#except persephone can't interact with hades

[space-dreams-world]

Angst time :

Add that Danny is adopted and looking for his dad, (I.e Bruce, dick or even jason) and the pits rage flairs up. The batfamily have to choose who gets to stay/go. Jason (once his head clears up) feels guilty (thinks he is being replaced) and wants to leave, but danny who feels even more guilt for causing his new family pain and decides to leave (sees himself as a screw up for fucking this up).

More angst: if father/son combo of Jason and Danny. Maybe once if the pit flairs up and Jason accidentally manages to kill Danny, Danny doesn't blame him, but you have Jason who in an inconsolable rage,regret and sadness sees what he's done and decides to dissapear.

Maybe the pit was a part of something that the ectoplasm makes stronger, the pit madness were an experiment from the observants that manages flee from them and dying in the human realm leaving puddles of his blood across the world. And the observants use Jason as a puppet to kill Danny,not realizing that they fucked up the timeline.

Okay i’ve maybe been reading too many hurt/comfort fics lately.

So as far as DPxDC goes Jason and his pit waters/rage reacting to Danny as a halfa/ghost and vice versa is pretty common. I just almost always see it being a positive thing. And believe me I love it being a positive thing, I’ve seen so many cool iterations of it. But what if it wasn’t positive? What if the ectoplasm-pit-waters/rage feed off of the natural ectoplasm that Danny produces. Danny isn’t malicious, it’s just like he’s accidentally added logs to a fire. Ghosts in Gotham don’t do the same because they usually don’t produce enough ectoplasm to make it flare badly, but maybe the ghosts in Gotham are what has led to the pit rage to stay as long as it has.

Danny ends up visiting Gotham with his family for some reason for another and Danny can’t so much as look at Crime Alley without hearing gunshots. Some of it is regular crime alley, but trying to get coffee or something from the area lands him in the middle of gang war, so he decides he has too much to deal with already and stays out of it. For the few days Danny is around, Red Hood seems to be on a rampage. All of the rehabilitation he’d managed is gone, and it sets his relationships with the bats back loads. Jason is blaming himself for it all, or maybe Bruce somehow, maybe both. And then Danny leaves Gotham and Jason is able to work his way back to where he was. Everyone just tries their best to put that weirdly aggressive weekend behind. They chalk it up to Jason getting set off by something that he won’t talk about. Only Jason is aware that nothing (he was aware of) set him off.

Then years later for some reason or another (reveal gone wrong, moved out for college, etc.) for this idea i’m running with reveal gone wrong or on the run of some kind. Danny comes back to live in Gotham this time. And I can see two interesting ways to take this (immediately anyway, i’m sure there’s many more)

The First;

Danny shows up on Bruce’s doorstep essentially requesting a place to hide. Danny’s smart, he knows he checks all the marks in the Wayne Adoption Compulsion, and it only takes one scouting of the manor (to check that it’s actually safe) in order to find the bat cave. And honestly what place would have better security than batman’s house, right?

Everything goes alright for a while but eventually Jason comes round to visit the new kid. As soon as he’s even near the house he can tell the pit is flaring. It’s less than the last time Danny was around because the kid was freaked out then, he’s more calm now so the ectoplasm is further from the surface (maybe?). That doesn’t stop Jason from barging into the house, maybe wires get crossed somehow, and he’s sure the Ra’s has sent a spy. He quickly finds Danny and shoots him, maybe he aims for the head or shoulder or what have you, but Danny panics and transforms to defend himself and things somehow manage to get Worse. Unsure where one would go from there, but the angst potential is immense. I can also see GhostKing!Danny having enough power over Jason to make him crumble and essentially get stuck not being able to move but full of so much rage. And if the Batfam didn’t know about Danny beforehand? Man what a heck of a reveal that would be!

The Second;

Danny ends up renting or homeless in crime alley. The effects on the pit only happen in close proximity or when Danny uses his powers, so in an attempt to remain under the radar nothing is inherently worse than normal crime alley at first. But then something happens, maybe a gang war that Danny gets caught in the middle of and tries to help, or he gets mistaken for a Wayne and captured in a hostage situation that Hood comes to solve, or heck maybe even a summoning that Red Hood is trying to stop because he realized that they make his control waver. Whatever it is, it’s the catalyst and soon Batman is painfully aware of Red Hood damn near hunting this new white haired meta. And Batman maybe has Duke at this point, so his meta rule is a little more lax? Bats is then extra confused at why Jason is all of a sudden defending that rule with deadly fervor.

