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Hello! Recently got into your lore rekindled series and as a (used to be) fan of lore Olympus I LOVE what you have done to the world and characters. Everything flows so naturally and you actually made Persephone a cool protagonist.

One question I had (if it will come up in future episodes no need to answer) is will Persephone’s interest in law school be a thing? When I was rewriting my own AU of lore Olympus I used Persephone’s interest in law to be the reason why she went to the Underworld and met Hades. As in the original comic it says that the underworld creates the finest lawyers in a throw away line. I also used Persephone’s love of law to be one of the major reasons why she and Demeter being to have conflict. Demeter wanting her to be into agriculture and horticulture like her and seeing Persephone becoming a soulless lawyer creating one of the driving conflicts of their relationship.

Heyo! Thanks so much, I'm glad you like it! <3

There won't really be a law school interest in Rekindled as that already felt like a half-thought-out plotline in LO with very little foundation (and honestly I always saw that mention about the Underworld having the only law school as a throwaway joke about lawyers being terrible people from hell LOL)

HOWEVER she still does have her own motivations for wanting to work in the Underworld that remain to be fully seen. There are lil' hints here and there that have been dropped (and more on the way, esp in the next couple episodes) but I'm waiting to see who pieces the puzzle together by the time it's revealed ;)

That idea you just pitched though for Persephone wanting to pursue law instead of agriculture would have been really interesting! I feel like if Rachel had actually planned out that plotline more she could have definitely gone at it from that angle. Couold have even set it up in the beginning for her to go to law school in the Underworld instead of university in Olympus which could have created an interesting scenario as that would have explained a lot more why Demeter didn't want her to move away.

I still would have been annoyed at the rift between them existing at all but it would have made more sense than "mom signed me up for the virgin club and now she's mad that I'm running off with the 2000+ year old man >:(" LMAO (or at least the way LO writes it, bleh)

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Posting his portrait as a standalone because he makes me want to explode

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Hi Puff! Idk if anyone has asked you this yet but what are your thoughts on the god of war game series? Are they actually more "accurate" about the greek mythology then LO? xD

oh lord, I'm def not a good person to ask about this question because I haven't played through all the original God of War games (though it makes me laugh to think about them because watching my oldest brother play the first game when I was like 7 years old was the first time I'd ever seen video game boobies LOL) but considering it's just a hack and slash game in which you brutally murder the gods... ima give it a big noooo on that one LOL it's about as accurate as LO in that it's more about spectacle and drama than it is about actually being accurate to the myths they're based on lmaoo

As for the Norse series of games, I actually HAVE played both God of War 2018 and Ragnarok and loved them both, though I'm not as well versed in Norse mythology so I also can't say if what they take from Norse myth is accurate. Obviously I know that Atreus/Loki has zero relation to fictional character Kratos from Greece and I have basic understanding of general concepts like Yggdrasil and the nine realms among other things like that, but the finer details regarding the stories of the characters themselves I'm not as brushed up on. Hella great storytelling though and I appreciate the lengths they went to to make it feel like a Norse-myth-inspired environment, even down to the vocabulary and terms used.

Just like with LO, you shouldn't be taking any of what God of War does or says at face value. If you like the games (or LO), use it as an opening hook to get more into the actual myths if they interest you. But definitely don't use them as any sort of credible source LOL

Now that I'm typing out my thoughts on this though, I think the biggest difference between GoW and LO (one that makes GoW far superior to it) is that the creators of GoW never once led their audience to believe that they were more than what they were, a hack and slash video game inspired by specific myths. What you see is what you get with GoW, but LO - and Rachel - constantly feel like they're actually trying to be taken seriously and that's what makes it all the worse when their storytelling is godawful and the amount of actual "myth" they have in the comic amounts to as much as a Family Guy cutaway gag. Just completely directionless and uninspired to the point you wonder why it's even an Greek myth retelling to begin with. At least GoW fully immerses itself in the myths their games are based on and has a shitload of fun with it, with LO it'll just source some copy pasted Princeton document or lazily tell some mythological metaphor that has nothing to do with the overarching plot so that it can remind you "hey this is a Greek myth retelling!" before getting back to its bland Keeping Up with the Kardashians romance. The mythological "inspiration" in LO feels more like tired lip service at this point rather than actual inspiration, which is really bitterly ironic considering Rachel used to tote around calling herself a "folklorist" and claiming that everyone else's knowledge of Greek myth compared to hers was "basic af".

TL ; DR: The biggest difference between GoW and LO in their retellings is humility IMO.

