E18: Circe: The Weird Girl Villain Edit

This week we’re diving into the chaotic mythology of Circe: the witch goddess from Greek mythology who turned men into pigs, accidentally created a sea monster, and basically got the villain edit of the century.

From getting bullied by immortal supermodels to becoming the most dangerous woman in The Odyssey, Circe’s story has everything: toxic situationships, female rage, goth witch energy, and serious “Bachelor villain with a traumatic backstory” vibes.

We break down:
• Circe’s weird girl glow-up
• The Scylla and Glaucus love triangle disaster
• Why ancient men were terrified of powerful women
• Circe and Odysseus’ year-long situationship
• Why modern audiences are obsessed with morally grey women

If you love Greek mythology, mythology retellings, reality TV drama, internet culture, or just hearing ancient stories explained like celebrity gossip… welcome to Ancient Society!

Transcript

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Hey hey, welcome back to Ancient Society. This is Lexi, and unfortunately, I'm actually going to be on my own for a little bit moving forward. I am living it up in New York City. I am starting to meet people, but have not quite met a good gossip girl yet to replace the lovely bestie Philip. So right now we are just in lieu of Philip and silence, but I will try to keep it going on my own until we find somebody else. Which, by the way, if you know anybody in New York City that loves wine, loves to gossip, and loves Greek mythology, please send them my way. Even not for the podcast, but just for friends. So, anyway, welcome on back to Ancient Society, which is now New York City based. I'm going to be picking back up, sharing some of my favorite gossip stories with you as the audience now, trying to gossip with myself a little bit. We'll see how that goes. I'm okay with talking to myself, but we'll see what it's like. But gonna be picking that back up, talking about some of my favorite characters, my favorite myths, anything and everything in between, especially while we get excited for all of this new Greek mythology content coming out. We have movies, we have shows, we have books, anything and everything is coming up right now. So we are ahead of the game, besties. But let's go ahead and kick into it today. I am actually going to be talking about kind of a weird girl who gets a villain edit. And I'll be honest, I gave her a little bit of a villain edit myself just because I'm a girl's girl to Scylla. But today we're going to be chatting about Cersei and researching into her even more. I actually kind of relate to her more than I expected to. So really excited to dive deep into Cerse, talk about her past, her glow-up, her situationships, and her just general men hating vibe. So, ready to get into it? Here we go. We will push on through. So, talking about Cersei today, the weird girl villain edit. She is, I'm fully convinced that she's basically just like the villain on The Bachelor, who you kind of hate her at first. She's really cruel, she's really mean, but then when she does get that one-on-one that nobody actually wants to watch, she actually opens up and reveals that she just spent her entire childhood being bullied, but then also accidentally lets it slip that she's a bit of a Nepo baby, so you don't quite know how to feel for her, but you do relate to parts of it. So that's that's genuinely just her whole arc. That's her whole story. Based on the surface, though, typically Cersei is presented as pretty dangerous and manipulative. She's pretty seductive and she loves to use that to her power. She is known for turning men into pigs, and she's pretty emotionally unstable. But when you're looking into it more, you realize oh, she's been pretty isolated and mocked and underestimated her entire life. And then she gets through this weird girl bully phase, and she has a hell of a glow-up and just skyrockets. She learns her powers, she learns to stand up for herself, she learns really to be that strong badass woman that she wanted to be. And I like to think that I had a glow-up, maybe not to this extent, but I do get it being bullied in high school and just not quite finding yourself or knowing yourself. And then I don't know. For me, it was like mid-20s, that just one year it was a world of a change, completely different. And everybody who had ignored me before in life was suddenly reaching back out to me. Everybody who rejected me was trying to hit me back up, so I get it. That power that comes from that glow-up, you feel unstoppable. It is a bit of an ego stroke because you can see the way that people treat you differently. So I do get Cersei with her whole arc. She has so many different sides to her with it. And ancient men did not understand women, just as men today don't understand women. And so the ancient men just could not process that flip in her. So when you think about Cersei's family, um, like I said, girl little Nepo baby. Which nothing wrong with a Nepo baby as long as they're good at what they do. Maya Hawk, peak Nepo baby. Love her. Lily Rose Depp, not quite. So there are levels to the Nepo baby spectrum. And I think as long as you're good at what you do, go ahead. But if you're forcing yourself because you are a Nepo baby, nah, nah, give it up. Just give it up. So for Cersei, she is divine royalty. Her father is Helios, the literal Titan sun god. Like massive power, massive ego, complete, complete emotionally unavailable father. I mean, his entire job is the sun and being the sun and all of it. So there's just no room for any sort of family parenting, emotional intimacy, anything else like that. He is not making her games, not making her shows. He's just not there. I do like to think though, it seems like his love language is, I would say, more of the buying gifts. So she always is going to have the nicest thing that she's wanting. She'll have the best dress for the party, she'll have the best shoes for her dance recital, but he won't be there to see them. And then her mother is Percy, an oceanid associated with mystery and magic. So true goth royalty. Goth witch, mysterious magical potions. It's your true little sunboy goth girl relationship, which I love, but this is setting Cersei up for just