#anti hades x persephone retellings

[lorepumpkin]

Maturing is realizing that the rise of Persades actually diminishes Persephone's agency and importance as a goddess a lot more than one would think.

Think about it; Throughout the skits, books, shows, and how everyday people talk about Persephone, do they ever talk about how people of that time feared her to the point where they didn't even speak her name? Or how she was a central figure of the Eleusinian Mysteries? Or her roles as a goddess of something as intriguing as life and death?

Nope, every single time they will always and (mostly) only address her as the wife of Hades and talk about her relationship with Hades. And when they do talk about, say - her mother perhaps, they would sour it solely just to up her relationship with Hades.

They might call it their adaptations as "feminist", but in truth they're just turning her into nothing else but a wife, her only being relevant with her connection to a man, nothing else.

[cosmic-tempest]

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.

[that-guy-in-the-chiton]

[smolandweirdwriter]

Full offense as far as ya (or supposedly ya for the latter) hades x persephone retellings or things based off it which have someone who is life/spring marrying the lord of darkness, Girl, Goddess, Queen is SO MUCH BETTER than acomaf.

[passionsofthegods]

A new look at Persephone like you've never read before.

Hades, beware! Finally, you've met your match! 😏

Passions of the Gods Available NOW on Amazon & KU!

[winns-stuff]

See I think a part of the problem for me in reading LO is that because nothing in it really resembles Greek myth or culture I tend to just treat the characters like RS' OC's.

Like I used to Really hate Minthe and was waiting for her to get turned into a plant (I actually think the the og myths Persephone actually goes to Demeter to complain about it and Demeter is actually the one to turn Minthe into a plant? I could be wrong so don't quote me on this) and I was really invested in HxP (Although the boss x employee dynamic and age gap still bothered me I was willing to overlook it because I thought it would be addressed and then it wasn't). I never really thought of it as feminist media or an accurate portrayal of Greek myth. (I don't really know why RS Americanized it so much, she herself isnt American). Mainly I was reading it for the art. And then I found some anti lo blogs that Really opened my eyes to some of the problematic elements of the story and since then I've become a lot more critical myself (which I think people should be allowed to do, I don't know when or why fandom spaces became positivity only / "courteous to not post salt" or something).

I think my main concern is LO is supposed to be a retelling of Greek myth yet Greek culture is nowhere to be seen. And look if people wanna just enjoy it for being a story, fine. What's not so great is when people don't read the og myths and take RS' version at face value.

Also if you look up LO it says it's a modern day and deconstruction of the abduction of Persephone (Hades doesn't even kidnap her tho. It's because another woman is jealous over persephones looks being praised that she decides to have her son drug her and dump her into a strange mans car... That's not very feminist).

I’m sorry, I’ve been busy all day so I’m answering this somewhere during the night. But I agree with all of your points! I didn’t even count Lore Olympus as a feminist retelling honestly, even when I was a fan of the series it’s never crossed my mind that it was actually supposed to be empowering to women. But I also don’t enjoy the way she went about Minthe’s character, it just felt like chapter after chapter her character was getting absolutely obliterated by the comic and it was for no purpose at all except make Persephone the better woman. Also, I can’t believe so many people just overlook the way Persephone and Hades met, it was so incredibly creepy. I’m not exactly understanding how that’s supposed to be romantic.

[moony-2001]

I’m sorry, did you not read my post? Bc I’m reading your critiques and I’m hearing a lot of wooshing noises. I shall once again say, if you don’t like what I have to say don’t interact with my content. The first thing you see when you click on my page is the words “professional critic” and every post I’ve made criticizing LO is tagged to hell and back with tags like “LO critic”, “unpopular LO”, and “anti LO”. If you’re mad bc you don’t like what I have to say yet chose to interact with my post anyway, that’s a you problem.

Now, let’s address all your little points here:

Percy Jackson is about the made up kids of Greek gods and not the gods themselves. I like PJ bc Rick Riordan has actually done research about Greek Mythology. He published a whole ass book separate from Percy Jackson retelling Greek Myths that was pretty much spot on with how the original myths were told. And as much as I love Marvel, I’m not particularly happy with the way they portrayed Norse Mythology but then again the Marvel franchise revolves around a COMIC BOOK SERIES and not an ACTUAL CULTURE. 

Percy Jackson is a work of fiction with Greek mythology as the base. Lore Olympus is advertised as a retelling and thus Greek mythology is front and center. If Rachel wanted to retell the story of Hades and Persephone, she should’ve taken it more seriously and treated it less like a Lolita fan fiction where she and Mads Mikkelsen are the leads.