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Thoughts on the new hades 2 designs?(and gods)

I AM SO FUCKING HYPED YOU HAVE NO IDEA

(hades 2 spoilers ahead!)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

APOLLO

HECATE

NEMESIS

MOROS

ODYSSEUS

SASSY OLD LADY HESTIAAAA

altho it's funny because at first I was like "really? that's the design for Hestia? hmm" but then when I watched the tech demo they explained that anything designed with this:

-is just a temporary placeholder, so that makes a lot more sense and is also getting me STUPID hyped for what she'll actually end up looking like. Because ngl I wouldn't hate it if that was all it is, there's something so sinister and funny about an old lady wrapped in cloaks talking shit about how she wants to burn everything to the ground LMAOOO

Believe me, as soon as that game drops we're gonna be streaming the shit out of it LJFDAKFJDKASL

also the unfinished family painting of Zagreus, Hades, Persephone and baby Melinoe has me fucking CRYING 😭 ZAGREUS HAD BETTER BE OKAY OR I WILL ACTUALLY WRECK SHIT

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Rereading some episodes of LR and I gotta say I love the brief glimpse we get of Charon! I can't tell if he's just ride-or-die or if can't gaf bcs hey, Hades probably 100% knows of the lady sleeping in his backseat (not even questioning why Hades would leave anyone just sleeping in his car while he goes home on his own) like, sir, please exercise some scrutiny 😅

And I know "Dark Zeus" is just an epithet but how does LR Hades feel about (essntially) being known as "Zeus" even if it's just a dark counterpart. AS a younger sibling, I know I'd be annoying about it whenever opportunity strikes

Aahhh I'm glad you like Charon, he was only ever briefly mentioned in LO and I wanted to give him an actual design. We're actually gonna be getting more into Charon and his backstory in the next couple episodes!!! 🤗💖

As for the Dark Zeus name, for Hades I feel like it's one of those "outshone by a sibling" type things LOL Especially with Zeus literally being the King of the Gods and Hades getting sent down to the Underworld. Though it's not even in a way that's necessarily detrimental to Hades as he has dominion over an entire realm (and it's a job he takes very seriously and takes a lot of pride in) but it does make for some interesting misnomers when he goes above ground 🤣 (he's got some complex feelings to unpack when it comes to being compared to his brother).

There's also just the superstitions that come with saying Hades' name outright, no one wants to be caught speaking names attributed with death in fear of summoning it ;0 So oftentimes mortals will just call him "Dark Zeus" as a sort of loophole to avoid lmao

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LISTEN I COME HERE TO SAY the way hades and persephone get along in your comic is so organic? it's so easy going and chill, i love it. they feel like real people getting to know each other. testing the waters of their personalities, etc

not to compare it to LO but im gonna bc in LO there's always this desperation (from rachel) in every pers/hades conversation to make each moment heavy with something (usually romantic or sexual tension) and its so exhausting. but in rekindled they're just chilling and connecting like normal people do and i really appreciate that!

so yes, the story's pacing is great so far and im eagerly looking forward to each new chapter !

AH THANK YOOOUUU ;-; <3

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no way am i letting this perfect analogy die in the tags-

hold the fuck up-

ENHANCE

RACHEL

RACHEL

ARE YOU WRITING YOUR EPISODES AT THE START OF THE WEEK THEY'RE DUE

WHAT IN THE WORLD-

there was already a lot of evidence to suggest that her buffer is only 1-2 weeks ahead of time

there was already a lot of evidence to suggest that she was writing by the seat of her pants

there was already a lot of evidence to suggest that LO isn't ending because she planned it to end here, but because she's either given up completely OR because Webtoons has cut her loose (see: "I thought it would take longer to get here", among other things she's said and done to suggest this tinfoil hat theory)

BUT IF THIS DOESN'T DAMN WELL CONFIRM IT, MADAME-

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Hello! Quiet but appreciative lurker here. Thank you for that post about Freewrite - it articulates perfectly all my problems with it (I saw Rachel's post, went "the fuck is a Freewrite", googled it, went "I mean I don't see the appeal even as someone with ADHD but if it's a cheap little gadget for writing on the go then I guess she can- FUCKING HOW MUCH?!") I understand the concept behind it, I think, but it just rubbed me in the wrong way for a reason I couldn't quite articulate. So, thanks for the as always insightful and well articulated post, and for recommending StimuWrite! I've been in a writing funk for the past 2 months (issues with starting, like you) so I wanna give it a try later on.

