minthe-lover

[minthe-lover]

Hey hey, new Hades ii content dropped. LO might not give us a bear but Hades ii sure will with their Hephaestus design. (All the new designs are amazing btw).

I really gotta finish playing the first hades game but holy fucking shit I just saw hepaestus and oh god oh fuck I am so gay

his little tummy trail and.. just... god he's so fucking hot-

I can not wait till this game comes out.

[minthe-lover]

i had a post in the works talking about some of my personal life shit and the things i'm looking to do with rekindled this year to help make personal life shit easier aaand then i fell asleep for a nap and when i woke up Rachel announced that LO was ending in less than 10 episodes ??

sooo yeah i'm officially saving that post for later, because LO is officially ending, with an actual end date. It does mean that it's not ending at the start of Spring like my initial prediction, which is a bummer (because that would have been really cool LMAOOO) but it does mean it gets to go on long enough to resolve the current plot arc. As for every other plotline in the story... yeah, those aren't getting wrapped up, at least not in any way that could be satisfying.

For over the last year LO has been a series of "wait seriously???" and this is yet another, though it's kind of different this time. We knew the end was coming and practically begging for Rachel to pick an end date because for many, following along with this comic has become a Sisyphean task week after week. It's bittersweet in a way, but . . . I also kinda don't feel anything? Maybe it's just my 'tism, maybe it's just the fact that I'm so tired of following this series, but I just... don't feel joy, but I don't feel dread. It's ending and that's that. As all things come and go in life, some day there won't be any more LO, and that day is May 11th.

I will miss the weekly readalongs that I would do with pals, the memes we'd make out of the new material, but I don't think I'm going to miss the comic and everything it said and did. At this point reading LO feels like watching a horse struggle to breathe and you're just begging the farmer to put it out of its misery, but the farmer thinks "No no, it'll be fine! It'll get back up in no time!" and it's like... no, it desperately needs to be put to rest 💀

I still have my two drafts stowed away, both on opposing sides of the fence depending on how LO turns out-

-and now we finally have an end date on when those essays will be written.

I don't know how I feel yet about it ending. These are complicated feelings to sort through regarding a comic that's basically been my life for the last few years, even before I turned into a critic of it. I'm just glad there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And I'm glad even my "love to hate it" energy has been waning on it the past few weeks anyways so that the end of it all can feel as painless as possible LOL Don't get me wrong, there will still be plenty to discuss after the comic, I don't think the antiLO/ULO community will just disappear into a puff of smoke as soon as LO is over, but I think a lot of us are also equally relieved that the comic made it this easy to stop reading and that it now has an end point.

And most of all, I'm hoping that whatever ending the comic brings, even if it just winds up being the S2 finale all over again for the critics, is still satisfying for the fans who have stuck around with it this long. The people who have loved this comic through it all at least deserve a proper send-off and I really hope Rachel gives it to them.

As for me... I'm not going anywhere, but it's been nice to stuff the overflowing clothes of LO back into its drawer within my brain. I want to make room for other drawers, other things, other pieces of work that will undoubtedly bring me more joy and entertainment. I don't know what yet, but it's nice to know the drawers aren't overflowing anymore.

And that's all I'm gonna say on that.

[minthe-lover]

eeey was thinking about you and hope you're doing okay (: miss seeing you post but i get life is busy and ur probably living best off without lo anyways but just wanted to say hi !!! <3<3<3

Aw! thank you-

and yeah I've been busy as fuck with a variety of things and sort of fallen off with lore olympus. I might go back to it someday but I've lost interest and I've been getting into other fandom. I still see some stuff about it every now and then and it seems like it's still the ever growing shit show I remember haukfe

I may get back into it after it ends, rereading the whole things and giving my last words about it because I don't want to just leave my criticisms of lo like.. half done and incomplete. Plus I haven't been able to write as much analytical stuff recently so it would be a ton of fun.

Soooo I'll get back it eventually but right now lifes just been one thing after another and I don't have much energy for it.

[minthe-lover]

.... Rs is really just.. physically incapable of ever making demeter be actually in the wrong-

like holy fuck man she is always right ahfuekae

[minthe-lover]

its been forever so i just wanted to send an ask to say youre amazing and i hope youre doing well!!

awww! thank you so much!

I've been doing alright just life been keeping me busy. I've been dealing with family, school and medical stuff so haven't had much energy or inspo to write about lo. I'm hoping to start again especially with the new episodes coming out but we'll see!

[minthe-lover]

WAIT A MINUTE. Speaking of unresolved plot threads, we still don't know about Demeter's! Remember when Hestia asked her what happened in Attica during her banishment and then we're treated to a brief image from Demeter's perspective showing a child? We never go back to that!

Yep, we also don't know about what happened during Persephone's time in the Mortal Realm that supposedly led to a famine. There are literally so many plot threads that are being either set up or hinted at through vague flashbacks and at this point it feels like it's just Rachel trying to reference either obscure or otherwise deeper myths that she doesn't want to actually depict, just nudge us in the right direction of assuming she's depicted them (ex. the Eleusinian Mysteries which I'm like 70% certain was supposed to be that Demeter plot thread. But idk it could have also been the birth of Despoina.) It's all way too vague at this point and i feel like it's at least half-intentional on Rachel's part so she can hint at these myths in an attempt to say she "did every myth" without having to fully commit so she can easily backtrack/dump these plotlines later due to them having not been really established in the first place.

[minthe-lover]

The Mishandling of LO’s S3 Mi(n)season Hiatus - Part 3 2/2

ALRIGHT. THIS IS THE LAST PART. I MEAN IT THIS TIME.

I had completely forgotten how long the mi(n)season finale for S3 was, but I suppose it makes sense considering it was operating as the true cliffhanger before the 4 month break.

If you haven't read the first 3 parts of this episodic breakdown, please go check these ones out first:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 1/2

Alright, let's get this show on the road!

CAUTION: THIS IS PART 2 OF THE THIRD PART OF A 3 + 1 PART SERIES IN WHICH I WILL BE SPOILING MUCH OF EPISODES 251-253. THIS EPISODE CONTAINS TOPICS SURROUNDING SEXUAL ASSAULT. THIS WILL BE A LONG POST. BRACE YOURSELF.

