STAY OFF MY TERRITORY - Time Travel in Lore Olympus (feat. Springlock, our resident time traveller)
AH YES. TIME TRAVEL. BUILDING COFFEE TABLES FROM IKEA. BOTH A MESS, BOTH SOMETHING YOU SHOULD NEVER ATTEMPT EVEN AS A GAG.
THERE WILL BE FASTPASS SPOILERS IN THIS ANALYTICAL DISSECTION OF LORE OLYMPUS' TIME TRAVEL !!!
Let's establish the "time travel" in LO first of all - it's briefly introduced by Hecate, who says that Hades isn't in a 'where' but a 'when' , hahahaha i so love time travel jokes /s THIS ISN'T A LAUGHING MATTER-
We had already covered this in the criticisms that Kronos' 'dream comas' would have been better allocated to his time travel abilities, and it seems now Rachel is trying to make that a reality at the last possible minute. I'm going to completely tear apart that reality to present to you why it doesn't work in LO.
Aw, Kronos' time abilities are finite? Get on my level, sir.
The caveat is the existential toll that time travel takes on the jumper, and the fact that in most cases, it's impossible to perform due to paradoxes. And Lore Olympus' time travel presents a lot of paradoxes. No wonder Kronos went crazy, I'm going crazy just thinking about everything that's wrong with this.
So Hades is trapped 'somewhere' in time. This isn't something I haven't seen before, but the issue it presents is getting someone back to their present time, as it presents the first paradox -
PARADOX #1 - There are no accidents. If someone is to jump into a timeline outside of their own, even if by 'accident', that would still have to be predestined by the timeline itself. This is in line with the grandfather paradox, which I will let the almighty Google define for us all to keep things brief:
You cannot travel back in time 'by accident'. If you were to travel back in time, it would have been written into the script of reality already, so any effects caused by your jumping would be purposeful, even if they seem like 'accidents' to you - such as becoming your own grandfather, Philip J Fry.
Moving on, in the most recent FastPass episode, Melinoe reveals that she was taken from her timeline by Kronos.
PARADOX #2 - Which version of Kronos took her? Was it the present version travelling into the future to take her from her timeline into his present? Or was it some future version of Kronos who has escaped yet again at some point in the future and then travelled back into the past to interfere with the events of the current present, possibly in an attempt to rewrite the script? If it's the latter, this means that Hera and Persephone can't feasibly stop Kronos indefinitely, as to stop Kronos would mean that he wouldn't exist in the future to take Melinoe from her future timeline and thus this present timeline of events would cease to exist. If we want to get even more granular with it, 'present' Kronos is still 'past' Kronos as it's the Kronos from ten years ago who got his hands on a deity to help him mess with people's dreams, and that deity has been revealed to be Melinoe, who would have had to be ripped from some point in their future timeline. This falls in line with a temporal paradox, or as most people know it, the 'kill baby Hitler' paradox, which designates that one cannot go back in time to kill baby Hitler, as killing baby Hitler would remove all the subsequent events that would lead up to you deciding to build a time machine and go back in time to kill baby Hitler.
Melinoe claims she's only been here a few days. That would be all well and good, as time is funny like that - I've done my fair share of jumps into the distant past only to return a few minutes later - but what doesn't line up is the present timeline of events that would only work unless she's actually been trapped for longer than a few days.
PARADOX #3 - So it's only been a few days, but Hades and Persephone have known about this child trapped in Tartarus for weeks, and we know Kronos has had her since the dream diving arc back near the end of S2. So unless Kronos is simply jumping to different points in time to cause shenanigans - which leads to even MORE paradoxes as you feasibly cannot travel to your own past to change it due to it creating a different future - then it can't have only been a 'few days' for Melinoe, it would have been at least a few weeks, giving some wiggle room to the past events of her appearing before Hades in his dreams due to her being the goddess of nightmares. Kronos escaping Tartarus after using Melinoe to put people to sleep and possess them was not something that happened in a pocket dimension, it was very real and very present.