Additionally a lot of art, whether renaissance or included in a book with various Greek myths, usually depicts random mortal women or nymphs being raped by whichever god. Also your little rape point is irrelevant because we see Apollo rape Persephone in the 24th episode of the comic; readers saw that whether they wanted to or not. So.

Yes we are in the age of the internet where ✨anything can be researched✨. Nice sentiment and all, but you should be directing that point to people who can’t be arsed to do actual research about Greek mythology and just blindly assume that’s how things are instead of people like me who have been reading/studying Greek mythology for the last 10 years of my life. I’d say I’m pretty damn informed. Can’t say the same for the majority of LO fans tho

No shit things were gonna be changed. It’s supposed to be a “modern feminist retelling” what a joke that is. But Rachel took that idea and ran with it to the ends of the earth. Pretty much every character in the comic (except Zeus, he pretty much stays the same except he’s a little less nuanced) has faced major character assassination in order to lift up our protagonists and make them look better. If you have to alter characters to make them look worse so your protagonists can look better, your protagonists suck and so does your writing.

You claim people can understand that things have been changed from the original, but the comments under the episodes beg to differ. Once again Percy Jackson is about the made up children of the gods so that point is null and void

Also the problem with your whole little “the writers changed what they wanted to better fit their ideas” is great and all except for the fact that Rachel is changing whole-ass aspects of a culture and a Hellenistic religion that has existed for THOUSANDS of years and continues to exist today. You can not just go in and change it how you please to better fit your narrative. You know where people change one narrative to another in real life? The fucking history books. Can you imagine if someone went “yeah sure, this is how x happened but also not really bc it makes the story I want to tell look bad” oh wait that’s already happening.

I have no problem with people liking Lore Olympus. I was a die hard fan up until the trial. I had the books, I owned merch. I could say the same about you. You like LO? Fine, why the hell would I care. You also have tons of media that fit your liking at the tips of your fingers and therefore don’t have to interact with mine.

I’m not “problematizing” every little aspect of the comic. I (and many other LO critics) am calling out the fact that at the base level this comic sucks because it is inherently disrespectful of a culture that has been stolen and pandered and capitalized on for decades by everyone and their mother and pushes/normalizes really problematic ideas.

In my post, I am calling out the blatant racism, classism, and fetishization of a minority group in the comic. It seems to me that you’re excusing all those things by saying I’m being a nitpick and “problematizing” the comic. If that’s the case, that’s really embarrassing for you. It’s giving “I can excuse racism but I draw the line at animal cruelty”.

The real-world impact of Lore Olympus

i.e. do your research Rachel

Trigger warning: racism, fetishization, appropriation, mentions of SA

Long post ahead

A while ago, someone told me that Lore Olympus was just a silly little comic written out of boredom. That it was made to be "funny". They told me that "[I] can't hope [for] an extremely [well-written] story when it was just made with the intention to make something goofy" and that if Rachel actually wanted to make something serious like I had, she would write a book and not a comic.

At the time of this exchange, it was past 1 a.m. and I was exhausted. I did not want to argue with this person and it simply wasn't worth my time or energy in the moment.

But looking back at that (mostly one-sided) interaction, I can't help but think that there is so much wrong with that point of view. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion about Lore Olympus, whether good or bad. But Lore Olympus isn't just some silly little nothing comic about nothing important. It is a comic that actively appropriates and erases Greek Culture. It is a comic that has no respect for the actual stories that have been passed down over thousands of years whether by word of mouth or written text. It is a comic that perpetuates a false narrative and harmful stereotypes about characters or certain groups of people. So, no, it's not just a silly little comic.

Incorrect information

Here’s an example of what I mean:

When I was doing research for my post about the 10 year time skip, I looked up Leuce to reconfirm the little information I knew about her. Wanna guess the first thing that popped up about her?

A Lore Olympus Wiki article.

Okay. How about Minthe? Hundreds of pictures of her from Lore Olympus and a LO Wiki article as one of the top 3 results. Both character are horribly represented in LO and unfortunately there isn’t really any documented stories or records that can refute how LO paints them. Because of this, other characters in Greek Mythology like Leuce and Minthe, whose stories have little to no documentation, stand to suffer the most harm from deliberate misrepresentation on Rachel’s part.