We've gotten delusional Leuce. We've gotten erasure of the SA. We've gotten a complete bastardization of the original myths that this story got its claim to fame on. The dread has set in, and all I want to do is get off Mr Bones' Wild Ride. But we have one more stretch of mind-numbing track to go, because the reveal of Persephone starting winter was not the end, oh no. The true cliffhanger of this episode - upon which the fans and critics alike have sat on for 4 months - proves that when we think Rachel has gotten crazy enough in this circus she calls a "retelling", she manages to prove that yes, she can make things even crazier, and no, you will not have a good time.

Ironically, despite that opening, I actually have a lot less to say about this last part of Episode 253 than I did about the first part. Obviously there's no feasible way to top "Persephone causes winter", but this episode does come rather close in its absurdity. Ultimately, if these essays have proven anything, it's just how much Rachel retcons things, to such an extent now that she seems to be retconning or outright forgetting information that she established just a handful of episodes prior. You'll see what I mean here as we go along in this.

As soon as it's hinted at that Persephone has started winter, we cut away to Apollo. Because, as per LO tradition, we can't spend longer than 10-15 panels on a single scene.

Already this seems like... really odd framing.

This is Apollo. A character who has been a villain since basically the beginning of the comic, when he sexually assaulted Persephone. This is not something that's up for debate. This is not something that can be refuted, as much as the comic may try to erase it or twist it into something else.

And yet, the vibe I get from this is, "Misled but good-deep-down character being taken advantage of by a sinister being." This isn't the type of framing we should be seeing around a character like Apollo.

I mentioned it ages ago in my post about the SA erasure that it really feels like Rachel is slyly trying to make Apollo empathetic, from giving us an entire episode in his perspective to adding extra panels into the books to making Persephone weirdly reminiscent of feelings for Apollo that she never had.

One thing I also touch on in that post is how Apollo is framed against Zeus. Zeus is also a villain character for much of the series, and even after he's "redeemed", the fanbase still considers him largely to be an antagonistic force. So to have Apollo be trying to take down Zeus comes across as very "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and I really don't like seeing that framing when it's regarding a rapist.

And this scene largely feels the same. It feels like Rachel's trying to sway the audience into believing Apollo is like Draco Malfoy - a misled boy who "didn't know any better" and was being manipulated by a greater evil. If you haven't guessed by now, that "greater evil" is Ouranos.

Why is it Ouranos? In my opinion (so take this with grains of salt) this is because they need to somehow "one up" Kronos and give Persephone and Hades a tangible force to fight against, to draw a clean line in the sand between "good" and "evil" so that we, the audience, will be forced to categorize Persephone and Hades as "good" and someone else as "evil".

But really, why Ouranos? We're told that he manipulated Gaia to use her powers in an attempt to create "hierarchy" (whatever the FUCK that means, I don't think Rachel really understands how societal hierarchies are created) but there's NOTHING to imply that he was tyrannical or "evil" in the same way that Kronos has been depicted. Rachel's basically submitting this whole plotline to "well it's in the prophecy" but there was NOTHING dictating that she had to try and write a "prophecy" storyline to begin with. So as a result, it feels very tacked on and it's hard to tell what the point is, it really just seems like Rachel watched too much Marvel one week and decided that Lore Olympus - a fantasy romance - needed a big bad.

And by extension it feels like Apollo is being used as a pawn in this dynamic. By making him subservient to an "evil" force, it means he can labelled as definitively "evil", and thus it gives Rachel a vehicle to have Apollo taken down - or even perhaps empathized with much like in the Draco Malfoy sense - without having to touch the SA plot that she set up and never resolved.

He was evil before, but he wasn't the kind of evil that Rachel could write around. Because she doesn't know how to write SA or give her female characters any sense of retribution or agency. We've seen that already with her robbing Demeter of winter and Persephone of her feelings regarding the SA. There was never going to be a chance in hell she was going to be able to write herself out of a plotline she's been procrastinating for 4+ years.

That said, this is just a vibe I get, so I'm not gonna speak on it much more. This is one of those "we're really not gonna know until the comic returns" situations.

Once again, Rachel's trying to make Apollo seem like a "master manipulator", but she's also trying to make him seem like he's the one being manipulated, but she's ALSO trying to write him as a big dumb idiot who literally can't grasp consent. Apollo has to be one of the most inconsistently written characters in the entire comic, and yes, that includes Persephone. Again, it just goes to show she hasn't been able to fully commit to the SA plotline because Apollo's motivations and intelligence levels change with each passing episode. Sometimes he's being nefarious and plotting to overthrow the King, other times he's literally asking a nymph if she'd be willing to cut her hair to look like Persephone. The comic can't choose and so we, the audience, can't tell why Apollo is even still here.

Again, this is SUCH bizarre framing. If we're to believe that Persephone has been "cursed" by no longer being able to create Spring, only Winter, then does that make Ouranos and Apollo the heroes here? Because Ouranos is right, if Persephone is causing winter, that's going to kill the mortals, which is the complete OPPOSITE of what she's trying to do. So what are we left with? A plotline where Apollo and Ouranos might actually have a point about how she rushed into a marriage with the King of the Underworld and sacrificed everything that gave her agency and power - both metaphorically and literally - in the process?

Again, this is why Rachel fundamentally misunderstands the original purpose of The Hymn to Demeter and how she's, by and large, made her retelling worse in an attempt to be "subversive". It puts the plot and character motivations in a place where it's hard to tell what the story is trying to say, I can understand if maybe Rachel's trying to write a conflict where Apollo uses this information to manipulate her, but it doesn't help that knowing EVERYTHING we know about the H x P relationship within the context of this comic, Ouranos has a point that Persephone's union with the King of the Dead is problematic. It might not be the same "problematic" that we're all thinking of, but it really just reinforces the criticisms of this relationship. Is the comic really asking us to say "fuck the human race, they're in love" ??? Because that's NOT what the point of the original myth was in the slightest and it's just a really weird place to put your audience in.

It's 4:45 AM right now as I'm typing this so my thoughts are a little scattered, but all this really feels like is an attempt on Rachel's part to create a new "big bad" for her to use as a distraction from the SA plot and to give Persephone a "flaw", but that "flaw" really only takes away the strength of another character.

