I always thought fertility goddesses was an allegory for womanhood. Like women has this special power of creation which is a blessing but also leaves them vunerable to men abusing them. And at first it worked in the narrative pretty fine UNTIL Rachel decided that men need concent for those powers to work, and then Persephone was "blessed with wrath" so she's not like other goddesses but special more powerful one. And it's ruined an entire allegory. But not only that it's ruined the idea of Hades coming from lineage of men who abused women and their powers but later breaking this cycle refusing to use Persephone as a battery for himself.
While irl the whole aspect of women's power of creation is a fact, i dont liek it from a mythological factor, even if creator gods are men sometimes, i always liked the strange spectrum of gender it accidentally made by it, having men creating life from various methodes, women creating it from zero, women and men joining but men being the one holding it, it was an interesting view of the whole concept that is just dropped for a what should be a even mroe easier to hold metaphor in LO
@@KnucklesxReala911 yeah, i think the problem is Rachel doesn't actually knows how to write complicated themes and easily panders to whatever her audience want but it's ended up of many aspects in LO's lore not working or being underbaked
It's very strange how fertility is portrayed as something entirely passive or out of the person's control. True, healthy, and sustained abundance is not something that just happens on its own. It must be cultivated with constant hard work and care, whether that's growing food, raising children or animals, or managing the whole land. There's immense agency and satisfaction to be had from allowing yourself to care about something, actively learning and working on it, and watching it flourish as a result. Just because you Give doesn't mean you are weak or lesser or lack free will. It's bizarre that a so-called "feminist" story reduces fertility to childbearing and being a passive resource to be exploited. It echoes so much of the whole "men = agents, women = entirely passive" understanding of gender roles, which feminism actively bucked against.
As a Greek i will say that LO failed to do the myths justice or create a compelling story. The story just has the Greek pantheon names and the author called it a day. As for fertility it has never ever, be anything more than just the meaning of producing life. It has no connection with super boosting powers of anything the comic tries to imply. They make no sense and have no purpose on the story other than to confuse 😅 This comic is THE very definition of exploiting Greek culture for profit. I doubt the series would be as popular had it not be a "greek myth retelling".
This this this this this. It doesn't even LOOK nice, jesus. The FANART looks better than the comic art. It's just a mess and I PRAY once all the chapters are publicaly available, it fades into obscurity by next year and is never talked about again.
As another Greek. I agree fully . It just has names plastered on colorful characters and it's sad because we have incredible mythology to be used in media . But they are never used correctly
I hate when people re-tell the history of Persephone and hades and make it as they both wanted to be together and Demeter is just a crazy mom who can't accept Persephone growing up if they wanted a feminist retelling they could have kept the original one, a mother triying to save her daughter from a guy who forced her to marry him If i remember correctly,the history was used to comfort mother's who's daughters had been taken away, giving them hope that maybe they could return some day.
it's seriously so horrible people have turned the story of a mother mourning the loss of her kidnapped (metaphorically dead) daughter into a "this mom is OVERPROTECTIVE AND ABUSIVE how DARE she get in the way of romance"
It was technically an arranged marriage orchestrated by zeus aka Persephone's dad, but your point still stands (also what I'm saying definitely doesn't apply to every version of this tale because there are many)
Also what about deities that were historically worshipped as fertility goddesses? Demeter was in some capacity and Aphrodite too, I think. Did Smythe really not do any research on who the actual fertility deities were? That would be the first thing I would do.
Then again, this is the same woman who allegedly used Lolita as inspiration for the romance between Hades and Persephone. If you've ever read Lolita, you will know why using it as inspiration for any consensual romance is a terrible idea, it's like using 1984 as inspiration for a utopian world.
As a butch woman, the entire discourse around this comic feels like a fever dream. Most of all, the (usually straight, almost exclusively cisgender) people who love or used to love it. It's supposed to be 'feminist,' but it was made at such a time and by such a person that it's entirely suffused with some of the most hyper-binarized, ultra-feminine, ultra-masculine aesthetics I've ever seen. Apparently in this feminist comic, women are more empowered by 'divine femininity' and sass than by any of their powers that DON'T revolve around their womb. A feminist retelling where Demeter never snaps like a real mother would. Where her concern for her daughter is panned as controlling, because Persephone always wanted it, and it's only those misogynistic ancient Greeks who'd ever tell you that a cute, curvy, sexually innocent girl WOULDN'T want to be spirited away by an older man. I think there's a reason characters like Athena and Morpheus take a back seat to the pink, tiny, younger half and the older, huge, blue half of the main straight couple. Lore Olympus is 280 episodes of the art style SCREAMING complimentarian, gender essentialist propaganda into your ear. It's oddly Christian for a comic about Greek polytheism.
I feel like a LOT of Ancient Greek inspired stuff or reimaginings have the problem of christianization where they insert christian ideals into Ancient Greek myth like purity culture. It's almost like we treat Ancient Greek mythology like it's ours (westerners? idk lol) and we're critiquing it or trying to reinterpret it which is really inconvenient to the still-existing Greek people. It's a phenomenon I don't see a lot of people talk about but I'd enjoy exploring
Anyone else also just find the art eh? Like Idk I get it was smart to make people color coded, but you could’ve still done that without limiting the style so much. I just honestly got sick of it. New characters looked like old ones and I eventually couldn’t even remember who was who panel to panel
I could never get into LO because it always felt like the author just slapped greek mythology onto their characters and called it a day without doing any research into the actual mythology that they're using. Feels very exploitative, especially because they make so much money off of the comic.