true, beautiful, incredible, charming goth royalty. Unfortunately, she's so weird. Like this girl is the weird girl at school. She this is emphasized so many times and so many different retellings for Cersei, but she is just so weird. Like she's not pretty, she's well, she's not viewed as the prettiest goddess. She is obviously pretty, but just in high school, you don't quite get that. So she's not viewed as the prettiest. She's quieter, she's a bit more to herself, more emotional. The weirdest parts though is that she loves mortals. Like no one else really cares about mortals. They're like a sim game to them. They don't really matter. But Cersei's actually so interested in them and wants to understand and learn and is empathetic towards them. And then instead of worrying about all of the divine god games and politics and whatever else it is, she's studying grass and strange magic. Like she has her herbs and her potions, and it just doesn't fit with what everybody expects from this family of influencers, pretty much. She's the artsy girl, and just nobody can expect it. So she kind of becomes the villain from that. And I view this so much as like The Bachelor, where you know, one girl, Maria, I yep, I'm diving into it. Maria on The Bachelor, my girl, she comes in and is just immediately hated. Like the music plays behind her, you have her sipping wine alone, she's kind of sitting just far away enough from all the other girls speaking badly about her, just immediately seems like a villain. That is Cersei. All everybody else is calling her intimidating and toxic, and one girl is going up to the guy and crying about how she's bullying the households, but really the producers are just editing this all together. She's not really doing any of that. But when she gets the one-on-one date, she is sobbing about how no one in her family knew I loved her, and she was just constantly getting bullied by all these incredible supermodels, pretty much. So she has this glow-up, and in this glow-up, she discovers that she has witchcraft abilities, and this goes into like transformation spells, potion mastery, forbidden magic. Like she can alter reality. She is a witch. Salem witch trials, she is on there immediately, and suddenly the girl that everybody ignored and bullied is the most powerful. Which, if you've ever fantasized about going back to a high school reunion before you actually got really successful, this is what you would imagine. You would hope that you would go back and everyone would look in awe about everything that you've accomplished. But then typically, when you do actually get to that level, you don't care. Like you you just don't. Cersei still kind of does though. And this really weird glow-up of a girl is always one of the most interesting and oldest stories in all of human history. Except she went straight to the dark magic and absolutely terrorizing sailors, to be honest. So she leaned into the dark side of it. So with that comes the situation ship that I have talked about in the past: the Glaucus situation ship. So this one is an embarrassing, and I think this comes from when you have the glow-up and you you know that you're so much hotter than you were before, but you're still just not quite getting that attention. And so Cersei falls in love with Glaucus, who, if you don't remember from my Silla story, Glaucus is a former fisherman who becomes immortal. And this girl is absolutely obsessed with this man. Like checking the Instagram stories every 10 minutes, not even every like two minutes to see if he's seen it. You're posting things just for him. You are texting paragraphs, beating that dead horse about every interaction. She is obsessed. But Glaucus is in love with Scylla. And Cersei does not do well with being rejected, as usual fans know. Cersei loses her mind about being rejected. And instead of like doing anything healthy, she doesn't have therapy, she doesn't have a journal, she's not moving on in any way. She decides to poison the girl that Glaucus loves. So she goes and poisons Scylla's bathwater, turning Scylla into a horrifying sea monster with multiple dog heads growing out of her body. And if you know me, you know I love Scylla. Scylla then spends an entire eternity hiding. She's also a sea monster, I guess, fine, whatever. But I think that Scylla is just defensive of anybody else that comes and tries to come after her. So not the biggest Cersei fan from that, not quite my girl, but this is just bad, not a girl's girl behavior. But what makes this interesting is that this is just a girl who desperately wants love after just being rejected her entire life. But every time she tries to find that love, she destroys something. So it's just like she's truly cursed to not find this love, which feels so modern, honestly. Like it really feels like I have some girlfriends who every time they try to find something, they just truly self-sabotage it, or it doesn't work out. Whatever it is, they cannot find that love that they desperately want. And they kind of just burn everything in the path going for it. So after this, Cersei becomes infamous. And I'm assuming Glaucus went and told his little boys' group, like, you're not gonna believe what this woman just did to me. Probably went on his little woman hating podcast and just talked about this woman who is not a girl's girl, whatever it is. Glaucus told everybody, and so Cersei becomes infamous, and she's now known as like, you do not mess with this weird witch girl. I'm sure the guys think that she just becomes obsessed with them, and the girls think that she's just dangerous. So it's just it's not a good look. It's really not. And this is where mythology gets really revealing about how ancient cultures would typically view women with power. So because of this, Cersei lives alone and independently. She is incredibly intelligent, she's emotionally complicated, she's more powerful than most men, she is very sexual, like she is actually living her best girl's life in her true best apartment with probably a cute cat and a dog in the city, and she's having the best time. But because guys cannot comprehend, I guess, girls actually wanting this life, ancient male writers treat this like a horror scenario. It's like, oh my god, what if a single woman had hobbies? What