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bella-in-a-bag · 10 months ago

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Lore Olympus: a story of wasted potentials

Hello, everyone.

I want to talk about Lore Olympus and I would like to focus on a few elements of it, in order to prove my main point: that this story had a great idea, but a very poor execution.

Brief introduction: Lore Olympus is a webcomic you can read on Webtoon. It’s supposed to be a modern retelling of the classic myth of Hades and Persephone, but this version includes a lot more gods/heroes and figures from the Greek pantheon.

I know, I know. It seems extremely cool, right? And it should be! But if it was, I wouldn’t write a post called “a story of wasted potentials”: I would’ve called it “great comic, read it”.

And one post isn’t even remotely enough! I planned three posts, to properly explain why this story is such a waste of potential. Just think what a disappointment it is.

But before starting, let me clarify a couple things:

* I do not believe in sterile criticism. If I don't like something, I want to explain why I don't like it and show examples. You may agree or disagree with my points, I am not forcing you to think I am right: you have your own mind and you can think by yourself.

* I do not know everything, so if you think my points are not right, please tell me and explain your reasons properly and logically. Opinions may depend on many things, but logic and common sense are neutral and universally accepted.

* I don't give a damn about Rachel Smythe's bank account. I'm not her accountant, so I don't care about her money/fame/whatever. All I care about is if she's a good writer or not. And she’s not.

* I am talking about a story, not insulting your mother. Do not take my words as a personal attack. We all enjoy bad stuff, I like it too and saw a lot of people tearing apart the stuff I liked with their bare hands. And I thank them for that, because they helped me see past the rose-tinted glasses of a fan and notice the flaws. Thanks to them, I developed my critical thinking. And now I can still enjoy the bad stuff, even while pointing out why it’s bad.

* I will use all sorts of language and talk about all sorts of themes, so read at your own risk.

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A sterile retelling

As said before, Lore Olympus is a retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone adapted for modern times.

Retellings are always intriguing: you know the source material, so you want to see how the author re-shaped it, what concepts will be more prominent, how will the characters change, how and if the setting changes too. There are a lot of things to work on and the final product can be more comical than the original, more tragic, or more dramatic: it's up to the author to choose the direction their work should take.

However, there's one thing that should never change, in every retelling, and it's the essence of the source material.

Why are Greek myths still so important and loved to this day? Because the gods are extremely human. They have strengths and weaknesses, just like all of us. They fall prey to human emotions like love, happiness, jealousy, anger, hate and sadness. They plan revenge and forgive each other. They make mistakes and repent for their actions. There is no completely good or evil god.

So if you reduce the Greek gods to just "good" and "bad" guys, you're already making a huge mistake. Have you ever met someone who is entirely "good" or "bad" in real life? The world is full of nuances and shades of gray, so flattening them isn't good for your story. On the contrary, it proves how much of an inexperienced writer you are.

Therefore, this story isn't bad because “it's a retelling”. It's bad because the writing is boring and childish, there is no real plot and the characters are flattened to adapt to the stereotypical roles of “good guys”/”bad guys”.

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We’ve all been influenced by Christianity

This will probably be shocking for people who never read the Greek myths, but the Greek gods are not supposed to be role models.

Unlike Jesus, whose life and actions serve as a perfect teaching of what people should/shouldn’t do, Zeus’ actions (or any other Greek god’s for that matter) are not. Greeks didn’t look at Zeus and thought: “Ah yes, this is exactly what we should do: go around and fuck everything”.

Myths and gods are not supposed to teach you to distinguish between good and bad: they are explanations for things the Greeks didn’t know how to explain otherwise (like the change of seasons) or retellings of ancient events people transmitted orally that got mixed with legends/additions over time (like Hercules’ adventures).

Sure, some positive aspects/people get rewarded and some negative aspects/people get punished in these stories. But this is more due to “facing the consequences of a certain behavior”, rather than praise/judgment of it based on the Christian concepts of “right” and “wrong”. Also because there are cases like Medusa’s myth, in which she literally gets raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple and yet, Athena punishes her. Does that mean Athena is a negative goddess? The same goddess who also represents wisdom, intelligence and protects women’s arts? Can you better understand now when I say Greek goods are not entirely good/bad and even less moral teachers?

The thing is: Greek gods are like us. They are good and bad. They are assholes, but also kind and generous. They use humans for their own needs and, at the same time, protect them from dangers. They are powerful and powerless. And, let me repeat that, they are not moral examples to follow.