Of course well-known and better documented figures in Greek mythology face slander as well. What about Thetis or Leto? How about Apollo? All of their portrayals in LO are HORRIBLE. I have seen people online absolutely drag them to filth not because they're upset about how the character is portrayed compared to their mythological counterpart, but because they have no knowledge of how they are actually portrayed outside of LO. They just assume that's how the characters are. Similarly, people who have either very little or no prior knowledge of Greek Mythology and Culture would look at the comic and go "Yep, sounds legit. It must be true." and go about thinking that what is portrayed in LO is accurate to what was transcribed thousands of years ago.

Creative interpretations and racism/fetishization within LO

Don’t get me wrong. Creative interpretations and artistic liberties can be great. When they’re done tastefully. I personally think if done correctly, a Greek myth spun in a modern way has the potential be very good. But that's not what we were given.

Characters like Minthe, Leuce, and Thetis (all nymphs btw) are portrayed as trashy tramps who put out and are used as a foil sabotage Persephone and/or her relationship with Hades. Compare that to Greek Mythology where in the Iliad, Thetis is very well-respected by the gods, particularly Hera. Unfortunately, other similar characters like satrys (and basically any character that isn’t a god) are usually portrayed as a low-class POC that can be easily exploited, manipulated, or used as a temporary villain/lover/pawn to “get back” at Persephone, our white-coded protagonist who can do no wrong.

Additionally, there is a clear race/class bias against characters like nymphs in LO. We see many cases scattered throughout the comic of gods like Hera or Aphrodite referring to nymphs as "trash" or "low class" or the idea that nymphs do not belong with gods being heavily implied if not outright said. I cannot tell you how often I've seen Minthe be called some variant of "cheap" by the readers of LO. Even Persephone (who created the flower nymphs) treats them with such disrespect. She frequently calls them some variant of "stupid" or "simple" like saying how they're not the sharpest crayons in the box even though she's the one WHO MADE THEM. However, it's so odd not really to note that nymphs like Echo, Amphitrite, or Psyche (who was previously disguised as a nymph) are not discriminated against. This is because they are liked or trusted by the gods they are around and ergo are often portrayed as the "good ones", which is a disgusting mindset to have.

We also see the fetishization of nymphs in the comic that is disturbingly similar to the fetishization of women who are Black, Asian, or Latina. It is a known fact that Hades has a flower nymph fetish. Not only is this implied in the comic, but Rachel stated it outright in an old Patreon post. Nymphs are also generally treated as sex-symbols, disposable, and as a lesser-than. Zeus frequently displays this behavior by abandoning nymphs he knocked up in the mortal realm.

For example, when Persephone finds out Apollo is dating Daphne, she isn't upset he's dating her friend. She's upset he's dating a flower nymph, beings that are generally considered to be "rare", "dumb", and objects of sexual desire. Ew.

Even on the Lore Olympus website (loreolympians.com) nymphs are regarded as "beautiful", "desirable", and "very exotic". And when they're not described in a sexual manner they're say it with me now regarded as "low class" or "workers" for some kind of god/goddess.

Final thoughts

So not only is the characterization of characters like Minthe or Thetis harmful to Greek culture and the stories that are so ingrained in their society, but it is also perpetuating harmful stereotypes about people of color and women who are confident in their sexuality.

Of course, the characters within Greek Mythology had their own issues. Zeus was a serial rapist, many of the goddesses deemed to be "feminist" by today's standards were actually horribly misogynistic looking at you Athena. But 1. that's just how things were back then (but that does not make it right) and 2. all of the good, the bad, and the ugly is still there in Greek Mythology. They're not denying how fucked up it is, but they're also not changing their history to better fit their own narrative or the narrative of the modern world. It exists, it happened, but now it is studied and called out by historians.

Rachel, on the other hand, is doing exactly that. She is actively changing the Greek's cultural history to better fit her fic's narrative. She is constantly sweeping things under the rug or going "No this is how it ACTUALLY happened". Lore Olympus is marketed as a "feminist retelling" yet somehow, it takes allllll the ugly parts from Greek Mythology (rape, incest, problematic age gaps, dubious consent, etc.), mixes it with a majority of the issues we have in the modern world (white feminism, rape-apologists/rape culture, grooming, fetishization of certain minority groups, etc.) and then amplifies the concoction to 20. Lore Olympus cannot be a "progressive, feminist, retelling" and also have characters that are morally apprehensive/come straight from the ancient myths. It does not work. In fact, IMO it makes all the problems from both eras worse.

News flash: actual cultures that are still thriving today are not your toys. They are not "made up". They matter. Do better.

