Some of you know that I'm not particularly fond of scary women, but you know what, I'm a big boy and I can handle anything an angry wench throws at me, but there is one bad woman in particular that has got my number- Medusa. This lady, man. For those who don't know the story, Medusa was one of three sisters with snakes for hair called the Gorgons, according to Greek legend. The worst part about Medusa is that she could turn you to stone. That's it. No questions asked. You so much as looked at her, and you grew stiff in more ways than one.
She's very scary, but you know what, sometimes if we want to understand someone then we need to know about their history. How did they become who they are? When it comes to spooky women, my extensive research has led me to the conclusion that it's always a man's fault.
Take Medusa, for instance, there are different versions of her story. In one version, she's a beautiful mortal who catches the eye of the god Poseidon, who then goes on to have her way with her. His jealous wife, Athena, then turned Medusa into a Gorgon. In another version, she's a priestess of great beauty who rejected all suitors. Then Poseidon (again) comes to mess with her, and the rest is history.
To top it all off, after being transformed into a Gorgon, which is not very nice, Medusa had to then fend off all kinds of dumbasses who wanted to claim her head as trophy. If you've seen the movies Clash of the Titans then you'd perhaps seen the classic scene where poor Medusa gets her head chopped off by Perseus (who cleverly used a shield to avoid looking directly at her). Then her head got paraded around and placed on a shield as a symbol of power and protection. Her image has retained this significance as anti-evil device to this day. Now, there might be other parts of the story that I may not be aware about, but from where I sit, the maiden got a raw deal.
In honour of Medusa, I decided to generate some AI art. In most images that you see of Medusa she's snarling at you. But she used to be a beautiful woman, and I imagine, at some point she smiled. So, I decided to soften her image by showing her beautiful smile. Here are the results. They represent a subset of 36 pieces generated plus other unsuccessful attempts until I got the prompt just right. Enjoy!
This one is very striking
So, what do you think? Have you turned to stone yet? She's beautiful, isn't she? I propose a toast, so I raise my goblet full of mead, "To lovely Medusa!"
Resources
Medusa on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa
Images generated by 