#mother demeter

[theironqueenofhell]

Happy Mother’s Day, Queen Persephone

🪺🦇💐🔥🌕👑💎🍇

On Mother’s Day, we honor Queen Persephone as the bringer of life as well as the divine child. Her most famous story is a testimony to the sheer power of a mother, and Her relationship with Demeter plays a major part in both of Their worships. Khaîre, Queen Persephone. Thank you for choosing me. I love you beyond words

❤️💜🖤💚💛

[each-uisge-enthusiast]

the modern villainisation of demeter will never cease to enrage me bc it wasn’t ENOUGH to just take a story of a girl being torn from her home from everyone who loved her and dragged away to be forced into marriage and twist and corrupt it until it was a romance story about female empowerment that wasn’t ENOUGH they HAD to take the original hero of the story the mother who went to every length to find her daughter again to bring her home and demonise her character until she was this horrific overbearing unloving mother. overprotective controlling without love. they turn the story of her grief at her YOUNG daughter being torn from her without her knowledge into the story of a misunderstood bad boy and a horrible cruel mother who won’t give him a chance and i really find it sickening. it’s ironic, that the ever misogynist age of hellenistic greece, has a better grasp of how disgusting and horrifying this situation was that a modern, self proclaimed ‘feminist’ era.

[thesummerstorms]

I kind of feel like the Demeter cabin kids must low key HATE Persephone.

Imagine that one of the most popular, well-taught Greek myths of all time is about how your mother's love and grief for your sister was so overpowering it literally created the seasons.

And then here you and your mortal siblings are, dying on a quest, or against the armies of Kronos, or in the hands of Gaia, or fighting an undead Roman Emperor, and your mother doesn't even spare you a conversation.

You and your siblings, despite your perceived weakness, show up to fight the armies of Kronos, to stop the thrones of the Gods from being overturned. Your siblings and friends are bleeding or dying.

And your mother takes her favorite daughter and hides in the underworld.

Demeter 's love for Persephone brought winter upon the world. Her love for you does nothing.

[clown-cult]

Imagine ignoring and villianising the original feminist hero in favour of a straight love story 💀

[gracecarts]

Demeter

[wooluuna]

"i'll not lose her again... i shall freeze hell in it's entirety if that is what it takes to get her back"

[nightmarearian]

blood dripped from Poseidon's mouth, red.

red.

the day they overthrew Kronos, child-eater (stomach acid crawling around them, after maw of teeth grazing his small, child body), his golden ichor bled red.

god blood, degraded into a mortal's.

the day Typhon, father of monsters (as big as their father was, as big as the Titans with sharp claws and teeth) ripped out Zeus' tendons, his blood was red.

Poseidon, god of the tides, son of Kronos, looked up at the dark shape stood above him, his own golden trident in his hand, the teeth like prongs drenched in red.

Odysseus is a mortal. was a human.

sharp webbed ears spread out on the side of their head, scales grew around their neck and arms, shining like a coral reef, illuminated by their growing red eyes, that were shrunken to slits.

Odysseus' teeth glinted in the lightning, showing their unnaturally sharp point.

monster.

[godsofhumanity]

Hades: [trying to feel the baby kick] Hera: Sorry this is taking so long. He kicked for everyone else. Zeus: It's hard for the little one to perform under pressure. Demeter: Top 10 things Zeus said on his wedding night! Hades: Woah, it was small, but I think I felt something. Poseidon: Top 10 things Hera said on her wedding night. Hera: [starts laughing] Zeus: Stop laughing at it, Hera :( Hades, Demeter, Poseidon and Hestia: Top 10 things Zeus said on his wedding night!!

[spookberry]

Its been a while so I cant point to a bunch of specific example outside of like, Hera, Athena, and Hephaestus. But okay, one thing that always bothers me about the Percy Jackson worldbuilding is the fact that its fundamental premise is just "what if the greek gods and their stories were real" so there's nothing you can do about how deeply and unrelentingly sexist the ancient greeks were without just breaking your own premise. Like your options are take them at their word to fulfill the premise or say "nah all of them were wrong I have new lore". So I don't exactly blame Riordon for cherrypicking which myths he was gonna edit.

Its just a little wacky to me though that because of it's status as an adaption(to some degree) people don't really critically analyze the intent behind the source material on the gods. Their context from a meta perspective is often overlooked in the grand scheme of the story. Which I understand, the intrigue is on the demigods afterall, not the gods themselves.

