Ok, Also With The Theseus Slander.

Ok, also with the Theseus slander.

How? Is it possible? To boil down a Greek hero so much that it’s actually possible to just flat out detest them.

I find it impossible to take the characters personally. Like people seem personally offended characters and I don’t get it. The characters are all so complicated that it’s impossible to just broad stroke psychoanalyse, and THEN proceed to act like the character has personally wronged you due to this diagnosis you have them based on your version preference when reading. Damn.

Yeah fun fact the villain in the story is Minos. The victims are the Athenian youths, the Minotaur. Theseus is the Hero, Ariadne is the Heroine. But Ariadne represents the suffering of the Athenians when she gets on the ship with them, even though she saved them, and Theseus’s dealing with that represents his tendency to make some very bad decisions, something that will haunt his character for the rest of his stories.

Maybe it’s the fact that I base my enjoyment of a character on how interesting they are. But Greek mythology is set up with these extremely complex characterisations alongside this tendency toward a deeply flawed hero. Not necessarily glorifying the fallenness, but using it to explore what happens to exceptional men when they are deeply flawed. That’s Theseus. He’s not a psychopath, not a narcissist. The texts paint him as a youth who began his ventures to find his place, who stepped up to save his kin, but whose chief and detrimental weakness was not thinking, and making bad decisions with big consequences based on just not fucking thinking anything through. He is a gut reaction person, he makes big moves based on where he finds himself in the moment. His character is glorifying the strength of the hero and, as so many men in mythology ARE WRITTEN, a cautionary tale against the flaws that lay a hero low.

Achilles is also one of these. Agamemnon is one of these. Hector, a great guy, but he has some flaws that get him in trouble. Jason too. Odysseus! And Theseus, a monumental figure, is one of these characters that implore men to be strong but to be wise, to think before they act.

No but I generally think more people should stop talking about Medusa's relationship with Perseus and more towards Medusa's relationship with Perseus's mother.

(In the version where Medusa was assaulted by Poseidon and Perseus's mother assaulted by Zeus) they are narrative foils/counterparts. Or at least they both experience similar traumas.

Apropos of nothing, Perseus is a perfect baby angel who only ever did what he had to do to protect his mother from forced marriage and a lifetime of sexual assault.

Starlo fight in pacifist be like

Og image under cut + alt version

Zeus to ares

my son who i hate

I feel like that's some shit Ares would pull, but like, too a mortal.

His godly lovers crave violence.

Yeah, this is generally my thought on retellings.

I don't think Greek Mythology retellings/adaptions/inspired/etc. are necessarily "evil"...but I DO think people REALLY need to understand that there's a huge difference between the actual mythology and certain media.

I feel like people have to basically do a "Fandom ___" to say the different versions. Like "PJO ___", "Hades game ___", "TSOA ___". For it to be understood that these depictions are DIFFERENT. I'm saying this as someone who grew up reading PJO and still has a soft spot for it. But as someone who really loves Greek Mythology as well, I sometimes get really SAD.

I'm going to use the comparison of Howl's Moving Castle with it's Book Vs. Movie. I enjoy both!!! But they are honestly very different. In the movie there is no "sister swap", Markle isn't a young teenager, Sophie doesn't throw weed killer at Howl, and many more moments. But I enjoy both because even though there are changes they still keep components that are ingrained into the characters!

In some Greek Myth retellings/adaptations/stories/etc., characters are...SO different from the source material. That's fine...Choose what you want with your story... But folks should know that the modern adaptations are NOT the source material!!!

It bothers me that a lot of these wonderful myths and stories are twisted up and seen so differently because of a modern version of them. You can have that character be "awful" or a certain way in your story. But I almost feel that as fans, it's not good to generalize them or see it as "This is the truth". People are hating the mythological figure when it's only in that interpretation they are like that.

In PJO, Ares is "Zeus' favorite", isn't a good dad, a misogynist, etc. The actual myths? One of his Epithets is LITERALLY "Feasted by Women", in the Iliad everybody basically bullies him with Zeus literally saying he hates him. He cries when he learns one of his sons is killed in the war. He literally kills someone about to rape his daughter. Ares isn't perfect but it makes me sad with how he's viewed and talked about when it's only in PJO he's like that. Same with Dionysus. Read the Bacchae, you'll love it.

In Lore Olympus, Apollo rapes Persephone (noticing the fact that modern takes on the myths add rapes where there never were hmmmmm) when he never did in any of the myths.

In TSOA, Thetis is cruel when in the Iliad, she is such a loving mother to Achilles. She grieved alongside her son over Patroclus. Also with Agamemnon. In Ipheginia at Aulis, Agamemnon is a MESS. He adored his children.

In Circe, Odysseus is viewed as a selfish man who ONLY hurts others and doesn't care about his family when that is LITERALLY his one consistent character trait. HE is actually the one who is the victim of rape. Circe was never raped.

Medusa is only a victim in Ovid's, a Roman man, works. Not in GREEK mythology. She was just a cool monster. Leave Perseus alone. Poseidon and Medusa actually had a consensual relationship in Greek Mythology!

These adaptations/retellings/inspired by/etc. whatever anybody wants to call them, are not the real myths! They may be similar in some ways but to just generalize them or hate the deity/mythological figure because of something they did in the new media feels fucked up!

You can enjoy these new stories. There's nothing wrong with that!!! But know they're not the real myths. Maybe even label it as "I hate ____'s version of ____". As that makes it clear what version you're talking about.