I just realized that I inadvertently held ALL comments for review, so sorry about that everyone!! I'll be responding to all of y'all as much as I can. Sorry for the goof!
As a Greek gal, me and almost every other Greek girl I be spoken about this webcomic immensely dislike it for popularizing the idea that hades and persephone is a love story. Yes, the kidnapping of persephone *is* very much a love story, but not between her and hades. Smythe takes one of the most feminist myths and completely twists it in the abusers favor while villainfing the hero/victim. Smythe misses the cultural context. How things worked until very recently (our grandma's were the first women to jot have arranged marriages) was that the father of the bride and the groom would strike a deal about the marriage, and then the bride would go where her husband lives, that could be really far away from her home, causing her to rarely is ever seeing her family again. the myth takes that reality and makes it so the mother steps foot, and demands her child back, after the deal was struck and the girl taken against her will (the myth is named the taking of persephone for a fucking reason) and Demeter succeeds, if not completely, she gets to have her daughter for half a year and that half of the year is when the earth is at its finest, the earth blooms because of the happiness of the goddess of grain and goddess of flowers being together.
Thank you for that explanation, I always love learning more about mythology and culture and this was more enlightening than most things I've read about the Taking of Persephone
Exactly! Although I woudln't go as far as directly blaming Smythe for that. The Abduction of Persephone has been recontextualised as a Romance story so many times before, which, I guess it can work in some contexts (it's a retelling, after all). But making Demeter become a toxic, controlling mother while presenting Hades (which is clearly grooming Persephone) as the good guy is... certainly a curious choice.
fair point. personally, I like the idea of hades being the nice brother of the big three (cos subversion with his death theme) I always blame it on Zeus for giving Hades bad advice lol. Then again, I blame Zeus for everything. I totally get how people being uninformed about myth is grinding your gears though, I feel the same when people are like Snow White was kissed back to life and I am like respectfully no. (I'm german and love fairytales) however, it's really hard fsr to get proper greek myth info, I always loved Greek mythology but obv the kid version was dumbed down, and apart from the big epics it's hard to find cohesive stories, so perhaps smythe can't really be blamed since perhaps her first impression of hades and persephone was framed positively by some other author/ the internet and then the idea was in her head
LO is successful because it hits all the usual BookTok/romance genera buttons: young female protag without much personality for people to project onto, who then becomes a "girl boss" which she didn't actually earn, male lead that's rich and/or attractive to sweep said girl off her feet, drama and fighting over the girl, other females in the story being "jealous" or blindly simpering to her... LO reads like a self-indulget, self-insert fanfic. I would know; I read a lot of fanfic. Add in the "Greek mythology" (if you can even call it that by the barest whiff it has in there outside of the names, lbrh) and you solidified it. It *absolutely* appeals to the high school/fresh in college female demographic. It also does nothing innovative with said troupes and THAT is my problem, among many others.
I actually felt that too. Great explanation. It seems like she didn't do anything, she just dramatically gets all the powers. Her struggles are also shown in a shallow way.
Can't forget that our leading lady is also virginal and too innocent and pure for this world. And she's also incredibly and effortlessly conventionally attractive, but has nooo idea that men find her hot. The author also does nothing interesting with these tropes, tbh.
Regarding the female envy point, in "Twilight" (for ex.), Rosalie being envious of Bella actually makes Rosalie's character more interesting; she's truly an old woman trapped in a young body, who'd love to switch places with Bella. In "Lore Olympus," Minthe's jealousy (fear of losing Hades) is shallow/too simply presented.
