i find it funny that one of rachel’s drawings of herself in the afterword that just went up is just fully persephone. is that something she does a lot?
Alright so I've been making it a general rule for myself to like, not harp on Rachel in any way outside of LO as much because frankly the horse is dead now and there's not much left to say outside of what can be analyzed in hindsight. I think despite everything I have to say about her and her work, she still deserves to get away from this nonsense and I don't wanna spend eternity hovering over her shoulder.
But the afterword was posted within the LO series and is clearly meant for readers of LO in the functioning of being an afterword so let's just call it fair game LOL
I will say, on the whole, it does feel very honest and sentimental and I can respect Rachel for taking the time to write out and illustrate her afterword in a way that was personal to both her and her fans. I can understand why she went at it from the angle that she did and I'm not gonna fault her for that.
But there's also something that feels deeply... disingenuous about her approach right from the starting gun. I will say, before I continue, that I'm well aware I am biased towards Rachel as a creator, and I fully acknowledge that I could very well be reading too much into things. This is just my opinion, take it with mountains of salt.
I can get looking back on your own childhood, your past self, whatever, and going "see! it all got better!" because sure! For a lot of creators like Rachel, it must be wild to look back on where they came from and there's a lot of sentimentality on expressing that through an afterword like this where she reflects on where she came from. Though she STILL didn't acknowledge her other comics outside of LO, I can understand if she wants to leave those skeletons in the closet.
But I feel like her drawing herself as a child who's being given an Eisner by her adult self and all that just feels like some gross attempt to disarm any criticism of her because "don't make fun of me, I'm just a sad lonely baby girl!"
She's not a child. Child Rachel didn't grossly misappropriate Greek myth into their own self-indulged vanity project. Child Rachel didn't claim herself a folklorist of a culture's works only to bastardize them completely. Child Rachel didn't create a hostile environment within her fanbase by bullying anyone who she perceived as a threat, sneaking into critical spaces to try and cause trouble, and writing her own clapbacks into her comic. Child Rachel didn't claim to be challenging misogyny and purity culture only to reinforce misogyny and purity culture through her own self-insert baby-virgin-gets-rescued-by-rich-tycoon power fantasy that regularly glorified abuse towards women and the lower class.
30-almost-40-year-old Rachel did though.
At best it comes across as really cringe sentimentality from a Greek-weeb (heh, greeboo) and goes to show how much Rachel inserted herself into Greek myth without ever absorbing its messages or cultural contexts, it was all about her and her feelings as a sad New Zealand girl with dyslexia who thought Persephone's story was about another sad girl being rescued from her "horrible childhood".
At worst it's an active attempt to play on people's heartstrings by drawing herself as a child who people will naturally not want to criticize. I don't want to assume she's doing it intentionally, I really don't want to leave her afterword on a bad foot, as I can definitely understand as both a creator and a person who struggled with learning disabilities in their own childhood how and why she wants to pay homage to her past and where she came from... but let's just say, as someone who's also gotten way too "lost in the sauce" concerning personal self-reflective projects, I think there's a lot to say about how this confirms that Rachel made LO entirely for herself, about herself, without any actual intention to respect the original myths, because she never truly separated them from herself when she was a child. And, in my humble opinion as someone who has Been There with the self-insert OC's and self-reflective angsty plotlines, I can fully attest to the fact that that's not fucking healthy. Even with personal projects, you NEED to learn to get your head out of the sauce, you NEED to learn to objectively separate yourself from the narrative so the story doesn't fall apart under your own hubris and ego, you NEED to learn to draw a line if you want to have any sort of identity as a human being outside of what you make for people. And that's with just normal original stories, this was a story based on Greek myth which doesn't belong to her.
And this goes for a lot of the things she's said and done in the past, so much of her own "sources" even are tethered to things that she read / watched in her childhood and only vaguely remembers, as if she never mentally left her childhood at all, which just... if the point was to highlight her past and the traumas she went through and how they contributed to her present, an Eisner isn't going to validate those experiences. And drawing attention to her past through the lens of her childhood self absolutely 100% does not absolve her of the negative effect her work has had on the modern Greek myth zeitgeist nor the things she's said and done as a 38 year old woman who should absolutely know better.
The community she entered and took from will forever remain changed by her influence and taking, in many ways not for the better. She has the privilege of walking away and never having to think about it again, with all the awards and accolades that were bought for her, the bravado that she built around being a "folklorist" with zero credentials, and the platform she was given over many other creators struggling to even be heard.
That "place" she claims to have now was built entirely on inserting herself into another culture's works and doing nothing but taking, taking, taking, while offering nothing in return but vanity and lip service. That "place" was paid for and brought to you by Webtoons.
Something I noticed upon re-reading the afterword that's, again, undoubtedly overanalyzing and should be taken with loads of helpings of salt, but got crazier the more I thought about it.
There's this part where Rachel talks about living with learning disabilities and how that affected her growing up-
Look, I know that this is Rachel "closing the book" so I don't want to beat her up over this or psycho-analyze her, but... did you notice how her retelling of her childhood went from being bullied over her "lack of smarts" to her trying to make herself feel better through... beauty? There's no connection between these two things, the focus just suddenly shifts from "not being smart enough" to "not being pretty enough", which are two separate problems, one of which she never mentioned having.