As an advid greek mythos fanatic, its honestly pretty fantastic how badly Smythe fucks up every myth she tries to "reinterpret". Because yeah, the myth about Hades and Persephone is shrouded in mystery and concepts lost to time. Persephone has only been a nature deity post Hellenistic Greece era, during her Mycenaean days she was a cthonic deity along with her mother. The pottery that their story is painted on even uses the same poses for kidnap, sa and marry. Conceptually speaking, making it a secret consenting marriage could work. But Smythe seems to fuck it up entirely. Every single myth she uses is wrong. Apollo is only Apollo in name, he's not the nice and sometimes goofy lovebird he tends to be. Minthe was Hades mistress mythologically speaking, or at the very least tried to be his mistress when he was already married. Hell, Smythe somehow fucked up the myth of Dionysus. Semele, yknow, unaliving is directly how he's created in the first place. It could even be argued that Dionysus being birthed by a god instead of a mortal could be why he's not a demigod, but just a frfr god. Spoiler alert, magically bringing Semele back to life for the nice happy ending epilouge just has no mythological standing. In her myth, Semele was tricked by Hera into getting Zeus to swear by the river styx for anything, and asking for Zeus to show her his godly might, which DISINTEGRATED HER. Every myth Smythe gets her "feminist retelling" hands on his butchered and modernized so much it loses the original plot of the story. I could go on and on about each myth and the differences between the fr myth and Smythe's bullshit mary sue write ins. But, regardless, Smythe should be permanently banned from ever touching a myth again, Greek or not.
Even Artemis is a fertility goddess in Greek mythology lol. She’s believed to preside over childbirth since in one of her birth myths she helps deliver her twin brother Apollo. It’s so common that it actually annoyed me how many goddesses were casually given fertility aspects despite the fact that it didn’t seem to fit with their other aspects.
I still love reading Lore Olympus but many things just annoy me about the story. Persephone being blessed with wrath irked me so badly. I could not let that go ever. Like what do you mean everything that somehow makes her more interesting and gives her more character is given to her??? I've read other Persephone's and I gotta say I liked most of them more. A good example is a wattpad story called The queen below, here Persephone is fierce and she isn't naive like other authors portray her she knows the danger of other gods. Or the best other example would be her other webtoon counterpart from Omniscient reader's viewpoint here she's everything you've ever imagined Persephone to be. She's scary and proves she's not to be reckoned with when she reveals the steak she's eating is actually someone's soul.
As far as how the fertility powers work how the rules work within the world itself confuse me too for all the reasons you have cited, but I think I understand what Rachel was trying to do here. Now to preface this I haven't reread LO and it's just something I check up every so often when I remember it (so I might be forgetting a lot or remembering things wrong) but I think Rachel's intent with having the narrative talk about how other gods typically use the fertility goddess' power is to touch on the idea that often women are expected to sacrifice a lot for men. For so long women have been expected to just be housewives who cater to their husbands, have kids and raise them so men can be fulfilled in their vocations even if the woman may find her own fulfillment in being something other than a wife/mother. (As an aside I just want to say nothing wrong with being happy being a housewife, it's nothing easy and mad respect and encouragement to those who do it if that's what they desire and there's nothing weak about it. Perhaps unnecessary to say this but I dont want these words to be misconstrued). The fertility goddesses being used is emblematic of this so we ARE supposed to find problem in that and the end comes with women supporting one another and helping them find their strength, and help them use that strength for themselves which is so often painted as "selfish" in society. I think this is one of the reasons Hera was chosen as the missing fertility goddess because she is a textbook definition of the worn out wife, and the reason she puts herself down so often and belittles her own strength is because she genuinely believes she has none since all her efforts have always been put into, as she once said making Zeus feel safe. Now whether this was executed well (or perhaps I'm just extrapolating) is another question xD because yea I absolutely agree with the inconsistency of fertility powers or how they work, what constitutes as fertile magic over regular ....creation?? Anyhoo sorry for the long comment, it was really fun hearing your thoughts! :)
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts :) I agree with you that this was probably the intent of the narrative and this message absolutely had a place in a history that was set up in a monarchy where women had less agency than men: like it's stated for eg that Zeus could force any goddess into unwanted marrage etc. I thought at some point that fertility power and gods tapping into that power was meant to symbolise pregnancy - where woman obviously do the heavy lifting. My problem is with the way it was executed. The comic book always talks about this union as this one sided thing that male gods can benefit from which IMO takes even more agency from the goddesses in a way cause it's spending great deal of time talking about how it helps men gain more power and influence and very little time actually explaining what this power means to the goddesses who wield it. It is not even properly defined. Even our main couple don't break that status quo. We don't even know untill the latest episode if fertility goddesses can use that union to their advantage and Rhea herself upholds that status while encouraging Hades to use Persephone's power in the latest chapters. How does he actually know if she can even use their union? Hades and Persephone never discuss it amongs themselves and with the narrative paiting Persephone as super smart it begs the question why she never thought about learning to utilise this power herself when she actually used it twice without the help of Hades. As soon as she saves him from Kronos which I thought would be a step towards giving this power more nuance, they come back to that status quo. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not a huge fan of the whole concept but if I am correct in thinking that it's meant to symbolise pregnancy I think it was really important to lay a foundation to emphasise that it is indeed a union that both parties could draw from, even if the comic still portrays male gods abusing that power. We don't get that. So it accidentally paints the picture of these goddesses as vessels to be taken advantage of. I think the message was very important especially with the way Olympus was ran but I would much prefer if it happened without using some form of ''supernatural'' spin. If fertility remained a simple attribute and with their combined powers these goddesses would not only defend Olympus from the likes of Kronos but also rebelled against the current system that is mistreating them. Imagine how cool it would be to see Eris, Demeter, Artemis and others in action and the firework display of their individual powers. Man, that would be fire. And if the fertility concept was to stay the same I think Demeter being a fertility goddess would make much more impact and solve some issues with the plot. If she kept her arch and dissapeared from the face of earth leaving winter behind her after Persephone decided to stay in the underworld and they will need to seek out her help to defeat Kronos after finding out she's a missing fertility goddess. She could battle Kronos along with Persephone and Hades (taking that they can use the power together which I'm not too sure about even if it makes most sense) and that would bring some much needed conclusion to her mother - daughter arch that is supposed to be the core of the story but was frankly neglected. Then Hera could also deal the final blow to defeat her abuser and then deal with her failed marriage with Zeus. But it's not my story to tell. Thanks for taking time reading this comment - as you can see I also tend to write long ones lol :D I really enjoy having these kind of discussions cause overall I'm a huge fan of storytelling and how it impacts people and sparks these wonderful exchanges :) Thank you so much for being here!