Hades commits an even bigger sin, however, and the biggest issue with this 'time travel' plotline:
PARADOX #4 - I truly hope 'home' means 'home point in her timeline' and not their literal home. Hades and Persephone cannot take Melinoe, for two reasons: they haven't had their daughter yet, and the future timeline versions of Hades and Persephone need their daughter back. If Hades and Persephone were to adopt this version of Melinoe in their present timeline, it would create a clone paradox, as they would have a duplicate Melinoe from the future, OR it would create the grandfather paradox if they opted not to try for a child knowing they already have Melinoe which would erase the whole sequence of events that led to future Melinoe's birth in the first place.
Ultimately Lore Olympus' time travel suffers from the same issue many time travel stories suffer from - not having consistent rules. It is choosing now , near the finale of the series, to introduce time travel, rather than establishing it back in Season 1 when Kronos was first hinted at. It's also still not clear in what Hades' role is in this, as him being taken to a 'when' could still be read as a dream sequence rather than actual time travel. After all, Kronos supposedly "exhausted" his time travelling powers centuries ago - surely as a way for Rachel to have her cake and cover for the fact that she's had Kronos in the series since S1 and never actually had him do what he's known for - but now she's trying to eat it too by just giving him his time travel powers again for no reason besides rewriting the dream diving finale from S2 but with ambiguous time travel instead.
It's all a huge mess and the best thing I can do for myself is simply not let it keep me up at night. I have enough time travelling problems to worry about as it is. I will be sticking to the Austin Powers method -
(I am not enjoying myself.)
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How I would’ve constructed the 10 year time skip
✨Brought to you by my deep loathing for Lore Olympus✨
•warnings: super long post (I’m not joking), death, kidnapping, violence•
What The Fuck Happened
There was so much potential for the punishment arc. We could’ve seen a lot of character development, fleshed out storylines, reconciliation between certain people. We could’ve seen both Hades and Persephone going to therapy instead of claiming that one therapy session has fixed all their problems and then never going again.
Instead we got horny Persephone, pretty much no clue about what happened to Demeter OR Persephone during that time, and an easy plot device (sorry Cerberus) for Persephone to be like “I’m a big girl now harrumph harrumph, time for me to go reunite with my crusty ass bf who I’ve only know for a month”.
I hate the way she reunited with Ares. Ares is just a bonafide creep throughout the whole comic (although I liked when he attacked Zeus lol). I guess what I mostly hate about Ares and Persephone’s interaction is, yet again, it’s another example of every guy in the comic going AWOOGA over Persephone. Also Athena’s design is so fugly. I guess Rachel is completely incapable of drawing masculine presenting women as actual women.
The whole Kronos plot line is stupid. I hate it so much. Imo the whole “the titans are trying to escape so they can rule Olympus again” is overdone and not particularly done well. The fight between Kronos and Persephone is lame as shit. Like what, she gets big for all of 20 minutes, burps out a bunch of bees (which aren’t even aggressive creatures), and then does her version of the Wuxi Finger Hold from Kung Fu Panda and has Tartarus spirit Kronos away, magically fixing all of their problems (except it doesn’t and nothing is actually fixed).
Also I might get a lot of flack for this, but I don’t think the addition of Morpheus’ character was necessary. I like Morpheus. I think she’s cute. But she’s a) slowly turning into another version of Hecate and b) not really vital to the narrative imo. We already have so many other characters and plot lines that take away from the central “romance” the story is SUPPOSED to be focused on. I just don’t think we need ANOTHER character whose arc is probably not going to go anywhere.
So yeah, overall very L writing, L plot, and L characters.
What I would do differently
The first thing I would change is that the whole punishment arc would be an entire season unto itself. You’ll see why it has to be a separate season.
The second thing is (and this literally pains me to say) in order for me to rewrite this portion of LO without rewriting the entire comic, I kinda sorta have to throw the entire timeline of Greece out the window. If I try to follow a timeline based on the history of Greece, the entire timeline of LO has to shift massively. I’m already getting a migraine trying to think about how I could possibly make it work.
I do know this: Instead of 10 years I’d do somewhere between 1,000-3,000 years. 10 years is a joke. When you’re a god, 10 years is a trip to the time out corner
For now, let’s just say (assuming LO takes place in the Ancient Greece era) and Ancient Greece spanned ~1500 years, Persephone’s punishment would’ve needed to have been established near the very end of the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, spanned the entirety of Ancient Greece as we know it today, and ended some time in the very early Byzantine era. So like what, 1500-2000 years? Fine. I can work with this.