Oh, and by the way? This whole "you need the fertility goddess" thing? THE COMIC HAS ALREADY TOLD US THIS WON'T WORK BECAUSE SHE HAS TO BE IN LOVE WITH APOLLO FOR HIM TO BE ABLE TO USE HER POWERS. SO RACHEL'S ALREADY WRITTEN HERSELF INTO A CORNER THAT SHE'LL EITHER HAVE TO SOLVE OR RETCON ENTIRELY. DO YOU SEE WHY THIS IS SO ABSURD???

This line is kind of jarring because we had the Kassandra prophecy at the beginning that talked about the herb, but the prophecy Ouranos is talking about is the one about the sons of kings overthrowing their fathers. I definitely forgot about that one for a hot second reading this, I didn't get how this sequence related to the poisonous plant thing because they're framed as completely separate prophecies. It's not like Kassandra said in her initial prophecy that this plant would be used to overthrow a King again, she just said that the plant still existed and Psyche figured it out on her own that Apollo was gonna use it on Zeus. IDK that's just something that bugged me (also again, why are they believing her prophecies when we literally just had it established an episode ago that no one believes her prophecies LMAO)

Because if it wasn't enough for LO to have one Evil Robot Jeff Bridges villain, it had to throw in another one for good measure. It's just a line of dads and grandpas going back centuries waiting for their turn in the ring with Persephone.

lmao I love this 'hint' at Apollo being the one to write the note from Hebe and leave the cupcake for Zeus. Like... duh? We already put that together as SOON as Psyche said gasp "Zeus!" and then it showed Zeus eating the cupcake while Psyche called him on the phone telling him Apollo was gonna try and harm him. This sequence of 'revealing what really happened' doesn't work here because we've already been told what happened.

Except we know he won't. There's no tension to this whatsoever.

That's Hebe by the way.

It's odd that Apollo is embracing this prophecy when he has a kid himself. He literally has a fully grown son in this comic. I guess Apollo forgot about that, just like Rachel.

And that's it. That's the midseason finale. Ouranos is the new twist villain and Apollo is... whatever the fuck Rachel plans on doing with him.

Now, this leads me to my original motivation to create this series of reviews. It spawned from a conversation we were having in the Discord, discussing what it must be like to be a free reader who hasn't paid for the FP episodes that are still behind a paywall. This is not standard for LO, it hasn't kept FP episodes behind paywalls in the past during long hiatuses like this. I can even prove this with screenshots from the Wayback Machine, during the last midseason hiatus:

(whoof, that rating has dropped. I know it doesn't seem like much but for a series with millions of readers, by law of averages it takes a LOT of poor ratings to pull that number down compared to a series that only has a few readers)

Point is, this is the first time Rachel/WT have done this. Now, I will make this perfectly clear, I don't think this was a decision that was purely on Rachel. WT controls much of the backend like paywall costs, release dates, etc. so I'm not gonna go pinning this on her.

However, I do think this is a completely bungled attempt at trying to get people to pay up. LO has been dropping in views steadily but surely since the midseason break for S2. It's not pulling in the peak numbers that it used to, while it does still pull in a lot more views and money than other series on the platform, it's nowhere near the juggernaut that it once was in terms of record-breaking numbers, and I think WT knows that. So this really comes across as a stunt to get readers to FP, assuming that people will HAVE to pay if they're left waiting for 4 months.

But here's the flaw in that logic - people are still going to have to wait 4 months anyways. Reading those 3 locked episodes, especially all at once, will still leave you in the same place as you were beforehand.

And it shows in the numbers that people aren't falling for the bait.

Again, 17k likes still isn't anything to sneeze at for a FP episode, but it's still just barely above the new average that LO has gained over the past two years. I remember a time when those like counts would be 30k+. And now, despite being on break 4 months with these episodes still locked behind a wall, it's barely able to scrap by its new average of roughly 14-15k, and that average is when episodes are actually updating.

Obviously like counts = / = viewcounts but when they fluctuate, we know that the views have to be as well by extension, at least to some extent, and that's still engagement that's dropped of in and of itself. And we can also see a rough look at how the views have dropped off through the comic's landing page. Now, it's hard to compare data because there was a time when WT actually didn't give follower/view counts on the landing page (this was also when the like count capped at 99k) but we can still see a downslide in growth very visibly in the view count, sub count, and most of all, the rating, which has been steadily dropping for years now.

August 2020:

May 2021:

November 2021:

March 2022 (don't get confused by the 995 million, this is where view count comes in):

September 2022:

March 2023:

Today (October 24th, 2023):

Again, there's no way to get a true clear picture of LO's stats beyond this surface level data, but it does show that LO is just not getting the rapid growth it used to. People are moving on from it. And while its view and sub count are steadily increasing (albeit slowly for a webtoon that gets as much marketing as it does) the average rating is going down. It's clear that the majority of LO's growth happened between 2018 and 2020, which would make sense as the series was still relatively new compared to how it's become old news today, and Webtoons experienced a boom in 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdowns - a boom that they think still applies in the year 2023, judging by their attempts to import as many series onto the platform as possible and capitalize on an audience that just isn't there anymore.

All of this leads me to wonder - what's in it for free readers after all this? Because if you recall from where we started, the cliffhanger they started on was Hades - possessed by Kronos - attempting to strangle Persephone, a cliffhanger that was resolved within seconds for FastPass readers. If they don't FastPass after that, they'll be met with numerous reveals that don't even make sense for the plot as a whole (such as Leuce making up the text messages).

Again, I don't want to claim that this was a decision on Rachel's part, but it really seems like either she didn't plan this hiatus, or her inability to write naturally without the need for addictive-style formatting as a crutch made it so that the free readers would be given the worst midseason premiere ever.

And what are we, the FastPass readers, going to return to? There are still so many plot threads that have been left unresolved, multiple villains being setup, and as far as Webtoons and Rachel have revealed during NYCC, LO is supposed to end by the spring. That's 20-30 weeks TOPS, which isn't exactly a whole lot of wiggle room for a writer like Rachel who's chronically bad at pacing and getting to the point of the plots she's established.