Now who does that sound like?
It's clear Rachel put a lot of thought into writing this and wanted to speak from the heart. But I think, if anything, a lot of it really puts into perspective just how much she wrote herself into Persephone, in a very - in my frank and honest opinion - unhealthy way.
Persephone is established in S1 as a character who is trying to make a go of it in university, and is cited as being incredibly smart and talented in basically everything she does. In fact, she's so good at everything that it's turned into a source for conflict in S2.
But then, as soon as she meets Hades, there's a shift in her goals. It's less about her graduating and doing something with her life, and more about her getting with Hades, about her beauty, her appeal to the men around her. All of her interests revolve around Hades, and the validations he can give her for being the most beautiful, most intelligent, most desirable goddess who chose him and no one else, not even the line of guys who are chomping at the bit to get to her even if it's without her consent. She's just that desirable, y'all, who cares about the guy's intentions as long as he's thirsting over her?
Like Sailor Moon, Rachel draws Persephone in the hopes that it will make her pretty. Like Rachel in this afterword, Persephone stops focusing on her own self-growth, her own pursuing of knowledge, and instead becomes just a physical object of beauty for others to fight over.
There is literally ZERO denying at this point that Persephone is a self-insert - but also that LO was undoubtedly used as a crutch for Rachel's own personal hang-ups regarding her childhood.
People were mean to her about her learning disabilities? Fuck you, now she's the smartest person in the world and has all the trophies to prove it, the mere cosmic coincidence of being a goddess automatically makes her smarter than everyone else by default.
She felt insecure over her appearance? Well now she's been twice blessed with beauty and is more beautiful than even the goddess of beauty herself.
And what is the first and really only thing that Hades notices about Persephone upon meeting her?
Oh yeah.
People were mean and gossiped about her? It's okay, the big power fantasy boyfriend is here to commit assault on her behalf. And now that she has a position of power? Raid their home with animals. Corner them at their own workplace and use her new position of power to intimidate them.
The bitter irony that she mentions therapy in this afterword and doesn't realize that she's borderline trauma-dumping on her own audience and, probably, maybe, should actually go to therapy to talk about how much she's used LO as a self-soothing crutch for herself.
Persephone, by design, is a twisted reflection of all of Rachel's fears, insecurities, shortcomings, and perceived flaws, a beloved but tragic character from Greek myth that she misinterpreted and projected into a reflection of what she clearly and practically admittedly wishes she could be - someone who is the most beautiful, intelligent, desirable Queen who's both worshipped and feared, both immortal and "forever 19", both a workaholic girlboss and a helpless baby who needs to be rescued by her suitor, both a "Dread Queen" and a "cinnamon roll" who can do whatever she likes to those who she deems as below her... but when you put yourself on a pedestal, everyone is.
Was disappointed in the dress she got for her power up mode. Like the white fur hate it. The stupid bee on the back of her necklace hate it. The almost nude rhinestone look would be cool but in a different part of the story and not taking down ouranos
The rose bun is nice and i wouldnt hate the white fur if it wasnt for the fact winter has been a big part of the last several chapters
This was supposed to be a quick edit that still took too long i wanted it to have more ancient greece aspects and if i was good at it give it an alexander mcqueen rose dress treatment with decaying flowers sprinkling about to decompose and provide the new growth nutrients
I don't think I ever posted about this, but I noticed a long time ago that there's a facial expression that seems to pop up in Lore Olympus a lot.
I can't tell if I just see it everywhere now just because I'm acutely aware of it... I tried to catch it every time I saw it on rereads. I'd taken to calling it "Lore Olympus Face," it's this sort of exaggerated eyeroll + open pog mouth 😅
Am I just looking too deeply at the details? Did anyone else notice this expression everywhere or am I just seeing it now because I'm looking for it?
This is a Rachel Smythe thing, it's present in her older comics as well:
IDK if it's her trying to be like Sailor Moon-
-or if she's doing the Vogue face or something, but it's definitely not just you who's noticed it and it's definitely a pattern that Rachel has fallen into the habit of doing haha In LO especially it results in a lot of void mouths with big googly eyes with those pupils that roll around everywhere, I sometimes can't help but think that this is what sex dolls bought from Temu would look like 💀😭
SPOILERS FOR LORE OLYMPUS EPISODE 280, THE FINALE.
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Yeah so I just spent the last two days obsessively working on this.
I've been telling people for years that Rachel mixed up being infertile with being sterile. And now with the birth of Makaria I was accidentally proven right.
If you want to read it for yourself instead of on here, the link to the full google slides presentation is below.
oh yeah, I just realized I never shared the 'funeral program' that I spent like two days making for the discord voice chat / stage funeral that we hosted with ULO pals the night of the comic's finale
and yes, i made it look like those loreolympians posts on purpose because (no hate to them) they're always reaching so far to try and make LO seem deep and intentional in its writing that isn't there, so in this case we're reaching real far to make LO's departure seem like a genuinely loss worthy of a whole ass funeral service LOL
god i hate this comic, i'm gonna miss it but i'm glad it's finally been put out of its misery LOL
Rachel once again back with emotionless characters. You’d think hearing that your only daughter was r@ped would cause a more… something reaction. Unfortunately Demeter just kinda looks bored.
