9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Okay, let´s not kid ourselves here

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
relationships in greek mythology are almost unilaterally

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
<i>really bad</i>

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Zeus and Hera get some flag for Zeus´ non-stop adultering

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
with extremely unwilling mortals

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and Hera subsequently punishing the innocent mortals involved

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but that´s got NOTHING on the story of their actual marriage

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which I will not be recounting here

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because it´s so far fron consensual

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there is rally no way for me to be funny about it

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and "far from consensual" is a recurring theme in the mythos

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Zeus, Poseidon and Appollo especially tend to

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
default to kidnapping when a pretty mortal

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
catches their eye

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
sometimes combined with their whole devine shapeshifting dealio

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to trick or coerce these mortals into banging

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If the mortal is lucky

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they survive the process

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and gain some superpowers or kick off a lineage of heroes

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if not

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they usually die horribly

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
SOme of Appollos famous lovers died tragically

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
after a fulfilling personal relationship with him

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but most of them died tragically trying to <i>outrun</i> him

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That is straight up f<i>Yoshi sound</i> and everybody knows it!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Check almost any olympian gods list of lovers

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and you´ll usually find at least one character

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who <i>super did´nt</i> wanna be on that list

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yes

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Even your favorites

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yes

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Even olympian softboy Dionysus

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And i will be the first to admit

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that i gloss over a <i>lot</i> of this stuff

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in my videos

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And i do that

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because it makes me incredibly uncomfortable

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Can anybody blame me?!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It´s not like i´m the only one!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I grew up with a freakin picture book

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that told me Zeus was a cool guy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who had cool kids that did cool stuff

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I watched a disney movie about these people!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
i don´t have an easy time reconciling the fact that these shining heroic figures

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that inspired incredible stories

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
were characterized as absolutely garbage

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in several very key ways

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and when i do talk about that stuff

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it feels disingenuous to talk about anything else

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as if that first thing isn´t very much a deal-breaker

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for finding the characters heroic or compelling

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Basically every modern retelling or

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
reimagining of greek mythology

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
heavily sanitizes the stories in one way or another

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The greek pantheon is given the same treatment

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as most beloved problematic celebrities

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We love it for the stories it gave us

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and we pretend not to notice the part

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where it won´t stop assaulting underage fans

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Because that behaviour doesn´t fit the image

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we have of it

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that´s because we, as a collective audience,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are primed to think of gods as good guys

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And good guys don´t

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
do that kind of thing

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that would make them

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Bad Guys

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that is excactly why only one greek god

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
gets consistently held responsible for

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
these problematic behaviours

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
None other than Hades:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Lord of the dead and unjustified satan analog

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
most of our cultural bises,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which come from a pop-culture understanding of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
christianity

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is the same source for the

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"gods are necessarily a good thing"

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
our modern audience starts of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
primed to hate this guy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Lord of the Underworld?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We all know what <i>that</i> means!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Cartooon-Lucifer, King of Hell,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
token evil divinity, blatent bad guy!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
easy -peasy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And he kidnapped his wife ?!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What an asshole!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
No wonder nobody hangs out with this guy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
MAn, what a jerk

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Anyway

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I just <i>love</i> Apollo!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He´s the hottest thing since hotness

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And isn´t it tragic how many of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
his ture loves die

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
...wonder why that keeps happening

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When retelling, or reinterpreting ancient stories

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in a modern context

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we almost always end up cherrypicking the parts that make the most sense

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to our modern worldview and sensibilities

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and working around the parts that

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
suffer from the worst parts of the

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
culture clash

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ancient greek was pretty cool about a lot of stuff

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but <i>women</i> for example

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
were not on that list

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so from the modern perspective

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
when we look back at these original tellings

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it´s very difficult to see Zeus doing his thing

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and conclude anithing other

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
than that the <i>King of the gods</i>

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is an ??? serial r*pist

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who leaves a trail of shadowed lives

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and bastard children in his wake

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and this pantheon is a f*cking nightmare

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But that is not the perspective

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a contmeporary athenian would have had

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it´s not the impact

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
contemporary storytellers would have

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
wanted to produce

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it is NOT the image most

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
modern writers want to attach to their

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
skyfather of the gods hero character

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the idea that gods are supposed to be good

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is coparatively new

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
For the ancient greeks

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
gods were a reflection rather of what was true

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
than what was ideal or morally right

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ancient greece was terrible to women

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so that was reflectet in the gods

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But to us

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and our prevasive pop-culture christianity

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
deities and divinity adjacent figures

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are more of paragons:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
idealised representaions of goodness and virtue

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, when we try and applie this moralised perspective to the greek gods

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we get some serious cognitive dissonance

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so the adaptations usually end up buffing it out

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Sure

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in all but the most squeecky clean versions

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Zeus is usually still cheating on hera

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which from our societal perspective

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Is typically seen as a much more forgivable crime

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Especially if you also rewrite Hera

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to be as deliberately unlikebly as possible

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
+ coughing*

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Romans

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but most of Zeus trysts

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
get rwritten as affairs of the heart

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because those are almost universally seen as

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
significantly less bad

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
than the non-consentual altenative

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a distinction thaat did not exist in ancient greece

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
among other thing acnient greek art

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
used a lot of stock poses to signify major story beats

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and there was literally no distinction

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
between the stock pose for kidnapping

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and for marriage

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
same result, same concept

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
what registers as an uforgivable crime

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to our eyes

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
wasn´t even recognised in the culture it came from

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
this specific culture clash is pretty significant

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is why this is the part that mostly

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
gets ignored, sanitized, or otherwise rewritten

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for modern audiences

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
i mean unless you´re Hades

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because fuck him, right?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We already hate that guy on principle!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There´s no need to clean up

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
his image so a modern audience will like him

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, maybe it´s bette if

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we make him deliberately worse !

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Just so people know who they should be rooting against !

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, with that lengthy and <i>spicy</i>

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
preamble out of the way

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Let´s talk about

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Hades and