#anti Hades

[olithetalker]

I really don't like Mal, but I find it concerning how Hades is such a popular character.

He abandoned his own kid. Just because his actor looks great doesn't change that being a deadbeat dad isn't as badass as D3 makes it sound.

We all hate the douchebag Auradon adults (Beast, Belle, The Fairy Godmother, Leah) and that's for very good reason. But Hades is just as crappy an adult and parent as they are, yet is literally a fan favourite. Really he should be put into the same pile as them.

[wanderingmind867]

Let me explain my problems with the Greek Afterlife, in depth. Let's break this down one by one, from the Isles of the Blessed to the Fields of Punishment. And first off: I haven't read anything beyond Rick Riordan's books, and I will not read old, hard to understand poetry. So my opinions come solely from the Rick Riordan books:

The Isles of the Blessed: A private island for those rare few who've reincarnated and successfully lived there lives of goodness and virtue. In other words, a stupid segregated island for supposed "good people."

Elysium: A gated off community for those who've lived a good life. Of course, good is a very arbitrary thing. And the fact that I believe Rick Riordan describes Elysium as gated off from the other locations really says something. Namely, it says that Elysium is like a rich, exclusive country club. So more segregation.

The Fields of Asphodel: Oh boy. Fields of Asphodel where you go to lose your memories and sense of self. The ghosts of asphodel are decaying souls, souls who were good, but not good enough to be allowed in the stupid country club of elysium. Or who weren't bad enough to get eternally tortured. I want to lead a revolution amongst the ghosts of asphodel, and i want to shove a stupid scythe into the stomach of whichever god thought of this.

The Fields of Punishment: Just a generic hell type place. But the punishments usually come off as excessive. Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill forever is the definition of cruel and unusual punishment. Even if he's evil, nobody deserves hades's stupid punishments. They're demeaning end cruel.

So I hate every single aspect of the Greek and Roman afterlife. Every single godsforsaken aspect! It's horrible!

[enixamyram]

While acknowledging there are different versions and interpetations, I tend to follow the ones I read from the books written by Stephen Fry.

Not only was his the first consistent version I read so pretty naturally the first one I kind of latched onto... But I can't help but feel a lot of the current ideas people put out there for these characters and their stories stem from more Hollywood Stereotypes than original text.

Like Aphrodite's marriage. The version I read is that Ares and Aphrodite were very much in love but Aphrodite was forced to marry Hephaestus in return for him freeing Hera from his own revenge trap. Yet I see a lot of people acting like Hephaestus is the poor victim, Ares is the jerk and Aphrodite is the prize. And it all matches a little too well with the tropes: Hephaestus is the "nice guy outcast", Ares is the "dumb bully jock", and Aphrodite is the "beautiful woman who will eventually realise it's the nice guy she really loves".

Same for the Demeter storyline. A lot of people put a Hollywood romance trope on it by making Persephone and Hades in love from the start and Demeter's just the mother-in-law from hell cliche. Which isn't bad from a light-hearted-retelling perspective but (like Hephaestus) it seems to be the one that a lot of people are clinging to. To the point where they believe the American tropes and cliches are more fact than they actually are.

[each-uisge-enthusiast]

thinking about kyane. how she must have known there was no way she would be powerful enough to stop hades but she stood up to him anyway. how even though she wept until she’d lost her mouth her hands and become nothing but water itself she still found a way to warn demeter something terrible had happened. how she’s never remembered in the retellings because she’d ruin their obsession with stripping demeter and persephone’s story of its meaning. how even though she was just a naiad she stood up to the king of the dead and told him he couldn’t take her friend.

[shiftingwithmars]

”When a villain tries to destroy the word they get punished for it. But when one of you guys does it, it’s an error in judgment.”

Maybe because they actually apologize and try to make amends instead of continuously trying to destroy the world

[sunshines-child]

some Chthonic designs

[rosabell14]

The fact that in house of hades Annabeth is like "Nooo Percy 😭 what you did wasn't good some powers should never be used like that 😰" and then the narrative actively decides to prove her wrong in Blood of Olympus? By having Percy listen to Annabeth's ideology and nearly get killed for it in his fight against Polybotes? He doesn't use his control over poison and nearly dies from it. Had Jason not convinced Kymopoleia to help them, Percy would have died. Listening to Annabeth would have killed Percy.

(and then Percy says that he deserved to die for what happened to Akhlys and Jason is like mood bro and it's never brought up again 😑)

And THEN, in the same damn book Nico literally turns Bryce Lawrence into a ghost and Reyna who has trauma associated with ghosts goes: yeah it was scary and reminded me of my dead abusive dad, but Nico we all have darkness inside of us and we should get to release it. Plus you saved us soooo ☺️

[moony-2001]

Some notes

Overall I wanted to put our leading ladies into mortal realm wear because why… would they be wearing modern clothes… thousands of years before they’re in fashion in the mortal realm

Métis I wanted to keep in blue since they’re opposite on the color wheel. I just made it a darker blue and since one of her symbols is an owl, I added the circles to be the eyes.