I know there are so many readers right now anticipating the return of this comic, some of whom genuinely believe this comic is "better than ever" and others who are critical of it but hope that the comic will come back in a better state after the hiatus. But right now there's so much evidence to support the contrary - that LO is about to come back in as bad, if not worse, condition than it was in when it left.

And through all this, for a comic that's finally ending after 5 years, I have to ask - where is the hype? Why are Webtoons and Rachel keeping the finale of this comic behind closed doors? Where's the promotional art, the hinting at what's to come, the attempts to generate any semblance of excitement for the readers who are still left after clinging onto this ride for 5 years? Why were the fans themselves barred out of their own communities during the majority of the hiatus?

And that just leads me to an even more discouraging thought. This is not meant to accuse Rachel or make assumptions. It's simply a thought that I had while thinking about what the series could possibly pull upon its return, so please, take this with MOUNTAINS of salt. It's one thing I hadn't considered with the knowledge that LO will be returning with 3 episodes still behind a paywall, a 'buffer' in and of itself for Rachel to work off of.

Rachel only technically needs one episode ready for the release. Not three as she normally would if the episodes had been unlocked like in previous hiatuses. That's not including whatever buffer episodes she would need beyond the upload schedule, but she's proven to be chronically bad at maintaining a buffer as well since day one.

We haven't seen any promotional art. No hinting. No hyping beyond what's been seen for her "Rachel Smythe Presents" series.

With all that in mind, I have one question to leave this on:

Has Rachel even started working on Episode 254 yet?

[minthe-lover]

The Mishandling of LO's S3 Midseason Hiatus - Part 1

So Lore Olympus' return is right around the corner, and I realize I've never actually talked about the S3 midseason finale. I think I said I was going to, but then I just sorta didn't, probably because I was still reeling in the absolute absurdity of it for weeks afterwards. In hindsight, I should have written about it back when it was still fresh, but I feel like I can do it just as much - if not more - justice writing about them in hindsight, now that they've had time to sit and I've seen what Rachel and WT are clearly planning to do after the comic ends (whether or not they succeed... that's a different story).

CAUTION: THIS IS PART 1 OF A 3 PART SERIES IN WHICH I WILL BE SPOILING MUCH OF EPISODES 251-253. THIS EPISODE CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE INVOLVING STRANGULATION. THIS WILL BE A LONG POST. BRACE YOURSELF.

So one of the things that really motivated me to finally talk about this was a conversation that happened recently in the ULO Discord - the realization that there are many readers who still don't know what happened after the free to read finale cliffhanger.

Y'know, the one where Hades gets possessed by Kronos and attempts to choke Persephone-

Now, awful dark jokes aside about how Persephone frankly deserves to have her balloon head popped, this was a wild cliffhanger to leave on for free readers, but the strange thing this time around - unlike with the previous midseason hiatus - is that this is where the cliffhanger has stood for free readers for the past 3 months, and it will be 4 months by the time the series returns.

And frankly... this just highlights a huge problem with LO's writing, because this cliffhanger? Like all the others, it's literally resolved within the next episode. The one that's currently under the FP lock.

Man, isn't it a little fucked up that we only ever get trigger warnings when it's concerning Persephone? Where was the warning for when Minthe got turned into a plant? Where was the warning for the entire episode that depicted Hera's trauma from Kronos and how it's still affecting her in the present? It's always either the Persephone, Hades, or Apollo focused episodes that get the trigger warnings, they couldn't care less about the violence being done onto other people in the story.

Anyways. Episode 251 opens up by reminding us, oh yeah, Kassandra exists!

Remember back in Episode 227 when Psyche stole Apollo's USB drive (and by "stole", I mean she picked it up off the ground where Apollo had conveniently dropped it?) And they found a folder with a picture of Kassandra? Well, Episode 251 opens by reminding us of her... 24 episodes later. SEVEN MONTHS OF REAL LIFE TIME, LITERALLY THE LENGTH OF BOTH THE SEASON 2 AND SEASON 3 MIDSEASON HIATUSES COMBINED-

Anyways, I guess Rachel finally figured out what she was gonna do with Kassandra after all that time, and it's... really stupid.

But wait, don't worry about that yet, because only the comic's opening reminds us of Kassandra, we gotta establish the title first and get back to that cliffhanger from before, the one that free to read users have been waiting 4 months to see.

(pay attention to the episode titles here btw, it's probably one of Rachel's lamest 3 parter title sequences yet)

Turns out Kronos is still intent on getting his hands on Hera, even though we've literally already seen Kronos haunting Hera. Is he just a ghost? A hallucination of her traumatized mind? We don't know, it never really explains itself. So Kronos is still looking for Hera.

(kinda weird that we're getting all these redrawn fullbody angles of Hades-possessed-by-Kronos choking his noodle-bodied wife who is doing literally NOTHING to actually fight back besides yelling at him, but okay.)

Turns out Hades isn't really hyped about this choking game going on between his dad and his niece wife, so he goes full on "release the beast" Naruto mode on his ass.

And that's it. That's literally the conflict resolved. The cliffhanger that free to read users were left with over the 4 month hiatus is resolved literally within a handful of panels and Hades just "believing enough" to save his wife.

And then that's just it, it cuts away, and we get this sorta awkward conversation between Persephone and Hades (now himself again) over the fact that he just choked out his wife.

The scene transitions to Hades waking up in his bed (literally that last shot of him and Persephone was it, it transitions immediately). I'm trying not to use up Tumblr's 30 image posting limit so I'm not posting the 3 fucking copy pasted panels of this that just involves Hades waking up, use your imagination lmao

There's literally no actual conversation here, no amount of Hades asking "what happened", somehow despite his possessed state he remembers everything so succinctly that he jumps right to demanding Persephone to see her neck.

(literally removed the panel of Persephone saying "Hades..." because these types of "let me do the thing" "Hades :(((" "let me do the thing" exchanges are literally just Rachel trying to hit her panel limit, once you start seeing these '3 panel' exchanges that copy paste the same shit over and over again, you can't unsee them and you realize this is why so little happens in the comic as a whole, because it's just constant repetition of dialogue and reaction panels to pad out the episodes).