if? And so they she's horrified, just no one goes to her. Absolute panic. So then enters my favorite story, Odysseus. Who, if you know anything about Odysseus and the Odyssey, everything about Odysseus is pretty much just the play that went wrong. Like he cannot catch a break. And a lot of it's his fault, most of it's his fault, but he just everything falls apart for him. And so he he lands on Circe's Island after 10 years of a war, multiple years of horrible decisions out on sea trying to get back to that war. He's been hunted by cannibals, he's been hunted by Poseidon, almost eaten by a toddler Cyclops. Like he has just not had a good time. And so he gets to this island, and some of his men go into her palace. And this palace is gorgeous. It is isolated, there's flowers, there's greenery, there's animals, there's luxury food, there's really attractive women's. Like it is just incredibly nice. And these men have been in war and fighting for their lives for 12 or 13 years. So she says, you know, come inside, come on in. Oh my god, welcome, welcome to my lake, welcome to my home, corrects herself, and offers them food. And these men see this beautiful woman offering food, and like, of course, we'll take the food. There's no danger. We fought a cyclops, there's no danger. Cersei turns these men into pigs, like, not metaphorically, like true, actual, dirty, gross pigs. And I feel like this is the best men are trash joke ever possibly. And one of my favorite things about this is that Greek myths love transformation stories. And if you ever listen to Epic the Musical, this comes in, but they're obsessed with the idea that magic reveals your true nature. And so in Ray's musical, Epic the Musical, Odysseus comes in and he's like, Where where are my men? She's like, What men? He's like, My men. I hear you, I hear you turned my men into pigs. What happened there? What's up? She goes, Oh, all I did was reveal their true form. Bitch turned them into pigs. I love it. So I'm sure they were already acting like pigs. Fair. I'ma believe her on this one. Don't doubt it. But before Odysseus does come up, because he did have an idea what was going on, Hermes shows up. And Hermes is true chaos in a person form. Like he is always going to enable your bad decisions, he's always gonna push you. He's texting you at 2 a.m. But he shows up and he pretty much goes, Hey Odysseus, take this like anti-witch drug, grab some weed. You know, here you go, and good luck. You can go fight her. Good luck. Incredible behavior from a god, truly. So Odysseus takes it, he confronts Cersei, they fight a little bit, Odysseus wins, so she tries to enchant him. This really beautiful, sexy, seductive witch tries to enchant this man who has barely seen a woman in 12 years. It should work, but it doesn't. And so finally, for the first time, someone sees her power and they aren't, they don't really have any feeling towards it. You know, like they aren't afraid of her, they aren't mocking her, bullying her, and they aren't immediately under her spell. They're just a person. And this is weirdly attractive to both of them. So, of course, they sleep together. There you go. I'm sorry, Epic fans, they sleep together. But this is a whole year of him in the back of his mind knowing that he wants to return to his wife to little Anne Hathaway. But my guy, you are living on an enchanted island with a goth, like a big titty goth girl goddess. Like, you're good. This is an emergency, you can hang out a little, so he's happy. But this is such a toxic situation ship, and the worst part about this is because he's staying on this island, he is dragging his friends along with them. Have you ever had a relationship, your friend's relationship, where you hate the partner, you hate the guy, but the friend is just dragging you along down in it? Yeah, that's this. All of his men, all of his crew stuck on this island while Odysseus keeps getting it on. So no one really wants to address it. Finally, after about a year, he does get to go. And so it's such a weird story about Cersei. And I think the reason, especially after Cersei the book, came back out, uh, the book by Madeline Miller, I think it's become so much popular again, and so many modern just readers can see themselves in her. And I'm not expecting that you've murdered people or turned men into pigs. I kind of wish, but the pig transformation. But I haven't figured out how to turn men into pigs yet. But the feeling of just being bullied and being overlooked and just being too weird, too much, just completely misunderstood, and then having that glow-up and suddenly becoming so powerful, but still so much of her power came from her being so desirable. If you've ever had a glow-up, lost weight, learned how to dress, whatever it is, you can feel the way that people treat you differently. And there is so much power in being desirable, and unfortunately, it sometimes feels like society gives more power to being desirable than it does actually being powerful. And I think Cersei shows a lot of that. She she's really exciting to people when she's insecure and lonely and sad. But the second she's self-sufficient and a little bit dangerous, just a little, then that's that's when she turns evil, and that's when people, myself included, dislike her. Now I will say myself included, just because of Scylla. Everything else I kind of get, but I'm still a Scylla girl through and through. And so this happens to women all the time. And that's unfortunately Cersei's entire mythology. So I don't think she survived thousands of years of her story being told over and over again just because she's a villain. I think she just represents so many people, and all of it feels dramatic, but is so memorable. And I think that's why she works so well as a character. So anyway, supports women's rights, supports woman's wrongs. I love a woman's wrongs. I love Scarlet Witch. I'm a girl. And yeah, I will see you guys next episode where we can keep on going through some characters or go back into the myth stories. But thanks so much for listening. Hopefully, you don't mind it being just me for now. I will hopefully get another co-host soon. But for right now, it is just me trekking along with this. And thanks guys so much for listening. Okay, bye.