#demeter.

[pjowiki]

CHILDREN OF DEMETER : anastasia, logan, fabiola, howard, poppy, george, lola, willow, ambrose, dulciana, kora, rafe, mai, hazel, kai, oliver, rowan, warren, jerome, preston.

[nectaric]

//What does peace mean to Demeter? Is it a person or a place or something else? Has she ever found peace?

for her, peace is a place - it’s the place where she can feel the dirt beneath her toes and the sun on her back and a crisp wind against her face. it’s where bees are buzzing, where birds are singing, where the plants turn towards her as their own personal source of sunlight. but peace is also a complicated thing, a concept she’s never truly known, by virtue of the life around her and her own inner turmoil. demeter craves peace, desperately. she’s chased it her whole life. for a time, she thought she had found it - despite what her father did to her, despite what her brothers did to her, demeter thought she had found peace in her daughter. just the two of them, splashing in the creek and roaming through the fields.

but that, like everything else, was ripped from her, and demeter has not known true peace since her abduction. even when things are good, even when persephone is with her and the sun is shining, she knows it will eventually come to an end. that gets easier with time, of course. but she never truly knows peace, because she’s always waiting for the next horrible thing to happen. it always comes eventually.

but she does find moments of peace in nature, where she can breathe and relax and feel everything she was born to feel. its fleeting, but that’s the closest she’s ever truly come to understanding peace.

[nectaric]

hc + love for Demeter

demeter's only true love for many years was iasion. she took many lovers, but in the fashion of her other counterparts, found they were only flings. they were fleeting and fun, but never deep. with him, things were different. with him, demeter saw herself a married goddess with him at her side, a multitude of children, and a happy life. she loved him so much, she was willing to embrace the possibility of losing him to age and time, if only to call him hers for a short while.

and so i think losing him made demeter close her heart off entirely. men in her life have hurt her at every turn, and iasion was the first one to see her for herself. not demeter the goddess, but demeter the woman. and he was ripped from her. the only man who ever treated her truly right, and she lost him so quickly. in most of my verses, she's never loved someone as strongly since. she has so much of it to give, but she's untrusting and often too afraid to open herself up, and so she's remained unmarried and distant for much of her life.

[nectaric]

hc + demeter

demeter is one of the strongest gods on olympus, and i mean that in more ways than one. i think she's one of the most physically strong people, outmatched maybe by ares or hephaestus. you know that scene in breaking dawn pt 2 where bella arm wrestles emmett and wins? that's the energy demeter is bringing to every contest with almost all of the other gods

she's also strong in a power sense, too. i know that i've touched on this before, but in my head, where zeus, poseidon, and hades are the 'next generation' version of ouranos, pontus, and erebus (in a sense, not literally of course), demeter is the next gen version of gaia. she is incredibly powerful. everyone else is really freaking lucky that she isn't more malicious and cruel, because what happened when persephone was taken was just a taste of her power. she is incredibly strong and her powers are not to be underestimated.

she's also extremely emotionally strong, too. she's been through a lot, and had her trust shattered by almost every important person in her life. she's been hurt countless times, and suffered immensely. and still, despite her reservations, finds the will to see the good in others, and gives of her love even when she is struggling herself.

aka, demeter is incredible and strong and powerful, and everyone should be a little Afraid of her - but also love on her, because she deserves it.

[nectaric]

i super stole this off the dash ( thanks @intothewildsea ) but y'all can do it too if you go here!

[nectaric]

picrew here

some makaria, athena, and demeter for ya <3

[nectaric]

I don't know if you've ever spoken about this before. But what is Hera and Demeter's relationships like with each of their children?

i may have mentioned things briefly, but i don’t think i’ve ever sat down and talked about it, so thank you!!! i’ll start with demeter, because that’s a little easier.

demeter is a very good mother. she gets a bad reputation because women expressing any kind of emotions get treated poorly, but her love for her children literally knows no bounds. she is encouraging and kind, affectionate and forgiving. she can border on over-protective, but it’s done out of love and knowledge of what her world looks like (demeter has been burned so many times by the gods around her, that she does not trust them and does not trust them with her children).

the easiest child to talk about is persephone, because the myths are so abundant and i’ve written with many great ones. demeter adores her daughter. she dotes on persephone endlessly, and is still willing to receive that 4am call for assistance. she’s learned to forgive hades for persephone’s sake, and is as involved in persephone’s life as she’ll allow. but demeter has relaxed a lot, and trusts in her daughter to make her own decisions and make them well.

her other children - ploutos, despoine, arion. i haven’t really had much of a chance to explore these relationships, but i imagine it would be the same. they have their own lives and demeter respects that, but she’s happy to be as involved as possible, and dotes on them a lot.

family is incredibly important to hera. her role as mother is significant not just to her children, but as mother to all, as goddess of motherhood, as she who blesses mothers and families. and so her relationship with her children is extremely significant, and she adores them all in her own way. but i think it’s also fitting that the goddess of motherhood is not a perfect mother - because none are perfect, because all make mistakes, because mothers are not infallible.

her relationship with hephaetus is complicated. the post-partum depression was severe, and what she did to him was horrific and awful and so unlike herself, as PPD often does to mothers, and it haunts her. part of her reluctance to reunite with hephaestus afterwards, after she knew thetis had come to care for him instead, was because she did not feel worthy as his mother. she did not think there was anything she could do to earn his forgiveness, and so she left him with a mother who could be what he needed. her shame was insurmountable. which meant that when he came to olympus to enact his punishment of her, hera accepted it. she did not like it, but she accepted it for what it was, and upon her release, made it her solemn vow to make up for what she had done. and i think, after a lot of work and forgiveness, her relationship with hephaestus has grown stronger. she loves him. she thinks he’s a brilliant mind and he makes her proud.

ares is her little baby boy, and hera’s boy mom vibes really come out with him. he’s unruly and difficult, and he always got himself into trouble, but hera sees so much of herself in ares that she forgives it a lot faster than zeus does. she’s hard on ares - as she is on all her children - because she sees so much potential.

eris is more complicated. eris is the kind of chaos that’s hard to focus, the kind of aggression that cannot be contained, and it put her at ends with her daughter. hera is very much so a tough love kind of mom, not taking any shit or allowing disobedience to go unpunished. and because of eris’ nature, hera’s parenting methods did not always mesh with her daughter. it severed their bond, and has taken centuries to repair in my opinion.

hebe and eileithyia receive the same treatment from hera - tough love, no room for nonsense, but a loving and guiding hand that often pushes them to work harder. she is proud of her daughters - eileithyia took on part of her domain, and hebe became hera’s personal cupbearer (and assistant), and she loves them dearly. she visits them regularly and takes them under her wing to raise her daughters to be strong and independent.

i would also like to add that most of zeus’ other children have become “hers” in one way or another. (the exception being dionysus… and sometimes artemis n apollo). athena is like a daughter to her, and hermes, the muses, persephone even - she may not like how they came about, but she cares about them a lot and views them as her own. mother to all the gods, y’all.