Cupid and Psyche and Rose/Ten Feels

Psyche was the youngest daughter of some random king and queen, and was overwhelmingly beautiful. She was so beautiful that all the local men neglected Venus (I'm going with the Roman names), worshiping Psyche instead. This made Venus maaaad. She sent her mischievous son Cupid to go "take care of" Psyche... buuut he instead fell in love with her. Psyche's parents, concerned that no one actually loved their daughter (thanks to Venus), went to an oracle who told them that their daughter would marry a horrible monster. The distraught parents then offered up Psyche on a high cliff, and the Zephyr winds bore her off to a meadow. There Psyche found a beautiful palace, where disembodied servants took care of her and prepared her for her husband's night-time arrival. Her mysterious husband (Cupid) would arrive every night, tap dat, and then leave before dawn, always ensuring she would never discovered his identity. Psyche grew to love him, and soon became pregnant. But when her sisters were allowed to visit her, they became jealous and convinced her to sneakily view him with a lamp, just to ensure he wasn't, yaknow, a horrible monster. She does, but finds a gorgeous winged man, who she accidentally wounds with hot oil. Cupid flees, leaving her to chase after him. Psyche begins a quest to find Cupid, and after helping out the goddess Ceres is advised to go ask Venus for forgiveness. Venus instead tortures Psyche, then forces her to undergo several deadly tasks, which she completes with the help of the gods. But on her last quest, where she is fetching part of Proserpine's beauty, she opens the box and is cast into a deep sleep. Cupid, now fully recovered, escapes from Venus and flies out to rescue Psyche from the deep sleep. He then goes to Jupiter and begs his case. Jupiter is convinced and persuades Venus to deal with it. Then he grants Psyche with immortality, and she and Cupid are married officially at a feast of the gods. PHEW that's a long one.

I'm actually not a fan of love stories. This mostly stems from the fact that while I, like everyone, prefer happy endings in real life, I also tend to like dark, ambiguous endings in fiction. While I'm sure real-life accounts of love can be quite nice (especially for the people involved~), it usually ties up way too nicely in fiction. I prefer tragic romances far more, because I HATE BEING HAPPY. But don't you DARE suggest that Romeo and Juliet is at all a good example of any kind of love story; it's a very stupid story until you realize that Shakespeare actually intended it as a satire of sorts. "Greatest love story of all time"? It was a teenage crush lasting three days that resulted in four people dying. Now, I would describe the Season 2 finale of Doctor Who and explain how it's a good example, but I don't want to cry. Titanic is decent, I guess... mostly because Jack dies. What really makes a love story is the total inability to be together, whether due to death or being trapped in parallel dimensions. Don't give me none of that Happily Ever After nonsense; if everything was like a Disney movie I would be soooo bored. I could never identify a best love story, but I can say that any of the few good ones in my book most likely don't have a happy ending.

This made me laugh.

 

<-- THIS MADE ME CRYYY -->