However I just cannot stop myself from thinking about it. Like the fact that a big part of why the greeks respected Athena was because she was born "purely of man" and her birth was umblemished via coming from an icky woman. Shes the perfect woman because she lacks ties to womanhood. Shes the ideal Pick Me girl.

The story of Hephaestus's birth is sucky for him, but personally I think more on Hera. To me its always been fairly clear that the intended message you are meant to get out of that story is literally "no matter what, women are worse then men. Even at the one thing theyre meant to be good at." How dare a woman think she could ever be better than a man at something even if she is a Goddess of this thing.

Hera does bad things in her mythos I wont deny that and youre not meant to like her in Percy Jackson either which is fine. We can have complicated and annoyingly meddlesome girlbosss goddess for the sake of plot. Nonetheless I often find myself feeling sad about how she has been dragged through the mud for centuries because people dont dare to think more critically on why the men telling her stories spoke on her the way they did.

[deathlessathanasia]

Demeter-Persephone and Leto-Artemis are both examples of particularly close and loving mother-daughter relationships. The difference is that in the first case the mother is the protective one always ready to defend her daughter, while in the second it is the daughter who vehemently protects and defends her mother.

[deadbaguette]

Doomed mothers in greek mythology they could never make me hate you (Demeter, Thetis, Clytemnestra, Penelope, Andromache, etc)

[hermesmoly]

Thinking about Hera inciting Dionysus with madness and Rhea being the one to cleanse him of it. Hera the madness bringer and Rhea the healer. The sanity bringer. How both their names are anagrams and yet mother and daughter are each other's antithesis.

[gingermintpepper]

So, now that Blood of Zeus has also been given its chance to tell the Demeter/Persephone story (and also, similarly, fundamentally misunderstood the themes of the Hymn to Demeter) can we finally, finally talk about Mother Love?

Because I can scream until I'm blue in the face about how modern, popular interpretations of the myth have become so focused on being 'empowering' to women by fixating on giving power to Persephone in her marriage with Hades and, in turn, disparaging Demeter, another woman, - the mother who grieves her lost daughter - that they've some how spun all the way around and gotten back to being misogynistic and reductive, but I feel like talking nebulously about the fact that it's Demeter and Persephone's story and not Hades and Persephone's story never gets the point across hard enough. So:

Anyone who was upset about Demeter's demonisation in Blood of Zeus S2? Read Mother Love. Anyone who is ever upset that retellings of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter constantly demonise, belittle, accuse and insult Demeter and her grief while making excuses to redeem and forgive her daughter's captor? Read Mother Love. Anyone who likes Hades and Persephone as a romantic tale but yearn for complexity outside of arbitrary romantic antagonists impeding the happiness of the couple? Read Mother Love!! Everyone who has even a passing interest in this tale whether it is for the romance, the mother-daughter connections, the themes of grief and loss and eventual comfort and compromise, the wrath of the mother transgressed, the justice that is served due to a mother's insistence in an unjust society, READ MOTHER LOVE!!!

Because it pains me that such a perfect retelling of Demeter and Persephone's story exists, that it focuses on the mother-daughter relationship by comparing it with the poet's own relationship with her mother and it is nearly obscure in the greek mythology community.

[dionysism]

sick of the hades and persephone retellings. not cause i dont think they could have an interesting story but because none of you are using them to write one. what i want to see now is ares and aphrodite retellings and inspired stories cause i mean come on guys! how are more people not using this material they're literally love and war

[thingsphoenix21]

Dionysus: Thanks mom. *silent at the olympus* Dionysus: Why everyone is staring at me? Ariadne *whispering*: You just called Demeter mom. You said thanks "mom". Dionysus: No. No I didn't I said thanks Dem. Demeter: Do you see me as a mother figure Dionysus? Dionysus*sweating*: No, If anything I see you as a bother figure cause you are always bothering me. Hestia*pissed*: Hey show you mother some respect. Dionysus: I didn't call her mom! Demeter *softly*: No, no, no Dionysus. I take it as a compliment. Zeus*trying to help*: It's not a big deal, I called Hera "mom" once and she's my wife. Dionysus: Guys jump on that! Dad has psychosexual issues. Persephone *with her phone filming*: Old news, But you calling my Mother mommy. Dionysus: Mommy is not on the table here. Hermes: You did call her mom dude. Dionysus: Shut up all of you liars.

[idiotic-two]

Art of @gigizetz 's Demeter