My pet peeve about LO is definitely that the characters just won't stay on model. It's super distracting when their noses change shape so much between consecutive panels that I get confused if I'm looking at the same character when they are even color coded to reduce that confusion. The graphic design background makes so much sense. The composition and colors are beautiful, but sometimes it's so hard to tell which way the characters are supposed to move or what's even happening in general. Also the writing is super juvenile. I think I would have loved this comic as a teenager, so I totally get its appeal but it's not for me at this point of time.
i can't find the source, so this is a bit of a 'trust me bro' moment, but iirc, rachel smythe just ... doesnt use character sheets for LO, which leads to that sort of inconsistent effect, especially when she started using other artists
I loved this comic in the beginning. I feel like I overlooked a lot of the issues because I believe this to be her first time doing a comic, and she was all alone. But as time has gone on and the more help she’s gotten the worse things are. And I agree she is not planning ahead for any of this, because everything has become so lost and hollow. I wish she would just hire a ghost writer to finish season 3. :(
Also, I didn’t mind all the plots because I thought we were going somewhere with them, but season 3 is just showing she didn’t plan well enough and we are slapping endings together if we touch on them at all.
Yeah, I don't expect her to go anywhere in terms of the art except where she's already been. While flawed due to the nature of the weekly format, her early art had a lot of charm and originality in the otherwise mostly conformist art of Webtoon. And you could see her really improve, for example, between the first episode and the Tower 4/Tartarus sequences. But nowadays she has 5-8 assistants and the art is somehow getting worse, and despite the decreased physical workload of production the story has also massively declined. It's just such a shame all around. BTW I've seen your comments on our other videos in this series and I wanted to apologize for the delay in responding to this one - seems I accidentally held the comments on this video for review! I appreciate all of your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy our discussions on LO!
@@pyrrhic_victoria I think I can explain this as a writer/comic artist (never really have published anything yet), I think Webtoon expects her to the manager of the team as the lead author. She's probably being pulled 4 different ways with webtoon wanting more content per chapter (or more chapters in general per month). Also these assistants can't read her mind to see exactly how she wants something drawn. There are other factors like time differences too that end up making communication harder. It's hard to experiment with your work when it's being controlled by another person y'know? What I don't like is how she takes this opportunity and doesn't improve her writing, since it's her job now more than art. What other author on Webtoon has 8 assistants for a single comic?
In the mythology, Artemis and Apollo had survived a "childhood" of incredible trauma with only each other as support, including having to support their mother, isolated from the other Gods, even persecuted by some. This made them incredibly codependent on each other. * This series could have used that sort of history to explain Artemis having a trauma-spawned Blindness to Her brother's (even obvious) flaws. Like neurotically incapable of processing them. * in the very reductive secularization of the mythology that is the basis for these modern "re-tellings".
I didnt get very far because the r* scene made me incredibly incomfortable, but the treatment of the deep nature of the myths in Lore Olympus... look, I love the whole "modern olympus, ancient mortal world" it's such a good concept and I found the relationship between hades and zeus to be funny af, but to have Apollo, the god of youth, the one guy that protects them, do this? So many more gods would have been more likely... Like the classic student that spent hours researching the roles of the twins in mythology and their symbolism just cannot not get annoyed to death with that
@@IceQueen975 more than just that, I feel like it has a lot to do with the jock caracterisation that he ends up getting in most modern medias simply because he's the guy in charge of the sun 😮💨
@@adrasthe314 "Apollo, filled with lust for Daphne, attempts to rape her. Even after she is turned into a tree, Apollo kisses her and gropes her bark. Jupiter is no better. He lusts after Io, rapes her, and turns her into a cow when his wife gets suspicious."
@@sommerblume9671 so I went back to ovid's metamorphosis book 1, the section where there is the myth of apollo and daphne and I checked both the French (I'm a francophone) version and the latin version (I'm a classic student at uni level so I had to learn latin lol). If I roughly translate the passage 1.550, I get something that goes along the lines of Apollo felt Daphne's hurting thumping behind the bark as he touched it and then he kissed it, but the bark (ie daphne) didn't want it. The precise word used in latin is oscula (plural of osculum) which Gaffiot tells me means either small mouth or kisses. Still not consensual, but like, very different from actual r*pe. Though like, let us not forget greco-roman myths have like a billion variations (@Ariadne and Theseus; there's like 3 main versions) so it may be different in other myths I *am* curious though about the quotations mark you used (genuinely!) I'm assuming you cited something? I'm kind of curious about it, perhaps I could learn something new there? Would you mind sharing it with me? :)
when I loved this comic in the past I did feel sympathetic for minthe, but I was always conflicted bc rachel would first paint her like a sympathetic character and then all of a sudden painting her as an abusive bitch
Minthe is SUCH an underrated character. I think her sympathetic nature is ironically completely unintentional and the character-assassinating slap was a response to all of the sympathy she was getting in the comments. Hot take, but I also think Minthe has more chemistry with Hades (from what we've seen). Persephone and Hades are so incredibly BORING, especially now.