@WobblesandBean Is this directed to me? If so, please read my comment. I admit to not having read it in a long time. This wasn't a defense of the comic. Simply speculation on what the intent was. I also state that just because this may have been the intent doesn't mean it was executed well. I say all this so a discussion can be had about writing and where things can go wrong since a big question within this video is what fertility means within this comic. There is no discussion to be had just by going "yea it's bad." If I had any issue with that take I wouldn't have watched this video from beginning to end or bothered with giving my ideas. Edit: Small edit since I think I understand where some confusion comes. When I say I haven't reread the comic I mean from beginning to end. I have read it but it's not something I check up on every single update, just in batches whenever I remember it's a thing
I just want to throw in here that Demeter did talk about how Zeus downplayed the powers of a fertility goddess, as to stop would-be usurpers from overthrowing him. Really feel like you didn't actually read into a lot of the story. It's almost like the criticisms you're bringing to the table has no substance other than what the community has already brought to the table. Although, I agree, it totally doesn't make sense why Hera was a fertility goddess...but I get what Rachel was trying to get at (made from the sweetest earth and starlight, etc., aka, she's supposed to be an "echo" of Gaia, which is what all the fertility goddess' were).
Right but what does it mean to be overflowing with life? Is it the power that Persephone has where she can create flowers? Or like Hera where she just gets larger..? Or if it’s a power boost, how do we manage to blame Eris or Tartarus for Persephone gaining power? Does it require the goddess to have a tie to nature?Like Gaia or Persephone? Then why wouldn’t Demeter be one? Probably not, since Hera (seemingly) has no connection to that. So if Hera is a fertility goddess, does this also make Leto a fertility goddess? Does this also mean the spawn of Hera or Leto have the capacity to be fertility god/goddesses or birth them? The concept of being a fertility goddess isn’t defined at ALL! What life is thriving through Hera for her to be a fertility goddess? Why wouldn’t Demeter be one? Why is it seen as a conspiracy if all these characters were seemingly alive during the time of their existence? It’s so more nuanced than “a being overflowing with life”. The question is: what power is granted to a god if given the power of fertility and what characters would fit under the category
Honestly, ima say it: For a feminist comic, the concept of how Fertility Goddesses work is inherently misogynistic. *not sayin it's offensive, but the fact is that the point is that it needs/requires a man to use it or help you use it. For a feminist comic that's a bit..... weird.*
honestly this whole comic is steeped in misogyny, there might be a few surface level feminist ideas but ultimately the story fails to actually deliver a feminist message. really the whole "feminist retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone" that so many of these modern retelling are touting pretty much just means "persephone consented to the relationship, hades would never kidnap someone to be his wife!" and often paired with "Demeter was just a B!tchy helicopter mom who threw a temper tantrum about her 'little baby girl' getting married", because since hades isn't a kidnapper anymore Demeter cant be justifiably upset about the relationship anymore so she gets demonized instead, turning her from an understandably devastated mother who lost her daughter into a bitter antagonist who has to be told to sit down and shut up by everyone around her (which is also incredibly misogynistic!) tldr this comic really isnt a feminist comic its pretty much just called that for marketing purposes
@@shanon4768like can’t Persephone like accidentally fall in the underworld and Demeter is worried about her and hades helps Persephone get back and they fall in love that way. And Demeter supports it. Also make Zeus the villain. Like Zeus planned another rando to marry Persephone and Demeter wants Persephone to chose and Zeus like threatens them so to save herself and Demeter Persephone eats the r pomegranate seeds.
@@Oliviagarry69420And the fact that the original myth was centered about a mother's love and the grief that comes from losing her daughter, but all adaptations just retcon out the main theme to make another stale ass semi mysoginistic story. the original was more feminist than those retellings.
If that's your take away of the fertility goddess . . . then how did Hera use her powers to defeat Kronos? She wasn't paired with anyone at the time . . . so, how did this occur?
LO has pretty lackluster writing in general. It would've been better for Rachel to stick to making fluffy vignettes instead of trying to write an overarching plot.
Honestly instead of fertility they should have been vitality. Also yeah the dead humans seemed to know what a fertility goddess was near the beginning since they called Perse a fertility goddess but later on it's some sort of unknown concept even to the gods??
I feel like this mythology has a layer of Christian beliefs imposed on it and “traditional” views and the further we get in the more the creator is fumbling to reconcile with that and is being hit with criticism so I think a different route was intended. Like is fertility is being able to create life independently and hades can’t have children then was this meant to be a virgin mother character but then there was the assault aspect that they included and it just slowly sank the story and I don’t think it really ever recovered from how the creator handled it. So there was this addition of attempting to give women in the series power of their own but since all women in this series are tied to a man in some way it just crumbles because nothing of value is being said or examined through the tropes included. So it’s hollow and just makes less and less sense
FINALLY someone else besides me has this gripe! I can accept that Smythe wants to do their own thing and it is well within their right, even encouraged to make their own spins on the myths, but I can’t for the life of me understand what makes Metis a fertility goddess in this story and not Demeter.
I just remembered that right before Persephone turned Minthe into a plant, Minthe shouted, “Does she know that you can’t have children?!” There’s a difference between infertility and being sterile, you can still have children if you’re infertile it’s just harder. Hades did try to spring a surprise proposal at Minthe even though they weren’t exclusive, has he tried to get Minthe pregnant or did they have a pregnancy scare?
as an SA survivor with an animation degree, the comic gave me the ick with how they handled Persephone's SA from the moment it happened. I love the art style, I think it's so gorgeous and unique, the fashion is amazing and cute. Everything about this had potential, but it just ended up being a creepy "Pretty (Greek Goddess) Woman" with so many contradictions and repetitive elements and aspects. It had potential, but i kept getting lost in everything and some themes were not handled well. I want to try to re-read the comic and push myself to get through it, but all the deep-dive videos make me cringe at the thought lol thank you for sharing your thoughts!
