#this isnt a euphemism btw

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

just remembered that my mum wants to finally bury the dead bat in our freezer :( lil guy's been with us for nearly 10 years how COULD she :((

[sapphicwithapen]

i cant listen to pheobe bridgers songs normally i need the songs inside of me

[apocalypsegay]

Why Lore Olympus shouldn’t exist, let alone be getting an animated series

because it’s terrible and unhealthy

discussions about #rape, #sexual assault #incest and #pedophilia in both Ancient Greek canon and Lore Olympus

the tl;dr:

hades and persephone’s myth is about grown men passing a young girl around like she’s property. that’s already awful.

lore olympus is about a 19yo Persephone being lusted after by 2000/say 40-something Hades. did woody allen write this?

the story uses kidnapping and rape for cheap drama without any concern about how to portray it.

the only character that might be a PoC can’t read lmfao

let’s go

EDIT to add: yes i am aware there are MANY versions to this myth, but lore olympus is very much based on the one where hades and persephone are related (the author herself has gone out of her way to clarify there isnt incest in this one if you’re wondering), and have an overbearing age gap (which still exists in lore olympus). no you absolutely don’t have to tell me child brides are okay because the culture accepted them.

i’ve heard conflicting statements that no, it was never a story where persephone had any sort of agency to yes, in some stories hades isn’t even present (which then, id say, isn’t anywhere near the same story then?).

anyway

the long, i’m reading:

1. Hades and Persephones’s story isn’t a love story. It doesn’t matter how many modern reimaginings talk about introducing “female empowerment” into it: the basic story is literally about Zeus agreeing to gift his young daughter (say she was 15-16yo since that was the traditional age of marriage for girls back then) to his brother as a bride.

To put it less mildly: it’s about Hades wanting to rape his teenage niece, and succeeding. Greek myths are awful and nightmarish, and i understand wanting to make them less awful, but you don’t make a story about kidnapping, abuse and rape not awful by saying “actually, it was true love all along.”

this is what Lore Olympus is based on. A myth about an older man wanting a young, defenseless girl to own.

so how did Lore Olympus spin it?

2. Lore Olympus is about an older man wanting a young, defenseless girl to own... but he loves her! :)

incest is gross, i guess, but grown-ass bastards wanting to fuck barely-legal girls is Romantic.

in the story Persephone is 19 and extremely sheltered. She doesn’t know that “sleeping with” is a euphemism for sex. Her naïveté is one of her selling points (bc you know grown men aren’t gonna go after a woman who knows her boundaries).

Hades is like a 40-something CEO who could literally have Persephone mistreated, battered and killed and thrown in a ditch w/o anyone batting an eye but i guess those power imbalances really get the author going

like. listen. think about any 19yos you know. would you want a 40-something or even OLDER talking about her like this

(btw hades literally doesnt have much to say about her other than she’s hot? wow true love)

3. the “kidnapping of persephone” is two other gods getting persephone drunk and shoving her into Hades’s car. we’re supposed to find this fun and kooky instead of a set up for a rape. 

Apollo rapes Persephone. the trauma is not addressed other than Persephone yelling at him Once, maybe, but still being super ready to be sexually available to Hades. that’s how trauma works (i know about hypersexuality, this is obviously not that lmfao).

4. psyche... the only brown woman in the cast... can’t read

the only character who isn’t bright neon... and she! is! illiterate!

LOL!!!!

[jigsawsatwafflehouse]

He smiles, the wrinkles by his eyes showing and he kisses her temple “Perhaps I can show you the basement as well, It’s where my.. Big ideas happen”

Dear friends, and Family

I have noticed I have spiraled back down into depression. And though I’m not taking my life for granted, I cannot help but feel as though something is missing, thank you for being with me on this journey, Starting right now, Waffles are free until morning, My employees? Get ready. The basement is about to have some action. Ready the traps.

[therewas-a-girl]

Ppl thinking oliver queen would have been better - liked/treated/his issues better respected - by fandom, if he had been a woman has me laughing at the… is it called paradox? Blatant nontruth of the statement?

Here are some easy examples of how this is not so:

Laurel lance (lol most heatedly hated character of arrow for a myriad for reasons, at least half of them sexist bullshit the other ¼ shipper bullshit; had some shit writing which is always taken as a character trait and for which SHE is blamed for; had a depression arc, is an addict, after all the times shes been kidnapped abused and beaten probably has some form of lingering effect from all the… u know… trauma + the emotional upheaval that has been her life for the last 10 years. And yet - still loathed and her issues are negated and belittled at every turn. Always misinterpreted, rarely afforded the luxury of viewer empathy; favorite fandom strawoman usually)

Sara lance (ptsd from all the fucked up shit the league put her through amd that she went through before that, which was very visible when she was on arrow. Probably dealt with some for of sexual harassment/threats of violence/violence when she was on the Amazo, which we never explicitly saw thank god. A good portion of Olicity fans dispise her cause ship reasons, same with lauriver fans. Who is the REAL black canary discourse is still going strong btw, which inevitably generates hate on either of the lance sisters side. Saras bisexuality is constantly erased or denied or treated as sth tintillating for the straight male gaze; she is slutshamed at every corner; ppl hardly can be bothered to remember that she was actually suicidal at one point, that she thought she was not worthy of love or capable of love or of being with someone - HUGE CHARACTER MOMENT HERE - when she broke up with oliver usually dismissed/forgotten cause felicity walks in the room so most of the olicity fandom - big portion of arrow fandom - 9 times out of 10 doesnt bother to remember that sara was talking about herself here)

- yes shipper tendencies matter, they shape character perceptions.