Also idk why Ares is there. It should’ve been Artemis.
in the wake of LO ending, especially over the next three weeks as the FP updates become free, this is your public service reminder from a fellow anti that you should be following tumblr / fandom etiquette and keeping antiLO/critical LO posts to their respective tags (#antiloreolympus , #antilo, #locritical, #loreolympuscritical) as best as you can
yes, it's our own responsibility to curate our online experiences by following the accounts we like and blocking the accounts we don't, and using the general search bar on tumblr absolutely opens you up to the inevitable risk of seeing something you don't wanna see, but we as the critical side of the fandom should be doing what we can to make it easier for people to curate by labelling our criticisms / shitposts / etc. about LO with the correct tags ! this ensures that if someone doesn't want to see anti/critical stuff, they can do their part to block those tags and don't have to worry about it leaking into the general tags. I don't think it's that big of a reach to expect that general fandom tags will contain content from, y'know... people who are still genuine fans and not talking shit LOL
And yes, this is why you will not see me ever using the general loreolympus tags when posting my own critical essays or Rekindled. Obviously what you decide to tag your stuff with is on you, but I'm gonna ask y'all to please remember NOT to use general loreolympus tags when reblogging my stuff!! that's not to say my content is entirely off-limits to fans of the comic (we actually do have people in the Rekindled community who enjoy both!), but what I do here obviously isn't tailored specifically to general fans of the comic and the general LO tags are what those fans are using to find content from other fans, not hyper-driven maniacal anti's like myself ╭( ･ㅂ･)و
Just because it's no longer an unpopular opinion to rag on LO doesn't mean our slice of the fandom is now the whole pie. It's easy to think when you spend so much time in the critical part of the fandom that LO is somehow "dead" but like, there is still very much a dedicated fanbase to this comic and it still has some of the highest stats on the platform. We can't in good faith complain about fans coming into our spaces complaining about criticism existing if we're not gonna follow the rules of etiquette and label our stuff properly. And hey, at the very least if we properly tag things and they still find it from journeying into the anti/critical tags, then that's on them at that point. We don't have to take that "stop being such a meanie to two-time-Eisner-winning NYT bestselling creator Rachel Smythe" shtick from anyone, but we do gotta be willing to respect the lines that are drawn in the sand so that we don't tear each other apart over this dumbass webcomic LOL
"If they love you, they wouldn't have abused you."
The title is in reference to the newest episode at the time of posting (277). Specifically, the line where Persephone states, "Now that you truly love me, you have to live with what you've done."
Heavy TW for discussion of abuse (emotional and sexual abuse)
The unpleasant truth of the matter is:
Someone being an abuser doesn't mean they don't *love* their victim(s). They don't love their victim(s) in a way that the person needs or wants from them. They prioritize themselves and how they feel over yours.
It's more common with families. Usually, it involves kids who have/had restrained relationships with their parents due to the abuse they suffered from them. Lore Olympus established this with Demeter.
I won't go over it in depth, but while what Demeter did is considered abusive, the comic still acknowledges that Demeter loves her daughter.
Does that excuse what Demeter has done? No. However, the story doesn't try to claim how Demeter must not love her daughter because of how she's been treated.
An abuser can love you but still hurt you in the worst ways imaginable. Whether that be physically, emotionally, etc.
On to episode 277:
This idea your abuser can only see their wrongs if they "truly love you" or that they wouldn't have abused you if they loved you is such a horrible narrative to push.
The way Apollo is described in this sequence doesn't reflect what this comic has shown. While post-Zeus poisoning, it seems his actions were finally riddling him with guilt, it wasn't because he was shown he didn't love her.
It was due to his view of what he's done to Persephone was actively challenged and condemned by others.
Most of the time, the comic depicted him as delusional or in his own world. Apollo can't fathom a reality where he's not wanted, so he actively denies that reality.
This doesn't come off as a guy who doesn't love Persephone but rather refuses to admit what he did was awful and tried to justify it by claiming she must've liked him back.
He did have some level of love for her. However, that love was forced upon Persephone via rape/SA, stalking, harassment, etc. His love is toxic and abusive.
An abuser, no matter how they feel towards the abused, will not change by simply "loving you more."
In fact, this mindset can easily feed into the abused feeling as though they deserve their abuse and/or they are in some way unlovable. 'If a person who loves you wouldn't abuse you, then they must be doing something wrong for the abuser to not love them.' - Which is simply not true.
In conclusion:
I don't expect Lore Olympus to be a reference for how to deal with abusers. That's an unreasonable expectation to have of LO and of Rachel.
However, considering how many people really resonate with the SA in this comic and that Rachel added it with the intent of wanting SA survivors to feel seen, I feel it's important to address this part of the confrontation.
Abuse is complex. It's not as simple as the confrontation depicts, nor is it true that an abuser can understand your pain if they love you enough.