If you want a moral example for your story, do not use Greek gods. Use Jesus: Jesus is great for retellings. I mean, he’s a pacifist who wanted everyone to be equal, he treated women kindly in a world that saw them as females only, he literally wreaked havoc and whipped merchants who were mistreating a sacred place, he respected the State and wanted it separated from religion (“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's”). And despite his talking about peace and kindness and not being a dick and loving each other no matter what/who they are, he scared the authorities so much they had to stop him and even today people keep misinterpreting his messages as “respect this kind of people only”, “wars are allowed” and “yes yes religion needs a shit ton of money”.

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Straights everywhere

Lore Olympus would not have been very appreciated in ancient Greece. Not just because it’s full of clichès and the gods make no sense (we will talk about them in the next posts, don’t worry), but also because everyone is boringly straight.

Greek gods loved everything and everyone. Straight wasn’t the norm, bisexual was: the gods had tons of male and female lovers and no problem switching from one gender to the other, as long as they felt love/attraction/whatever.

And let’s not forget that the Greek myths are full of trans people too. And hermaphrodites. And asexuals. In other words, there was everything for everyone. And if there wasn’t a specific myth about that specific kind of love, then rest assured that Aphrodite protects all kinds of love.

So, how did Rachel Smythe show this variety in her retelling?

By making everyone boringly straight. Zeus has female lovers only, Apollo has nothing because he’s a loser and we get a lesbian kiss between two goddesses who were considered (mostly) asexual. Oh and let’s not forget that, according to Mrs. Smythe, the TGOEM was basically a cover for lesbians… so asexuals do not exist, I suppose.

But okay, maybe Mrs. Smythe didn’t feel at ease by writing more different sexualities besides heterosexual. That’s okay too, that’s her sensibility and I would never insult her for that. But in that case, please allow me to ask:

why write a story and use the Greek gods, notoriously known for their multifaceted sexuality?

why focus so much on the sexual aspect of these characters?

It’s as if Mrs. Smythe read the Greek myths and all she saw were romance and sex. Sure, they are part of those myths too, but if you have never read any Greek myth, do yourself a favor and read them: you will find that most of the time romance isn’t the focus at all. Even in the myth of Hades and Persephone, the main focus isn’t the romance: the main focus is Demeter's grief and how the agreement between her and Hades led to the change of seasons. The story is the focus, not the romance between the protagonists.

And no, despite what you think, the fact Hades and Persephone are uncle and niece isn’t important either.

But since I mentioned it, let’s talk about incest too.

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Incest with extra steps

Rachel Smythe changed a lot of relationships in her story. She said she wanted to avoid incest, apparently: the result was that she ended up writing incest with extra steps (which is way worse) or weirdly sexual relationships between people who, according to the Greek myths, are related but have no sexual relationship at all. And, maybe that’s just me, but this makes me a lot more aware of incest, than the actual myths.

Also because, if you read even one story from the Greek myth, I can assure you that incest is the last thing you will focus on. As it was for romance, the focus of the story is the story, the metaphor, the characters. Not how they are related.

But I can hear your question: okay, so if the focus was the story, then why incest was mentioned everywhere? Well, I found this pretty cool article that talks specifically about incest and ancient times. You can read it fully if want, but I would like to quote this paragraph that I think resumes pretty well why incest isn’t so important in myths:

“The incest prevalent among the gods must have set an interesting precedent in the ancient world when it came to family relationships. We must bear in mind, however, that the classical deities were not the models of morality and goodness that we associate with the word ‘god’ now. Instead, they were each independent characters with their own strengths and, more importantly, their own vices. An ancient Greek or Roman would not aim to emulate the actions or behavior of the gods in their own lives! It is nonetheless interesting to consider how the sexual deviance of these divine figures may have influenced the classical perception of incest.”

And these paragraphs which explain why incest was so common back then:

“Apparently, the ancient Greeks and Romans were not content to limit their fascination with incest to the realm of mythology, literature and drama. Laws from the two major city-states of Athens and Sparta indicate that Greeks were legally permitted to marry their own siblings, while in Rome, it was not uncommon for uncles to marry nieces, which was legalized after the Emperor Claudius married his brother’s daughter, Agrippina. It is important to remember, however, that just because incest was not prohibited by law, and even allowed in some cases, this does not mean that it was widely practiced or socially acceptable. In general, marriage in the ancient world was looked upon as a private affair between two families, and was often used to negotiate, forge alliances and gain power. Consequently, the state did not interfere directly in the arrangements, and was even willing to overlook certain incestum unions.”

Incest was common in myths because it was part of ancient life. And by adding it in the stories, the goal was not to teach people “Please, incest with your family members”, but to show another part of human life. As said before: greek myths were not examples to follow, but a way to explain (or just show) parts of life, nature and the world. Even small parts, not widely practiced by everyone (but still well known) like incest.