Truly they more look like the evil eye but oh well, it still looks cool

Rhea hurt me. She and Persephone are so damn similar in color and style I wanted to do a hard left. Gave her the iconic circle crown back, made her thicker, and made her hair more closely resemble a lion’s mane

I also did more of a dark teal as opposed to the more true mint I put Persephone in. Both still have pink but persephone’s is definitely baby pink vs Rhea who leans more towards white/gray

I think Rhea’s outfit is the least “ancient Greek” which does make me cringe a bit internally but I tried to mimic how the fabric would fold and crease… Greek citizens please have mercy 🙇🏼‍♀️

Oh also Rhea has what are supposed to be moss agate on the hem of her dress. Moss agate is *supposedly* what her representative gemstone is but Google is Google so grains of salt

Hera looks great in green. I really leaned into the peacock motif and gave her that spiky crown thing she normally wears (even though it’s not accurate)

It was so damn hard to hide all those ribbons

I think my edit of Hera is a little gaudy… but when in Rome I suppose

Hope you enjoy and see you next week for the finale of Lore Olympus

[the-weekly-nark]

Minthe will forever be the original!

The last pic is by @anoldplace, who noticed that Persephone dresses like Minthe. Their post inspired me to look for more parallels and wow there’s a lot.

[lady-menrva]

So...about Nico...I can't make out what Rick was trying to do with his character, so I'll take this from the top.

In PJO, he had a complete arc with development, and a good characterization (especially) considering his position as a side character, and later, a major supporting character in the original saga.

However things eventually start changing for the worse:

(Excerpt from Son of Neptune)

And

(Excerpt from Battle of the Labyrinth)

In BotL this part was so important for Nico's character. It showed that he's finally come to terms with Bianca's death, atleast up to an extent.

But in son of Neptune the way Rick just ruined it, only to make Nico a redundant plot device for Hazel's resurrection was just cheap. There were other ways Hazel could've come back to life (maybe as an escaped soul, for instance).

Later on, Rick tried to make the "Bianca was the only one who accepted Nico" excuse, but of course it doesn't add up (because chronology and logic, duh).

Fast forward to Mark of Athena, things don't improve and he's still just a plot device. This could've been fixed easily by giving him a couple of short PoV chapters, maybe focusing on his journey through tartarus. Why do I say this? Because Nico is supposed to have a more important role in HoH, and the sudden narrative upgrade from plot device to side character/major supporting character is some truly unsatisfactory writing.

Now, moving on to the House of Hades, he doesn't have much of an actual characterization, even though he stars as a major supporting character (of sorts) here. A tad disappointing, if you ask me.

Again, everything flips a complete 180 in Blood of Olympus, this time for the better. He gets a layered personality, with consistent and well-written flaws (unusual for a character written by Rick), and equally important positive character traits. His interactions with anyone not named Will or Percy were top-notch, and he had a good amount of emotional depth.

But then came in the inevitable spanner in the works: Will Solace and romance.

Thereafter, ToA onwards, everything was back to square one for Nico's character, and he was diminished to "goth ball of darkness" as complex characters often are, when paired off with highly underdeveloped and one-dimensional characters (you know, he had to match Will's 'freak')

To give the sum and substance of it, he never really had a bona fide character arc aside from PJO. In HoO, there was potential, but it never went anywhere, and in ToA, even the potential was lost. Moreover, his development post PJO was in dynamic retrograde.

Anyways, I'm so used to Rick wasting potential that I'm not even surprised any more.

[incorrect-percabeth-quotes]

Annabeth: I know you, Percy Jackson.

Sponge Bob Meme: A few minutes later [in Tartarus]

Annabeth, terrified: What the fuck was that? Don't you ever do that again!

Percy: What, fight a god into submission, scare them and then threaten them into fleeing? I've been doing that every year since I was 12. Ares, Clarisse's dick brother, Hades...

Percy: How did you not know this Annabeth? I thought you said you knew me?

[lo-shouldve-been-an-email]

Look,I know both hades and lore Olympus are inaccurate,but at least hades is funny with it.

Gaslighting Orpheus into making an entire song about zag,then zag realizing he took it too far but Orpheus being too convinced Zagreus did all this stuff is hilarious.

It’s even funnier when you take into account that Persephone lies about underworld pomegranates so he got that from his mother.

Then we have lore Olympus,who does not make an effort to reference the original myths and instead rebrands itself as a new version of the original myth,the only interesting reference being dio.

