#I am back on with bullshit with the hate for Hades and Persephone retellings
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cosmic-tempest · 1 year ago
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I am tired of the Hades and Persephone retellings. It all boils down to the same things with nothing new to add. "This book is a human retelling of Hades and Persephone." Okay, then make Hades and Persephone related, since her father is Zeus. "But gods don't have blood or DNA." Okay, but consider this - Hades is still Persephone's uncle.
Edit: Before people hop on and say anything because sadly people are like this - no, I do NOT condone incest of any type at all. Just because I said "okay, well -" doesn't mean anything.
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bronson · 5 years ago
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What is wrong with lore/olympus?
so I got four anon asks about this in the past hour so I’ll just answer in one big post. also this is going to be long because I don’t feel like giving generalized blanket statements bc I actually want y’all to understand.
1. “what’s LoreOlympus?”
LoreOlympus is a webtoon based comic that revolves around the lives of the gods of the Greek pantheon, specifically Persephone and Hades. it’s set in the “modern” world with a few adjustments. it’s gorgeously illustrated, so it’s very intriguing and inticing to read. a few different Greek myths play out in the story (or are told), like the Cupid and Psyche myth, but the main myth is the Persephone/Hades ordeal......
2. “what’s wrong with it?”
the fact that it romanticizes the Persephone/Hades story. the Persephone story (specifically a myth revolving around her) has become an entire phenomenon online recently. young women (mainly) have begun identifying with the goddess for a variety of reasons, and many have begun creating NEW STORIES to justify this obsession. on the surface this is fine! why not love a Greek goddess? Greek goddesses are cool! the aesthetics are pretty! we all love Rick Riordan! but when you dig into it, there’s an underlying problem with this form of obsession.
Greek myths have always been a part of our pop culture. but often we don’t analyze the underlying stories of the myths. sure we talk about how Zeus is a dick to Hera, but we don’t talk about why Hera even exists. what the gods/goddesses actually represent, more than just their surface deity existence.
so take Persephone. sure you could say she’s the goddess of spring in a sense. she’s the daughter of Demeter. what else is she? the personification of a young girl. the same way Demeter is the Mother, Persephone is the Daughter. she was also known as Kore (directly translated: young girl) and what else were known as Kores? grave statues for girls who died before marriage. persephone is intended to be the embodiment of all young women stolen before maturement/being able to married off. one of the more famous statues’ inscriptions can be translated as “given this [being named Kore] instead of marriage by the gods.” so who is hades? he’s the god of death yes. the god of rebirth some might say in a sense. he also acts as an explanation of stolen brides. in Ancient Greece and now but whatever, young girls were often stolen by older men (sometimes related to them) to be married off. even more common was the simple handing off of young girls to older men/relatives as wives to create bonds within the family/carry on bloodlines, create children, etc.
so the Hades/Persephone myth exists not only as an explanation of the seasons of harvest, but also a cultural explanation of the lives/forceful marriages of young women/girls.
so that’s the ancient cultural context. now for our context. young women today, yesterday, since the beginning of time, have had no power. simply stated. they don’t. but who does? older men. so who do women turn to when they need power or when they feel powerless? older men! it only makes sense. and men know this, so when they feel like they need an ego boost or to hold power over someone, they turn to younger women. this is so widely accepted in our modern culture that we create falsities to justify it, like “girls mature faster than boys, so women seek out older men to meet their intellect.” and we have THOUSANDS of our own mythology backing this story of young woman + older man=love. books, movies, tv shows, anecdotes, famous people we idolize. so this story, a young girl who’s “seduced” by an older man, seems enticing!
but is that the story of Persephone and Hades? of course not. in what world would Ancient Greece give that much power to a 12 year old girl. Artemis barely had any power and she was a way more important deity. (that’s the other thing, Persephone ain’t shit but whatever). Persephone has no agency in “her” myth. the myth’s most famous form is in the Hymn to Demeter, where Persephone says one (1) thing and it’s her talking about how violent Hades was in forcing the pomegranate seeds into her mouth. (the story is Demeter’s, but we don’t care about older women or we hate them, so she’s been demonized in our modern retellings.) Persephone is not a powerful girl who runs away, she is stolen by her old uncle, r*ped, and forced into a marriage. after that’s her role, she does become the queen of the underworld in a sense, and she does gain agency in myths about her queendom, but the initial marriage to Hades? not of her own accord by any means. how could it be?
so of course I’m torn. I know why young women need these stories. I even like some of these stories—hello ACOMAF! hello Fifty Shades! hello Twilight! but am I okay with the fact that we keep sanitizing and romanticizing this original story? no! because a) if we keep romanticizing these Greek myths, we will never escape the racist and classist hold they have over us and b) we can’t keep perpetuating our own oppression. we can’t keep stripping away context from stories that shape our culture. we can’t ignore what this myth (and others like it) have done to young women and their psyches.
so stop reading it. stop reblogging those bullshit posts saying Persephone chose to eat the seeds. she didn’t and she deserves better.
also if you want to debate with me on this, just know I studied classics and media communications, and wrote my thesis on this topic. and I’m sick of it.
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