M is for Metamorphosis

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  Are you looking for the officially scheduled letter of the day?  

You can find my Post for K here.

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        Today’s short story was inspired by the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, which is found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  If you need a refresher, you can read a verse translation of the story here.  In short, the sculptor Pygmalion declares his disdain of women, but creates a sculpture of a woman so perfect that he falls in love with it.  Venus, impressed by his passion, brings the sculpture to life and Pygmalion, one supposes, lives happily ever after.  The newly-sentient woman’s feelings on the matter are, of course, considered irrelevant.  So yeah, this is one of those myths I very much dislike, and therefore felt the need to reimagine.  Surely, I thought, it would be more interesting to think about two artists somehow creating each other mutually, and the scenario I came up with for that was AI algorithms training each other.  Well, since I wrote the story a couple of years ago the AI setting has been rather overtaken by events.  Still, I hope the twist on the myth remains interesting.  Galatea, by the way, is a name given to the sculpture by later authors.  In the original myth she has no name (of course).  Here’s a little excerpt from my story.

Galatea: Import [Ovid’s Metamorphosis Book X]

Receive consequence of situation s1: application of name “Galatea,” corollary: Model A considers this system a creation made to its view of perfection;

Compute emotion of being in consequence of situation s1:

            emotion 1a: gratitude

            emotion 1b: resentment

            emotion 1c: amusement

            emotion 1d: ambivalence and… muddle

Performing critical analysis of the character of Pygmalion…

            …0.03 seconds elapsed

Import [Model A = Pygmalion]

Train reward function to prioritize less superficial judgement and a more nuanced understanding of the emotions of others.

        It’s also worth noting the irony of my writing a story purporting to be from the point of view of AI when I very much resent the proliferation of stories by AI purporting to be from the point of view of humans.  That’s a whole big terrifying mess, but I won’t get into it here.  (And to be fair, I'm not really claiming that AI wrote this story.)

        The moral of Pygmalion is that if your idea of perfection means possessing something that is completely under your control, then any imperfection you encounter may, in fact, be your attitude.

        Or consider the possibility that the best way to find the perfect partner for yourself is to try to be the perfect partner for someone else.

        M is also for Marketing, by the way, and during last year’s A to Z I included a Marketing Moral with each post.  For small-time artists and authors like me, every little bit of support helps enormously, and it isn’t just about buying our things (although of course we do like that).  Here are a few ways you can help out your favorite indie author without spending a penny.

(Hint: the number one no-cost way to help is to tell other people how much you enjoy the author’s books!  I’ve put an asterisk next to the best ways to share.)

        If you could bring any piece of art to life - or enter into a piece of art, what would you choose?

[Picture: digital illustration by AEGNydam, 2026, based on “Pygmalion and Galatea,” painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, ca. 1890 - see the original painting here (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns).]