demeterdefence - Tumblr blog

[demeterdefence]

there’s a whole lot of nothing happening in these last few pages lmao like on the surface plots are wrapping up but they’ve got no logic or coherency. just fast and bright and loud. literally opening up each update feels like receiving psychic damage. why has hera been naked her entire fight. why were there two kronos’. where the fuck is demeter.

[demeterdefence]

alright so hera defeated a kronos but hades also transformed a kronos. which kronos was real. if the rock hades is holding is kronos then who did hera defeat. i don’t know what the fuck is going on anymore.

[demeterdefence]

tacking onto the last post but why is hera sad to defeat kronos??? she literally just spelled it out for him, he has been nothing but abusive and cruel to her. he’s been hurting her for centuries because she tricked him. if it’s meant to invoke pity, it just does not come across.

[demeterdefence]

LMAOOO this had me peeved im truly sorry for the essay but this got me heated

there is this whole thing in media now where a victim of abuse - domestic, romantic, any kind - will inevitably get some kind of power over their abuser, and use it as their moment to "forgive" the abuser. it's meant to show how little power the abuser has now, and how healed the victim is

i am not against forgiveness in media and i'm not necessarily against this particular trope - i'll use avatar the last airbender as an example, and point out how zuko (who starts off as the antagonist in the story) works to redeem himself following his actions, and is forgiven once he's made actual amends. he then goes on to forgive his sister for her abuse, and not because she's doing better or she feels sorry for it - zuko realizes his sister is also a product of abuse, that she's been warped by the abuse, and she didn't have the support that zuko did. she's not going to get better; she will always be twisted and cruel. zuko forgives her because he sees her as a fellow victim, and he has no hate for her, only grief and pity.

arguably that's the same narrative rachel is trying to set up here with kronos, considering how the last few chapters have hammered on about how cruel and mean oranous was and how abusive he was, and how of COURSE kronos ended up so bad because his dad was so mean!

EXCEPT. THIS DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE WE HAVE NEVER SEEN ORANOUS AS A VILLAIN.

he's mentioned at best maybe three times, and certainly he's given shades of evil, but nothing that exclusively focuses on kronos. all we get is the generic bad guy vibes, but he's out of the story faster than we have time to process. if rachel wanted us to feel bad for kronos, having his so-called abuser just kind of wander in for a panel or two does not achieve that pity.

so this is really just hades (looking like a jesus figure seriously rachel how on the nose do you have to be) forgiving a being that, for the entire story, has been nothing but abusive and cruel. he swallowed two sons, he killed his wife, he abused hera, he took chomps out of his kids, and he put the world in danger. he tried to kill hades' wife. he kidnapped hades' future daughter. he has shown no remorse, no regret, nothing but cartoon villainy.

forgiving a character like this just ... hand waves all the harm done. like "sorry your dad was mean to you, here's a cookie." none of his other victims get the choice to forgive, and i'm willing to bet a fair few do not want to! you can argue this is hades' choice, but ultimately, it demonstrates rachel's utter inability to follow a narrative line to the end. she wanted to set up hades' as a powerful redeemer able to move past his abuse, but all she did was ditch kronos at the last second, unable to complete any storyline because she never thought it through.

[demeterdefence]

saw a post once that said we have stop writing characters like they’re in therapy speak and this truly does sum that sentiment up so well. this statement is accurate! hades is technically correct! the best kind of correct!

the problem with statements like these is they’re not meant as a line from hades to kronos, they’re meant for the audience. this can work well in some places! when the protagonist makes this line to the villain, it’s knowing the villain will never understand because they are the villain. it’s a narrative tool that helps show the growth of the hero and the journey.

hades has not grown, and this panel thus falls on two fronts: it obviously doesn’t impact kronos, because he doesn’t see his actions as abusive, and it doesn’t impact the audience, because we haven’t seen hades actually put work in to heal from his abuse. more importantly, hades has inherited abusive traits of his own, so the emotional impact is negated in every way.

it’s just skimming through “abuse 101” and plastering some of the lines into dialogue. yeah, we don’t deserve to be abused, we don’t deserve to be mistreated, it’s not our fault for the abuse of others. now show us the growth.

[demeterdefence]

WHAT is going on with expressions in this comic

[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

[demeterdefence]

hecate be so serious im begging you

[demeterdefence]

was going to make a joke about the absolutely unserious facial expressions but this panel took me out

her head too big for her gotdamn body

[demeterdefence]

final thoughts as we head into the end zone but since we know officially rachel is still writing the finale it’s making the plot holes more apparent than ever

metis said that rhea was put into hibernation, but the rhea in this chapter is taken from the past, so where is rhea actually. when will current timeline rhea come in? is she dead or not what’s the consensus

metis also told persephone that she and zeus had “a thing” and he devoured her, implied against her will, to defeat kronos, but then it’s revealed she asked to be devoured to protect hera, so what’s the truth

where the fuck is Demeter

[demeterdefence]

i haven’t seen these kinds of proportions outside of a - no i shan’t say

[demeterdefence]

is it important for her to be naked during this showdown. has she been sufficiently empowered by being naked when her abuser is not.

[demeterdefence]

presented without comment

[demeterdefence]

how did rhea know persephone was small and why was that at all relevant to bring up

[demeterdefence]

reasons this panel is causing me psychological distress:

1) why is his hand drawn like that

2) he just has this picture on his person sure okay

3) his titan mother has been dead for three thousand years. two of her children were devoured by her husband and the third had to be hidden away, and she never got to see him grow up. the first thing she asks once reunited with her firstborn son is ask how her sons are, perhaps to find out if they’re healed from the trauma of Kronos and if her sacrifice was worth it.

hades: anyways look at the nineteen year old i scored

[demeterdefence]

LMAOOO im sorry i have been holding it back but i can’t do this that’s persephone. it’s SUPPOSED to be rhea it’s SUPPOSED to be hades’ mom but that is 1000% persephone. anti lo community has been saying this for years but the similarity hits you upside the head with a baseball bat here look at this

im about to go fucking bonkers

[demeterdefence]

you see this panel, yes? notice the explicit expressions on the two characters? body posing, general placement? good. okay. the next literal panel placement:

not only did rachel simply zoom in her pngs (im not joking i screenshotted them exactly like that) she slapped in a line for melinoe’s mouth. that kind of laziness is almost inspiring.