What I don't get is why they even used the whole "fertility" thing in the first place. Narratively, they just want a magical girl style power-up. They didn't need to call it "fertility powers". They literally could have just said "Screw it, all the gods can do it" or "all the goddesses can, but the gods can't and need to channel a goddess to grow giant". But, since "fertility god/goddess" is simultaneously both a nebulous and a narrow term, you end up with contradictions. Metis isn't a fertility goddess, while you could make an argument that Eros is a fertility god. And what about dryads and other minor deities? There's a ton of them based on various plants, which would make them as much fertility goddesses as Persephone (who is, in mythology, actually a chthonic goddess and only related to spring because she "brings the plants back" (rather, Demeter does when she returns)). Fertility gods should be super-duper common. Like, the most common.
So in LO Fertility translate to "Life and Grow", Fertility goddess are deities that have the ability to generate life and boost that life, they are like huge living batteries of life and power. That start with Gaia the primordial of earth (Mother Earth) the living personification of the planet itself, and the matriarch of at leas 70% of Greek mythology. The other fertility goddess are echos of Gaia, smaller and with less power but with similar power to generate life. LO explain that every generation has one fertility goddess, no more no less, and they need to be related to Gaia, Rhea and Metis are normally deities associated to motherhood and healthy, same for Hera and Persephone is the deity of Spring, (return of life and grow) in short they are goddess related to "Life and Grow" dont necessary just childbirth, because they can create life in more "Raw" ways
If they all need to be related to Gaia doesn't that mean Hades and Persephone are related? Also that definitely does not come across at all in the comic.
@@Rebecca-bk9bd well in mythology they are related, but LO make it less obvious by the whole Hera,Hestia and Demeter are daughters of Metis thing. but yeah, they are cousins, what is very common in greek mythology, basically 95% of the characters are related in some level, most of the monster are cousins of the gods. Cerberus and Hades are technically half second or third cousins, or something around that.
At the time I was reading the comic I thought that fertility meant the power to create life like plants and that kind of stuff but in a more out of control manner.
I thought that fertility goddesses were just goddesses with a life domain(ie. nature, childbirth) but the fact that Demeter isn’t one but Persephone is weird. Clearly that’s changed completely since I stopped reading.
One I can’t believe this is still going on i left in like 2020 bc Rachel was dragging 💀 but i think it had the potential to be fantastic it fumbled bc she wanted to self insert persephone the only good thing was Hades fr but if rachel stuck to a cute love story instead of poorly written “complex” plot it wouldve been great
Apparently it’s ended. A little while ago actually. Persephone summoned bees or something and killed the bad guy. It was dumb. I don’t think there was much potential since most self insert stories are bad.
So much more has happenef after that point with the bees lol but what makes it even worse is the fact that in the comics time line before the 10 year time jump that all of this happens within like a month. But in real time its been yeeears
I haven’t read the comic in ages but I feel like two quick fixes that would resolve this issue would be for fertility to be an unstable power source that would pop up uncontrollably in early age for a goddess. As they grow older they need a constant connection to another deity to access the power perhaps. Thus why Persephone can go a rampage but would need someone like Hades later on. And then the power can maybe skip in strength every generation which would be like Hera or Persephone’s abilities are more potent than someone like her Demeter for instance. Ensuring that no-one goddess is equal in that aspect and that could drive the conflict further. If anyone has any other suggestions feel free to add on to anything I may have missed because I haven’t any of Lore in YEARS!
I thought Zeus consuming Métis to get her powers was actually interesting when I first read it, because I know the original myth and I was excited to see what that expanded into in Rachel’s story. But the problem with rewriting myths into your story that has a world with different functions from that myth is that you need to A: Understand the original myth B: Understand your own magic system Neither of which Rachel does
It is not vague, in theology it is a category that encompasses certain types of goddesses or religious figures associated with nature and life, it is noted that the author used this in her webtoon
I think that the core of the story is about surviving trauma, and the “fertility” part of it is the ability to grow and love even after a traumatic event.
. . . what is it with these LO essays that can't remember the plotline . . . . or you act like you can't remember the plot line because you hate the plot and wish to undermine it. . . . sigh- HERA FINALLY TAPS INTO HER FERTILITY POWERS AFTER BEING ABUSED BY TWO DIFFERENT GODS FOR HER POWER AND WHEN SHE IS KILLED, PERSEPHONE NOT ONLY REVIVES HER BUT REPAIRS HERA'S WOUNDS!!! THAT'S HOW SHE REGAINS HER POWERS!! SHEESH!! If you guys are going to shit all over someone else's work, get it right fgs! BTW: . . . Smythe suffers from a giant plothole known as . . . the fertility god. What kind of powers did they have? I'll name one that was visible the entire time: Hermes. Hermes is a fertility god . . . where is his powers, what were they? No . . . that would ruin the message, so no fertility gods. Never happened. Nothing to see here.
I always thought fertility goddesses was an allegory for womanhood. Like women has this special power of creation which is a blessing but also leaves them vunerable to men abusing them. And at first it worked in the narrative pretty fine UNTIL Rachel decided that men need concent for those powers to work, and then Persephone was "blessed with wrath" so she's not like other goddesses but special more powerful one. And it's ruined an entire allegory. But not only that it's ruined the idea of Hades coming from lineage of men who abused women and their powers but later breaking this cycle refusing to use Persephone as a battery for himself.
While irl the whole aspect of women's power of creation is a fact, i dont liek it from a mythological factor, even if creator gods are men sometimes, i always liked the strange spectrum of gender it accidentally made by it, having men creating life from various methodes, women creating it from zero, women and men joining but men being the one holding it, it was an interesting view of the whole concept that is just dropped for a what should be a even mroe easier to hold metaphor in LO
@@KnucklesxReala911 yeah, i think the problem is Rachel doesn't actually knows how to write complicated themes and easily panders to whatever her audience want but it's ended up of many aspects in LO's lore not working or being underbaked
It's very strange how fertility is portrayed as something entirely passive or out of the person's control. True, healthy, and sustained abundance is not something that just happens on its own. It must be cultivated with constant hard work and care, whether that's growing food, raising children or animals, or managing the whole land.