Danny’s panicked because what did he do to piss off THE Red Hood?? But he’s so used to Skulker that being hunted by someone with normal guns is child’s play, but other people are starting to get caught in the crossfire. Also, Danny is pretty sure that Red Hood is human under all that leather and don’t humans need to eat and drink water and sleep?? Hood is so hopped up on MURDER that he has no concept of his own oncoming death by human needs, just that he needs to get rid of the walking (flying?) Lazarus pit.

I like to think that the Batfam eventually capture Jason and essentially put him in time out (to the best of their ability anyway, he was a Robin, he has many escape artist skills). And Batman confronts a now rather haggard Danny as Phantom to figure out what happened and nearly catches the kid himself when he sees those neon green eyes. Maybe he does catch Danny and puts Danny near Jason again, and it’s very confusing and worrying to watch how quickly the pit rage hits full force. Everyone is just stunned until Danny pushes the containment as far away from Jason as he can and transforms back to human. He figured out how to hide somewhere along the way, because Danny is half human, he still needs food and sleep and stuff too. The pit rage dies out significantly, and it answers several questions and brings up SO Many More.

ANyway,

Most of my context for batfam stuff comes from one webcomic, half rememberances from TV shows I watched as a kid, and all of the DPxDC fanfic I’ve read. I’m much more familiar with Danny Phantom. This brain worm simply would not leave me though so ta da! If anyone ends up writing something based on this idea or if there’s something already out there, will you tag me? I’d love to read it :3

[vivalafxxku]

Zagreus escapes AU

AU where Zagreus was the one who grabbed Melinoë and ran away to the Crossroads with Hecate.

Like obviously, he tried to stay and fight with his parents. But Hades and Persephone were like "your job is to protect your sister and it is our job to protect you" and then Nyx (with Hecate's help) does some magic bullshit to prevent Zag from following.

So he lost his parents and his lover(s).

He no longer is as quippy and sassy. His vibe is solemn. (Think Patroclus with Thanatos' silence)

I think he would be a boss too, trying to stop Mel from confronting Chronos and risking the Titan taking away his final family. (I imagine that's how Mel would permanently vanquish Chronos? Convincing Zag to fight with her as a call or something. It triggers a dialogue/cut scene right before entering Tartarus: "Spent years breaking out of Tartarus, never thought I'd be breaking in")

Zag's design would be less red and representative of Hades, and more of what he lost. He'd wear more greys and blues (Than and Meg's colours) with small hints of red. A butterfly following him around would be a cute but sad touch.

At the Crossroads, he'd probably be a bit of an outcast. He's withdrawn, kinda hates Hecate (it's a little misplaced) and is definitely hated by Nemesis (he can't blame her, he blames himself too). Whenever Charon is around, Zag is nowhere to be found. And he can't even look at Hypnos.

Whenever Mel tries to ask Zag about what happened, he doesn't say much other than it was his biggest shame.

He warns her about trusting the Fates. Sure they helped him in the past but now he's wary.

The Gods and Goddesses ask Mel about Zag because he's been ignoring their calls. (He's paranoid that Chronos will somehow use it to find the Crossroads)

Zagreus obviously has a soft spot for Melinoë, she's all he has left at this point. He was left one job after abandoning his parents (he didn't abandon them, but it sure felt like it) and he's going to keep doing it until his last breath.

So it's a given he's protective of Mel. She walks in on Zag talking to Nem and telling her to "back the fuck off my little sister" when Nem is airing her grievances about Mel. Though whenever Mel talks to Zag directly (passive dialogue and not the important plot ones with the special interact icon) after each run, he's asking Mel why she insists on doing an impossible task and subtly trying to talk her out of it.

FISHING WITH ZAG! FISHING WITH ZAG! FISHING WITH ZAG! FISHING WITH ZAG! FISHING WITH ZAG!

At the garden, he makes a comment like "you have a green thumb like Mum. Dad and I kill everything we try to plant without her help. Except for pomegranates".

The most emotion the Crossroads have ever seen on Zagreus was when he quite literally blazed through camp searching for Hecate because his little sister was turning into a shade.

All Hecate heard was a desperate cry of "LADY HECATE", full of panic, and when she turned around, she saw the prince clutching her writhing disciple in his arms.