[genericpuff]

Now that I think about it, since Persephone was the Barley Mother mascot, shouldn't she have some money? Wouldn't she have gotten royalties from her likeness being used?

so at best this is sort of explained away in S1 when Persephone has her interview with Hades and he asks this exact question, why does she need a job if she's an heiress? And her response is basically that she doesn't want to be reliant on her mother's money, that she and her mother both want her to pursue her own path in life... and also she's an immortal from the Mortal Realm so being an heiress makes no sense because Demeter will logically never have to pass down the role in death which is usually how it works.

And honestly, that on its own would have been fine and makes perfect sense for the context of the comic at the time, but then that context changed, and now we have:

1.) Rachel later making Demeter out to be a villain for being a "helicopter parent" and "controlling her daughter", when in reality she was literally supportive of Persephone wanting to go to school from the get-go, she just wasn't certain her daughter should outright move to Olympus, she wanted her to commute, that was it (and was she really wrong to worry about her daughter's safety in Olympus when within her literal first day of living there she was intoxicated by Eros and dumped in Hades' car with the intention of embarrassing her, and then literally the next night was assaulted by Apollo?? Like I don't think Demeter would be all "I told you so" but maybe... maybe there was a reason she was worried and wanted her daughter to commute 💀😭) and;

2.) Persephone going from trying to be independent so she's not reliant on her mother's money... to being completely co-dependent on Hades and his money. How feminist lmao

That said, yes, technically Persephone does have money, and I'd like to think that if she did get royalties, it would be in an account for her and wouldn't just be taken by her mom (though apparently neither of them use banks so ??? where is Demeter keeping all this money LOL) and at the VERY least she's due to inherit what's presumably a massive fortune and company for herself if her mother ever steps down. So the comic does play a very frustrating tug-of-war between Persephone being the "comes from nothing" valley girl who marries into wealth... and a trust fund baby who was always wealthy and became wealthier after marrying into more wealth.

[riptidefromzoe]

How I would have fixed Bianca Di Angelo's Character

First of all Bianca is a character who has very little actual personality or backstory, I'm afraid ultimately she is just another age old case of a woman being killed in order to further a man's story.

So to fix her(and give her an actual character) I would do the below:

1.Make her older!

• I would make her 14, a few months older than Percy(specifically born on June 9th 1932, idk why but I feel like it fits her) seeing as Bianca being 12 logically makes zero sense in the context of her story. Making her older would in turn make her choice to join the hunters, make Artemis's decision to let her become a hunter and zoë's decision to let her join the quest all less stupid. Her being older would also make her the second choice for the prophecy, above Percy. It also just fits with what little character she has to be older.

2. ACTUALLY GIVE HER A PERSONALITY!!!

• Something that has always deeply annoyed me is that she has no personality! We're clearly meant to be devastated by her death but we know so little about her that her death doesn't really invoke any emotion. When we look at the Greek big 3 kids personality's in all honesty she and Percy have a lot more in common than Percy and Thalia or Bianca and Nico, so l'd hone in on that, id point out their similarities(though I wouldn't make her basically female Percy, there's already enough of that in this fandom), make her happy, make her gloomy, make her apathetic, just make her something!

3. Expand more on her powers and what they would have been had she not died.

• I wouldn't make her show off too much as to not give away the surprise of her and Nicos father but l'd definitely give her something. I saw once in a fanfic that her powers were to control the rivers of the underworld and do things like turn any water into a river of the underworld and I quite liked it and thought it was creative.

4. Don't make Bianca's entire character revolve around Nico!

• Bianca's character completely and utterly revolves around Nico, it's always 'oh Nico this' and 'Nico that' like please shut up!

Why is Bianca 'mothering' Nico at all??? For the first 9/13 years of their life's they lived with their mother and all the other parts were in the casino; where they had their every need taken care of, and their school; where Bianca and Nico probably weren’t even around one another very often!; they both also mainly grew up in fascist Italy(an extremely misogynistic place & time mind you) so even with that(Especially with that) it makes no sense why Bianca would be ‘mothering’ Nico(honestly nico would most likely been raised and expected to protect and take care of her!)

—

This is less of a fix and more of a silly headcanon but I’d have her steal 6 friendship bracelets from the gift shop whilst at the National Air and Space Museum. One for Percy, one for Thalia, one for Zoë, one for Grover, one for Nico and one for herself(she got one for Nico because even whilst caught up in becoming a hunter she had noticed that Nico was sad, most likely from feeling left out, so she got him a bracelet so when she came home she could give it to him and he wouldn’t feel so left out anymore). When she dies she takes her and Nicos bracelets with her. They never find either bracelets. Percy, Thalia and Grover have never taken the bracelets off.

—

Anyways if you have any other suggestions or thoughts please let me know!

(This has been sitting in my drafts for a WHILE now😭)

(Also sorry if this is hard to read!!!)

[that-guy-in-the-chiton]

The Stolen Bride

[justmenoworries]

Really funny how LO's narrative and fans wanna make us believe Hades' type are strong women when he literally has a history of sabotaging every ambitious woman in his life, making them dependant on him and then preying on them at their most vulnerable.