#Lore episode 236

[itsawritblr]

Can things stop disappointing me, please?  Part 1.

Lore Olympus Episode 236 spoilers.

I saw (early) Lore Olympus’ episode 236 with Persephone and Hades alone in bed after their wedding (a fan has it on Youtube.  Don’t unmute-- I never listen to the guy-- just watch).

For me, it was so passionless.  Here’s 6 years of slow burn, and Hades was more horny and lustful for Perse in the first 20 episodes than on his wedding night.

I hated that they weren’t married in the clothes Hera had seen in her vision.  I know they had to get married in a hurry, but still.

Plus, they’re in a hotel.  Seriously?  It would have been a wonderful way to complete the arc if they were back at Hades’ home in the Underworld, where Perse had first slept off being drunk. It would have come full circle, been more intimate, have more resonance.

The art has lost its  unique, watercolor-like strangeness and is almost Disneyesque now.  Is  this because it may/may not be a Netflix series?  Whatever the reason, I  miss how it used to be.

Maybe the next ep will be better, perhaps we’ll see some passion, but I’m skeptical.  I know the comic isn’t and won’t be graphic, but Smythe could at least give us some hint of the two having hot sex.

If you want an explicit, hot sex scene with the two, a fan has created a great one, IMO.  Adults only.

[justmenoworries]

Lore Olympus Episode 236 Spoilers

For fuck's sake, can RS make up her mind about how she wants to portray Demeter? Is she a sympathetic antagonist or is she just a clingy mother who doesn't understand her daughter???

Because from all that we've seen through Demeter's flashbacks and had confirmed by other characters, Demeter really isn't in the wrong here!

Persephone made a split-second decision to marry her groomer, who proposed to her in front of her mother while she was having a disagreement with said mother! And everyone around her just acts like it's beautiful and "about time" when really, it's not! It's a shot-gun wedding between a predator and the young woman he's been consistenly grooming and holding a position of power over.

Also, Hades literally went full naked monster-god but Demeter is the one whose behavior was extreme?

Hestia fucking sucks, I'm sorry. She's never there for Demeter when Demeter needs her, she never opens her damn mouth until it's almost or actually too late and she has such a fucking victim-complex over merely getting involved. And then she has the abolute gall to tell Demeter she'll be there if Demeter wants to talk??

Their entire conversation felt like text-book gaslighting. Hestia's continued insistence that the blame laid squarely on Demeter, that Demeter was the only one who'd done anything wrong, that whatever Hades did to her Demeter was now just as bad because she'd been acting just as "cruel". When pretty much all of that is blatantly untrue. Good on Demeter for telling lemon-woman to fuck off.

Worst sister. (Yes, I still see Hestia, Hera and Demeter as sisters, because that's what RS established and I'm not willing to go along with her last-minute retcons.)

RS continues to just dump all of Demeter's past trauma on us, but then pulls a 180° every time to portray her as unsympathetic as possible. This isn't "nuanced" writing, this isn't "grey morality" or whatever. It's RS being shit at keeping her character writing consistent.

God, Persephone continues to wear the ugliest outifts known to man. What the hell is that red bow-dress, she legit looks like she's Hades cute little pet I wanna vomit.

I can't be the only one who thought Hades came across extremely shady in that conversation with Morpheus, right?

Also, oh joy, the dream realm is gonna be introduced to ✨capitalism✨! Can't wait for all the ways Hades is gonna find to exploit Morpheus and her powers!/s

[vixvaporub]

January 9th to January 15th Read and Watched List:

Currently Reading:

Berserk - chapters 230 to 240

Fruits basket - chapters 93 to 95

Chainsaw man - chapter 39 to 45

Pandora hearts - chapters 29 to 32

The Demon Prince of the Momochi House - Chapters 17 to 22

Blue flag - chapters 1 to 11

Coffee Moon - chapters 1 to 4

Updates:

The tainted half - chapters 30 and 31

With hat atelier - chapter 65

Accomplishments of a Duke's Daughter- chapter 63 

Gokurakugai - Side story 

Yona of the dawn - chapter 236

Bitten contract - chapters 58 and 59

Call of the night - chapter 154

Completed/Caught Up:

My solo exchange diary (completed)- chapters 16 to 25; another one that just felt so relatable, I really appreciate the mangaka being so honest in her writing 

Beards, bells, and bubbles / Hige to Suzu to Shabondama  - chapters 1 to 27; I thought this was super cute, the vibes was similar to Seaside Stranger 

Anime:

Land of the lustrous - episodes 6 to 12 (completed) This is one of those animes that does cgi right, it fits the story and character design so well. I'm also so interested in the lore of this series that it makes me want to read the manga

The magical revolution of the reincarnated princess and the genius young lady - episode 2

High Card - episode 1

[mythicallore]

... What was that sound?