There's immense agency and satisfaction to be had from allowing yourself to care about something, actively learning and working on it, and watching it flourish as a result. Just because you Give doesn't mean you are weak or lesser or lack free will.
It's bizarre that a so-called "feminist" story reduces fertility to childbearing and being a passive resource to be exploited. It echoes so much of the whole "men = agents, women = entirely passive" understanding of gender roles, which feminism actively bucked against.
As a Greek i will say that LO failed to do the myths justice or create a compelling story. The story just has the Greek pantheon names and the author called it a day.
As for fertility it has never ever, be anything more than just the meaning of producing life.
It has no connection with super boosting powers of anything the comic tries to imply. They make no sense and have no purpose on the story other than to confuse 😅
This comic is THE very definition of exploiting Greek culture for profit. I doubt the series would be as popular had it not be a "greek myth retelling".
This this this this this. It doesn't even LOOK nice, jesus. The FANART looks better than the comic art. It's just a mess and I PRAY once all the chapters are publicaly available, it fades into obscurity by next year and is never talked about again.
@@IceQueen975The art killed the man
As another Greek. I agree fully . It just has names plastered on colorful characters and it's sad because we have incredible mythology to be used in media . But they are never used correctly
It's the names, butchered stories (Leuce was done dirty change my mind), and makes them worse people. That's all LO is.
It’s so bad too bc it romanticizes grooming too 💀
I hate when people re-tell the history of Persephone and hades and make it as they both wanted to be together and Demeter is just a crazy mom who can't accept Persephone growing up
if they wanted a feminist retelling they could have kept the original one, a mother triying to save her daughter from a guy who forced her to marry him
If i remember correctly,the history was used to comfort mother's who's daughters had been taken away, giving them hope that maybe they could return some day.
it's seriously so horrible people have turned the story of a mother mourning the loss of her kidnapped (metaphorically dead) daughter into a "this mom is OVERPROTECTIVE AND ABUSIVE how DARE she get in the way of romance"
It was technically an arranged marriage orchestrated by zeus aka Persephone's dad, but your point still stands (also what I'm saying definitely doesn't apply to every version of this tale because there are many)
@@Oli-Chan her uncle? 🫤
@solaris5922 And in some myth Zeus turns to Hades to bed Persephone
@@ManaverisDraconaThat's how Melínoe was born xd
Also what about deities that were historically worshipped as fertility goddesses? Demeter was in some capacity and Aphrodite too, I think. Did Smythe really not do any research on who the actual fertility deities were? That would be the first thing I would do.
She basicly read they Wikipedia pages once, wrote down one or two things, forgot a lot, then started making the comic.
She doesn't care about actual mythology she only cares about how tiny and petite and little phony purse is lol
Then again, this is the same woman who allegedly used Lolita as inspiration for the romance between Hades and Persephone. If you've ever read Lolita, you will know why using it as inspiration for any consensual romance is a terrible idea, it's like using 1984 as inspiration for a utopian world.
@@TheCrimsonElite666 I didn't know that this comic and it's creator can get worse, but from this information it go a lot worse.
@@TheCrimsonElite666 oh my gods she did that? Is she serious?
As a butch woman, the entire discourse around this comic feels like a fever dream. Most of all, the (usually straight, almost exclusively cisgender) people who love or used to love it. It's supposed to be 'feminist,' but it was made at such a time and by such a person that it's entirely suffused with some of the most hyper-binarized, ultra-feminine, ultra-masculine aesthetics I've ever seen. Apparently in this feminist comic, women are more empowered by 'divine femininity' and sass than by any of their powers that DON'T revolve around their womb. A feminist retelling where Demeter never snaps like a real mother would. Where her concern for her daughter is panned as controlling, because Persephone always wanted it, and it's only those misogynistic ancient Greeks who'd ever tell you that a cute, curvy, sexually innocent girl WOULDN'T want to be spirited away by an older man. I think there's a reason characters like Athena and Morpheus take a back seat to the pink, tiny, younger half and the older, huge, blue half of the main straight couple. Lore Olympus is 280 episodes of the art style SCREAMING complimentarian, gender essentialist propaganda into your ear. It's oddly Christian for a comic about Greek polytheism.
I feel like a LOT of Ancient Greek inspired stuff or reimaginings have the problem of christianization where they insert christian ideals into Ancient Greek myth like purity culture. It's almost like we treat Ancient Greek mythology like it's ours (westerners? idk lol) and we're critiquing it or trying to reinterpret it which is really inconvenient to the still-existing Greek people. It's a phenomenon I don't see a lot of people talk about but I'd enjoy exploring
Anyone else also just find the art eh? Like Idk I get it was smart to make people color coded, but you could’ve still done that without limiting the style so much. I just honestly got sick of it. New characters looked like old ones and I eventually couldn’t even remember who was who panel to panel
I could never get into LO because it always felt like the author just slapped greek mythology onto their characters and called it a day without doing any research into the actual mythology that they're using. Feels very exploitative, especially because they make so much money off of the comic.