And then we get what I like to call "guy in a position of power manipulating his more vulnerable partner into pitying him without actually apologizing":

No for real, I didn't cut out a single thing from this exchange aside from a couple copy pasted reaction panels, this is the entire conversation. Hades doesn't apologize, he doesn't ask Persephone if she's okay, he just pulls the "you can leave if you want toooo :(((" baiting Persephone into further trapping herself with this jackass. SHE'S the one who's stuck with HIM.

Like, obviously Hades wasn't the one who choked her, that goes to Kronos, but he doesn't even ask her if she's okay. He just looks at her moldy ass bruises and immediately goes "YOU CAN LEAVE IF YOU WANT TO I'M A MONSTER OH GOD-" and then of course she's having to comfort him which is fine but where's the balance? It's always Persephone having to comfort him and listen to his trauma and we never get Hades doing the same for her - the times we do get Persephone talking about her trauma and struggles with him, he always finds a way to make it about him.

Hades proceeds to talk more about his childhood and more of the shit he's already talked about multiple times before, I don't even need to go over it at this point.

That said, Rachel does remember to bring his stutter back. When's the last time he stuttered? 200 episodes ago ?? (literally I don't remember, it's like when he used to twist his napkins, he doesn't have these character traits consistently anymore).

THERE we go, finally some semblance of an apology. It came after more trauma dumping, but at least it's something-

Oh for fuck's sakes.

This is literally such generic "you've come so far!" motivational jargon. And it's made even worse in LO because what has Hades overcome exactly? Just a reminder, here are the things we've seen in Hades' backstory since he was rescued by his brothers:

He started a business in the Underworld that he's been operating with slave labor and profiting off ever since as a tyrannical oligarch

He entered a multi-century-long affair with his brother's wife, his own sister in law

He cost Demeter - Persephone's own mother - the role of Queen of the Mortal Realm and Persephone still does not know this.

He abused and neglected his adopted son - who was literally abandoned on his doorstep - for hundreds of years and used his role as his adopted father to guilt trip his son for getting "special treatment".

He never took responsibility for the financially dependent relationship he created between himself and a lower class nymph and tried to bribe her out of his life as soon as he fell for a 19 year old intern

HE LITERALLY FELL FOR THE 19 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER OF A WOMAN WHO HE HAD SCREWED OVER AND PRETENDED LIKE THAT WOMAN WAS IN THE WRONG FOR NOT APPROACHING HIM DURING THE EVENTS OF THE ACT OF WRATH, AND THEN HE HAD THE GALL TO PROPOSE TO HER DAUGHTER RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER WHEN SHE BASICALLY HAD NO OTHER CHOICE BUT TO SAY YES.

Everything he's legitimately had to overcome involving his trauma has gone completely ignored until pop in comes the pink cinnamon roll girl to solve all his problems and do for him what apparently even a therapist couldn't do (because haha he thinks his therapist is a hack.)

Persephone saying "look at all you've done" should be a reminder of all the crimes Hades has committed against people weaker than him, but instead it's used as a term of endearment, because Persephone literally got with him when she was 19 years old. And apparently the whole "eternally 19" thing applies to more than just her body, because even now, 10 years later, she's still lacking all the smarts and self-awareness and maturity to realize marrying this man was a mistake.

At this point Persephone isn't too naive or stupid to realize what she's gotten herself into, she's just a terrible person who's entirely complacent in Hades' bullshit and frankly, they deserve each other.

They literally keep talking about him for several more panels. Hades literally whines on and on about how much of a failure he is, how he feels like he failed the child who's trapped in Tartarus, and then of course Persephone tells him "no honey, you're the most important being in this process!" and she's LITERALLY STILL JUST TALKING ABOUT HIM, THIS WHOLE EPISODE IS PERSEPHONE TALKING ABOUT HOW WONDERFUL HADES IS, NOTHING ELSE HAPPENS. HAVE YOU NOTICED WE HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN KASSANDRA YET ?? HAVE YOU NOTICED THE COLD OPEN FOR THE EPISODE HASN'T BECOME RELEVANT YET ?? I'VE ALREADY HIT THE 30 IMAGE LIMIT AND I HAVE TO START CUTTING STUFF OUT-

Persephone and Hades talk about how they should name the interloper, but they don't come up with anything before transitioning to Leuce and Thetis.

And y'all, this has gotta be one of Rachel's worst cases of backpedaling in the entire series. You thought how she turned Leuce - Hades' first wife - into a homewrecker was bad? You thought it was absurd the plot tried to turn Leuce into Minthe 2.0?

Remember those text messages that Leuce and Hades sent between each other? The ones we never saw but kept getting alluded to? Well of course we couldn't have Hades actually text Leuce during Persephone's banishment, because then that would mean he isn't 100% loyal to his little pink cinnamon roll "qween", so what was the next best thing? Kronos possessing Hades and texting Leuce like so many people - even fans - assumed? No. It's worse.

The text messages... weren't real.

This literally makes no sense. First of all, it's once again Rachel creating drama out of "haha woman delusional!" much like she did with Minthe. But second, it literally doesn't make sense after what we've seen leading up to this.

Leuce didn't just talk about Hades texting her. She went to his office, intent on seducing him, with the knowledge of these text messages being real. She even TALKS ABOUT THESE MESSAGES WITH HADES.

But of course, they were interrupted before Hades got a chance to respond, so this was convenient enough for Rachel to try and pull off some 'twist' where she could easily absolve Hades of "cheating" on Persephone (again, the girl he only knew for like 1-2 months) but also not have to deal with the weird logic of Kronos possessing Hades just to text some random nymph.

This is absolutely one of the most absurd retcons Rachel has ever tried to pull to get herself out of the corners she writes herself into.

Now the episode is still going and FINALLY, it gets to Kassandra, after teasing her at the beginning of the episode and proceeding to do a whole lot of nothing throughout the entire thing.

This has to be one of the funniest panels in the entire comic, bar none. Rachel's gotten worse at drawing men despite making this comic for 5 years and having plenty of opportunity to improve, and he literally just looks like the fucking Amazing Bulk, haunting this poor mortal woman with his very presence.