Bonus: thea queen (neglected by her mother, abused physically and emotionally by her monster father, has some serious issues with violence, probably ptsd-related avoidance for it, the mask, her old life. Has utterly detatched from a whole side of her personality and history, something that was intrinsic to her for 2 years, and yet nobody sees that as eyebrow-raising worthy for some reason cause that is what a tots normal person would do. The almost oliver-like split of the sides of her life/personality is mentione…. how many times in fandom? The metas are where? Maybe ive just missed them. Okay. Oh i almost forgot - was stabbed and just about died. But she got over that, right? Which has nothing to do with the bloodlust, by the way. Thats from the Pit. Trauma outlasts the bloodlust. And yet whenever she displays behaviour that is consistent with some kind of post-traumautic symptoms/behaviour… she is bitchy or ungrateful or whiny or being a child again. Literally do not know how to go on with this one)

Extra bonus: felicity smoak. How much felicity’s trauma was aknowleged = she has all kinds of traumatic shit happen to her, including but not limited to near-death experinces, and yet the effect this had on her is nearly nonexistent in big fandom spaces. Sunshine felicity yay! Supporting and taking care of oliver. Yay. Always the light to guide his way. Untarnished. Y. A. Y. (Feel my burning enthusiasm for this interpretation. But thats my preference and of no consequence here.) And the moment it was “officially” aknowleged that a ptsd arc would be explored with her (which is, imo, still a euphemism, or a gross misusage of this very serious illness /that they cant be bothered to portray right on a woman/) - the same ppl that say ‘olivers mental illness is disrespected cause he is male’ were all about (paraphrasing here) “olivers LONG LASTING and X YEAR LONG ptsd is as valid as felicitys NEWLY CONCOCTED/FRESHLY CREATED ptsd” …somehow managing to insult the both of them and imply that the years one lives with an illness give u a sort of precedence and ‘elder card’ in the club. ‘Empathy should go first HERE where its mooore…’ more what? I just dont know how to continue this. needed? Valid? I dont know man. I mean, by works of logic the obvious non-truth of the beginning statement of this post is encapsulated by this last example. But lets be thorough.

Look there are layers. Olivers character deals with shit writing sometimes and horrifying demonisation of his mental illness FROM THE WRITERS OF HIS OWN SHOW. And there is a shitton of ableism in fandom about him.

But if he’d been a woman… my dude… my guy… my pal…. experience shows fandom generally, not as separate ppl but as a block unit, (fandom currents? Fandom tendencies?) have *lower* empathy for women and their narratives (e.i. a lot **less** 29596k word metas about why he does the things he does, trying to explain away the writing holes would be floating around). Lower patience for their fuckups. Lower imagination for their inner lives and even lower willingness to search them out. The show itself would have a lower interest in exploring these issues, as they have shown it to be the tendency with female characters.

Oliver queen is human, he fucks up, he has a deep inner life and his trauma has far reaching shockwaves. All those are characteristics we assume him to have, as default, cause hes a WHITE MALE presented as straight. Who has to contend with bullshit ableism, sure, and fandome expectations colored by toxic masculinity, which canon doesnt even support. But he would have faaaar more prejudices to contend with if he were female. All those assumptions - of hidden logical reasons, depths, triggers etc - up there wouldnt even go halfway if hed been a woman, or not white or, god forbit, a woman of color.

(Dude can u imagine the shitstorm of slutshaming that would hit a female!oliver for sleeping with a *fraction* of the number of ppl oliver has slept with??? In canon he has always had emotional ties or reasons for sleeping with every single one of his partners whether fandom likes it or not, and STILL he is called a manwhore, as if he only thinks with his dick. Even oliver isnt afforded brains and emotions when it comes to sexual agency. It baffles me.

But im willing to bet that it would be worse if he were a woman because the reason for dumbing him down would go from ‘i want to belittle all these other relationships he has so that THIS ONE SHIP shines thru’, to straight up sexism and womens agency over their bodies and emotions. Case in point ppl were calling felicity a plethora of disgusting epithets for sleeping with ray (ONE MAN) when she was a FREE BEING WITH AN INDEPENDENT WILL tied to !!!nobody but herself!!!, just cause she didnt plant olivers name on her ladyparts from the moment she first saw him. (Lets also admit that shipper reasons are present here too but the difference is that in olivers case, his sexing up other ppl lowers olicity’s value cause hes not devoted enough and whatnot. In felicitys case, her sexing up other ppl lowers *felicity’s* ‘value’ because… do i rly need to explain why here? Hint - It ties back to the ‘pure felicity oliver’s light’ argument and the dehumanization of her character by making her the literal object of olivers salvation and therefore nullifying/ridiculing her choices if they make her path deviate from olivers.) Ppl are saying Laurel would be betraying tommys memory by loving oliver still - TOMMYS MEMORY. a man whos been dead for *four years* matters more than a live womans feelings. Just… christ…)