#that's just lore olympus

[wakinguponsaturday]

love the implication that the eagle is just as fed up with this arrangement as prometheus and now they've unionized

[genericpuff]

For the sake of comedy, I redrew this iconic S1 panel in the S3 style. Better or worse? 💀😆 /s

edit: because i've gotten comments on both this post and the one i shared in the subreddit that seem to misinterpret why i made this, y'all this is meant to be satire, i'm not actually trying to 'outdo' the original panel, it's supposed to look like the S3 art style which looks boring and stiff compared to the original LMAO (I even used S3 panels as the base to work off of when creating this) so yes all the issues with the redrawn version are on purpose, i'm well aware it's not as good as the original and that the anatomy is wack, that just tells me i succeeded because it's p much exactly what S3 of LO looks like JFKDLAJFDASKLJKASLD

[meanya]

I don't think I ever posted about this, but I noticed a long time ago that there's a facial expression that seems to pop up in Lore Olympus a lot.

I can't tell if I just see it everywhere now just because I'm acutely aware of it... I tried to catch it every time I saw it on rereads. I'd taken to calling it "Lore Olympus Face," it's this sort of exaggerated eyeroll + open pog mouth 😅

Am I just looking too deeply at the details? Did anyone else notice this expression everywhere or am I just seeing it now because I'm looking for it?

[thatoneluckybee]

okay WHAT is it about longer Webtoons that inspires the character to infiltrate and overthrow the government or at least fundamentally change it

[princessrainbowpastel]

(Credit for the Hades x Persephone art goes to razzberrypopcans! 🥰 also sorry for the repost! was trying to update the original and it glitched out on me so I had to delete it 😅)

[pomegranatepomp]

What if we both dumped papa smurf and ran away together instead

And we were both girls

Original panel under the cut;

[moony-2001]

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.

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay so I saw this post about dark percy (really him reaching his Limit and fighting full strength with everything he had) and I was imagining the potential fallout of that. Pretty bad, as you can guess.

The thing is a lot of percys strongest moments happen out of view of the olympians, especially in hoo. The hurricane atop the glacier in alaska, the poison scene in tartarus, bending the depression river and the one in the palace of nyx.

Stuff like the St Helens eruption got him washed up on an inescapable island literally removed from reality until calypso gave him the OK, the achillies curse he got tricked into losing by hera. Smaller moments, the minotaur, fighting ares, the stolen pirate ship, walking on water vs hyperion, freshwater sources, him knowing both Latin and Greek, they're more easily brushed off or at least mostly due to cunning, sword skills and sheer luck and grit.

But basically the olympians don't actually know the full extent of percys strength and divine power. They have hints - percy standing on the throne, winning against ares, his many victories - but what they aren't willing to brush aside in the heat of (an important) battle there have been pretty strong consequences for.

Heck, just look at Frank, he's no prodigy with weapons, he's polite and respectful, but his distant relation to two olympians letting him inherit shapeshifting earned him direct divine meddling and his life force tied to a hunk of half toasted firewood. Man is a honey bear with lactose intolerance and he was punished with a mythical death curse for being too strong.

If Percy's true strength came out, he would risk losing everything. His freedom, most certainly. If he wasn't straight up executed he might wind up in a Greek myth style imprisonment, the way of atlas, prometheus, calypso, or something like the myriad of ways Greek heroes met their end. Good scenario he survives a dozen curses and gets on with life with a dozen new disabilities, best case scenario he's stripped of every inch of divine power and dropped back to the mortal world, not even clear sighted. Total separation from the Greeks and Romans. Oh, annabeth would marry him either way, and his friends would hardly abandon him despite the gods wishes, but they'd hardly be able to see him, and no long range contact without the ability to IM him or vice versa.

All of that to say Percy is hiding his true strength from the gods themselves - maybe not consciously, and it's not even power he particularly wants - but if they ever find out?

It's game over.