"This happens all the time," says Darren Evans, a bystander joining the paranormal investigating team of Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures. The target: Zozo, an ancient demon who makes his presence known by rapping on walls and moving objects, and might be doing so in the empty hallway upstairs.

Evans isn't rattled by the sound; he's used to his house making strange noises. For years, he claims that Zozo has stalked, harassed, and tormented his family. Evans even claims to have been possessed by Zozo, who is an ancient supernatural presence who has wormed his way through history, wreaking havoc on participants since the pre-Biblical days. Evans is a self-proclaimed "Zozologist," who regularly tells his stories at paranormal conventions, on supernatural-themed podcasts, and across 236 pages in a recent book. For this television appearance, he's leading a team into the darkness, into the unknown.

Zozo's origin story is riddled with supposition, fabrication, and a hive-mind belief system that keeps his power alive and thriving -- despite giant gaps in its history. But since 2009, Zozo has been a popular internet fixture, so notorious that he's inspired feature films, books, podcasts, and been the focus of entire episodes of both the aforementioned Ghost Adventures and SyFy's Paranormal Witness. A YouTube search of "Zozo demon" turns up more than 80,000 results, with videos ranging from emotional personal encounters to timeline histories to alleged, full-on possessions. Internet lore has one explanation for how it crept out of the shadows; facts tell us something very different.

The demon's story is intertwined with Darren Evans, a man whose stringent belief in the unseen -- and whose obsession with Led Zeppelin -- helped birth a modern urban legend that gains traction with each passing year, its foothold coagulating into an accepted, inescapable truth.

Who is Zozo?

The Zozo demon (sometimes stylized as ZoZo or ZOZO) is a mysterious trickster entity known for stalking people through Ouija boards. Those who claim they've made contact with Zozo – who also goes by Zaza, Mama, Oz, Zo, Za, and Abacus – say he often shows himself by guiding the planchette into figure-8 formations, before frantically zooming back and forth between the "Z" and "O." His interactions start out friendly, but grow malicious; he's known for cursing at and threatening contactees, sometimes personally. While he's often wrangled by a Ouija board, some believe that saying his name out loud can also summon Zozo from the depths of hell.

Zozo believers claim the demon has ancient origins, either African or Sumerian, depending who you ask. While those claims can't be substantiated (they may be confusing Zozo for Pazuzu, a Mesopotamian wind demon who famously appeared in The Exorcist), a supernatural entity called "Zozo" was referenced in the 1818 French text Le Dictionnaire Infernal. The demonological encyclopedia, written by French author Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy, recounts the story of a young village girl who claimed she'd been possessed by three demons named Mimi, Zozo, and Crapoulet.

But according to the website The Paranormal Scholar, accurately translating the text of Le Dictionnaire Infernal shows that the girl's story was faked. "She rattled nonsense," de Plancy wrote, adding that the girl had been publicly beaten years before for faking possession, and was eventually imprisoned for her fibs. He goes on to describe what he believed to be genuine cases of demonic activity, ending the Zozo extract with the sentence: "Nonetheless, there are real cases of possession."

Zozo's first-known textual appearance was technically a non-appearance, but this hasn't stopped people from using Le Dictionnaire Infernal as "proof" of Zozo's existence. A number of websites and videos still cite it as fact, bolstering the belief that Zozo predates the event that seemingly willed him into existence.

Darren Evans (right) on a 2014 episode of Ghost Adventures | Travel Channel

A legend is born

In 2009, an Oklahoma man named Darren Evans recounting his experience with a demon named "ZOZO" on a website called True Ghost Tales. In the post, Evans admits to an adolescent fascination with the occult, citing many Ouija board incidents through the years. But Zozo, he said, was different. The entity consistently showed itself to Evans, "too many times to count," pretending to be a kind spirit before shifting into threatening language, including curses in what "looked like Latin or Hebrew."

"I was genuinely fascinated and startled by how many times 'ZOZO' showed up, even in many different states and many different Ouija boards," Evans wrote. He claimed that the demon also made threats against his toddler daughter, nearly drowning her in a bathtub and later infecting her with a mysterious illness. "We almost lost her, and that was when I began to suspect demonic attack."

Evans' post garnered a great deal of interest, with other readers alleging similar Ouija encounters with Zozo. He eventually set up a website to collect stories, which steadily gained popularity. A film production company called One World Studios took notice of Evans story, acquired the rights, and in 2012, released the independent feature I Am ZoZo, which featured a cameo appearance by Evans. A YouTube video promoting the film -- titled "Scariest Ouija Board Demon ZOZO Possessed Girl" -- went viral; it currently has more than 5 million views. The comments still debate its validity, despite a promoted link to rent I Am ZoZo below the video's description. "Oh my gosh, [you're] not meant to joke with this. She was laughing and insulting Zozo, so that's why this happened," one comments reads. "The thing was going around in a figure eight. That's bad," says another.