I took that as Minthe's internal conflict. Like that's all she knows and is struggling (or afraid?) to let it go. I see a lot of characters and family trying to change. There's a slip.
I heard at one point RS was writing her to have Borderline Personality Disorder, but later retconned this when Minthe was getting her “redemption” arc. All of her conflicting feelings about herself were watered down to the result of bad parenting, and suddenly she gets to take care of kids and all her problems dissolved.
@@beedoesthings8037 this was over the time of 10 years tho like she didn't just woops I'm better. And on top of that she had a lot of time to reflect as a plant. This webtoon isn't perfect but it's my kind of trash so 🤷🏽 To each there own.
@@pyrrhic_victoria The sympathy is absolutely intentional. She mimics real life people who self-sabotage by acting out and get defensive when they have to face their own flaws. The only thing I would criticise with her writing is that her development into a better person is rushed. It felt a little like the author wanted to give her a happy ending within the story and couldn't fit it in properly.
Yes! Acknowledgment that hades sucks and is also an abuser , and minthe is underrated and deserves better! She had interesting writing , personality, and lore, and yet she was tossed to the way side to make the otp look better. Just look how she and persephone contrast throughout said comic. There are definitely elements of purity culture there. Am I defending an abuser? No. (I see that argument a fair bit when people bring up minthe. It's okay to like chaotic characters , just be honest about them. )but I know for a fact that hades wasn't any better and got off pretty much Scott free for it, as well as most the ugly things he's done in said comic. He does have financial power over her among other things. I wish more focus was on Minthe, honestly. Missed opportunity.
Oh yeah great callout on the purity culture dichotomy between Minthe and Persephone!! How does one who goes into a work to "deconstruct purity culture" accidentally write that...? I also think it's significant/sinister that the other contrast highlighted between the two is Minthe's relative sophistication, age, and sexual confidence. Even her color, red, connotes more of the maturity and confidence of a woman whereas pink is connoted way more with girlishness and purity. I don't consider Minthe to be an abuser by the comic's own logic because in the early episodes Hecate slapped Hades silly and even dragged her nails down his face and Hades nearly killed that paparazzi guy for KoMeDy, but when 90 lb Minthe slaps Hades we're meant to feel like she crossed a line. The framing of Minthe's "abuse" was so sudden, utterly lacked buildup, and didn't even match the established moral tone of the comic to the point that it just came off as character assassination. In the episode prior to the slap where we see Minthe getting manipulated by Thetis, she was getting a lot of positive comments, after all... Thanks for watching and leaving a comment!
@@friendlyghosthost1830 me too, but Rachel chose to continue to pit women against each other. That's all I see in this comic is women attacking each other for the favor of a man
The more and more I learn about Lore Olympus, the more I am convinced this is just like.... a case of "The Author's Poorly Disguised Fetish" Its a self indulgent age gap fantasy about being swooped off your feet by a rich hot older man with a plot just kinda stitched together to make excuses for these things to happen. It's not inherently wrong to create stories with that kind of fantasy, its just kind of a shame that it grew in popularity under pretenses of being more subversive or ambitious than it really is, and then really didn't examine itself or what it was doing.