So yeah, it turns out that the "curse" Kassandra suffers from in this "retelling" is, rather than having prophecies no one believes (or at least, if she does, we don't see that), she sees Apollo and no one believes her. Again, Rachel takes these weird liberties with the original myths that don't make a whole lot of sense all for the sake of seeming original, but whatever, Rachel hit her panel limit for the week, because that's essentially where the episode ends, with Apollo greeting Kassandra. As quickly as it was shown at the beginning of the episode, the one part of the episode actually featuring Kassandra is wrapped up in literally 7 panels.

THOUGHT VOMIT TIME

So with Episode 251 now summarized and out of the way, I really wanna talk about how this episode operates as the first FP episode after the midseason finale for free readers.

Despite the fact that it was a 4 month break and despite the fact that WT has always still released these episodes for free on schedule - with the idea that every reader will be up to date with the current content and can start fresh with a new set of FP episodes when it returns - this time around Episodes 251-253 have remained locked.

And I say Webtoons specifically because as far as I know, the creators typically don't have control over this type of decision. From what I've heard from other Originals creators, it's often WT who decides shit like coin costs, FP release dates, etc. This is why during hiatuses the numbers on the episode unlocks never actually align with their real return dates, sometimes they completely undershoot and reset, sometimes they overshoot and tell people LO is coming back in January despite the fact it's been confirmed it's coming back in November. This isn't Rachel's doing. It's clearly Webtoons trying to squeeze as much money out of this series as they can so they think the 4 month hiatus will motivate people to pay... but even the newest episode is still only sitting at 17.9k likes, which is just slightly above the average amount the FP episodes normally wind up sitting at by the time they're unlocked after 3 weeks, but this has been after four months. The hiatus of the comic and its communities absolutely put LO out of sight, out of mind.

That said, I don't know what this means for the series' return, if it'll have 6 FP episode unlocks going forward or if it'll just return with one new FP episode and Episode 251 unlocking for free readers, but holy shit, if that's the case, this is gonna be a shitty way to return from 4 months of nothing. The cliffhanger from 250 implies so much more than what it ends up being and it's, again, highlighting a fundamental issue within LO - it operates purely on a week to week basis, producing episodes on the fly, and concerning itself more with filling up its panel quota so that it can get readers from beginning to end when they can drop some new cliffhanger that likely won't lead to anything or will be completely resolved within three swipes of the next episode. Season 3 has been especially egregious with this and it's clear Rachel has run out of track to run on.

There is speculation that perhaps the reason the timing of this cliffhanger is so off is because Rachel didn't know the hiatus was going to happen and WT forced her on it. That said, it's not something anyone can really confirm besides Rachel. I wouldn't blame her for taking the time she did considering she was attending both NYCC and SDCC this past summer, and it's hard enough for her to keep up with any sort of buffer to begin with, so those conventions would have definitely resulted in episodes getting postponed anyways.

What I'm really interested in seeing is the reception when the comic returns. Hiatuses like this are brutal for traffic, it's incredibly difficult to get every single person who you started the hiatus with to return after it's done. It's not uncommon for comics to come back to only a fraction of their readerbase - and that's where the marketing comes in.

S3's return has been incredibly undermarketed. I've talked about it already but I'll mention it again here - they have done nothing to hype up LO's remaining audience for the ending of LO. Not only has the fact that the comic is even entering its final part been mentioned on either Rachel's or WT's social media pages, but the fan groups have been shut down for almost the entirety of this hiatus, shutting fans away from discussing the comic, making predictions, and just participating in their most active and direct part of the fandom. This was an absolutely absurd decision on Rachel's part, I don't know if this was her trying to shield herself from criticism or if she genuinely just doesn't give a shit about her fanbase anymore, but it's not a good thing if the only active groups to be found online during a comic's hiatus - it's final hiatus before the series ends - are the critical ones. Fans of the comic should not have to find out about its ending from me. I know I've got a way with words, but it's not fair to the long-term fans of this comic that they're being shut out by the comic's own creator, simply because she either doesn't care or is just so afraid of the critics that she'd rather hurt her relationship with her fanbase by shutting them out just to maybe shut out any critics who are nearby.

I don't know what the reasoning is and I don't know how it could have been beneficial. But that leads us to the other theory, one that I can see as plausible-

I don't think Lore Olympus was supposed to end here.

We've talked about this theory before, but to reiterate - it's been speculated for a while (prior to the news at NYCC that the comic would be ending) that S3 of LO wasn't going to be the final season as so many people had been assuming based on past info. There was no indication or marketing implying this was the final season - meanwhile webtoons like City of Blank were marketing their final seasons from day 1 of the premiere - and there were loads of new plot threads being established in S3 that we knew couldn't possibly be wrapped up by the end of the season. Case in point, it took Rachel seven months to get back to Kassandra, and while during that time she's rushed plotlines that shouldn't have been rushed (the wedding) other plotlines have proceeded to drag at a snail's pace or been dropped altogether. The speculation that S3 wasn't going to be the final season was plausible.

But now, suddenly, LO is coming to an end, likely within the next 20-30 episodes, and neither Rachel or Webtoons have said a word about it. No announcement post, no hype, no promotional art, no statement from the Webtoons VP of what to be excited for (which he's done before). It seems like they're either intentionally trying to bury it to keep people from panicking while Rachel retreats into the shadows to hide from the crimes she's committed, or they're intentionally keeping the ending of the comic unannounced so they can backpedal on it later to generate hype over it "deciding to stick around". Chances are, it'll be based on how the return of the series goes, and whether or not it's able to get the performance numbers back in the green.

I do not think it will. As I said already, hiatuses are already notorious for destroying built up traffic, especially on Webtoons where people (many of whom are teenagers and children) are conditioned to expect regular content on a schedule. But there's one other thing that's been bugging me - there hasn't been a shred of promotional art. We're currently less than a month away from the return of LO and not only are Rachel and WT being incredibly hush hush about it, but all the art Rachel has put out has been largely on her Blue Sky, where she has the smallest following, and none of it is exactly indicative of being "promotional art", rather just random sketches and doodles that she's doing on her downtime. Everything else has been promos for her books, SDCC/NYCC, of course, Rachel Smythe Presents, her next venture which she has been hyping up more than the actual return or ending of the comic that made her famous in the first place.