Lore Olympus just pulled off the biggest whiff in webtoon history.
I promised I would choose one of two headlines and of course, this is the one we wound up with. But should we really be surprised? Rachel herself seemed to be telling on herself down to the minutes leading up to the finale, fully confirming to us that yes, she's been writing this comic at the last minute, by the seat of her pants, for ages now.
(that second one was literally posted TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES BEFORE THE COMIC UPDATED.)
Welp, let's get into it. Possibly the last essay I'll ever write about this dumpster fire of a comic (but probably not, let's be real LOL)
CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND FASTPASS SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE AHEAD!
Holy crap, where to even start with this. I knew it was going to be bad. I knew it was going to be rushed. I knew it wasn't ever going to live up to what I had hoped it would be years ago when I was still a diehard fan.
But I didn't think it was going to fall quite this hard. Despite bracing myself for the worst, Rachel has once again let my expectations down through a final display of explosive mediocrity and disappointment.
Yes, the episode is called "You're Welcome", and yes, that instant "ick" you're feeling is the exact same as what we're all feeling. This title plays into the dialogue later, but what a shitty, lowkey mean-spirited title for the series finale.
Now, before we get into the actual episode, the WT ads for this are just... so desperate and misleading.
They are trying SO HARD to hype up something that isn't there, and at the last minute to boot, because Rachel definitely hadn't written any of this ahead of time.
First off, the bit about the gods being in "eternal chaos" of course isn't a stake worth worrying over because Gaia literally does away with Ouranos in the first 5 panels.
Did you really think I was joking about that 5 panels thing?
That's it. That's the death of Ouranos. As mysteriously and quickly as he arrived, he was gone, after Gaia ripped out of him what appeared to be some purple sunny side up - but it's actually, in fact, Apollo.
And that's when we start to get some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen throughout LO. Remember when I said LO's dialogue was like Shenmue 3? Welp, the finale decided to continue that tradition and further fuel the suspicion that this entire thing was written by ChatGPT.
Oh, by the way, that "thank you, ma'am" was Artemis' first and last line of the episode. So once again, just like in Episode 248, we're completely robbed of her reaction to Apollo being a rapist piece of shit and the character development she could have had as a supporting character. The women in this "feminist retelling" really couldn't be more half-baked.
Gaia stumbles upon Persephone, and I'm not even gonna fucking bother showing the panels where Gaia says it's time to "make things right" because they literally don't matter. Why don't they matter? Because Rachel just had to get in one more pointless time skip.
We're shown a sequence of pointless images that I'm not gonna show as I don't want to waste my image limit on them, depicting Hades having a sad day because his small wife isn't with him and oh nooo what could have happened?? Did Persephone finally divorce him ??
Nah, we couldn't possibly have an actually happy ending in this comic. Instead we get a completely pointless phone conversation between Hades and Hecate-
Not only is the grammar particularly bad in this episode, but the actual script-writing is atrocious. We literally did not need this phone conversation to happen because-
-we're cutting BACK TO THE PRESENT THAT WE JUST CUT AWAY FROM FOR A 3 MONTH TIME SKIP. FOR NO REASON BESIDES SHOWING HADES BE SAD OVER SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY ISN'T THAT BIG A DEAL, AS YOU'RE ABOUT TO SEE.
I- I LITERALLY HAVE NO WORDS. I HAVE NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS. ALL I CAN HEAR IN MY BRAIN IS THE LEGEND OF ZELDA ITEM GET MUSIC-
-BECAUSE THIS WHOLE THING SUDDENLY SOUNDS LIKE SOME CONTRIVED FETCH QUEST. WHAT DO YOU MEAN HADES AND PERSEPHONE HAVE PROVEN 'TRUE LOVE' IS REAL? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY HAVEN'T USED 'LOVE' AS A FORCE FOR DESTRUCTION?? ARE WE FORGETTING THAT HADES MUTILATED A GUY IN THE NAME OF 'LOVE'? THAT PERSEPHONE LITERALLY INVADED THE HOME OF HADES' CANONICAL FIRST WIFE BECAUSE SHE FELT MILDLY THREATENED BY HER?
This whole concept of "true love" that Rachel is trying to convey feels so juvenile especially for a series that has sold itself as being mature and thought-provoking and progressive.
HAHAHA SO FUNNYYYYYYY why does Rachel write like this. this is, at best, the writing of a 13 year old on fanfiction.net, which I SHOULD KNOW, because I WAS ONE OF THEM. BUT I'M 28 NOW AND RACHEL HAS ANOTHER 10 YEARS ON ME.
Okay, this is the part where I'm CONVINCED Rachel either just mashed this into the episode in the MINUTES leading up to its release, or she used ChatGPT or something. Because NONE of this dialogue makes any sense. Beyond how stilted and lifeless it is (seriously, this dialogue reads like something from Empress Theresa) Gaia is clearly meant to 'replace' Erebus here which I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO EVEN EXPLAIN IS SO FUCKING DUMB, but ALSO what is even Persephone trying to communicate here? "That is true, but it was a deal I was willing to make and ties me to the Underworld. Please don't change me." What? Gaia hasn't even insinuated that she's going to do anything to Persephone, why is Persephone immediately jumping to this conclusion? What does 'changing' her mean? Is she asking Gaia not to force her to sacrifice something (which she never did)? Or is she asking Gaia not to strip her of her Underworld status? Because again, why is that even something Gaia would do?