The thing with Apollo not really showing any signs of being an assaulter is that they often don't show signs IRL. They are often great at acting like they're not bad people who would do something like that. This often is a big reason victims go unbelieved, cause "I know him! He's a good guy! He would never!" So I find the idea that Apollo wasn't obvious about this side of him fairly realistic. Edit: Also, a r@pist's friends and family will often be the last people to believe this person is in fact not all he's cracked up to be and are also often huge victim blamers
Really solid points! But I think there Were signs that Apollo has dysfunctional ideas about how men and women relate...I got Control Freak vibes from Him way early.
Yes! Also, my friend was assaulted in a similar way (they partner pushed them and didn’t listen when they withdrew consent) and it took 2 months for my friend to register that they were assaulted. The entire time he acted like he normally did, and he even defended his actions as normal when it came out he did that to multiple people. Usually with that, they don’t realize they are wrong. They just want to be in control
"Apollo, filled with lust for Daphne, attempts to rape her. Even after she is turned into a tree, Apollo kisses her and gropes her bark. Jupiter is no better. He lusts after Io, rapes her, and turns her into a cow when his wife gets suspicious."
almost fully through the podcast episode and i never really realized how time crunched the whole comic was! The reason I tolerated season one was because I had interpreted episodes 1-70 to be over six months, not five fucking days oh my god. This also puts the whole comic under a really scary lens also. In 5 days, nay 120 HOURS Persephone-the-nineteen-year-old gets drugged, raped, bought out, media-ambushed, groomed, a new job, a scholarship revoked, visited TARTUS, and gets attacked by the dead. On top of that its depicted in this interpretation that she's had MANY sheer encounters with older male gods BEFORE all of this, like when she was what? 16? 14? there is some huge timing issues with this comic
I have two major problems with how the myth is interpreted in lore Olympus. 1. Persephone was actually like REALLY feared by mortals, she was almost definitely as, if not more feared than Hades and her name was used in some curses (so why is she, as Eros puts it, a cinnamon bun?) 2. Persephone was raped not once but twice and it wasn't Apollo, it was Zeus and Zeus was also her father (in the original myths) Here's one bonus issue I have with it! the Psyche and Eros myth is decently accurate, except Psyche had to complete deadly tasks to see Eros again, she wasn't Aphrodite's shopping buddy, she was more like her punching bag (Of course take this with a grain of salt cause I stopped reading the comic by maybe episode 80, 90ish) Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong cause this is basically all just knowledge I gained 2 years ago so some of it might be inaccurate given my faulty memory
Every point you make is (refreshingly) totally accurate. Most modern "retellings" of Greek myth, (esp. Medusa) grow out of a secularizing reduction that ends up bastardizing the meaning in the myth. I wish I could correct every instance that this occurs online, and give us back the value of the symbols. Not just the deconstructed modern fails. I kept reflecting on how since Psyche's final task requires She find a way into Hades to get something from Persephone...better planning could have told the whole traditional Psyche story, wrapped up in soapy LO style drama, which could have satisfied the YA junkies AND the mythology fanatics that read her!
@@lullabi3234 I totally agree. I think really the only reason they don't show Aphrodite doing this to Pysche is because they want to keep it sweet and lovey but it also makes me think why did they depict other characters horribly (Apollo) but not aphrodite?
@@You-lw7cn Yeah she obviusly isn't trying to make Aphrodite a friend or mentor in the first season at all (I've only seen 1st season so far) so yeah, why the soft hand? That said, there's an argument for Aphrodite sending Psyche on her trials as an act of maternal love, for both Eros AND Psyche, in versions of the myth historically, so leaning into those elements, a modern re-teller can easily give us an Aphrodite who we are Terrified of and stomps us into the ground, but *plot twist* suddenly and smoothly reveals Herself as an Aphrodite we can love gushingly and know we can rely on for the rest of the series... And seriously, why does she use Apollo as her "Toxic Masculinity" pincushion? His (in secular reduction oversimplicity language) assshole tendencies towards women weren't in the date-rape spectrum, more in the "way too harsh responses to offenses" stuff...Poseidon and Hermes are more (to ignore any symbolic interpretation and lean on a lazy literal take on the myths) "rapey" than Apollo...