At this point, I'm not even fully convinced she's even started working on the next episode yet, let alone any sort of buffer. If anything, she knows that she's coming back to the series with 3 episodes still locked under FastPass, so all she'll need to technically have ready for launch is one new episode. Rachel has never been good at building buffers, not even in the beginning when she apparently started off with 2-3 episodes of buffer. Even when her comic is nearing its end, she's not learning any lessons, she's not setting herself up for success. And I'm not setting myself up for the hope that the series could possibly come back any better than it was when it left - if anything, I think we're about to see Rachel and the comic outdo itself once again on how bad it can possibly be.

And we still have two more episodes to talk about, which includes the cliffhanger for FP readers that we've been waiting four months on. Part 2 and 3 of these FP episode analyses will be going up as soon as I can get them done, ideally I'll have all three parts done before it returns so we can start off fresh with the newest episode.

Buckle up folks. Pour yourself a drink. We're gonna need it.

[minthe-lover]

Seeing people defend LO with takes like, "Well who cares if it disrespects an entire culture's religion, religion is the root of all evil and it's stupid oppressive make belief bullshit" makes my skin crawl and it's exactly why we need to be allowed to criticize works like LO for appropriating and erasing the cultural significance and spiritual beliefs behind the stories they're attempting to replace.

[minthe-lover]

LORE | REKINDLED EPISODE 33 - 1-3-4-3-4-0

< Previous episode | Next episode releases October 21st! >

Hades has a plan and it's totally 100% not going to blow up in his face-

[minthe-lover]

damnnnn rs is finally pulling the plug on lo. I'm really curious to see how bad the ending is gonna be cause... she just doesn't have enough time to finish the million plot lines she's set up well. To be far I don't think she could finish anything well but.. still very curious.

Once Lore olympus is done I'm definitely gonna reread the whole once it's over.

Lore Olympus will be officially ending in 2024.

While this is vague both in Rachel's responses (as always) and the actual specific timeline, considering this is the final 'arc' and most of Rachel's arcs rarely go any longer than 12-15 episodes, I have the sneaking suspicion she's going to try to wrap this up by March/April. That's just a prediction, mind you, it could just as well go on throughout the entire year of 2024.

That said, it's wild to see it finally confirmed, like a weight has finally been lifted of our shoulders. Many of us have been speculating on it for a while now that LO would undoubtedly get dragged out as it's Webtoon's golden goose and clearly Rachel's lifeline to the industry.

Lore Olympus has been a part of my life since 2019, and an even larger part of it in the last year and a half when I joined the critical community. It's going to be weird to live in a world where LO just doesn't update.

Of course, as mentioned in the article, there's still the matter of the physical books which are still FAR behind the webtoon version, and the TV show which they swear is still happening (but we all know it's not happening lmao).

So I don't think this will be the end of WT milking it for all its worth, but I am interested to see what happens to WT when they don't have their golden goose on a leash and chain anymore. They've sunk so much money and priority ad space into LO that even other Originals creators can't stand the comic due to how much its undercut their own opportunities. I'm hoping this will be a wake-up call to WT to give more attention to their series that are struggling and deserve to be seen, rather than focus all of their attention into one series that's barely got a pulse to speak of.

Of course, I'm sure people are wondering, "What about the fandom communities? What about antiLO/ULO?"

Listen, this isn't the first fandom I've taken part in, though it's certainly the one I've been the most directly active in with the essays I write and the stuff I do through Rekindled.

But if being in fandoms has taught me anything, it's that it doesn't matter how long a series has been gone. If there are people who still love it - or love to hate it - taking part in discussion, that discussion will continue to thrive. A series existing in hindsight is just as much a reason for participation as an active series existing in the present day. If anything, a series falling into the realm of 'hindsight' can give us the room we need to sit and reflect on what the series actually did, and what we were left with in the end. It's never stopped the folks who still talk about long-ago-completed series like The Office, House M.D., and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

So if you're new to the LO critical community, or asking yourself if it's still going to be "worth it" to take part in the fandom after LO is done - it's as worth it as you make it. There will always be something worth discussing in this fandom if we're wanting to discuss it.

As for me, well... I'm just getting started.

[minthe-lover]

Minthe in her reparations arc for the ULO discord.

Pls observe the specific hand colours and how she gets happier as she recovers.

[minthe-lover]

LORE | REKINDLED EPISODE 32 - ALEX (PT 2)

< Previous episode | Next episode releases October 14th! >

Short episode this week on account of it being the second part of Episode 32!

[minthe-lover]

In which Persephone is told she can't game the system- (TEXT EDIT)

no art was edited here, just text to make this more realistic to how this scene WOULD have gone if it was an actual courtroom with real rules LOL I find it a little weird that Rachel wrote a courtroom drama arc like this and then twisted it this much to benefit Persephone because like... clearly she was inspired by courtroom drama shows, and I can't help but wonder if she got all of her basic courtroom knowledge from like, Spongebob or some shit LOL

[minthe-lover]

Weird thing I’ve noticed:

Rachel seems to be deathly afraid of giving her characters facial hair- even tho that was like, a staple for a lot of male Greek gods and deities

Well, except for the “unattractive” ones

In Rachel's defense on that one, I can attest that it's difficult to give these characters facial hair when they're all painted neon colors LMAO like, I LOOOOVE drawing facial hair, but even I haven't really bothered giving the male cast facial hair because they're so ethereal/non-human looking that if you gave them something like a mustache or beard, it would start to tip them more towards the 'human' look and it could clash with the colors and enter uncanny valley territory. Like, the characters would either have to have full stylized cartoon beards-

-or nothing at all.

(that's how I get away with it with Dionysus, because his beard is basically just a big 'ole berry bush, so it's able to color match his face and not be distracting with its stylization).

That said, I've seen some great edits of LO panels where characters have facial hair, so that's not to say it can't be done! I just don't know if it's something that Rachel is capable of doing.

Because straight up, Rachel also just doesn't know how to draw men. Or rather, she only knows how to draw one type of man. Most of her portfolio pre-LO consists of drawings of women, many sharing the same body types (though there are some variations around 2010-2014). And just like with the women, when she does draw men, they've all got the same facial structures and body types:

(from The Doctor Pepper/Foxglove Show)

Like, you've got 6 guys here, six, and not a single one of them has facial hair or any extremely varied hairstyle. Half of them look like Hades. I get the sense that Rachel basically learned how to draw one "type" of male and one "type" of female and has just been drawing from those same templates ever since while swapping out minor details like nose shape and hair type.