Maybe this is harsh but I'm pretty sure even Empress Theresa is more coherent than this, what in the flying fuck is Gaia talking about?
"I can just see the potential for conflict! To relieve you from the burden of the whats, the hows, and wheres." Like... okay, first of all, that second sentence isn't even a complete sentence, it's a dependent clause left hanging, but also what the fuck does this MEAN. Is she EXCITED for the conflict but then contradicting herself by saying she wants to relieve Persephone of that conflict? Or is she saying she can see the conflict it would cause for Persephone to have to perform duties in both realms and trying to insinuate that she's going to relieve her of those complications?
Here's what I think happened - I think that second 'sentence' wasn't supposed to be a sentence, but the start of the sentence to the next panel-
So with that theory in mind, the sentence becomes, "To relieve you from the burden of the whats, the hows, and wheres, you are to spend three months in the Mortal Realm to do spring and the rest of the year in the Underworld. That seems fair to me."
It's still a very poorly written line of dialogue, but at least with that fix in mind it makes sense. But man, you can really fucking tell this episode was submitted at the last minute because that's a serious syntax error that should NOT have happened in this two-time-Eisner-winning comic.
Errors aside, it's clear that Rachel is following through on having Persephone spend only three months in the Mortal Realm, rather than the traditional six. There ARE other translations that have that number closer to four, but those four are the time she spends in the UNDERWORLD, meaning she's always spending either equal or MORE time in the Mortal Realm. Of course, Rachel doesn't want her self-insert small wife power fantasy to actually have to be separated from Hades despite this being a retelling of The Abduction of Persephone, so instead of her spending three months in the Underworld, she's now spending them in the Mortal Realm, literally doubling the MINIMUM amount of time (four months) she was originally meant to reside in the Underworld.
But oh no, apparently those three months are STILL NOT SHORT ENOUGH FOR PERSEPHONE-
Of course, Rachel "Retcon" Smythe had to have her cake and eat it too. I always worried something like this was a possibility, but I never thought she would actually prove me right - not only is Persephone only separated from Hades for three months out of the year, but actually he can visit her any time he wants to, so really, they're not separating at all.
I think Rachel needs to look up "reunion" in the dictionary, because if you can visit each other any time, then that means the 'reunions' are no longer special occasions. This completely removes any semblance of depth or meaning from all of the storytelling leading up to this, all of it with the expectation that this was a retelling of the Abduction of Persephone, because that's what Rachel said it was going to be. At this point it's safe to say that Rachel has zero business attempting to "retell" mythological stories, because she doesn't even seem to grasp the concept of why they were written the way they were to begin with. Either that, or she really just doesn't care, and the only reason for making LO a Greek myth comic at all was to propel her career.
This also brings me back to those promotional ads, the other one that posed the question, "Will sacrifice be enough to bring these two back together?"
This is stating the obvious, but I need to make it perfectly clear - Hades and Persephone have never sacrificed a single thing. The only thing they could POSSIBLY quantify as a "sacrifice" is "not being tied at the hip for a few hours", because even Persephone going on the equivalent of a work trip next door is apparently enough to make Hades sad as we saw in the 3 month time skip panels. Why is Hades so sad and lonely if he can visit her any time? Why is he acting like he hasn't seen her in years when he's actually on his way to reunite with her? Why is Hecate calling to ask him if he's "okay" as if he JUST got separated from her, but actually he's about to literally go to the Mortal Realm to reunite with her?
Hades hasn't 'sacrificed' a damn thing, neither has Persephone. They've both always gotten exactly what they wanted, even at the cost of breaking the story's own established rules. Their 'sacrifice' is equivalent to what billionaires think are 'sacrifices' when they can't buy another yacht or go on that third overseas vacation for the month.
And even outside of this episode, when have these two ever sacrificed anything?
I've tried so hard to think of what sacrifices have been made by the characters within LO, and I genuinely can only think of one - and that was when Artemis chose to go to the Mortal Realm with Persephone instead of staying with her family in Olympus. That was a genuine, selfless sacrifice, made by a character who has been shelved in favor of focusing on the self-centered pink and blue airheads.
Being forced to be apart for a couple days to do the equivalent of a day job and whining about it the whole time is not a 'sacrifice'. Neither of these characters have ever sacrificed anything, they just feel like sacrifices because they have the integrity and empathy of soggy cardboard.
sigh Anyways, we're back in the present and Hades and Persephone immediately decide they're gonna have sex because ofc, and then we get this gem of a panel-
MMMMMM
FUNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY JOKE
For some reason it's just a common thing for people to just be in Hades' home, and they can't seem to get any privacy as a result of this, but I digress. Turns out they still need to have that coronation for Persephone.
There is... so much wrong in these three panels.