[antiloreolympus]

9 Anti LO Asks

1. anyone else notice echo is colored similar to hades too? so hades has the hots for a tiny hot pink variant of his mom, and hera (apparently) wants to sleep around with a female version of hades? rachel you know there are other colors, right? tell me you know that

2. hi, im someone who dated someone who was extremely hateful but considered me one of the "good ones" of my race: hera doing that with echo is extremely dehumanizing and, seeing as nymphs are a different race in LO, really racist! i understand there's no actually IRL races involved in LO, but the fantasy racism allegory is still there, and they all look bad! very, very bad! why am i not surprised the well off white lady would have unintentionally bad race takes in her comic! big yikes!

3. server x royal and boss x worker is VERY popular on webtoons in general, but at the very least the majority of them are all 21+ characters with emphasis on them being, well, adults. LO stands out because hades is depicted so much like an old man even by WT standards (40s according to RS) and persephone is ... not, she in canon is stuck at 19, so she's more akin to a high school MC than the MCs from adult/sex-filled romance comics that LO tries to be. It's kinda creepy for that fact, tbh.

4. with recent anons i have to say again that it's unlikely RS puts any of the harmful shit into her work with any ill intent. she's just ignorant and also doesn't think. except maybe that classism because it's so blatant that it's hard to believe RS really doesn't notice it??? is she ever going to bring it up??

5. thats what i dont get about the stans. they've been flooding every single mythology and pagan tag for years now where they shouldnt be, they've harassed and threatened pagans and greeks for not bowing to LO and RS's "genius", they've tried to tamper with actual wikipedia pages, and have doxxed and sent death/r*pe threats to critics and fans alike, but they act like tumblr having a broken tag system is our fault and we must accommodate them? these are grown adults acting like entitled children.

6. i dunno if anyone remembers the "Our company's Women of Color" meme that was just a bunch of white women in rainbow-colored shirts, but ... lore olympus. that's lore olympus. i havent seen that meme since 2015 but its LO to a fault. rachel thinks women of color means purple and pink.

7. wait is rs going to make hera x echo a canon thing? didnt hera torture and basically magic murder echo in myth? how is that a healthy relationship? then again this whole comic is about romanticizing a r*pist and his kidnapping and forced marriage of his victim into a "love story", so i guess its not shocking rachel has some bad takes on "improved" pairings for her girlboss, karen version of hera.

8. As a response to your most recent anon, as a Greek myself, the story is just the same old boring cliche of romanticizing a part of our mythology, same as Percy Jackson or Song of Achilles (another cheap attempt of making profit out of a culture that doesn't belong to them, but eh)...Our mythology has been SO overused and 'defiled' that honestly, it is mostly makes me indifferent than it makes me displeased..Not only Americans but also Europeans have been leeching off of our cultural history for EONS and no matter what we do, they will continue to do so...my word of advice to anyone thinking they are offending Greece or smthng by enjoying these pieces of media is that it is okay if you like them, some of us like them too, some of us don't, it happens..just remember that whatever you read is most certainly a retelling and that the actual material is much less 'enjoyable'

9. So I dropped Lore Olympus a while back...I liked it at first, considering it just a simple piece of media to consume but some people criticizing it had some really good points...so after some consideration I stopped reading it..but lemme just say, the death threats and blatant hate ain't it..it is entirely possible to like a story AND being able to see the flaws in it...all the antis sending death threats to fan content creators and calling fans "apologists" was too extreme...everyone is allowed to have their own opinion on the media they choose to consume and sending hate to one another is a completely pointless notion🤷

[passionsofthegods]

Minthe Defies Hades' Orders 👀🥵

Hades listened to her struggle to catch her breath, offering her no words of sympathy or arms of comfort. Once she regained her composure, he said calmly, "I have warned you on numerous occasions to never sneak into my bed without prior notice. I cannot control what harm may come your way."

"And I have warned you…" Minthe wagged a pointed finger, allowing her natural aroma to float into the air. “I like being choked." She flashed a broad smile accompanied by fluttering lashes. "Unfortunately, sneaking into your room unannounced is the only way I can get you to fulfill my fantasy."

Passions of the Gods Available NOW on Amazon & KU!

[smolandweirdwriter]

Eros &

Psyche &

Hephaestus &

Aglaea &

Hades &

Persephone &

Hypnos &

Pasithea

What can I say? I have very simple standards for godly relationships: few myths surrounding their relationship, and minimal to no affairs. The bar is on the ground. (And yet somehow Zeus is down in the underworld, limbo dancing with someone who is definitely not Hera)