As always, love your content! Thanks for sticking around and being you! :D

Aw hi!! <3 I hope you like StimuWrite, I've been wanting to use it more but haven't had the time to just sit down and write. It's definitely a great way to just mash out ideas ! And yeah, definitely way cheaper LOL

Thanks for lurking and saying hello! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

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!!! MY QUEEENNNNN-

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Why did you decide that tumblr was your preferred platform for Rekindled? (I see you have an Instagram but engage more on here.)

It was kind of just a no-brainer ! When I started this blog it was with the intent of interacting with the antiLO community which had been around for a good couple years pn here already, I mostly just shared essays and panel edits. So when I started dipping my toes into doing an actual comic redraw - which started as simple sketch panels at the time - I just posted them here because it made the most sense, and that naturally transitioned into it becoming the regular thing it is now !

Overall I like posting it to Tumblr, it's not as optimized for vertical comics ofc which means I have to work around a lot of the site's quirks, but it's a great fit for what I do which is art and hyperfixation essays within a specific fandom lmao Tumblr feels like the only place where I can post a 3000 word analysis of LO's queer erasure without someone responding "tldr ????" 🤣

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How old is Persephone in Lore Rekindled?

Old 😆 All the fully developed gods and goddesses in LR, including Persephone, are old enough to exist outside of the scope of human comprehension of age. Hades is centuries old, Persephone is centuries old. Rest assured, she's not 19 lol though her general appearance and life experiences resemble that of a 23-26 year old, much of that is due to her living in the Mortal Realm for centuries prior to attending university in Olympus. It's never too late to go to college and learn new things ;)

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I really am enjoying Lore Rekindled! I had a quick question: in the beginning of the latest episode, Hades makes a casual remark referring to himself as successor as the god of time and doesn’t seem fazed. Is that part of how he copes with his past or have you changed his backstory a little? Or maybe he just doesn’t think about it much cuz it’s been so long? I was just a bit curious. Thank you thank you!

"Successor" in this case was frankly the best word I could come up with to describe his relationship with Kronos as his backstory concerning his creation is mostly linked to Rhea, a fertility goddess who created her children on her own despite Kronos' disapproval.

Humor is also definitely a hell of a coping mechanism 💀😆

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a tribute to the chapter covers of old <3

I actually have zero clue if I've shared these before, I feel like I have but I can't tell if that's because I genuinely have or if I'm just having deja vu LMAO either way, these are some of my favorite chapter covers from the days of old when I was working on Time Gate: Reaper <3

CW: some of the covers are graphic with blood / dismemberment / violence !

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Hi puff I just read EP 273 and I need to know your opinions PLEASE. I feel so upset with the episode hfkfjskfkkd ASL??? AMERICAN sign language before America existed??? Why do Hera's proportions when she says "Did you forget?" look like that???? When Zeus asked if she loved him and her waist was smaller than the width of her head?? Why is Purse Phone running out of the cell with Dio labeled with a *floom*, I didn't see anything grow?? RS please I need food, water, atmosphere, and consistency 😭😭 comparing Hera's queen form with Peer Phony's just makes the art look so jank, I can't 😖 anyways thank you for letting me vent sorry if you already wrote your thoughts on EP 273 elsewhere and I missed it!!

I haven't really written anything concise on Episode 273 aside from the sign language stuff (and the time travelling problems) because I just... frankly don't even know what to say about the most recent episodes besides a very unsurprised "meh". I will give it credit for one thing, every time Hades and Persephone are separated the plot is actually allowed to happen, but the plot that IS there atm is relying a lot on characters being too stupid to solve their own problems and readers being too gracious or too forgetful to realize just how much is being retconned and / or forgotten about for the sake of writing a plot that tries to be deeper than it is. There's a lot of rushed worldbuilding happening at the last minute that's undoing a lot of the reasonable assumptions people had to make to fill in the blanks of the first three seasons and not exactly for the better. A lot of these issues could have been solved if Rachel had actually done any real planning in the beginning, but we're 5+ years too late for that now and the consequences of that have been rolling in every week since S3 began. There's a point where it becomes impossible to analyze because you know there's no logic to it, it's just Rachel writing whatever gets her through the week.

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Bit of a question here about Lore Rekindled, do you think you might redesign hebe?Since she is basically a carbon copy of her mom in later parts of lore Olympus when she is an adult.(i think if she looked more like a mix of her parents with set her apart from her mom and brother.)

Hebe isn't due to appear in the comic any time soon but if/when she does show up I'm definitely gonna be refining her design a bit more to make her more unique from Hera. It's fine for her to resemble her mom but it does annoy the piss out of me that she's virtually indistinguishable from her LOL Literally can't even tell who's who when either of them show up u.u

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Reblogging because I have more to say after actually looking into the "Freewrite".