First, to state the immediate issues - why the fuck are they mentioning Apollo at Persephone's coronation? Like first of all, no shit Apollo isn't gonna be there, but also, if this is supposed to be an event for and about Persephone becoming Queen of the Underworld, then why in the WORLD is Apollo even being mentioned? This is supposed to be a "feminist retelling" where the victims are empowered and heal from their trauma, but LO once again can't try to show any sort of positive growth for the victims without bringing up the assaulters and giving them screen time. It just goes to show that Rachel's idea of "healing" is purely rooted in the revenge, and not the growth. It's a very high schooler approach to this subject, hellbent on showcasing how all the meanies from the past are losers now and life just sucked for them forever, but inadvertently proving its own point that the victims haven't and can't move on because the narrative is spending so much time on caring what's going on with the abusers. It's the "I don't care! Look at how little I care! I'll prove it to you by putting in the effort of showing you how little I care!" approach, it doesn't really feel like moving on.
It's not about how Persephone and his other victims could have grown and healed, no, Rachel always needs to highlight just how much worse the bullies and haters and abusers are doing to make the victims seem like they've healed by comparison. Don't get me wrong, I can understand wanting to showcase the downfall of a character like Apollo, but this just... isn't the right context for that? Because it's once again taking attention away from the victim to focus on the abuser. It's once again spending screentime on the voices of the oppressors rather than the oppressed.
And speaking of, what the fuck is this punishment even? I knew Rachel wasn't gonna be able to resolve this plotline properly, she never had the capability to, but ... community service? Are you fucking for real? What is this even a punishment for even? Was this EXCLUSIVELY the SA, or does this ALSO include his attempts to overthrow Zeus by poisoning him, nearly killing Daphne, Eris, Eros and Psyche, trapping Eros and Psyche in an enchanted basement, and framing his father's 'death' on his half-sister? Because if so, how in the world is anyone content with community service? He hasn't even been turned into a mortal, HE'S STILL A GOD, so what's to stop him from going "WE'LL MEET AGAIN, SPIDERMAN" and trying something else? How is this a reasonable resolution in ANY context?
This is why I talked at length about what an issue it was to hide what Apollo really admitted to. Because now we really don't know what exactly he confessed to, and thus we can never really see the point of views of the victims outside of just Persephone - and we still don't even get Persephone's, because she just walks away from him and then he gets eaten by Ouranos and next we see of him is him doing community service! Once again, any emotional development that could be given to Persephone and the other victims is stripped away to make room for the point of views of the oppressive men. In this, the two-time-Eisner-winning "feminist comic" that is LO.
And that brings us to the "where are they now" segment. Yes, as we all feared, there's a "where are they now" segment, and it's as rushed and underwhelming as we ought to have expected it to be.
There is just... so much to unpack here, and yes, all of it is delivered in the dumbest way possible that only raises more questions than answers.
So Rhea and Metis are just back and we're not gonna talk about the implications of them being alive again?
Dionysus is a 3 month year old in the body of a teenager / young adult, and his mom is just alive now because Hades conveniently got his hands on more ambrosia and brought her back to life offscreen? But somehow Triptomelus and Hedone are still child-sized relative to their ages?
How did they 'heal Zeus'? And why is he so content with losing his power as King and Apollo being sentenced to community service after making an attempt on his life? How does he feel about the letter that Hera gave him? Did he even read it?
Where the fuck is Hebe in all of this? Is she okay? Do people still think it was her who put Zeus in a coma? Or did Apollo confess to that, too?
You're telling me Hera and Echo are just in a relationship now despite the fact that Hera is literally racist towards nymphs and there is ZERO reason for them to have a relationship in the comic beyond the fans making gratuitous headcanons out of it? How is Rachel, a bisexual woman, so bad at writing actual lesbian relationships and giving them the same amount of attention as the heterocis ones without shoving them into the background as props for insincere queer rep? And what about Hera herself? How did she overcome her role as the Goddess of Marriage to finally divorce Zeus?
"Ares is still a dog!" Haha! Ares is still a Persephone simp! Happy end!
Why is Eros just standing there smiling at the camera struggling to be seen past Hedone who's just floating right in front of him? You're telling me there wasn't a better place to put her out of that entire panel?
"Hades and Thanatos have been making more time for each other. Sometimes they even have a conversation." I'm sorry, is this supposed to be funny? The man abused Thanatos for years, treated him as just a lowly employee when he was literally his adopted son, and now you're trying to play it off as a joke that they're "making more time for each other"? What the fuck is this?
TGOEM disbanded? Why? What about the women who were genuinely a part of it?
Also, Artemis and Selene are just good friends now because reasons? Because they're both affiliated with the moon, I guess? Why is Selene even in this comic-
"They are still looking for Kassandra". Who? And why? This feels like such a last minute addition to acknowledge a character that the comic spent WEEKS foreshadowing only to have her finally appear as a pointless McGuffin, but it's so last minute that it does nothing. I'm assuming it's Eros and Psyche looking for her, but like... why can't they find her? They're gods, tracking down one mortal shouldn't be that difficult LOL ???