The Famine
You know how the first 400 years of Ancient Greece was deemed the “Dark Ages” and it was a time of war, famine, and loss? I want to start the punishment there. It would make sense for what we know about the characters thus far:
Demeter has had complete control over the growth of the flora and fauna on earth. She’s the goddess of the harvest after all. But we also find out that while Persephone has been in Olympus, Demeter has also been carrying out her duties as the goddess of spring. Plus Demeter has been around for forever and a day. She knows what she’s doing
Persephone doesn’t (at this point in the comic) really have control over her powers. Even in her fits of rage, she ends up doing more harm than good (i.e. her act of wrath, turning Minthe into a plant, etc.). In comparison with everyone around her, she is a literal infant. I mean shit, she’s only been alive for 20 years compared to the fact that everyone else has most likely been around for a minimum of 500 years.
If Demeter is stripped of her status as a goddess (and thus her powers) it would make sense that there would be a lot of death and famine and war over territory/food. Persephone would be left with nothing: no guidebook, no how-to. Of course a lot of people would die while she’s trying to figure her shit out. It could also be a very interesting tactic for psychological warfare on Zeus’ part. Zeus KNOWS Persephone doesn’t know what she’s doing. He knows people will die. And he knows that since life is precious to Persephone (or at least that’s what she claims), it would punish her further.
We can see episodes of Persephone struggling to provide for humanity. We could have real world examples of the affect of famine and depopulation. We would see her struggling with her powers, her mental health. We could get an episode that explains how her hands got destroyed from trying to mimic her mother’s powers. We can see what the fuck happened to Demeter in Attica.
Now obviously things will eventually go on the up and up for Persephone and her compatriots. The whole 1500-2000 years isn’t just going to be one big clusterfuck. As time progresses and chapters pass, we could see real character growth for Persephone not just mentally, but in almost every aspect. Since she will have been alive at that point for over 1000 years, the readers would be able to see her newfound maturity. We could also see her build strong female support systems and strengthen her friendships, something we NEVER saw in the OG comic (or at least they never happened without Hades somehow being involved). You get the point.
What’s Old Man Hades up to?
I have big plans for Hades and none of them involve him going into a 1000+ year coma or getting possessed by his creepy-ass dad. He is an asshole though. I kinda wanted to portray him in this the way he is in the original myths (which for those who don’t know or haven’t read it, it’s not good).
So in Greek mythology, Hades actually had a wife before he even met Persephone or Minthe. Can you take a wild guess as to who?
Bingo! It’s Leuce. Contrary to popular belief, Leuce is actually NOT a home-wrecking POC version of Persephone (don’t @ me we all know the nymphs represent the lower class and POC). In mythology, Leuce was Hades’ first wife/lover and she died sometime long ago and I believe was turned into a white poplar tree. No she is not a cousin of Thetis and Amphitrite. She is not even remotely related to them. And Thetis and Amphitrite are sisters, not cousins. Do your fucking research Rachel.
Unfortunately, Greek Mythology doesn’t really mention all that much about Leuce outside of the fact that she was a daughter of Oceanus, she was kidnapped by Hades, and when she died (for unspecified reasons) she turned into a tree. Which means I’m going to be taking a lot of creative liberties for this portion of the post. Sorry to all you diehard fans of Greek myths out there. I shall try to do her justice.
In my head-cannon Hades and Leuce had been in an arranged marriage for thousands of years. Leuce was offered by Oceanus as a peace offering after the War and Hades, not really having any other viable options for a wife, agreed to take her to the underworld (much to her dismay). Over time, they grew to have a mutually loving/caring relationship. Unlike LO Persephone, Leuce was a good queen and she worked hard to make sure the denizens of the underworld respected her and that they were well cared for. Unfortunately, they got divorced because Hades starting having an affair with Minthe. Even though she loved her kingdom and the people of the underworld, she divorced Hades because she couldn’t stand to be around him, which, y’know. Fair.
A few notes: in my head-cannon, Leuce is still around leading up the the trial and punishment. Her portrait would still be up, we would see signs that Hades and Leuce still interact (more in terms of business, not romance), etc.