I'm someone who, like Rachel, has ADHD and often struggles with keeping up good working habits. Even with comics, which I've gotten down to a very particular science that works for me, I still find myself hitting mental walls caused by my poor dopamine regulation which can result in me losing hours of time to doing essentially nothing (doomscrolling, watching Youtube shorts, etc.) when I could have been working on my art.

So when I see tools like the "Freewrite" which advertise themselves as the "cure for distractions"... I know all too well what kinds of people are getting suckered into buying them.

Now, I don't own a Freewrite, so let me be clear that this is my opinion of it and tools like it based on what I've seen and experienced (as I've definitely fallen for those "distraction-free" tools before which aren't far from the Freewrite, they're all designed on the same philosophy of "unplugging" and going "distraction free"). Do not take this as an official review of the Freewrite, whether or not you own one yourself, this is just my personal opinion.

I will say I felt the twinge of "I want itttt" while looking at the Smart Typewriter. I've always been a sucker for typewriters, I got my first one when I was around 13 which I wrote pages and pages of Zelda fanfiction on. I haven't owned one in a long time but I wouldn't object to owning one again if I knew I could keep it properly stocked with ink ribbons.

BUT I wasn't here for the typewriter. I wanted to look at the model that Rachel specifically owns, which appears to be the Traveler, meant for portable writing.

Now, when I clicked on it, I assumed that because it was clearly an electronic device, it would probably range in cost from around $100-$250 tops. I mean, it's just a battery-powered typewriter, you can't watch Youtube on it (though it does apparently connect to Wi-Fi??), the displays look like they came straight from 1994, and it's clearly designed with minimalism in mind, providing you only with a small keyboard and an itty bitty "E Ink" screen, which I'm assuming is equivalent to how e-books like the Kindle are designed to prevent glare. It claims it has a "full-sized keyboard" but this is just factually incorrect, it ACTUALLY has a 60% sized mini keyboard, if we're going by traditional keyboard sizing, as it doesn't feature additional keys you would find on a standard full sized keyboard - there are no arrow keys, no Home / Page Up / Page Down / etc. keys. This is, after all, meant to be a tiny compact writing tool, so it does not include the keys that aren't necessary to serving its purpose.

This is, by all accounts, an E-book for writers. Simple, compact, easy on the eyes, and meant for reducing distractions by being as plain as possible.

Now I'm sure you're wondering... puff, what's the actual cost of this thing? $100? $200? $400?

$714.00.

This is before shipping and handling, before taxes, without any warranty applied or any accessories such as the felt bag included. Those cost extra, all of which together will run you another $200.

To get this baby shipped to where I live here in the sticks of Canada, WITHOUT ANY OF THE ADD-ONS I MIGHT ADD-

-that brings us to a GRAND TOTAL of NEARLY $900 FUCKING DOLLARS.

Now, that initial cost actually was automatically converted into CAD, which did make me realize that the USD cost of the $700 device would be lower, but... Rachel herself is ordering this from New Zealand, and the currency in NZ isn't exactly much better than CAD. And that's still an expensive device by USD standards because we're just converting. That is a shitload of money for what's literally just an electronic notebook.

But okay, Rachel got it as a gift to herself. That's great, good for her, I live by the law of "treat yourself" all the time. I just bought an Attack on Titan Maneuver Gear Sword for like $150 at this past weekend's convention, we all like to splurge every now and then.

But I think what bugs me about all this is what bugs me about tools like the Freewrite as a whole - they don't actually do anything. At least not anything that a pen and paper can't do.

The most expensive Amazon Kindle is nearly $600, and it comes fully decked out as both an e-book as well as a notebook for you to doodle on and take notes with. It comes with 64GB of storage (IDK how storage even works on the Freewrite, it doesn't say) and a MUCH bigger screen to work on.

Don't get me wrong, it's still way more than I'd be willing to spend on an electric notebook, but at least it has a little more to show for its cost, plus there are tons of cheaper models as low as $120 for those who just want to read.

Freewrite's cheapest, most bare bones model is the Alpha, and it's gonna run you the same cost as the Kindle for an even tinier screen (and yes, it still asks you if you wanna buy the $200 of add-ons).

Why am I ranting about this? Why do I care? I'm clearly not in this device's demographic, I'm not someone who can justify dropping the cost of a brand new Playstation 5 on a device that's one step away from being as complicated as a pad of sticky notes.

But I'm also someone with ADHD. And I know Rachel is, too.