But why is he so strong? I don't know. What I do know is that the half bloods of the books are so much stronger than the ones of myth. Used to be that divine blood would get you divine favour and a great fate whether you liked it or not. Maybe some cunning and bow skills. A spot of spell casting if you were really lucky. Achillies got his curse after he was born, Perseus had a dozen magic artifacts, orpheus had something going on but hercules is to my knowledge an outlier. Now? Everyone in camp has some special power. Flight, fire, necromancy, hypnotism, dream walking etc. However it's happening, half bloods are slowly but surely getting a lot, lot stronger every century that passes. Meta? I mean I guess. But.

What no one has done before is something that their godly parent couldn't.

Except.

Except Percy.

Except Percy, in tartarus, at his mental, emotional and physical limit, controlling poison with his mind, overpowering the goddess of poison in her home, making misery choke on misery. Feeling something in his chest crack. Doing something poseidon could not, and doing it better than the person who could.

Down there, hidden away from the gods, he evolved. For that brief moment, he did something, was something new.

And that was how the gods overthrew the titans.

And that's why they must never find out.

[demeterdefence]

so just to refresh

- we spend real live months with persephone and hades wanting to talk to erebus about the “trade” she made to become queen

- we spend even more time focusing on a sleep dive to meet erebus despite it being clear that’s not going to work

- NUMEROUS characters including metis tell persephone she NEEDS to talk to erebus to figure out what she traded

- we spend two or three weeks on just LOOKING for erebus, putting hecate in harms way

- we do ANOTHER sleep dive which we know won’t work and that kidnaps hades and morpheus

- after all of that! while humans are dying in their millions!

- the plot of finding erebus is thrown away in a cheap joke panel

[fabuloustrash05]

I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but I dislike it when in modern Greek myth retellings nowadays there’s a side plot of Hera having an affair with one of Zeus’ brothers, Hades or Poseidon.

Webtoon’s Lore Olympus and Netflix’s series Kaos have both done this and I’m already tired of it.

[nymphsupremacy]

Zeus' nightmare (Part 1)

He was told not to stray too far because his father may find out that he's still alive.

[genericpuff]

lore olympus' brand of feminism is like if the credits for Mean Girls immediately rolled credits after the line "and that's how Regina George died"

[schibi12]

Greek Gods being desgined as colorful rainbow people my beloved

[ladyelainehilfur]

webtoon up to their crappy money making BS again 😐 aren't they already making enough money off their tens of millions of monthly readers? Did they set up this whole coin system with the end goal of using their site as an advertising platform?

Webtoon doesn't even feel like it's about web comics anymore. It's about piggybacking off creators' hard work to suck money from its users, credit card or not.

If the comic is ongoing, there's a fast pass system, with coins to advance. If the comic is finished, there's a daily pass system, with coins to advance. If the comic is popular and finished in another language, there's both. A popular webtoon will be complete and you have 60 days max to binge read before it's paywalled despite the fact you might have kept up with it for years at that point.

Now it's not enough for you to scroll through the episodes to get coins, now they want you to do a quiz. There might not even be enough slots for everyone to do the quiz! There was a time when there was no expiration date on coins you earned. Now you only get to keep the coins for 7 days. Go drop dead, right now.

From what I've read, creators don't get paid if someone purchases fast pass with free coins. I never thought webtoon was a benevolent entity creating a safe haven for aspiring comic creators, but their real greed as a company under multibillion-won-earning Naver is finally showing.

[micciemoore]

Lore Olympus but Persephone is 💕unhinged💕

[losthopeinloreolympus]

I've already said this back when I was Whyloreolympus, but now that my old account is gone, I'll gladly say it again

STOP ASSOCIATING THE VESTAL VIRGINS A ROMAN CONCEPT WITH HESTIA A GREEK GODDESS!!!!

They're called "the Vestal Virgins" FOR A REASON, and it's bc they're named after Vesta, A ROMAN GODDESS, NOT HESTIA!!

"well, roman mythology is the sa-" NO, IT'S FUCKING NOT, IT'S NOT THE SAME AS GREEK MYTHOLOGY!! similar? Maybe, but not the same, why? Bc in roman culture, Vesta, the roman equivalent of Hestia, has her own cult, while Hestia doesn't, nor does she need one.