#antiloreolympus

[mythsandheather]

Repost from reddit of my thoughts on the LO figurines as an artist from New Zealand.

So the figurines don’t look good.

This isn’t news to anyone at this point. There’s still no clear reason as to how they turned out this way, but I do feel the need to come to the defence of Weta Workshop at least a little bit, as I’m seeing a lot of people lobbying blame and criticism at them.

Weta Workshop, as many of you know, is an NZ special effects company and has worked on projects like the Lord of the Rings, the Dune films, Wakanda Forever, the X trilogy, Mad Max: Fury Road, M3GAN and James Cameron’s Avatar films. They know what they’re doing and their work spans a multitude of genres.

At the bottom of the listing for any figurine on the website, they list the principal sculptor, so I found the one for the LO figurines. His name is Daniel Holland his specialty is 3D textures.

I also included some snippets of his other projects where he was the principal sculptor, including the detail work. These are…in a word…spectacular. The real kicker is the Sauruman sculpture is only about $30-$40 more expensive than the LO ones.

So Weta Workshop knows their craft and so does the sculptor who oversaw the creation of the LO prototypes (which I mention in case they turn out looking better yet).

The final two images have a quote from Rachel about what it’s like to see how people see her characters and that she provided feedback…

…and Weta Workshop explaining the features of the Persephone sculpture and how it was made in collaboration.

Was a conscious decision made to make the characters look as simple as possible to appeal to the LO audience rather than the usual LOTR fans who buy most the site’s figurines? Are these just very rough prototypes and they’ll end up looking better yet? But if that’s the case, why would they showcase these rough early versions for approval and potential sales?

It’s all baffling and feels very odd, but as I said, I felt the need as an artist in NZ to come to Weta Workshop’s defence. This isn’t the usual quality of their work and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they didn’t create more detailed sculptures when they certainly have the means to do so, yet I also can’t figure out why Rachel would sign off on her characters looking so bad.

[genericpuff]

LORE | REKINDLED EPISODE 32 - ALEX (PT 2)

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Short episode this week on account of it being the second part of Episode 32!

[sweet-discordia]

Your stolen maiden isn't here.

I'm projecting on persephone that she has OSDD, Despoina is a defense mechanism, she rarely fronts and is mostly there to hold trauma and complex emotions that stresses persephone. but after persephone gave up her powers, persephone has been using Despoina's instead, by accident (so winter and snow). This has caused a break down of inner walls along with the stress persephone is facing so that Despoina now can front. Despoina is at odds with persephone, and doesnt agree with her actions, but wants to protect her at all costs. with her new found freedom, shes ready to try confront those who have hindered and hurt her (as well as confronting perse's mistakes and trying to rectify past misdeeds)

[mxssnasty]

Minthe in her reparations arc for the ULO discord.

Pls observe the specific hand colours and how she gets happier as she recovers.

[winns-stuff]

LO RANT:

TRIGGER WARNING: SA

Okay I’m back again and it’s only to say this.. The comments on the new fastpass are genuinely disgusting. I don’t care how you put it or feel about both characters it’s absolutely deranged to ship or want a redemption arc for a rapist, maybe I’m being too harsh but I can’t find soft words to use for this. The fact that there’s so many people girlbossing this entire situation as a “I got the entire lineage on my shoulders!!! I slept with the brothers and the father!!!!” thing is weird to me because these fans are all missing the point of Hera’s entire story and it makes no sense that as I’m ALWAYS saying these fans are quite literally shipping rapists with their victims when the entire point of Lore Olympus was to shed light and bring awareness to Sexual Assault that is not violent or gruesome in physical action.

And we all know why this is happening, Rachel doesn’t know how to properly handle this situation and it’s clear that that’s how this is coming across to her fans. They don’t see this as a rape survivor story they see this as another dark romance since she doesn’t bother on actually addressing the assault in a respectful and dignified way, every single time she adds another sexual assault in her story she’s always glamorizing it or diminishing it whenever she gets tired of writing about it and it’s infuriating. Your fans should know better than to ship victims with their abusers and you wanna know why? Because you pride your comic on healthy relationships and mental health talks, you use the sexual assault as some kind of badge to show everyone that you know what you’re talking about when it’s clear that you will abandon all real representation of a situation that affects millions of people around the world just for crappy fan service.

Lore Olympus fans are groomed to dismiss these arcs since they’re not even treated like they’re serious and it doesn’t seem like Rachel takes it serious as well, she’s never taken any advice from survivors who aren’t pleased with how she portrays SA and she completely ignores the feelings of those truly affected by the traumatic events that she shoves into her webcomic just so it’ll stay “interesting”. I’m tired of Rachel getting away with drawing absolute trauma porn and I’m sick of her sexualizing every single woman we come across, how many times do we have to continue this long and excruciating pattern of giving the women of your comic terrible consequences and make them suffer just for drama and nothing else. How many other situations are you willing to completely spit on just to look self aware?

This is honestly the last straw because there’s been so many people genuinely shipping Hera and Kronos and also saying borderline disgusting things just to defend stuff like that. Rachel needs to say something, you cannot just sit back and be quiet while your fans openly admit to wanting to see a rapist and his victim together for the sake of your own comic and “beloved” main character hell even for a lot of your fans you need to speak up about this and address it letting a mindset like that fester in a fandom probably filled with survivors of assault is a disservice to them and it’s a slap in the face to the comfort that your webtoon gave them.

[psyaurorak]

I made a collage of old sketches from Rachel.

This is what I mean by Persephone is infantilised!

It’s one thing to have an age gap but this… THIS DOESNT MAKE IT LOOK ANY BETTER

Hades fr looks like Persephone’s dad.

[bloodofjuno]

There’s a lot of things wrong with Lore Olympus, from the writing choices to the horrid pacing to even the strange victim blaming the narrative has. But one of the complaints that I often hear about is that they made Apollo a rapist. I get that he’s some people’s favorite god, but the fact that Apollo was written as a rapist almost doesn’t matter.

Rachel Smyth could have really picked ALMOST any random Greek god to make an assaulter, including Apollo, and it’d be accurate. Most of them were rip. Mythos goes wild.

[bubsgirl291]

Miraculous Awakening and Lore Rekindled are single-handedly reforming and reviving my love for the first two franchises with pink-coded female leads that I’ve ever loved, and I’m so happy about it