I've already spoken about this several times, so this isn't the first but it will also not be the last. (Yeah, I really will not shut up about this lol)
The way the larger fandom treats Penelope just genuinely bothers me.
I've already touched on this one before, but she's either the "Spartan-trained man-punching strong dominant wife" which is one, entirely out of character, two, people only characterize her as for the sake of the weird Girlboss x Malewife trope. I mean, fine, you can like that trope, but stop forcing it onto characters who barely even fit the mold.
Or the "kind loving perfect wife who remains unaffected by everything and only exists to comfort everyone."
And it just... It irks me so bad, because why is quite literally every other character, and yes, I mean every character, (Odysseus, Telemachus, Athena, Poseidon, Polyphemus, Circe, Calypso), allowed to have trauma but her?
And most of the time, it's for the sake of making her the caretaker, the one who comforts everyone, the perfect wife and mother.
And I understand if the fic is hurt/comfort, I understand that most of those fics have a typical comforter/caretaker archetype, but, that's literally all she is.
And it just undermines her entire character, undermines all of her complexity. This is a woman who spent twenty years waiting for her husband, ten years wondering if he might have died at war, another ten wondering if he was swallowed by the sea.
This is a woman who raised her son and kept her husband's kingdom afloat, all alone for twenty years, in a period where misogyny was heavy towards women.
This is a woman who spent most likely five years unsafe in her own home, disturbed by suitors constantly trying to gain her hand in marriage. (And if we're going through EPIC specifically โ this situation was much worse, considering Xenia seemed to be non-existent in the musical).
And in the Odyssey, this is a woman who prayed for Artemis to kill her.
And the way all of this is just ignored, thrown under everything in order of making her the perfect badass wife or the untouchable caretaker just bothers me so so much.