As handy as these devices may be for some people, they're rarely every really useful for people with ADHD, but there's a sort of sinister marketing behind them that definitely tries to sell to people with ADHD. They market these tools as "miracle devices" that will "erase distractions" and "cure your productivity problems". They're basically dogwhistling it all as "oh, you have ADHD? Cure it with this $700 paperweight :)"

Now I will give them credit that yes, something like this can help separate drafting and editing, but... again, so can just writing on a notepad.

As for minimizing distractions... anyone who has ADHD can probably agree that it's not so simple. ADHD is not a "distraction disease", it's a dopamine regulation disorder. If the task we're doing is one that we can't feasibly do due to our brains simply not wanting to Do The Thing, then it doesn't matter if you stick us in a room with nothing but ourselves and the task, we're not gonna do the task. We'll find other distractions or simply freeze out of not wanting to do it. People with ADHD often struggle with just getting out of bed in the morning because of the amount of steps it takes to get up, get dressed, and do whatever you have to do to get your day started. And I'm definitely people here, I didn't get up until 3 PM today.

Tools like Freewrite make these grandiose promises of being "distraction free", but that's a different solution to a different problem. Putting someone with ADHD in front of a blank canvas with no stimulation isn't necessarily going to help their writing process, it could also just as easily debilitate it by forcing the brain to find other ways to satisfy its dopamine needs. It's not going to find that satisfaction in the work it has to do that it doesn't want to do.

None of this is to hyper-analyze Rachel. I want to make that abundantly clear because I don't want people taking this as an excuse to theorize or speculate about her mental health. She's a person and how she co-exists with her ADHD is her business. If something like this works for her, then great, more power to her.

But there's still a little voice in the back of my head that wonders, "Does she think this is going to help with her writing problems?" Because... it's probably not. It's not going to make her a better writer - only practice and discipline and being willing to take and apply criticism will - and it's not necessarily going to make her a more productive writer either because that's an issue that goes far beyond just not having the "right writing tool". Shiny new toys rarely "fix" anything, they just make us feel good for a few minutes because it's shiny and new.

People with ADHD don't need less stimulation to be productive, if anything they need more of it, because again, it's a dopamine regulation problem. If you're not getting any amount of dopamine from the task you're doing, then you're not going to want to do the task.

If you want a writing tool that is ACTUALLY meant for people with ADHD who struggle with dopamine regulation especially in this day and age of social media dopamine storm, then allow me to show you StimuWrite, which was actually made by a neurodivergent person, for neurodivergent people.

I've tried this tool and I can definitely say that while it doesn't solve my issue of never wanting to sit down and start writing (the hardest part), it does help a lot with facilitating the writing process by constantly rewarding my brain with small and regular hits of color and movement and sound. I've actually been listening to the background noise of the app this entire time while writing out this post (it's brown noise, my big favorite LOL)

And guess what? It's completely free. Though it does allow you to name your own price so you can support the creator (which you absolutely should!) it's far more affordable and accessible than a $700 mini keyboard. Of course, it's not a super fair equivalent to the Traveller as it's not usable on mobile (maybe someday?) so it doesn't have that portability factor (unless you use it on a laptop) but it does feel like a device that was actually created with neurodivergent people in mind and not inadvertently marketing to them for the sake of getting hundreds of dollars from desperate people who are looking for a quick fix by using buzzwords like "distraction free" and "flow state". You can achieve those things by popping in headphones, turning on some white noise, and writing on a $2 notepad, or just writing in the Notes or Google Docs app on your phone.

Tools like Freewrite are certainly appealing and make the writing process more engaging for people like myself... for all of about two minutes. As someone with ADHD, I can definitely say I'm not in the actual demographic for this product, maybe it works for some folks out there, but I think it needs to be talked about more that the 'treatment' for ADHD is not forcing the brain to go without stimulation whatsoever. That's just what neurotypical people think is the treatment because all they see ADHD as is being "easily distracted".

And that's my very personal bag of cents.

hold the fuck up-

ENHANCE

RACHEL

RACHEL

ARE YOU WRITING YOUR EPISODES AT THE START OF THE WEEK THEY'RE DUE

WHAT IN THE WORLD-

there was already a lot of evidence to suggest that her buffer is only 1-2 weeks ahead of time

there was already a lot of evidence to suggest that she was writing by the seat of her pants

there was already a lot of evidence to suggest that LO isn't ending because she planned it to end here, but because she's either given up completely OR because Webtoons has cut her loose (see: "I thought it would take longer to get here", among other things she's said and done to suggest this tinfoil hat theory)

BUT IF THIS DOESN'T DAMN WELL CONFIRM IT, MADAME-