As an advid greek mythos fanatic, its honestly pretty fantastic how badly Smythe fucks up every myth she tries to "reinterpret". Because yeah, the myth about Hades and Persephone is shrouded in mystery and concepts lost to time. Persephone has only been a nature deity post Hellenistic Greece era, during her Mycenaean days she was a cthonic deity along with her mother. The pottery that their story is painted on even uses the same poses for kidnap, sa and marry. Conceptually speaking, making it a secret consenting marriage could work. But Smythe seems to fuck it up entirely. Every single myth she uses is wrong. Apollo is only Apollo in name, he's not the nice and sometimes goofy lovebird he tends to be. Minthe was Hades mistress mythologically speaking, or at the very least tried to be his mistress when he was already married. Hell, Smythe somehow fucked up the myth of Dionysus. Semele, yknow, unaliving is directly how he's created in the first place. It could even be argued that Dionysus being birthed by a god instead of a mortal could be why he's not a demigod, but just a frfr god. Spoiler alert, magically bringing Semele back to life for the nice happy ending epilouge just has no mythological standing. In her myth, Semele was tricked by Hera into getting Zeus to swear by the river styx for anything, and asking for Zeus to show her his godly might, which DISINTEGRATED HER. Every myth Smythe gets her "feminist retelling" hands on his butchered and modernized so much it loses the original plot of the story. I could go on and on about each myth and the differences between the fr myth and Smythe's bullshit mary sue write ins. But, regardless, Smythe should be permanently banned from ever touching a myth again, Greek or not.
Even Artemis is a fertility goddess in Greek mythology lol. She’s believed to preside over childbirth since in one of her birth myths she helps deliver her twin brother Apollo.
It’s so common that it actually annoyed me how many goddesses were casually given fertility aspects despite the fact that it didn’t seem to fit with their other aspects.
I still love reading Lore Olympus but many things just annoy me about the story. Persephone being blessed with wrath irked me so badly. I could not let that go ever. Like what do you mean everything that somehow makes her more interesting and gives her more character is given to her??? I've read other Persephone's and I gotta say I liked most of them more. A good example is a wattpad story called The queen below, here Persephone is fierce and she isn't naive like other authors portray her she knows the danger of other gods. Or the best other example would be her other webtoon counterpart from Omniscient reader's viewpoint here she's everything you've ever imagined Persephone to be. She's scary and proves she's not to be reckoned with when she reveals the steak she's eating is actually someone's soul.
As far as how the fertility powers work how the rules work within the world itself confuse me too for all the reasons you have cited, but I think I understand what Rachel was trying to do here.
Now to preface this I haven't reread LO and it's just something I check up every so often when I remember it (so I might be forgetting a lot or remembering things wrong) but I think Rachel's intent with having the narrative talk about how other gods typically use the fertility goddess' power is to touch on the idea that often women are expected to sacrifice a lot for men. For so long women have been expected to just be housewives who cater to their husbands, have kids and raise them so men can be fulfilled in their vocations even if the woman may find her own fulfillment in being something other than a wife/mother.
(As an aside I just want to say nothing wrong with being happy being a housewife, it's nothing easy and mad respect and encouragement to those who do it if that's what they desire and there's nothing weak about it. Perhaps unnecessary to say this but I dont want these words to be misconstrued).
The fertility goddesses being used is emblematic of this so we ARE supposed to find problem in that and the end comes with women supporting one another and helping them find their strength, and help them use that strength for themselves which is so often painted as "selfish" in society. I think this is one of the reasons Hera was chosen as the missing fertility goddess because she is a textbook definition of the worn out wife, and the reason she puts herself down so often and belittles her own strength is because she genuinely believes she has none since all her efforts have always been put into, as she once said making Zeus feel safe.
Now whether this was executed well (or perhaps I'm just extrapolating) is another question xD because yea I absolutely agree with the inconsistency of fertility powers or how they work, what constitutes as fertile magic over regular ....creation??
Anyhoo sorry for the long comment, it was really fun hearing your thoughts! :)
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts :) I agree with you that this was probably the intent of the narrative and this message absolutely had a place in a history that was set up in a monarchy where women had less agency than men: like it's stated for eg that Zeus could force any goddess into unwanted marrage etc. I thought at some point that fertility power and gods tapping into that power was meant to symbolise pregnancy - where woman obviously do the heavy lifting. My problem is with the way it was executed. The comic book always talks about this union as this one sided thing that male gods can benefit from which IMO takes even more agency from the goddesses in a way cause it's spending great deal of time talking about how it helps men gain more power and influence and very little time actually explaining what this power means to the goddesses who wield it. It is not even properly defined. Even our main couple don't break that status quo. We don't even know untill the latest episode if fertility goddesses can use that union to their advantage and Rhea herself upholds that status while encouraging Hades to use Persephone's power in the latest chapters. How does he actually know if she can even use their union? Hades and Persephone never discuss it amongs themselves and with the narrative paiting Persephone as super smart it begs the question why she never thought about learning to utilise this power herself when she actually used it twice without the help of Hades. As soon as she saves him from Kronos which I thought would be a step towards giving this power more nuance, they come back to that status quo. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
I'm not a huge fan of the whole concept but if I am correct in thinking that it's meant to symbolise pregnancy I think it was really important to lay a foundation to emphasise that it is indeed a union that both parties could draw from, even if the comic still portrays male gods abusing that power. We don't get that. So it accidentally paints the picture of these goddesses as vessels to be taken advantage of.
I think the message was very important especially with the way Olympus was ran but I would much prefer if it happened without using some form of ''supernatural'' spin. If fertility remained a simple attribute and with their combined powers these goddesses would not only defend Olympus from the likes of Kronos but also rebelled against the current system that is mistreating them. Imagine how cool it would be to see Eris, Demeter, Artemis and others in action and the firework display of their individual powers. Man, that would be fire.
And if the fertility concept was to stay the same I think Demeter being a fertility goddess would make much more impact and solve some issues with the plot. If she kept her arch and dissapeared from the face of earth leaving winter behind her after Persephone decided to stay in the underworld and they will need to seek out her help to defeat Kronos after finding out she's a missing fertility goddess. She could battle Kronos along with Persephone and Hades (taking that they can use the power together which I'm not too sure about even if it makes most sense) and that would bring some much needed conclusion to her mother - daughter arch that is supposed to be the core of the story but was frankly neglected. Then Hera could also deal the final blow to defeat her abuser and then deal with her failed marriage with Zeus. But it's not my story to tell.