And also, where the fuck is Leto?? You're telling me she was an accessory - maybe manipulating Apollo, maybe not - but we don't see what happened to her? Is she just back to being a social outcast then? jesus christ this comic isn't finished-
Kassandra is where the "where are they now" sequence ends, and we're treated to one final horribly written dialogue scene between Hades and Persephone, where they tell each other how much they love each other in a desperate attempt to convince the audience that this is, in fact, a romance.
There's this thing in romances called chemistry, and if you're good at writing it, you shouldn't have to write dialogue like this. You should be able to see how much the characters love each other through their actions, through their small behaviors around each other. It's not always about what they say out loud, it's about what they don't have to say, because when two people really share that close of a bond based on love and trust and chemistry, words often aren't necessary.
Hades and Persephone do not have that chemistry. It has been apparent for years now, but this final exchange really is the nail in the coffin. There are no microexpressions or subtle emotions, no subtlety in their word choice, and nothing unique setting their voices apart. It's all just "wow thank you for being such a wonderful amazing partner, you are amazing and I love you" word salad that has to do all the heavy lifting for the completely non-existent chemistry that's been at its absolute worst throughout this entire season.
And worst of all, despite this story trying so hard to be focused around Persephone, around her story, her trauma and her healing, her voice... it's still all just about Hades. In the end, she's thanking Hades, and forcing him to say "you're welcome". All of it is trying so hard to convince us that Hades has been a positive addition to her life, that she 'owes' so much to him, but we've obviously seen plenty throughout the comic that begs to differ. And even if he were a better person than he is, it still doesn't change the fact that once again, the men are being held up above the women, with the women being grateful to the men who choose them. LO can try its hardest to convince people that it's feminist, but it is, at best, reinforcing the very same structures of the patriarchal system that it claims to despise and rebel against.
We do get one line from Hades acknowledging Persephone's part in the relationship-
-and it falls so fucking flat because it's still about him and what she does for him, and because nothing about their relationship was built on any sort of organic chemistry. There was a lot more chemistry back in S1, but it was still predicated on Hades lusting after a vulnerable 19 year old girl.
Yep, and that's it. That's the end.
Except it isn't because Rachel wanted to try and be smart by including an 'epilogue' that's really just stretching the episode out pointlessly for another few panels. And of course, we had to get another time skip, just a final dose of salt in the wound, this time to years ahead when we inevitably had to reconnect with Persephone and Hades in the future after Melinoe was born.
To recap, Melinoe doesn't remember... because Hades had Morpheus erase her memories.
This plotline has really started to give me the ick because it actually feels very familiar. Bear with me here, because I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent about my own original work, but it's because I wrote a plotline exactly like this years ago.
There's this... turning point, in Time Gate: Reaper, when the main character Uzuki is kidnapped by a Reaper (see: undead) who wants to experiment on her in the hopes that he can somehow gain her abilities to bond her soul with others (which later allows her to literally possess people after she becomes a Reaper herself). Mitsuhiro, the male deuteragonist who kickstarts the plot by telling Uzuki she's got a limited amount of time left to live (which he knows thanks to his magical death timers that mark themselves on his skin), feels an immense amount of guilt after finding out she was kidnapped by the Reapers (at this point she's been gone for three months), as they were originally after him; he worries that she was made a target simply due to him associating himself with her, and vows to rescue her.
With the help of some other spunky teenagers and anime trope characters, Mitsuhiro does eventually rescue Uzuki - but for the three months she had been gone, she had been tortured, abused, and experimented on, causing her mind to split and for her to lose any sense of awareness of who Mitsuhiro or her other friends were. She was no longer herself after the hell she had been through.
Mitsuhiro's solution to this is to have Springlock - another Reaper with motivations that are not yet clear to the cast - erase her memory. This is not a light decision that comes without consequences - for the remaining duration of the story, Uzuki is plagued by night terrors and panic attacks, unable to really remember what happened to her aside from whatever brief flashbacks her brain recalls in its haze of memory loss. She is traumatized, both physically and mentally. She has lost three months of her life and memories, and doesn't know how to explain why she's covered in scars that are still healing, why she's missing organs, why she's now blind in one eye, and why the sound of scraping metal and ticking clocks gives her panic attacks. Mitsuhiro has convinced her friends that she's suffering from memory loss due to trauma, but only he knows the truth that he forcefully took her memories away from her, without her consent. This was not the right choice to make. It was not noble of him, it was not a grand gesture of love, he made a decision on her behalf without her consent that has now resulted in her becoming a nervous wreck. Sure, she still would have had PTSD if she remembered what happened, but at least she would know why and could then seek adequate help. Without those memories, she has nowhere to begin to heal. And so we see the consequences of this throughout [AFTERBIRTH] and even the upcoming Thread of Fate. It is a long-term problem that is not going to be solved overnight, especially not with Mitsuhiro withholding information from her.
Reading about Melinoe having dreams about her experiences trapped in Tartarus with Kronos ... it felt familiar enough that I had to talk about why the insinuations of this are so fucked up. I know there are people who are gonna handwave it away as "she's just a kid", "these are gods so what does it matter", etc. but ... it just feels like such an oversight to have Hades effectively erase her memory of her trauma and then hint at them still being present in her mind through her dreams. She did not ask for that. And the fact that she's now dreaming about it all does not bode well. But we're supposed to think Hades made the correct choice, regardless.