It’s pretty clear Mrs. Smythe knows nothing of this. She probably did zero research for her story, aside from a bunch of names of less famous gods/mythical characters and less-known trivia to add to make it look like she did her homework.

And I don't kow you, but I think this is insulting toward the original material, which is way more modern, complex and original than the supposed “modern retelling”.

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Characters overload

This is a very common problem and mostly depends on how inexperienced the author is: if they are young or have never written anything, they tend to add as many things as possible to make their world “full of stuff”, “alive” and “vibrant”. And so we have schools and works and places and a shit ton of characters and chapters dedicated to the backstories of these characters and the plot is put on stand-by to talk about a ton of other, unrelated stuff.

The same thing happens in Lore Olympus, especially in the first two parts. While reading, I kept asking myself why there were so many characters and so much stuff: lack of experience? No previous planning? A simple love for money? I don’t really know.

What I know is that this problem could’ve been easily solved by not adding all this unnecessary stuff. This story is a retelling of Hades and Persephone: the point of the whole thing is the story between them, so the focus should be on them, not on everyone around them.

And if there are other characters, their involvement should make sense for the plot. What was the point of Daphne? What did she add to the story? And Aphrodite and Hephaestus? Aside from a little contribution to the story, they did nothing. Same for Athena, who is just a cardboard. And what about the guys Persephone met in school? And what about the whole school?

The only characters who have a real purpose in this story are Hades, Persephone, Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Minthe and Kronos. Seven characters. The others are all cardboard figurines who pretend to be important while doing marginal shit or are nothing more than plot devices. As a result, we have a ton of people who are never fleshed out and the main characters are not fully fleshed out either, because Rachel Smythe spent too much time exploring all other characters, instead of focusing on the main ones.

What would I have done instead? Add a few surrounding characters who help move the plot forward and leave the rest as background characters or, even better, remove them completely from the story.

For example, why having Hephaestus, Aetna, Eros and Psyche, when Artemis can do everything they did, find out about Apollo's actions and defy him? This way:

Artemis would have more time to be fleshed out and become an interesting character

it would make more sense for the story that Persephone’s supposed bestie tries to help her/gets her back

it would make the story cleaner and smoother and the world less “crowded” with useless characters

it would add additional drama, because there's not a random character fighting Apollo, but his own sister

But nope, Artemis did some stuff and disappeared. Maybe she will pop up again in the future, maybe she won’t, but does that change the story? Not at all. Do I care if she pops up again? Not at all. I don’t care about her, just like I don’t care about any of these characters. They have the potential to be interesting, to be multifaceted, to make me care. But I don’t. I can’t. I don’t have enough time to care, because there are other things happening and other more important characters showing up and they’re not fleshed out nor interesting - and the story is going in a weird direction, like, wasn’t this supposed to be a love story?

But we will talk about it in the next post about Lore Olympus, which will be focused on the three characters who derailed the story from “romance” to “defeating evil villains”: Zeus, Apollo and especially Cronus. Oh, I have a lot to say about Cronus.

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In conclusion

Lore Olympus isn’t a bad story: it’s a disappointing one. It could’ve been a great rewrite, it could’ve been interesting and modern. It ended up being much older than the original myth.

And yes, I know it’s not over yet, but since we’re in the third act and we’re approaching the end (or at least what I hope it’s the end), I doubt it would suddenly change and become the modern, wonderful story it could’ve been. If it does, I would be the first to admit that… but I just doubt it.

This failure is even more disappointing for me, because I grew up with Greek myths. When I was a child, my father read me these stories. They’re the reason why I started reading too: because after a couple of stories, my father always fell asleep, but I still wanted to hear more - and, if he fell asleep mid-story, I wanted to know how it ended. So, while he was napping, I took the book and read these stories by myself. First just one, then a couple, then I moved to other books, then reading became my passion and I'm still an avid reader today.

So Lore Olympus offends me as a reader, because it insults my intelligence with a childish plot and does not focus on the real important parts of a myth, but on the most trivial ones. It pretends to be modern, feminist and innovative, but it does not understand the original material from which it takes inspiration. It does not make me feel anything for the characters, while I still remember fondly parts of these myths I read as a child, after more than 20 years.

And this is just what the “reader” part of me feels. Wait until the “writer” part of me talks. (spoiler: it's not what you think)

See you soon with the second part <3

(How about a coffee? ☕)

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#i havemt been tagges in one of your posts in years but im kinda glad cause this post is great #as an art historian in progress what ive seen of lore olympus is very disappointing #even if i havent read it (nor do i plan to lol)

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