HELENA: —in the book and understood what I was trying to do. And I was like, okay. I must have to some degree, succeeded in those craft decisions, because somebody was able to see every single one of them. You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Yeah.
HELENA: And so, yeah, I—I don't know, man. I don't have idea how it's going.
AMANDA: That's all incredibly validating. I think for me as a person who makes stuff. And I imagine for a lot of the people listening. Like the great musical title of show says, I think it's better to be nine people's favorite thing, than 100 people's favorite thing. And if it's at all validating, the book was recommended to me in a Discord server I'm in or somebody tagged somebody else and said, oh, my God, I can't imagine anything more you. And then like, 18 hours later, the person responded, yep, nope. That's what I was exactly right. Yeah, I read it all in one sitting and you couldn't be more right. And I can't wait to read the sequel.
HELENA: I'm excited to be done writing the sequel. I would love to be—I am at the point where I want to like write both of these characters falling down a well.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah.
HELENA: I don't know if there [54:31], but I would love to write one so that I can throw them down it. And [54:35] can ride off into the sunset. Crinkles, the magic cat, Julia.
JULIA: Good. Thank you. Thank you for the context.
HELENA: Yeah. I'm at the point where I'm like, I can't. I hate these people so much.
AMANDA: Normal, normal.
HELENA: I feel like that's just part of how creating people is, you know, I think—and this is partly why I think that I am inspired by actual play podcasts. Because when you're writing a book for other people to read for publication, you want there to be like a very specific character arc that's like, this is where they were emotionally. And then this is what happened. And this is where they ended up that you can trace. But obviously, that's not how like human life works. And so when you are playing a character, you get to be like, and I—you know, and I play, I have an ongoing game as well. I'm currently in a Monster Of The Week game that is fun and shit. We are a very bad team of crypto hunters trying to track down magical objects, and lighting stuff on fire accidentally, at every turn.
AMANDA: We just wrapped up a Monster Of The Week, like a mini-campaign over the summer. When Julia and I and our colleague played 13,12 and 13-year-old counselors in training at a summer camp overridden with monsters. It was the most exciting and fun thing I could possibly imagine.
HELENA: Yeah, so with that, I just get to be like, what would this character do now?
AMANDA: Yeah.
HELENA: Like, what if? What if? What if? Which is the fun part, right? Like, that's the fun part of making up stories is like, oh, I know this person. And I know that they would do this thing, even though it's like such a boneheaded thing to do. And it's not what I would do from the outside, because like, inside the story, this is exactly what the this character that I built would do. And also like, what if this character were like if Professor Trelawney joined the lone gunman? Like what— what now? [56:26] Like, I just love that sort of following a rabbit hole down to see. And that's really inspiring. And so I think part of it is that right now I'm in the weeds of like, I already did all of that work. And now I have to make it publishable, where like, there's a character arc, and I just want to be like, I don't know, these two black kids fell in love. And then they broke up, and now they're trying to get back together. And like, they're dumb about it, like they're bad at life. And why is there a plot? So, you know, I might like in the I'm not in the fun, sort of generative part of like, what if, what if, what if. But I do think that writers are always asking, like, where do you get inspired? I get inspired a lot by actual play podcasts, by cartoons, by like, I don't know, I just rewatched the series finale of Anne with an E, and sobbed because I was like, how do I make people want Levi and Hannah together the way that people want Anne and Gilbert together. And I know that's impossible, because like people have been wanting Anne and Gilbert together for 100 years. And so they bring with them a huge history of pre-shipping these characters and wanting them together. But also, you know, we were talking about, like, rewriting myths.
JULIA: Yeah.
HELENA: Like, what is it about these two? Because you could do any version of that and have the reader at the end be like, actually I don't care if these two people are together, right? Like no matter how much sort of goodwill they bring into it from loving and of Green Gables. And so I was like, you know, I love just like, looking at things that make me feel the way that I want my characters to feel and trying to figure out.
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: 100%
JULIA: I love that as an inspiration for you. That's so cool.
AMANDA: Helena, I can't thank you enough for sharing with us your love of Clytemnestra. Your thoughts on reading, and writing, and making stories and packaging them for other people to enjoy. If people want to stay in touch with you, and with your work and your thoughts online, where are the best places for them to do that?
HELENA: You can follow me on Twitter assuming that Twitter's gonna continue to Twitter. And on Instagram and sort of on Hive when it exists. All of those are blumagaincurios, B L U M, like Miriam Blum, her last name, Blum, B L U M againcurios, all of my social media. And you can also just go to helenagreer.com. And you can follow me all the places there. Or you can sign up for my newsletter, which theory once a month, I send out a newsletter about what's happening at Carrigan's, right then. In practice, I've not sent one out since right before the book came out, because things have been a little wild. But the plan is that like when I'm finally able to release the cover Forever And Always, which is so great. I cannot tell you guys like full Hannah and Levi look so hot. Um, Alexandria Bellefleur, who's the author of like, Count Your Lucky Stars, and Hang The Moon, and a bunch of queer books, called it the Pansexual Panic cover, because both of them look so outrageously hot. She could not tell which one of them she wanted more, which is just chef's kiss.
AMANDA: High praise.
HELENA: So like, eventually, I'm going to be able to, like reveal the cover of Forever And Always. And I'll probably reveal it to my newsletter first. And so like news and what's happening with my stuff, and like when I'm on podcasts. And also just like the Carrigan's Christmas land calendar, so if they're celebrating a holiday, or if they're having a fun event or whatever, in the fully imaginary little pocket universe that made up. I will tell you what is happening there right now. So if you're the kind of person who's into like imagining an entire world and then having the author write fanfic about it once a month, you might be into my newsletter, which I'm totally gonna send out again someday.
AMANDA: Hell yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you again. And everybody remember—
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: —Stay cool.
[theme]
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!
Transcriptionist: KA
Editor: KM