#anti Hades

[randomtheidiot]

Something that deeply upsets me.

I hate how Hades and Persephone have become the archetypal “healthy goth mythology couple who love each other” when

-Hades kidnapped Persephone (his niece) when she was a young girl and tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds to trap her with him forever, which was a very bad thing to do. (Also, anyone who says that there’s a secret feminist version of the myth is talking out their ass, there is no such thing in any of the recorded versions of the myth.)

-Loki and Sigyn were rIGHT FUCKING THERE-

And for the record, I blame OSP for this.

[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.

[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 ☺️

[sunshines-child]

some Chthonic designs

[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.

[belle-keys]

this is the worst book description I’ve ever read like I’m actually having a stroke

[lady-menrva]

If you’re ever tempted to call Nico good representation, please remember that he:

• He was outed violently, and forcibly; he didn’t even receive any closure for the same. (Yep, totally something closeted queer kids living in homophobic regions should be reading/s)

• Was forced into a relationship so one-dimensional, random and shallow that even the Disney princesses are now blushing a deep sepia.

• Had his entire character arc and development thrown out the window; he also had his entire character watered down to “goth ball of darkness”, all to sate the fujoshi shippers’ appetite. (A character, regardless of their sexuality, must have an existence outside their sexuality and relationship. Since ToA!Nico lacks this, it’s hard for me to deem him good queer representation.)

Basically, I don’t think it’s accurate to call Nico good queer representation.

[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.

[witchhazelevesque]

I often see Calypso’s curse described as ‘she’s forced to love anyone that comes to her island’ but that’s not exactly what happens:

“You asked about my curse, Percy. I did not want to tell you. The truth is the gods send me companionship from time to time. Every thousand years or so, they allow a hero to wash up on my shores, someone who needs my help. I tend to him and befriend him, but it is never random. The Fates make sure that the sort of hero they send…” “They send a person who can never stay,” she whispered. “Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can’t help…just the sort of person I can’t help falling in love with.” … “The Fates are cruel. They sent you to me, my brave one, knowing that you would break my heart.”

Battle of the Labyrinth, 223

The most pertinent bits are in color.

It’s not that she’s magicked into loving someone against her will, it’s that the Fates handpick people she would have loved anyway. As in, they have qualities she admires/values and finds herself able to love (big asterisk here). And the Fates make sure that of those people she could love, they pick ones that can’t stay with her.

This isn’t exactly retconned in House of Hades, but she does shift the blame more to the gods and doesn’t mention the Fates in this exchange:

“They were all the same! The gods send me the greatest heroes, the ones I cannot help but…” “You fall in love with them,” Leo guessed. “And then they leave you.” Her chin trembled. “That is my curse. I had hoped to be free of it by now, but here I am, still stuck on Ogygia after three thousand years.”

House of Hades, 378

But the focus is still on the fact that the people who come to her island can’t stay. The way it’s phrased here, it does makes sense how it could be taken as ‘she’s forced to love anyone’, but that’s not what’s happening.

Her curse is centered around being abandoned while stuck on her island. It’s only a curse because she’s imprisoned. She cites that as the reason she isn’t free from this curse. It’s not a set-and-forget work of magic that controls her emotions. It’s more of an active situation for the gods or Fates, where they orchestrate the delivery of the source of her pain each millennia, and then the rest comes in Calypso dealing with the aftermath of her companions leaving.

That big asterisk: Percy and Leo should not be included in this category. They’re children.

So, why is any of this even happening?

Blame Riordan and his weird, failed attempt to depict Calypso as a teenager; he did a horrible job.

Granted, it wouldn’t have worked no matter what he did, just by the nature of immortality. But he, for some reason, keeps shooting himself in the foot by hammering in her age. I don’t have access to the ToA books but some examples: Apollo saying she was old enough to be his babysitter, the way she got dreamy eyed at remembering things that happened before her imprisonment, the fact that she was there when Zeus was a child (by immortal standards).

Calypso is aware of time passing, and she retains all her memories of the thousands of years she existed, both on and off Ogygia. Time is weird on her island, but it does still move forward. She is literally, emotionally and mentally thousands of years old.

The only leg work RR does to depict Calypso as a teenager is to make her look like a teenager and then try to set up romantic situations with actual teenagers. For comparison, RR has Hestia take the form of a child, but no one acts like she actually is a child.

Later, RR has Calypso do things like want to go to high school and band camp, but that doesn’t make sense. Her wanting to have new experiences does, yes, but not ones that are for teenagers. That’s not indicative of her being a child, it’s more of RR’s lukewarm effort to make her a teenager.

I don’t have some hard hitting point to this distinction, I just think it’s important to know what’s actually being portrayed and how it’s being done. Calypso isn’t forced magically, in universe to fall in love, but she is forced to narratively.

My overall point though is, as usual, be critical of Riordan’s choices. He set up this thing where he wants the audience to believe that Calypso is so compatible with Percy and Leo that even the gods take notice, but it doesn’t work because she isn’t a teenager like they are.

[that-guy-in-the-chiton]

The Stolen Bride

[clown-cult]

Minthe in her reparations arc for the ULO discord.

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

[moony-2001]

Freud- I mean Rachel strikes again