Thanks for taking time reading this comment - as you can see I also tend to write long ones lol :D
I really enjoy having these kind of discussions cause overall I'm a huge fan of storytelling and how it impacts people and sparks these wonderful exchanges :)
Thank you so much for being here!
You haven't even read the comic. You have no idea what you're talking about. It's bad. It's really, REALLY bad.
@WobblesandBean Is this directed to me? If so, please read my comment. I admit to not having read it in a long time. This wasn't a defense of the comic. Simply speculation on what the intent was. I also state that just because this may have been the intent doesn't mean it was executed well. I say all this so a discussion can be had about writing and where things can go wrong since a big question within this video is what fertility means within this comic. There is no discussion to be had just by going "yea it's bad."
If I had any issue with that take I wouldn't have watched this video from beginning to end or bothered with giving my ideas.
Edit: Small edit since I think I understand where some confusion comes. When I say I haven't reread the comic I mean from beginning to end. I have read it but it's not something I check up on every single update, just in batches whenever I remember it's a thing
I love the way you explain this issue lol
same
I'm so happy this dumpster fire of a plot cannot be milked anymore since it finally ended.
I just want to throw in here that Demeter did talk about how Zeus downplayed the powers of a fertility goddess, as to stop would-be usurpers from overthrowing him. Really feel like you didn't actually read into a lot of the story. It's almost like the criticisms you're bringing to the table has no substance other than what the community has already brought to the table.
Although, I agree, it totally doesn't make sense why Hera was a fertility goddess...but I get what Rachel was trying to get at (made from the sweetest earth and starlight, etc., aka, she's supposed to be an "echo" of Gaia, which is what all the fertility goddess' were).
It's a BEING overflowing with LIFE. REREAD. It's not complicated.
Yeah that's pretty self- explanatory. Silly me lol
Right but what does it mean to be overflowing with life? Is it the power that Persephone has where she can create flowers? Or like Hera where she just gets larger..? Or if it’s a power boost, how do we manage to blame Eris or Tartarus for Persephone gaining power? Does it require the goddess to have a tie to nature?Like Gaia or Persephone? Then why wouldn’t Demeter be one? Probably not, since Hera (seemingly) has no connection to that. So if Hera is a fertility goddess, does this also make Leto a fertility goddess? Does this also mean the spawn of Hera or Leto have the capacity to be fertility god/goddesses or birth them? The concept of being a fertility goddess isn’t defined at ALL! What life is thriving through Hera for her to be a fertility goddess? Why wouldn’t Demeter be one? Why is it seen as a conspiracy if all these characters were seemingly alive during the time of their existence? It’s so more nuanced than “a being overflowing with life”. The question is: what power is granted to a god if given the power of fertility and what characters would fit under the category
You may be right but why do you have to be so rude about it?
How does overflowing with life help with fighting?
Honestly, ima say it: For a feminist comic, the concept of how Fertility Goddesses work is inherently misogynistic.
*not sayin it's offensive, but the fact is that the point is that it needs/requires a man to use it or help you use it. For a feminist comic that's a bit..... weird.*
honestly this whole comic is steeped in misogyny, there might be a few surface level feminist ideas but ultimately the story fails to actually deliver a feminist message. really the whole "feminist retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone" that so many of these modern retelling are touting pretty much just means "persephone consented to the relationship, hades would never kidnap someone to be his wife!" and often paired with "Demeter was just a B!tchy helicopter mom who threw a temper tantrum about her 'little baby girl' getting married", because since hades isn't a kidnapper anymore Demeter cant be justifiably upset about the relationship anymore so she gets demonized instead, turning her from an understandably devastated mother who lost her daughter into a bitter antagonist who has to be told to sit down and shut up by everyone around her (which is also incredibly misogynistic!)
tldr this comic really isnt a feminist comic its pretty much just called that for marketing purposes
@@shanon4768OMG THIS.
@@shanon4768like can’t Persephone like accidentally fall in the underworld and Demeter is worried about her and hades helps Persephone get back and they fall in love that way. And Demeter supports it. Also make Zeus the villain. Like Zeus planned another rando to marry Persephone and Demeter wants Persephone to chose and Zeus like threatens them so to save herself and Demeter Persephone eats the r pomegranate seeds.
@@Oliviagarry69420And the fact that the original myth was centered about a mother's love and the grief that comes from losing her daughter, but all adaptations just retcon out the main theme to make another stale ass semi mysoginistic story. the original was more feminist than those retellings.
If that's your take away of the fertility goddess . . . then how did Hera use her powers to defeat Kronos? She wasn't paired with anyone at the time . . . so, how did this occur?
LO has pretty lackluster writing in general. It would've been better for Rachel to stick to making fluffy vignettes instead of trying to write an overarching plot.
Honestly instead of fertility they should have been vitality. Also yeah the dead humans seemed to know what a fertility goddess was near the beginning since they called Perse a fertility goddess but later on it's some sort of unknown concept even to the gods??
I feel like this mythology has a layer of Christian beliefs imposed on it and “traditional” views and the further we get in the more the creator is fumbling to reconcile with that and is being hit with criticism so I think a different route was intended. Like is fertility is being able to create life independently and hades can’t have children then was this meant to be a virgin mother character but then there was the assault aspect that they included and it just slowly sank the story and I don’t think it really ever recovered from how the creator handled it. So there was this addition of attempting to give women in the series power of their own but since all women in this series are tied to a man in some way it just crumbles because nothing of value is being said or examined through the tropes included. So it’s hollow and just makes less and less sense
What does the assault have to do with Virgin mary?
FINALLY someone else besides me has this gripe! I can accept that Smythe wants to do their own thing and it is well within their right, even encouraged to make their own spins on the myths, but I can’t for the life of me understand what makes Metis a fertility goddess in this story and not Demeter.