But none of this is effectively expanded on or explained, because we get one final scene of Melinoe and Demeter visiting Persephone, who has just given birth to... Makaria?
So it turns out Persephone and Hades are just able to have biological children now. Don't know why, but of course they both look exactly like Hades.
What I was really confused by though is the fact that it's Makaria and not Brimos. Do you remember Brimos? The child that was foreshadowed in Hades' original fantasy dream sequence about his future children about Persephone?
Either Rachel completely forgot about him, or she saw all the criticism over the fact that Brimos isn't a confirmed child of Hades and Persephone (rather, an epithet that can apply to basically any Underworld god including Persephone and Hades) and that her "research" was dependent on a book she read when she was 13 and decided to axe that. But she went to the effort of establishing that all the dreams Hades had were , in fact, canon visions of the future, so good job Rachel, you created yet another plothole on top of the hundreds of others.
And that's where the series ends, on a final nuclear-family-photo of Persephone, Hades, Melinoe, and Makaria. Of course, Dionysus and Thanatos aren't present in this shot because this is Lore Olympus and only biological children count /hj
Why Rachel couldn't move the "the end" portion to THIS part, I don't know, but I'm also expecting way too much of the person who finished this 20 minutes before it was due.
So that's it. Six years and that's what we get. I didn't expect much, but I was still incredibly disappointed, as were many others who walked away from this dazed and confused. Maybe it's all the "haters" deserve at this point. But what of the fans? While many of them are celebrating this ending at best and tolerating it at worst, I can't help but think of the fans of this comic who hung on for so long in the hopes it would "pay off", just for it to go out as gloriously as a wet fart.
As for me, I have such mixed feelings about Lore Olympus ending, but none of them pertain to the comic itself. Most of what I'll miss from this comic isn't the comic itself, but the people who have made reading it every week so fun, the artists and writers who have enriched the content with their own interpretations of what could have been, and the experiences of being part of such an amazing community made up of people who are as long-term-obsessed about this piece of media as I am.
I get people who ask me a lot if it's "worth it" to be so engrossed in the LO slander, who assume that I'm going to "regret" ever being a part of it all... but from where I'm standing right now, I couldn't ask for a better view.
Even if I didn't love every minute of it, everything I have here I owe to this comic. This stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing, pile of shit comic.
I worked around it by switching to desktop mode and double-checking to make sure the "m." before webtoons/./com (aka what indicates the moblie site) was removed from the Webtoon URL.
Remember your post about her writing the episodes the week of?
Well, you keep getting proved right!
Considering the lack of preview this week + this post, I think the weekly writing caught up to her recently.
okay but fr like, what is Rachel's strategy here? Does she seriously lack this much self-awareness or is she actually SUPER aware of how up shit creek she is and is just having fun in the chaos of it now? Because who would seriously advertise "hey, I know we're in the finale of this 5 year old comic, but wouldn't you like to know that I actually haven't even drawn the final episodes yet?"
(seriously who wants to bet the roughs for whatever the fuck this is ^^^ are gonna show up in this week's episode lmaoo why would you even show roughs like this and then call them 'scandalous', what the fuck is even going on)
Like damn, there's no denying now that this is where we're at. She said in the beginning of it all that she only had like 2 episodes prepared ahead of time, and she's never once improved from that workflow since despite it being clear as day that she's not good at writing and drawing by the seat of her pants. This is just sad at this point. This is the same person who's won two Eisners, who's been showcased as a primary guest at NYCC, and will be running her own self-titled imprint after LO is finished. What a disappointment, truly the pinnacle of "failing upwards".
Have you ever written an essay about the excessive sexualization of Persephone in LO? Especially after seeing that Persephone getting a food delivery pic and she’s wearing just a sheer robe and thong, I feel like it’s just an odd thing. I can understand feeling horny for your own characters, especially if you made them with features you find attractive, but this all just feels… really odd to me sometimes. I don’t know.
I've written a few essay posts about Persephone that touch on how she's been overly-sexualized-
I see it come up often, the notion that Persephone is "fat representation." She's "thicc", she's "chubby", etc. and celebrated for it. But n
because i fucking don't, it's frustrating and goes to show how ironically far up persephone's ass everyone is
A lot of the things Minthe get
You mentioned multiple times that Persephone is a self insert of Rachel, how is that so?
Also, I love Lore Rekindled
So obviously it's no
-though I don't think I've written any sort of extensive essay on how she's been overly sexualized throughout the series because it's a very common criticism that's been made so many times that I doubt I could contribute anything new to the discussion LOL
That said, here's a great post by another community member that highlights the sexualization issues in LO, and supports the argument that yes, Persephone is written and drawn through a predominantly male gaze (or at least, a very "Rachel is thirsty for her own-self insert" gaze LOL)
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.
People say the Hera fertility goddess design looks good and while I'm not gonna stomp on anyone who has that opinion I will respectfully disagree and raise you this instead-
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