[demeterdefence]

been thinking a lot about how lore olympus really just could not fathom the concept of found family, it absolutely HAD to have a traditional blood-related family for the ending which is just ... so rachel honestly lmao we really should have known.

there were a lot of instances in the series where it almost seemed like rachel went out of her way to paint biological families as inherently dysfunctional, or at least not all they're cracked up to be - aphrodite is disdained by ares' family, zeus and hera are constantly arguing / zeus is constantly unfaithful, rhea and ouranos are an abusive marriage that begets three wildly traumatized sons, etc and so forth. that's not to say all families were bad or flawed (whether that was a choice or rachel spent so little time on them it just didn't come up) but the end result is that there were a lot of broken biological families in the series.

i think rachel wanted to demonstrate that you do not have to stick with an abusive family if they hurt you - that blood is not the defining aspect of family and bonds, that you can make your own and build your own family. i think rachel thought she was writing that, with how hades hates his dad and how persephone distances herself from demeter (who did nothing wrong but anyways.) the problem is, she absolutely does not follow through with it. at the end of the day, rachel is going to prioritize blood bonds and biological children over found family, because to her, that's the only family that counts.

like, hades raised thanatos from childhood and abuses the fuck out of him, completely traumatizes the god of death to the point thanatos is genuinely afraid of hades. thanatos is mocked, derided, scorned, and scoffed at by hades, constantly. thanatos did not have a CHOICE in who raised him, his mother abandoned him into hades' care. and hades does not for a single moment let up on how resentful he is about it. when thanatos finally admits that he only had hades as a parental figure (or ANY kind of family, tbh), hades turns it into how that affects him, how it makes him feel. after, we get two jokes about how hades is thanatos' dad now, and the last scene we ever get of thanatos is that "sometimes hades talks to him." thanatos never shows up in hades' daydreams of a family, he never shows up as a person who is important to hades. for centuries, hades was in charge of raising thanatos, not once does he ever appear in any of hades' dreams or wants regarding family. not biological family, so fuck off.

more to the point, the narrative makes it explicit to us that hades can't have children - it's brought up three times specifically, to drive the point home that hades wants children, he's definitely tried to have children, and it just won't happen. melinoe was seen as a way around that, and i won't lie, compared to rachel's usual hamfisted approaches, it wasn't the worst idea to have. but by the end of the series, it's shown that oh, nope, hades can have children (only with persephone though) and also they look like him, because biological bonds are everything. you know who doesn't count? dionysus, who was kidnapped from his dad and raised as a pet project for persephone. the kid helps her conquer winter or whatever the fuck that plot point was, but because he's not their biological child, hades and persephone ditch him after the final battle and throw him his old mom back to get rid of him.

biological children aren't a bad thing and it's not a bad thing to want or have them, but it's so fucking telling that hades and persephone have multiple people in their lives who should be considered family, and are picked up and discarded summarily once their use is over. dionysus was their proxy kid, and we literally do not see hades interact with him except maybe twice. thanatos gets absolutely trounced and i'll never not be angry about that. i don't even know what's going on with persephone's half brother, but he shows up for a single panel in the finale and then disappears.

wouldn't it have been so powerful if hades, an abuse victim, decided to be the father thanatos deserved? wouldn't it have been more in line with the supposed message of the story if hades and persephone opened their homes to people who once felt like them, abandoned and unwanted? at the very least, couldn't they have shown love to the people in their lives who sacrificed so much and put up with so much from them? what exactly is the measure of a family in lore olympus? we can't control who births us, but we can control the hurt we ourselves give, and the love we share, and that would have been an infinitely better ending for the two most selfish characters to show their growth. another disappointing pin in an already massively disappointing ending.

[chilewithcarnage]

oh finally making that post on lore olympus and rachel smythe's supposed 'decline in art style' before I forget about it .

so in the original post, the blogger jokingly edited this tweet in reference to the original tweet on the right made by infamous ex-tumblr fan artist rcdarts. my problems with this post stems from in my opinion an unwarranted comparison and kind of 'grasping at straws' type of complaint to the way lore olympus' art looks. op of the post makes it seem like Smythe's art devolved; but if this is the type of critique you're trying to make it's got pretty weak legs to stand on. the above pictures are not good examples if you're trying to have a valid argument that lore olympus' proto art is better than how the comic ended up looking. you can argue that the character designs of the series are boring and safe considering they're based off of Greek gods as opposed to say the art in the supergiant Hades series. That's all well and good but to say that legitimately that first picture with gray Hades and orange Persephone is 'better' than the second feels disingenuous. From a technical standpoint, the art of the second image is better. The art in the first picture while decently drawn is much flatter and dull than the second. Second pic is definitely more visually interesting and has better usage of its colors/painting style. Though the palette is limited there's still visual depth and volume to it. Design wise I get a much better read of who these characters are and what they're like. Also second pic Hades and Persephone are much better proportioned than the first. Albeit it first pic looks like a wip, Hades' head looks huge in comparison to Persephone's (her torso also looks like it's kind of just floating over his, the limited composition and coloring doesn't make it feel like these two are actually touching/interacting with each other). I think a lot of the smoke lore olympus got (and still gets) is due to the main characters looking like a stereotypical 'booktok' romance couple; Hades being a tall sharp featured fit man in a suit and Persephone being a big bright eyed button nosed Disney princess esque young woman. But the first pic doesn't even divert from those tropes. It's pretty much the same visual dynamic except Hades gives less sugar daddy/mafia boss and more academic(?) shut in. And Persephone's is face is less rounded and her hairs shorter but that's about it in terms of design differences. I've never read lore olympus and don't plan to so I can't give any actual criticism to the series, but in this specific case where we're just judging art and visuals the claim of the older art being 'better' seems unfounded. I think what a lot of people that rag on how the series looks hate it because Smythe's style is very much a product of when she started getting popular. It's very much that early to mid 2010s tumblr fantasy style that a lot of women artists were doing (hence why I feel low-key why this and also Steven universe had/has so many haters is mainly due to misogyny, this is a very feminine art style). y'all need to understand that a person developing a more simplistic style is not equal to their skill devolving. The comparison to rcdarts to me is unjustified cause rcdarts actually did change for the worst. like how I just said simpler style =/= worst art, but rcd's work not only got simple but less visually interesting, less dynamic, utilized more static and dull posing/coloring, and over exaggeration to the point where characters were unrecognizable.

