#i swear i love the series i just cant stand this aspect of the casting. it doesnt feel like they thought this stuff through

[higuchisora]

Y'all might hate me for this, but the more and more I think about it, the more I think it was incredibly short-sighted of them and weird as fuck to cast a black man for the role of "World's #1 deadbeat dad with so many unpaid child support checks that they had to bar him from having kids." Yes I'm talking about Zeus. Yes I know they probably didn't mean it that way. No I don't think that intention really matters when you've got an entire team of professionals working on the project with the expectation that millions will watch it.

Like did we forget that we didn't like Zeus. He was never really a villain but NO ONE in the fandom liked Zeus. Hell, the CHARACTERS didn't like Zeus. He might as well have been a villain, with what he does and how they regard him. Why the fuck did they cast him like this.

It's especially weird when you consider the way Rick initially wrote about the gods' appearances as basically caricatures/physical cues for what they're supposed to represent. Battle-hungry god of war Ares being a "scary biker guy", and goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite oscillating between "all the supermodels in the world"/whoever you're in love with, for example, make total sense for obvious reasons. Hence it made sense to me for Zeus to be a white man in a suit in the first book, seeing as being the "king of the gods" and general self-centered prick, his whole thing is being more powerful than anyone else (and an asshole about it). So it made sense that he would look like an alpha male Podcaster's wet dream. It made sense that he'd look like the face of capitalism and patriarchy incarnate. Unfortunately, a white, rich businessman kind of IS the face of power in America. Making him black feels like a weird confirmation for those Ben Shapiro fucks who think white people are being oppressed or replaced.

"Appearances don't matter" vs the importance of visual storytelling, fight!