@@You-lw7cn but honestly, I can personally accept the rapey Apollo because I have been playing with the question of how different Sun Gods and Sun-Associated Gods (Apollo isn't the actual Sun, right?) would be seen in a kind of Chthonic "Sun In The Underworld" or "Nocturnal Sun" version of themselves, and some of the results are sociopathic as fvc*... but I'm attention seeking now, so gonna get tf out of comment sections for a while, lol Thanks for keeping some Dignity in the myths, while it's become the hot shit to make toilet paper out of em!
I always thought the Minthe's ears change to reflect her insecurities about dating a God because of lore olympus class rankings she would sometimes changes her ears to look more like a Goddess instead of a nymph. But I guess it's just one of the many things not explored more in depth.
I think it's an art mistake. Thetis later makes a comment about her "getting her ears done" like through plastic surgery or something. And there's no remarking about it in the story itself to indicate that it's intentional. I suppose it could be, but there are so many instances of glaring art mistakes that I wouldn't be surprised if this is another thing to add to the list. Thanks for leaving a comment!
I'm still in the process of listening, but I love what I'm hearing so far. Hades is so icky, I'm rereading and there's a part in the early chapters when he unbuttoned his shirt cause he misinterpreted Persephone in wanting to sleep with him. 🤢 And when he talked about her mom when it came to about why he was single. Idk why that STILL didn't turn Persephone away, but yuck yuck.
Yeah Hades certainly is SOMETHING, and probably not what Rachel at all intended. I think he gets even worse as the story goes on somehow!! Thanks for leaving a comment, and apologies for the late reply - it turns out I accidentally held all comments for review (whoops...)
It's not the fact that he dated or considered dating her mom that bothers me, it's how he talks about her. Later on in Ep 210 we see Hades and Demeter interact and he comes off as a misogynist tool who doesn't like Demeter because she's assertive and speaks her mind vs simpering and childlike *cough* Persephone *cough*. The fact that Demeter is coded as Hillary Clinton-lite doesn't help matters.
@@Mocha_x_svt I kind of take your last part of you being a smartass, so I will answer accordingly. You need to reread the chapter [it's chapter 28] and actually think it through. Why does Hades bring up Demeter as a former potential love interest to his CURRENT one, her DAUGHTER? Does that not rub you the wrong way? Even Persephone herself didn't want to hear it.
2:18:41 the pomegranate is linguistically named 'apple of seeds' and the product naming convention seems to echo tech companies so basically Hades's brand is. Seedy apple.
I personally would have made it so Persephone was just supposed to meet up with Artemis at the party, but something interrupts Artemis (maybe a minor myth) leaving Persephone (who's a couple hundred years old, isolated from Olympus for all those years and riding a freedom high) on her own. Then Eros happens, she vomits and cries in front of everyone, and Hades takes it upon himself to get her a hotel room to recover, also using it as an excuse to get away from the party and sleeps on the couch. Queue drunk trauma ramblings, an awkward Hades, and a regretful hungover Persephone who feels the need to prove herself to the rest of Olympus after her bad first impression.
God I wish she had been a couple years old in the comic isn’t she like 19???? It’s been years since i touched it because the behninnig just turned me off so bad
@@_TSC_46 Or change the relationship dynamic. Like they could be just uncle and niece, with Hades spending time with her as a parental figure because Zues doesn't bother and the whole kidnapping and marriage part of the greek lore could be a rumor.
Right! Then that way, Hades and Persephone can bond over being outcasts/ social pariahs (though, Smythe's version of Hades doesn't come across as a cold, intimidating, rejected bachelor).