I just remembered that right before Persephone turned Minthe into a plant, Minthe shouted, “Does she know that you can’t have children?!” There’s a difference between infertility and being sterile, you can still have children if you’re infertile it’s just harder. Hades did try to spring a surprise proposal at Minthe even though they weren’t exclusive, has he tried to get Minthe pregnant or did they have a pregnancy scare?
as an SA survivor with an animation degree, the comic gave me the ick with how they handled Persephone's SA from the moment it happened. I love the art style, I think it's so gorgeous and unique, the fashion is amazing and cute. Everything about this had potential, but it just ended up being a creepy "Pretty (Greek Goddess) Woman" with so many contradictions and repetitive elements and aspects. It had potential, but i kept getting lost in everything and some themes were not handled well.
I want to try to re-read the comic and push myself to get through it, but all the deep-dive videos make me cringe at the thought lol
thank you for sharing your thoughts!
What I don't get is why they even used the whole "fertility" thing in the first place.
Narratively, they just want a magical girl style power-up. They didn't need to call it "fertility powers". They literally could have just said "Screw it, all the gods can do it" or "all the goddesses can, but the gods can't and need to channel a goddess to grow giant".
But, since "fertility god/goddess" is simultaneously both a nebulous and a narrow term, you end up with contradictions. Metis isn't a fertility goddess, while you could make an argument that Eros is a fertility god. And what about dryads and other minor deities? There's a ton of them based on various plants, which would make them as much fertility goddesses as Persephone (who is, in mythology, actually a chthonic goddess and only related to spring because she "brings the plants back" (rather, Demeter does when she returns)). Fertility gods should be super-duper common. Like, the most common.
So in LO Fertility translate to "Life and Grow", Fertility goddess are deities that have the ability to generate life and boost that life, they are like huge living batteries of life and power.
That start with Gaia the primordial of earth (Mother Earth) the living personification of the planet itself, and the matriarch of at leas 70% of Greek mythology.
The other fertility goddess are echos of Gaia, smaller and with less power but with similar power to generate life.
LO explain that every generation has one fertility goddess, no more no less, and they need to be related to Gaia, Rhea and Metis are normally deities associated to motherhood and healthy, same for Hera and Persephone is the deity of Spring, (return of life and grow)
in short they are goddess related to "Life and Grow" dont necessary just childbirth, because they can create life in more "Raw" ways
This does not come across at all with how Rachel has this lack of an ability to explain things
If they all need to be related to Gaia doesn't that mean Hades and Persephone are related? Also that definitely does not come across at all in the comic.
@@Rebecca-bk9bd well in mythology they are related, but LO make it less obvious by the whole Hera,Hestia and Demeter are daughters of Metis thing. but yeah, they are cousins, what is very common in greek mythology, basically 95% of the characters are related in some level, most of the monster are cousins of the gods.
Cerberus and Hades are technically half second or third cousins, or something around that.
@@Rebecca-bk9bdI mean in a all versions Persephone and Hades ARE related , she is his niece from both sides
At the time I was reading the comic I thought that fertility meant the power to create life like plants and that kind of stuff but in a more out of control manner.
I thought that fertility goddesses were just goddesses with a life domain(ie. nature, childbirth) but the fact that Demeter isn’t one but Persephone is weird. Clearly that’s changed completely since I stopped reading.
One I can’t believe this is still going on i left in like 2020 bc Rachel was dragging 💀 but i think it had the potential to be fantastic it fumbled bc she wanted to self insert persephone the only good thing was Hades fr but if rachel stuck to a cute love story instead of poorly written “complex” plot it wouldve been great
Apparently it’s ended. A little while ago actually.
Persephone summoned bees or something and killed the bad guy. It was dumb. I don’t think there was much potential since most self insert stories are bad.
So much more has happenef after that point with the bees lol but what makes it even worse is the fact that in the comics time line before the 10 year time jump that all of this happens within like a month. But in real time its been yeeears
Lore Olympus has a LOT of problems.
I haven’t read the comic in ages but I feel like two quick fixes that would resolve this issue would be for fertility to be an unstable power source that would pop up uncontrollably in early age for a goddess. As they grow older they need a constant connection to another deity to access the power perhaps. Thus why Persephone can go a rampage but would need someone like Hades later on. And then the power can maybe skip in strength every generation which would be like Hera or Persephone’s abilities are more potent than someone like her Demeter for instance. Ensuring that no-one goddess is equal in that aspect and that could drive the conflict further. If anyone has any other suggestions feel free to add on to anything I may have missed because I haven’t any of Lore in YEARS!
I like that concept!
which would be why^
her mother Demeter^
Sorry!
I thought Zeus consuming Métis to get her powers was actually interesting when I first read it, because I know the original myth and I was excited to see what that expanded into in Rachel’s story.
But the problem with rewriting myths into your story that has a world with different functions from that myth is that you need to
A: Understand the original myth
B: Understand your own magic system
Neither of which Rachel does
I thought persephone grew Titian size to fight cronos or whatever when she went to save him or that doesn’t count ?
It is not vague, in theology it is a category that encompasses certain types of goddesses or religious figures associated with nature and life, it is noted that the author used this in her webtoon
I think that the core of the story is about surviving trauma, and the “fertility” part of it is the ability to grow and love even after a traumatic event.
fertility goddess has nothing to do with reproduction, just power
. . . what is it with these LO essays that can't remember the plotline . . . . or you act like you can't remember the plot line because you hate the plot and wish to undermine it. . . . sigh- HERA FINALLY TAPS INTO HER FERTILITY POWERS AFTER BEING ABUSED BY TWO DIFFERENT GODS FOR HER POWER AND WHEN SHE IS KILLED, PERSEPHONE NOT ONLY REVIVES HER BUT REPAIRS HERA'S WOUNDS!!! THAT'S HOW SHE REGAINS HER POWERS!!
SHEESH!!
If you guys are going to shit all over someone else's work, get it right fgs!
BTW: . . . Smythe suffers from a giant plothole known as . . . the fertility god. What kind of powers did they have? I'll name one that was visible the entire time: Hermes. Hermes is a fertility god . . . where is his powers, what were they? No . . . that would ruin the message, so no fertility gods. Never happened. Nothing to see here.