Shit, here's an actual Hades drawing from back when she started doing Hades x Persephone sketches around 2016/2017:

Like, that's just a guy from The Doctor Pepper Show. He looks like a mix of Donovan and Shifty Ricky LMAO And it's not like she doesn't have mortals in LO either who aren't colored with highlighter marker, but I don't think she ever really gives them beards either. The only guy I can think of off the top of my head is Psyche's father:

And that has the exact kind of stylization/structure that I was talking about before that Rachel would likely have to do if she gave the gods facial hair to keep it from looking silly. Case in point, that time Hermes grew a mustache:

All that said, I do think it's a combination of Rachel not knowing how to draw men (she's even admitted in past AMA's and interviews that she's bad at drawing men and that doesn't seem like something she's tried to improve judging by how the men look in LO) and LO's art style just not mixing well with more human features like beards and body hair. It could wind up looking like a Barbie doll with marker scribbled on it LMAO

[minthe-lover]

About the gynecologist scene... this is unrelated but it really bothers me how Perse's hair stays short, it would be cool if her hair had grown after waking up, ya know, to show her distress? Pretty sure the only times her hair grows is the first chapters, the aftermath of Persephone's SA and after she confronted Apollo, her hair growing feels like an excuse so RS can show her in any hair style she wants to, being either short or long

Just a nitpick of mine but it really bothers me

Persephone's hair is really inconsistent in the series because it started as a great visual device to show her going through times of stress:

(that last panel is really fucking hilarious out of context btw, like damn Hades put your blue sausage fingers away, what you doing-)

There's also been some really great visual imagery depicting the growth of her hair during moments where her emotions are overwhelming her.

But then Rachel went and confirmed Persephone can just grow it whenever.

Which kinda muddies the point of it being used as a visual indicator for her emotions IMO. Like you can still have both if it's a sign of her powers becoming out of control but it's just never consistent so we have scenes where her hair SHOULD grow out (by the logic that it grows out under stress) and it just doesn't. It really seems like Rachel forgot about it entirely in Episode 98-

-but then she remembers it just in time for Episode 99.

(literally look at that stylization inconsistency, you can tell that scene in Ep 98 was drawn by entirely different people in Ep 99, jfc. Where did her wrath go?? She went from being legitimately pissed to being uwu boo-hoo sad with IG filters and a doe-eyed fish lip look).

And so you don't know if it's just her controlling her emotions so well that her hair isn't growing (if she can do it on command) or if it's just Rachel forgetting that she established that Persephone's hair changes length based on her emotions. It never seems to follow the same rules from week to week.

And there's definitely something to be said about how short-haired Persephone has become more and more like Rachel over the years. Like, she's always mildly resembled Rachel, but now she REALLY looks like Rachel to the point that she doesn't even look like the Persephone we've become so familiar with anymore, she's just a pink name swap version of 37 year old Rachel.

[minthe-lover]

hfuekahfek as generic puff said join us.. become an anti lo blog do it-

But yeah Lore olympus has somehow has pacing that somehow things are happening to fast AND to slow. Especially with the newest chapters.

So much stuff is always going on, even in the early chapters we have hades and persephone relationship, hades and minthes. Persephone assault, hera trying to figure that out. The stuff with eros and psyche, perspehone and demeter etc etc

There is always like ten different plot point struggling for attention between multiple characters.. but also at the same time there is just so much wasted time. Characters are constantly farting around doing nothing, and wasting time either bringing up new plot points or doing stuff that just.. doesn't matter.

For example hades opening persephone bank account, it's something brought up and solved right away. It barely does much to further their relationship and even then it's a really awkward and weird way to do it. It wastes alot of time and in the end doesn't really lead to anything besides persephone just.. getting money to buy an apartment that she lived in for like.. a day-

so yeah.. rs somehow managed to write a comic that is both to busy and not given enough time to breath... really it just needs a few dropped plot points and like more focus. The main problem is that it's just really unfocused on what it wants to be, sometimes it's a forbidden romance.. sometimes it's a story about healing from abuse.. sometimes it's a fantasy story about magic womb powers, and it struggles to be all of those at the same time.

What the ✨actual fuck✨ is the Lore Olympus timeline? I never tag anyone, but @genericpuff @minthe-lover if y’all want to add onto or comment on this please I’m all ears.

You’re telling me that in Persephone’s first week in Olympus in the FIRST 2 DAYS she:

Is given an excess amount of alcohol, blacks out, and wakes up in a unfamiliar man’s house with no idea how she got there or what happened to her

And after returning the next day she is r*ped by her best friend’s brother

Are you fucking kidding me.

It gets worse. This next photo is week 2

First of all, all this takes place within the course of 3 days. Three. Days. Within 3 days:

Hades breaks up with Minthe, his on-again, off-again partner for years, after a week of officially dating (unsure of whether or not they actually broke up 2x or if that’s just a typo)

Persephone has a traumatic fight with the man who r*aped her in which he tells her that he doesn’t care about her or her well-being and that she “doesn’t have like to like him to be his wife”

PERSEPHONE STARTS HER FIRST ACTUAL DAY AT WORK IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THEIR FIGHT

And either within the same day or early the next day, she kisses a man who she a) has known for less than 2 weeks b) IS HER FUCKING BOSS and c) JUST DUMPED HIS LONGTIME PARTNER FOR A CHILD HE BARELY KNOWS

And yeah Persephone is a child. When they kiss she’s like what a fresh off the boat adult? Barely 20 if I’m not mistaken? While Hades is thousands of years old? What the actual fuck.

Mind you, all of this happened within the first 2 weeks but has spanned across 110 episodes.

What’s worse is that pretty much everything leading up to the trial takes place over a month. A single month. 4 weeks. You wanna know how many episodes fall in that month? 190 out of the 250 episodes. That is over 3/4s of the series (that is available so far) that is dedicated to a single month.

I can’t. I hate this comic so damn much. Deadass about to become an anti LO blog /jk