I hated that persephones SA was sorta dangled over the viewer. Instead of exploring it and seeing her heal at a good pace, we got small teases (for lack of a better word) and as you pointed out we get more panels of hades sexualisng then we do of her inner turmoil. I also expected her virginity cult thing would be explored more. It felt like it would be a theme - she's been SA yet she's in a virginity cult, feels theme worthy. I don't think Racheal had the guts or know how to do so. I've been reading a book on Virginity and the history of its concept (Preforming Virginity by Kathleen Coyne Kelly) and there's some really interesting interpretations on how virginity is reconciled with SA through history that are so relevant today. Like I wonder how exactly did she do her research.
What was pretty weird was the fandom after the thing with Apollo. I know the fans are young but still. Basically they thought that this story was accurate to greek mythology. And I've heard of hellenistic people who pray to Apollo who were harassed online for worshipping him, because of this webtoon. Like wtf? The Apollo from LO has nothing to do with greek mythology Apollo.
Thanks for the feedback! We're also quite amateur as we're still confined to the canvas ghetto and haven't managed to monetize our comics yet, but we've been aspiring storytellers for years now. We like breaking down content like this to understand what makes the story tick - it helps us learn how to craft better stories ourselves when we see what works and what doesn't!
webcomics being a new thing is so weird since i've been reading them since probably 2005. back when drunk duck webcomics and smackjeeves were the dominating hubs. i gotta say the rapid, and sudden, corporatization of the medium due to korea and japan getting in on it is alien. webcomics now are such a far cry from the indie passion projects of the early 2000's. there are still a lot out there like that but the culture is so different, there are so many social rules now, and indie passion projects don't get near as much attention as the new mainstream, copy/paste stuff made my underpaid, over worked korean artists.
Corporations saw the value of webcomics and now are cashing big on them at the expense of creators. This is why I really advise people to just publish their web comic on their own website or sell their comic as a ebook on Amazon. The problem is that most of these web comics are either terribly written or artistically mediocre and wouldn't actually succeed anywhere but on Webtoons.
@@Nopeasaurus yeah it's sad. with the recent info leak about how webtoons treats their creators, i imagine a lot of the issues stem from poor work conditions, and corporate push for quantity over quality. doesn't help with how corporatized things have become its gotten harder for indie creators since readers are now getting used to unreasonably massive weekly updates, and certain aesthetics. there are good places to go like comicfury, hiveworks and spiderforest, but very few people have heard of them outside of the webcomic community. plus the former two require applications, and your work to be a certain quality, sooooo most of these 3D asset, generic looking webtoons probably wouldn't cut it.
Ok so I know I'm a month late but great video! Admittedly I've been hesitant to really speak out against Lore Olympus as a fellow Webtoon author, as I've been worried that people might see me as "attacking other creators", so this video is like a breath of fresh air. What bothers me with Lore Olympus's big cast is that Smythe COULD have made it work. Shonen casts are often very large, and while there are definitely some characters that get more love by the author than others, with enough time and care(and planning) they can flesh out multiple story arcs and characters. Also I love seeing more people talk about Cursed Princess Club! I love that series so much that when I first binged the series I couldn't put it down. Great job on the video and I can't wait to watch the other parts :)
I feel the same way about Cursed Princess Club, but it does have a similar problem to Lore Olympus in its depiction of abuse and violence. Gwendolyn's insecurity is always presented seriously, even with some horror elements. Things like King Leland's emotional, verbal and physical abuse of his family as well as torture (and possibly rape, if you read between the lines in Whitney's backstory about his family's treatment of political prisoners) are either presented neutrally or as a joke.
Haven't watched the full video yet, but so far you guys expressed my feelings about Lore Olympus pretty much exactly. I was never on the 'hater' camp but can't fall in love with the comic, either. There's some things it does alright, the artstyle and concept are appealing, but there are other areas where it falls flat. Inconsistencies in characters' behavior and the overall story, 'missing' panels that are needed to follow the story, as well as many scenes that are unnecessary to the plot and are just there to be 'cute/funny', all like you said. There's so many missed opportunities in this comic, but with webtoon's working schedule I understand that it's neigh impossible to make the comic the way Rachel might have intended. Anyway, thanks for uploading, I'll be watching the other video soon. :)
Thanks! Yeah, my feelings pretty much echo yours in the beginning, but as this comic goes on the absolute nosedive in quality yet persistent popularity has to be seen to be believed. Pretty much everything that can get worse, does - it's pretty shocking since I dropped the comic sometime in season 2 and only came back earlier this year. Hopefully the rest of the series is interesting to you from that perspective. And sorry for responding to this comment so late! I accidentally held all comments for review, but we really appreciate your feedback!
