#and so is persephone

[presefone]

*takes a deep breath* ok so i want to talk about my personal criticism regarding the myth of persephone in common media etc because this has been told so many times across enternainement that i feel like some of its meaning has been lost through time. i'm a huge history enthusiast so this plays a role, definitely, and i'm not saying anything else besides what i'm writing here is wrong ; these are just my thoughts on it. basically, hades and persephone are not the protagonists of the story and they never were. it was always demeter. homer called it 'the hym of demeter' and praises her love for her daughter instead of anything else. there's truly no discussion about 'hades and persephone's love'. hell, persephone doesn't even have a line in the hym ; we don't hear her thoughts at all, which of course opens to a very welcomed interpretation but alas, let's move on. zeus' offers his daughter to marriage without hers or her mother's consent and awareness. his daughter, who he never helped raise and nor was involved in any way. his daughter who was never truly his daughter in anything but conception, but was above everything else demeter's creation, her most treasured companion, her gift and sole happiness in a world of mortals and olympians. a young 'maiden', stolen by death, never to be seen again. all gods knew of zeus' allowance and where persephone had been sent to but couldn't tell demeter, at all, by orders of their king. yet one god took pity of demeter's pain, hekate. demeter, who roamed the earth crying for her baby, who was taken too soon, without warning, to the darkest place in myth ; death. and demeter, who raged like the mother earth herself to get her child back, who cried and screamed in pure agony : all of this is the central theme of the hym, not hades, not even persephone herself. this is a clear story about ancient greek lives where fathers would send off their daughters to marriage without questioning their wives, and where daughters died too young in the process. i say this because normally what we have is a very ''cool but brooding hades'' who is ''misjudged by everyone'' and a ''sunshine and flowers persephone who is the only one who makes him smile'' and against that we need a clear antagonist, so common perception has a demanding, cruel, controlling demeter. this is not accurate at all. demeter is not the villain and again, neither is hades ! but he isn't the victim here too ! did persephone go willingly? only two myths tell that, so, it isn't the wildly accepted version. in most, she was kidnapped, taken, or lurred. and after that, we don't hear what happened because unfortunately her view does not matter, nor hades', nor their possible bloom of love. it is not really her story nor hades'. i personally fufill that gap that yes, she did come to love hades, hence the eating of the seeds and the marriage bond (and after all, hades was hit by eros' out of aphrodite's demmand to avoid kore from becoming yet another virgin goddess, so again, outside forces). her position as queen became more and more tempting as she is a goddess and any god wants power and glory, a maiden to be rival to hera, and stand up to her mother as equals, and not just a tool to her existence. my persephone longs for that power, for that duty, for that respect, and i take into accord the other myths she comes by as the dreadful, just, allurring queen. i also complete in my head that it was always her destiny from the beggining to be a god of underworld, since her name itself is leading to a destroyer and not just spring. but it all comes down to the meaning of the hym, of demeter, of her being 'kore', being a girl, a young girl, stolen and taken too soon. dead too soon. like the many greek women who were sold off to marriage never to be seen again ; dying in more ways than one.

[chthonic-kids]

You look just like your mother. I'll not lose her again.

[spineless-lobster]

Hey so if you guys here any pained animalistic sobs and/or wails don’t mind that it’s only me thinking about the house of hades family portraits

[where-that-old-train-goes]

not normal about orpheus and eurydice. you loved someone so much it opened the stones of the underworld. so much that death had to listen. so much that everything stopped for your love. so much that you turned around. so much that even when you did wrong. she forgave you.

[mysterycitrus]

I just love your Tim drake as it's just practically getting jumpscared everytime and I just love that

Also can we talk about the wonder twinnss and the FIC!

tysm !! i will go into heavy detail about the scientific sliding scale of jumpscares between the wonder twins and timmy drake

[omaano]

Skyguy joins the Hades AU to Din's great distress

"How's Snips? And my Captain? I bet they've missed me all this time." "I don't know who you or those other people are, but you are scaring my kid."

They definitely missed him, but Rex sure as hell failed to mention his old General by name or description, so Din can be excused for a bit of rudeness just this once. He's looking for a Jedi to teach his kid, and since meeting Ahsoka he at least now knows that a lightsaber does not a Jedi make, please tone down the menacing looming, Anakin, and just help him, he's got a trinket from Rex in his pocket, he's cool. (Depending on the keepsake he runs with, Anakin is more or less likely to turn up as Vader instead to grant a boon only to make Din's life all the more difficult. So he is part Chaos, part just Disaster Lineage.)

As promised: the 501st command is all here for this project by now, all done in the span of a few months, so they even look like they match :)

[moonlightflower-queen]

The rulers of the underworld have an important message about mental health

[each-uisge-enthusiast]

the modern villainisation of demeter will never cease to enrage me bc it wasn’t ENOUGH to just take a story of a girl being torn from her home from everyone who loved her and dragged away to be forced into marriage and twist and corrupt it until it was a romance story about female empowerment that wasn’t ENOUGH they HAD to take the original hero of the story the mother who went to every length to find her daughter again to bring her home and demonise her character until she was this horrific overbearing unloving mother. overprotective controlling without love. they turn the story of her grief at her YOUNG daughter being torn from her without her knowledge into the story of a misunderstood bad boy and a horrible cruel mother who won’t give him a chance and i really find it sickening. it’s ironic, that the ever misogynist age of hellenistic greece, has a better grasp of how disgusting and horrifying this situation was that a modern, self proclaimed ‘feminist’ era.

[psiakosc]

there is no escape

inspired by a „thor: ragnarok” poster!

[linefelcei]

More baby Mel but with parents QUQ

[spacehomos]

Kaos

The Gods

[scalpho]

the sam nightingale gorgug-hater grind NEVER stops. and i respect her immensely for that

[chthonic-kids]

IT'S ON SIGHT CHRONOS

[thequietesthing]

i’m sorry but KAOS is like a greek mythology fanfiction AU on steroids and i love her for it.

[itscosmicnerd]

Chant I in a nutshell (click for higher image quality)

(OG meme under the cut!)

[grecoromanyaoi]

in general i dont like the treating of (ancient, ""dead"") mythologies as fandom