Also, unlike Persephone, Leuce would not take her anger out on Minthe or turn her into a plant or destroy her apartment. She would simply wish her good luck. She would be mad at Hades for cheating and for taking advantage of Minthe while she’s at her lowest. But I’m going to be straight up: even though Leuce is meant to be the better Persephone, she still has her flaws. She’s not going to feel inclined to help Minthe in any way. Would you want to help out the person who your partner is cheating on you with? The answer is no and if you say yes, you’re lying.
Anyways, during the Punishment, Hades and Leuce reconnect and Hades finds out Leuce is dying. He tries to convince her to leave the underworld and return to her father, but she insists that she is going to stay, even if it means she dies away from everyone she loved. She won’t abandon her kingdom, her people, or her ex-husband (although that’s much better than he deserves). They move in together and Hades begins to take care of her, even as she begins to deteriorate. They also begin to rekindle their past relationship and (with the help of a therapist) work through some of their past problems together.
Note: their relationship rekindles a couple hundred years into the punishment so by the time the punishment ends, they’ve been back together for a minimum of 1200 years
The aftermath and the Rape of Persephone
Before any of you go gaga over me for the title used above, the original title used for the myth is The Rape of Persephone (or if you want to be really original, The Rape of Proserpina). In the context of the title, the term “rape” means to be taken/kidnapped rather than having sexual violence inflicted upon you. Rape stemmed from the traditional Latin word “raptus” which means “to be seized” or “carried off”. Okay? Okay.
So after the Punishment ends and Persephone feels like she has thoroughly improved herself, she goes to find Hades and talk with him about their relationship. Mainly that she feels they rushed into it, and even though she does like him she wants to take things really slow (kind of like how she wanted before getting married 3 episodes later).
Upon arriving to the underworld/Hades house, her worst fears are realized: not only has Hades (seemingly) moved on, he has found someone else. Or rather, he got back together with his ex-wife.
Persephone freaks out (“who is she?”/“I’m his wife!”)
Persephone, throughly upset for getting her hopes up, flees back to mortal realm. Hades goes to leave Leuce, but not before she tells him that if he leaves her for Persephone, she will never forgive him. Hades leaves anyways, much to the absolute despair of Leuce, who is left wailing as he runs off.
Persephone returns home and finds Demeter and they hug. Demeter is initially horrified to see what happened to her hands, but is proud of the work she did during the punishment. Persephone cries to her mother about Hades, and Demeter tries to comfort her but it inadvertently comes off more as “I told you so” rather than “I’m sorry you had to experience that” (although Demeter is sorry that Persephone’s heart is broken). Persephone, already feeling incredibly emotionally distressed, lashes out at Demeter and they start to argue. This is when Hades arrives.
Hades sees Demeter and Persephone arguing and inserts himself into the situation. Persephone becomes more upset after seeing him and Hades (assuming that Persephone is upset about the fact that Demeter is getting in the way of their “relationship” and not the fact that Persephone discovered Hades went back to his ex-wife after saying he loved her) whips out the the “one personal question, no exceptions” card and proposes to Persephone. He insists that he loves her and only her and that they should spend the rest of their immortal lives together.
Persephone says no.
Hades, not taking no for an answer and not wanting to leave the mortal realm empty handed, kidnaps Persephone, much to the dismay of Demeter, Artemis, and the nymphs. Hades returns with a traumatized Persephone to the underworld to find that Leuce has died and turned into a white poplar tree. While Persephone is sobbing on the floor, Hades weaves a mock crown from the branches and leaves of the tree, places it upon Persephone’s head, and tells her she better get used to their life together.
Thus ends the season and the punishment arc.
Afterthoughts
Thank you for sitting through my ramblings. I officially joined the anti-LO community about the time the trial happened and had been wanting to make a post like this for a reaaaaally long time. Besides the fact that the trial in of itself was completely unethical (@genericpuff made a whole post about that) the punishment arc just really pissed me off. Like go girl, give us nothing!
Anyways, I may or may not do a whole timeline reconstruction of LO depending on how much I feel like offing my sanity with the amount of research that would have to go into that. Until then, I hope you like this post and look out for other anti LO posts coming your way :)
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