@@pyrrhic_victoria Np! I’ve actually been reading the newer chapters along with the rest of your review and I gotta say, everything is spot on. This is by far the best and most in-depth critique of the comic I’ve seen so far. Can't wait for more from your guys (Lore Olympus-related or not)!
I've always hated this comic so this review is just what I need. You two really explain the issues eloquently in a detailed way. I am totally here for this dragging.
Hahaha. I hope you keep watching, as we're quite fair to the webtoon when it was at its peak in episodes 1-50, but everything from there is a swift ride deep downhill. Thanks for the comment!
@@Tareltonlives yeah the art is so good and the story starts off okay (kinda creepy in parts) but it quickly turns into an ugly mess. It's shocking how fast it completely nosedived
I think the timing is extremely difficult for Webtoon's weekly format. There were a few comics I got into at a later point, so I could binge through at least 50+ episodes. Once I reach the latest episode though and the weekly waiting starts, I often start to enjoy a series less. Even something like I Love Yoo, that I really like. Right now there's this flashback arc, that I also like. But it's been going since like half a year or so? It absolutely kills any pace the story had before. I understand creators want to show stuff. But you really have to think about if you can drag an arc or a scene over a span of several weeks or months and what you can do to keep people engaged (and I don't mean harsh cliffhangers, those get boring too when they happen every week).
I agree 100% and I'm not sure to what extent that's being pushed on creators by the editors at webtoon since it seems to pervade all of the top series on the app. I think LO is a special case, though, because it has some of the most *inefficient* writing I've ever seen, especially in the recent episodes. How many panels are just copy/pastes with no dialogue that achieve nothing from a story perspective? It feels a lot like stalling in the latest episodes. If we were to do a rewrite we'd like to remain independent and approach the series in a goal-oriented way with the storytelling being paramount to the writing. I think that's the crux of where LO lost its way - leaning into the fluff and fanservice to the detriment of the plot, and this coincided with the art taking a huge quality dip. Thanks for leaving a comment!!
@@pyrrhic_victoria I guess you're correct. It's similar with Let's Play actually. The more the series progresses, the more 4th wall break and fanservice stuff seems to happen. To a point where I'm just annoyed. Frankly, I am quite late to Webtoon, I discovered it 1.5 years ago. Not once was LO marketed to me an I only started reading it a week or so ago because I read some bad stuff about it. Now that I catched up I watched some videos about it. Because honestly, I did enjoy it very much. I basically binged through the whole thing. I'm also honest that the bad boy trope is kiiiinda a guilty pleasure of mine, but I'm 27 and understand that that's stupid irl. What got me were the comments. Like, what is wrong with a huge amount of commenters? And that was when I started second guessing the comic. And I also realized that I would definitely have dropped it, if I did not have had the possibility to read ~220 episodes at once but instead would have waited for years for the story to get somewhere. What's also a weird thing with Webcomics is the timeline. In sooooo many Webtoons stuff happens within a span of a couple of weeks. So realistically, you can't expect that much character/relationship development. But for readers it's not weeks, it's often 2-4 years. That makes pacing also pretty whacky. You don't have that issue with books, because you can read them within a few days. And with graphic novels that get a new issue once a year or so you also avoid this problem because 1, you don't follow the characters through the whole year but it's more like an event and 2, one issue of a graphic novel covers much more plot than weekly episodes. For me, the weekly publishing is both cool and shit at the same time and I don't really know how that shit part can be handled. Especially because, as you said, editors seem to push for certain things.