[kyouka-supremacy]

In the original version of Hadestown, when Orpheus turns, him and Eurydice exchange the lines “you're early” / “I missed you” before Eurydice returns to Hell forever. In the Broadway version, the lines are replaced with “it's you” / “it's me”. I used to like the old version of the scene so much better, how their last exchange echoes Persephone and Hades' first interaction in the show. I loved the parallels between the two couples, I loved how Orpheus and Hades are different in everything except in the love they hold for their wives. I loved how the lines first delivered in the most upbeat moment of the tale were now repeated at the peak of the tragedy, but maintaining the same meaning: “I love you.” Winter came early because I love you. I turned because I love you. Eventually, I found, on Tumblr, someone saying they thought the Broadway lines were infinitely better than the NYTW ones. I was so genuinely curious to know their reasoning for liking a change I despised so much: because I could find nothing meaningful in the new lyrics, but I wanted to understand! I found the courage to (politely) ask Op to elaborate. Their answer was very insightful, but eventually summed up in: those lines are only theirs. The musical is filled to the brim of Eurydice / Orpheus / Persephone / Hades parallels, and they're amazing, but that moment is only about them: about Eurydice and Orpheus' love, and the audience being remembered of other characters' existence doesn't sit right, because in that moment only Orpheus and Eurydice, their love, their tragedy, exists. Anyways this is why you can't fit skk in sskk fics

[specialofficerlemons]

Ooh ooh ooh

Okay, been thinking about Private Eyes Hades and Persephone AU...except-

I just watched this interesting video about some issues with "modern retellings" of Greek myths and the big thing the creator talked about wrt HxP is that the original (earliest record that we have) is not really a story about Hades and Persephone. It's a story about Demeter. It's a story about a mother whose daughter is snatched away by the god of the underworld and her grief and anger

So what if, in this AU, Arthur isn't Persephone as I originally thought. What if he's Demeter. What if it's a story about him bargaining with the(or a) god of the underworld for his daughter whose soul was claimed too early. Obviously, this would not be like a romance between Faroe and John, it would still be about the relationship between Arthur and John (but it could have a little focus on how Faroe interacts with John, how she expresses her feelings that she was failed by her father. Is she mad at John for taking her to the underworld? Or is she mad at Arthur for making his visit necessary?) Could have a Beauty and the Beast angle, trade my soul for hers (but what kind of life would she lead, being alive without a mother or a father) (speaking of, does he care at all for Bella? Does he seek her out in the underworld? My instinct says no, but that does leave open the opportunity for some juicy drama, a confrontation in the underworld where Bella is reunited with her daughter and doesn't want to give custody back to the father that caused her death, who proved he was not a fit father) (I can't stop thinking about this)

[moony-2001]

Lore Olympus ep. 252 critique

Before all you stans get mad I generally thought this episode was pretty okay. But maybe that’s because not a whole lot happened.

Cassandra

So going in the order of events, first up is our favorite gal Cassandra.

Gotta say, already like her loads.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about her general existence, beyond the fact that it’s stupid that Apollo is using her as a walking incognito tab. My main criticism more lies around the idea of when did Apollo even meet her? He obviously couldn’t have met her during the time skip because there were no interactions allowed between realms during that time and he was kicking it in Olympus.

