a retelling

Storytelling is so powerful because it molds our lives, our senseless experiences and memories, into something rationale. It introduces the idea of cause-and-effect, that we have agency and control over the unpredictable, somehow steering through the unknown. It’s why I find such comfort in media and creative work; through narrative, I become a purveyor of fate. Everything we do can be charted and remembered by telling it convincingly enough.

So when it comes to a retelling, we’re able to shift the prism just a little. The light refracts differently, illuminating another facet that was previously hidden. When I journal, a lot of it is laying the groundwork for finding a new corner to run my thumb over, turn something over in my mind again and again and again until I find a new part of me. Often, as novel experiences and different frameworks of thinking come into my life, I am able to unfold my past, flatten my memories, reshape everything entirely. It’s the most rewarding part of creative work; the ability to turn your head just so and see the world differently because of it.

For these reasons, I find myself both awed and appalled by how people approach retellings. Particularly, having finished reading Ariadne and going through yet another runthrough of Hades, in reference to stories as pervasive as Greek mythology. As someone who grew up obsessed with the Percy Jackson series, I’ve always been drawn to anything that references and remakes these age-old stories of gods, titans, primordial forces. It is immensely satisfying to me to wonder how these myths have been preserved and altered throughout the centuries, asking “what elements were kept because society at the time demanded it? what. parts were changed?” It’s the world’s longest game of telephone, and you can’t help but be humbled by the realization that these stories will outlast you. Perhaps, they will be the last remnants of our existence to survive, evidence of our world’s consciousness. Human storytelling, at its core, has always been about retelling—building upon existing structures so as to one day construct a palace of ideas. The turrets added by one author, the stone road paved by another. All so that at the top, one can look to the horizon, and see that there are thousands of other castles to build towards, that there is a glittering and wine-dark sea for everything to return to.

This is all to preface how important I find retellings to be, and that I think they are an essential part of the human experience. It’s why I find fanfiction and fandom culture, with its own established headcanons that often diverge from the source material, to be so fascinating. Branching from some origin, we have iterated through stories to the point of unrecognizability, but retained in these plots and characters is a kernel of some truth. It is why I find especially inventive and modern interpretations of retellings to be so important; in them, we find values that we want to imbue into society now adhered to classic stories. We find solace in breathing life into stories that have been locked by tradition, mangled by something so sinful as stagnation. To keep a story from change is to doom it to a slow death.

As I continue my playthrough of Hades, I’m grateful for its diverse and modern representation and how its ludology marries the narrative with the roguelike gameplay. I am astounded by the game’s ability to continuously introduce new story beats and character facets through player decisions, and how in doing so, it provides a new way to experience stories that have been done to death. Of course, there is something to be said of surface-level representation in which the diversity doesn’t necessarily incorporate the cultural specificity and significance of its godly depictions. And Zagreus’ bisexuality can be seen as a question of intentional representation or a cop-out for player choice. Personally, I think it’s refreshing to see the representation feel rather natural; it doesn’t feel like a half-assed cash-out to incorporate diversity. This game is clearly crafted with vision, intention, and care; it would seem anathema to the game’s attempts to recharacterize greek myth to claim it isn’t performing an entire overhaul of its source material. Here, the retelling occurs on every level, in the core beats of the mythology itself, in the characterization of the gods, in the dialogue and world. It’s much more a focused story of family drama and mystery that uses these familiar characters in a way that makes you go “Oh! I know what they’re referring to! What a neat way to reinterpret it” than a rehash of mythology as you know it. And Zagreus’ continuous deaths in the Underworld becomes a mechanism to find out more lore. The player is rewarded for their repeated playthroughs with dialogue and story that reveals a truth, the game’s specific truth, that uses canon as a foundation. The mixture of stories interwoven with gameplay here becomes a jumping-point for something new altogether; Hades is compelling because it is inspired by greek myth and reinvents it.

In contrast, I just read Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, and I was left with lukewarm opinions towards how the book approached “retelling.” Namely that it didn’t bring anything new to canon, only that we are now experiencing these familiar stories through Ariadne as its captive, passive audience. I’m not saying that every retelling needs to completely overhaul the source material, nor necessarily have to apply its themes to modern times, but the lack of any commentary or reflection made the book feel stale to me. The female protagonists of the story are not given voice in this book; instead, they leave no influence on the people or world around them and only serve as vessels for a summary of myths. Here, the amalgamation of familiar content doesn’t feel refreshing for how they interact with one another, but rather tiring to read because we already know what’s coming. It is a “retelling” in the most literal sense: they are repeated to us without critical analysis. It isn’t enough anymore to just speak of events through an overlooked character’s perspective if that point of view does not bring with it a new facet of light, an interior world more nuanced and complicated than we were led to believe. Instead, this book makes the princesses of Crete feel shallow, constantly misguided, unlearning. I found it frustrating because while the book markets itself as a feminist retelling, it really only reinforces a narrative of women struggling and patriarchal dominance, as though the traditional myths we have been told are the only truth, are the events as they happened. What, then, is the purpose of a retelling if not to introduce new light, shifting the shadows that have become so familiar to us?

In all, I found it fascinating to place these two works, of two different mediums, in conversation with one another. Where one attempts to recharacterize and reshape Greek myth, the other mostly keeps to established canon. Is it enough to breathe new life into characters, or should we revive them entirely? And in this act of resurrection, surely, there must be changes we have made to their bones, their soul. Trying to parse out a singular truth is a fruitless endeavor, but how we bring these stories to modernity, forcing them to be reanimated and hauled from their graves, is what it means to find personal truths for each of us. For me, when I retell my memories, place them into a new context, it allows me to grow in new ways, find pathways once hidden. There is a shorthand that comes with using existing content, because we know what’s going to happen. We know how it ends. But, by revisiting our pasts with new understandings, maybe we can change the future.

Retellings beg the question of whether or not there ever is the right way to tell a story, or if the point of telling it once is to tell it again, and again, and again—ad infinitum—until someone else can take the burden on for us.