In 2014, Evans and his family appeared on an episode of the Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures. The show's paranormal team, led by host Zak Bagans, visited Evans' house in Oklahoma, which he claimed to be plagued by Zozo. During interviews, he added new details to his original story, including the temporary blinding of his daughter, which he blamed on the demon.

In 2016, Evans co-authored a book, The Zozo Phenomenon, with leading paranormal expert Rosemary Ellen Guiley. He once again added new details about his first encounter with Zozo, claiming that he came in contact with Zozo in 1982 after discovering a Ouija board in his then-girlfriend's basement. Engraved on the back? "ZOZO."

According to The Paranormal Scholar, earlier that year in a phone interview with a New Jersey newspaper, Evans told the same story about a mysterious Zozo-engraved Ouija board, only that time, he claimed "Zozo" was written on the front, "where 'Ouija' is normally written," not on the back. Both of these mentions were the first time in the seven years that Evans had been talking about Zozo that he mentioned an engraved board.

The Zoso symbol from 'Led Zeppelin IV' | Atlantic Recording Company

The part where one of the most legendary rock bands of all time factors in

As if the cracks in Evans' story weren't enough, The Paranormal Scholar uncovered another fascinating revelation: the "Zozo" font on the cover of Evans's The Zozo Phenomenon appeared to be lifted from the "Zoso" symbol, an ancient glyph representing Saturn that was widely used by Led Zeppelin frontman Jimmy Page. Though Page has never revealed what Zoso means to him personally, it's possible that his being a Capricorn -- a sign ruled by Saturn -- has something to do with it.

Evans also happened to be an on-the-record mega-fan of Led Zeppelin, a band long been associated with Satanism and demonology. For a time, his Zozo website even linked directly to the official Zeppelin website and had a link to purchase Jimmy Page's autobiography.

Evans, for his part, has attempted to counter the claims that he fabricated his story. He claims the root word "Zo" -- appearing in both Zozo and Zoso -- has some sort of "magical power," which he believes explains its recurring nature. In a blog post from earlier this year, he posted more historical "proof" of Zozo's existence, once again citing Le Dictionnaire Infernal and a Nigerian paranormal website, Nairaland, where in 2005 a user named Makaveli wrote of a friend's encounter with a demon called "Zo-Zo." (Curiously, in the Nigerian languages Hausa and Igbo, "Zozo" translates to "come up.") He found mention of a demon named Zozo in a 1966 play by Jacques Audiberti, and in an 1876 issue of the Catholic Review, where Saint Bernardino of Siena mentions a "Mass of Zozo," some sort of Satanic ritual.

There's little consistency between Evans's personal accounts and his sourced material that relates any one Zozo to the other. Furthermore, none of these instances explain why, before Evans' 2009 True Ghost Tales post, "Zozo demon" yielded next to zero results in Google's search function. If Zozo encounters are such a shared experience, no one felt comfortable enough sharing their own run-ins until Evans came forward with his viral anecdote.

A scene from I Am Zozo | Image Entertainment

Zozo lives on

Even with such traceable and flimsy origins, Zozo lives on in the collective subconscious, seemingly unstoppable. Like Slender Man and other Creepypasta concoctions, his mythology is so entrenched in the niche corners of the web that you'd be hard-pressed to convince believers in his non-existence. From Reddit to YouTube vlogs to message boards, many people remain utterly convinced that they've had Ouija board run-ins with Zozo.

In the 1970s, scientists attempted this on a large scale with a project known as the "Philip experiment." Hoping to manifest a nonexistent "ghost" through fear responses, the scientists created a fictional character named Philip and held a séance with a test group. After feeding the group Philip's story, they tried to conjure his spirit. The experiment was successful: through sheer force of belief, the participants felt the table vibrate, heard rapping sounds, and said they sensed a presence.

Zozo could be like Philip, a presence people decided to believe in and have now willed into existence. It's strikingly similar to Slender Man, who, despite being wholly and obviously fictional, inspired two Wisconsin schoolgirls to stab their friend, hoping to sacrifice her to the figure they were convinced was real.

Perhaps Zozo is real, and Darren Evans is merely the conduit through which we were introduced to him. In lore, demons are known to disappear for long stretches; it's possible his 2009 emergence was by some hellish design, and he's here to prey on the specific fears of a new generation, one who can spread his word through the viral capillaries of the internet, where any unsuspecting soul might stumble on his wrath.