We also have no indication of when he actually met her post-punishment. There’s no definitive timeline for how far we are post-time skip, but by my estimation, we can’t be more than a month past when the embargo officially lifted. Idk I can already smell the mess that is this storyline a mile away.

The SA plot line

Holy fuck. I don’t exactly know what the hell Rachel is exactly trying to achieve with the SA plot line but I can tell you that the handling of it has been piss poor.

Uhhh... this is great and all except for the fact that Persephone never thought this. There is not one shred of evidence that Persephone ever liked or actually found Apollo handsome. Not even in the very early chapters. She didn't even say that he made her feel special. She said that she liked the way Hades made her feel. Hades made her feel special by grooming her but that's a whole-ass post on its own.

Even after her assault, she continued to express at minimum a clear discomfort for him in front of others and at maximum immense hatred for him when by herself or with only him. And now suddenly Rachel wants to flip the script? Why? What purpose would that serve? Why is she suddenly backpedaling on a plotline that was established within the first 25 episodes/the second day Persephone is on Olympus? The SA plotline is the longest-running and the "big bad" that has yet to be resolved. But now it only pops up when the story needs a little conflict or an extra boost to drive it forward. Plus now she wants to portray Apollo as this misunderstood ex-love interest/boyfriend with whom the audience is supposed to sympathize? It's disgusting. @genericpuff who I really need to stop tagging in these posts I'm so sorry made an excellent essay about how Rachel is burying the SA plot line that basically takes what I've said above and greatly expands it. Go read it, they made a lot of excellent points.

Melinoe

Ah yes. The mystery deity that was really Hades’ inner child/actual child all along!

So I actually had a conversation with another LO critic about how weird I thought this "inner child -> actual canonical child" pipeline was. Now, granted, I could be reading into this way too much but when I first read this, I honestly thought it was some kind of weird/unintentional representation of parents projecting their trauma onto their children.

We've seen this little ghost buddy in past chapters and a lot of people (myself included) thought that our ghost buddy was a representation of Hades' inner child. A little Hades if you will. And it was portrayed that way. We often saw our little ghost buddy/little Hades who was extremely traumatized by Hades' past experiences. The part of Hades that just can't let go despite what he may claim about "moving on" or "being better". But if this little ghost/Hades is actually their kid Melinoe, that means they saw everything that Hades went through. All his traumas, all his struggles. Everything. And now also with Persephone and her little jaunt through the mind-scape and the shit she saw. So now we have to recontextualize all of those scenes where Hades interacts with this being and tbh the scenes kind of become very ick? This is such a strange direction to take this particular storyline. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way and I don't know if it's my above complaint or something else.

But yeah. Pretty tame in comparison to some of my past posts and posts that will come. Until the next chapter and/or my next post.

[starriskiesstuff]

ok so bianca lives au!

the stress of being inside talos causes bianca to accidentally shadow travel (which explains the lack of a body)

talos is defeated, just to clarify

the quest continues on, zoe dies, and percy gets back to camp and tells nico bianca is dead

nico in this version denies it because he can feel that she isn't, but the rest of that interaction follows canon

so meanwhile bianca is in the underworld and when she figures out how to control her shadow travel she gets back to camp the day after nico leaves

unfortunately she can't do much to help find him, but she does search while also rejoining the hunters

eventually she realizes he's in the underworld, but minos leads him away before she can get there

after that it's a game of cat and mouse

nico has been convinced that he's wrong and she's dead because that serves minos' goals better

so she tries to find them, minos keeps moving away, this goes throughout the labyrinth

at the same time annabeth, percy, grover, and tyson are on their quest and have been told to keep an eye out

they see nico at the ranch and try to tell him, but he refuses to listen

after percy kills geryon, annabeth manages to send an iris message

bianca shows up, there's the reunion/explanation, nico hates percy less, and since now he has a whole reason to not trust minos, he sends minos away.

nico doesn't want to go back to camp atm, so he stays at the ranch and bianca sticks around too

then the quest continues, calypso's island happens, annabeth and percy go back in with rachel's help, etc.

bianca shows up and helps them in daedalus' workshop (nico didn't have enough control to properly return minos to the underworld so he ended up sticking with some chthonic kids from the ta)

they escape, go to camp, where nico and that immortal ares kid who's name i don't remember join them, as do the hunters

so castor doesn't die

lee still does because reasons

tlo goes more or less the same except more powerful demigods = less deaths

also hades favors bianca so she stays in the underworld freeing up nico to assist the others

plus bianca and hades, demeter, and persephone show up earlier

alabaster will probably work his way into this b/c i love him

and he is a chthonic kid so maybe...

so there you have it! bianca di angelo lives. she's also scary.