#I kind of want to do an essay on how rape is treated in LO

[whatmyface]

Daphne's Handwaved Trauma

Ok so I'll be the first to admit I don't like Daphne, but I absolutely HATED this panel.

Why does she look so happy?? Daphne turning into a tree in LO was (at least to me) a tribute to all the women in Greek mythology. The women who couldn't trust the ground beneath them, a flower or even gold coins! It was preferable to be a TREE rather then be r*ped. Daphne's smile just ruins all the emotional weight the panel could've happened.

[genericpuff]

hi, i know the episode came out weeks ago, but i wanted to talk about ep 277 and your essay on it. i thought it was very well thought out and had brought up lots of concerns abt apollo's other victims and the harm persephone caused to others that i just. hadn't really thought about myself because honestly this webcomic is a BLUR to me LOL. thank you for writing these insights and putting them online for others to read ! i think you manage to keep a respectful distance to rachel [1/]

Yeah, regarding how the SA was handled...

I think Rachel did exactly as well as anyone might have expected someone like her to write a plotline like that.

Honestly if Rachel really did want to do the arrow thing, I think it would have worked WAY better if she had used the arrow of hate. First of all, because it had already been established back in S2 when it was shot at him by Psyche, but ALSO because making it an arrow of love confirmed that Eros literally did what Apollo asked despite the fact that he's Persephone's best friend and should have been more suspicious of what he was going to use it for. Why not just do a bait & switch where Apollo is under the impression that it's an arrow of love but Persephone trusts in her friend and pieces it together that it's probably an arrow of hate? It would also payoff the whole "news crew being nearby" thing (as well as all the other gods that just randomly showed up) because uh oh now they all see his true nature and he can't hide behind his lies anymore!

After all, as I mentioned in my previous post about this (the one I believe you're referring to) it's not like there wasn't already foreshadowing that Apollo was going to fall on his own sword the way of Mr Waternoose from Monster's Inc, he was already showing signs of cracking under the guilt that he was feeling towards how he treated Persephone/Eris/Hermes/etc. so why did it have to be Persephone taking a massive risk by sticking him with an arrow of love that still doesn't fully explain why he would even suddenly be a changed man? Loads of people like Apollo think they're in love / define their infatuation as love so I don't see how an arrow of love would suddenly make him empathetic to her pain. Especially when, again, he still begs her not to make him confess, so the guilt he's feeling is still completely empty and unmotivated.

I will leave this with one final thing that I saw the other day that very much reminded me of the Apollo SA plotline and I think it rings very true for the misdirected conclusion of the plot itself:

One of the biggest issues of the Apollo SA plotline, at least in my opinion, is that it never really gets to the root of why people like Apollo exist. There absolutely were strong foundations for this - he's the son of a guy who's known for being a serial cheater, he's popular and egotistical and is used to women wanting him, etc. - but all of those foundations kind of fell to the wayside in favor of turning Apollo into just another boogeyman, especially to lift Hades up as a "good man" by comparison (when Hades himself also falls on this spectrum). But many people like Apollo aren't just random guys in an alleyway or conspiring with some "higher power" that's manipulating them, they're men who fundamentally do not understand consent and assault on the varying spectrums in which it exists from "SA just exists, oh well" passiveness to "I'm an actual monster who gets pleasure out of victimizing women" aggressiveness. I think there's a lot to discuss about how people like Apollo exist WITHOUT sympathizing with them, but LO manages to do neither - not only does it give us uncomfortable and unnecessary looks into the rapist's POV more than we get the victims, but it does it in a way that doesn't actually address the issue of how people like Apollo come to be, it's just "Apollo is the big evil boogeyman who raped Persephone". Not only does it not actually put enough focus on the victims, but it reduces the societal and cultural complexities of where Apollo's brand of egotistical entitlement comes from to just "some guys just be evil like that". Guys like Apollo don't just come out of the womb like that, they're often shaped into what they are by a society that both excuses them for awful behavior towards girls ("Boys will be boys!") and enables - if not outright encourages - them to objectify women as trophies that they're entitled to. Even the seemingly innocent and sentimental practice of "giving away a bride" at a wedding is rooted in these patriarchal systems, with the belief that a woman first "belongs" to her father before being "given to" her husband.

It's the part of feminism that often gets overlooked - it's not just about uplifting female voices and helping survivors speak up about and heal from SA, it's also about deconstructing and challenging the patriarchal systems that lead to SA victims being created in the first place. Sure, Apollo got sentenced to building temples in the Mortal Realm, but what is that actually doing to address the bigger topic of how men like him come to exist in the first place? Especially when it was also treated as a good thing for TGOEM to be disbanded, instead of, idk... reworking it into a women's support group for survivors like Persephone?

IDK, it's a very complicated subject that you can approach from a million different angles, I don't think that my criticizing it should outweigh the opinions of those who were satisfied with the punishment that was given to Apollo (my saying the SA plotline sucked doesn't mean you're not allowed to find your own validation in it) but I do think that, at best, Rachel ended the SA plotline the only way she could because she herself is just not equipped to tackle such broad subjects that require a lot more education, experience, and nuance than what she's capable of writing. There are definitely 1298423108 better ways that plotline could have been resolved, but not with Rachel Smythe at the helm.

And that's my many cents on that.