@@Eagle_Owl2 mybtake with this comic is that if you binge and don't thing too much about it, you can enjoy, but the moment that you start to question things, or worst, see the timeline, it is like a house of cards falls apart. But what is your take about everything post trial? I'm really having a hard time with LO right now, the characters feel off, specially the side characters, and I can't stand Persephone and Hades right now
I'm (Victoria) actually writing reddit posts on the Unpopular Lore Olympus sub for each new episode that comes out in S3. It's GOD AWFUL. The commentary mostly centers on the art and the story in the episode itself, so you'll get a wider view when we get to that part in our videos, but in the meantime you can read my breakdowns if you need something to tide you over :) This is our reddit profile: www.reddit.com/user/pyrrhic_victoria/submitted/
I think if they approached it like manga, it would be able to cover a lot more ground in the story in a single week's episode. Manga is black and white and the average chapter is at least twice as long as a webtoon chapter. Unfortunately it seems like the audience is being primed more for colored art and weekly dope-hits over following a continuing, complex story which simply can't be produced in color by a single artist alone. The writing for most webtoons as a result focuses on fanservice or comedy instead of storytelling because it's inefficient to do so in only 80 colored panels. If the audience accepted black and white or limited palette art and was interested in following a more complex narrative, that would help alleviate the writing quality issues. Webtoon also doesn't train their artists or exercise heavy editing control unlike manga publishers and seems to encourage this dope-hit tropey writing besides, compounding the issue. I have a lot more to say and quite honestly we could do an entire video just based on our experience with webtoon as it, uh, wasn't very good lol
Apollo was one of my favorite gods, so when I saw the role she put him in, I didn't think I would read it. I read a bit and found so many problems with the story, the tons of characters that their colors tend to overlap, so I'll get characters confused, and I couldn't continue.
I actually really liked the art at the beggining more than later on. Poeple say it got better, I think it just got more basic, more how poeple should look like and it diverted from how original and different it was from everything else. Now its just people with different skin color, but before it had a special artistic flare to it. After the art changed and the story was not progressing I stopped reading it.
This! The art style is what drew me in initially, although it might look more polished for some now, to me it just missing the original aura that made it different. Without that art aspect and the plot defects just makes you loose interest
1:28:00 yeah I would have preferred to spend a few chapters exploring Pers coping with Her assault, and only picking up on the courtship stuff after we've spent time with the Aftermath. Also y'alls spreadsheet format looks hella useful!
I used to be a LO fan, but after reading some criticism, like the age gap, and Persephone’s Mary Sue-ness, then the plot just kept getting bigger and emptier, and the episodes started to drag with endless plot hangers, I lost interest. While I think the story had merit, I think it lost it
Minthe is easily the most interesting and well-written character in this series don’t @ me 😂 Edit - the algorithm gave me these videos today, and I only got to episode 2 before Webtoon had them removed lmao. They really and truly can’t handle criticism of their biggest property
Yesss, i was just gonna comment on that. I was really disappointed as I was watching this series because of its useful insights into scriptwriting and character writing and now it’s gone. Hopefully they can get it back up :( !!
She really is. I loved how in depth Minthe's character was and every stan would get pissy at me for defending her and pointing out that Rachel wrote her that way so why call her names! I'm glad she's doing better and she and Persephone aren't friends but I think they ok
Oh and to add to the very end: a popular webtoon that is wholesome with great writing, gorgeous art, unexpected twists, awesome setup and payoff, and a cute romance has to be Castle Swimmer!
Yh, Lore Olympus had potential but it was biting more than it could chew, while the author of Castle Swimmer takes the story, themes and characters into consideration and even cuts or redoes old plot ideas or characters when she feels it won't work with the story (because e.g. no space for said plot or too many characters to focus on).
Thanks for this comment! We really appreciate the feedback. And sorry for the long delayed reply, I didn't realize that I'd accidentally held all comments for review until just now!
LO is a little overrated but it’s not a bad thing. 2 major criticism, for me at least, is the art style mainly the height inconsistencies mainly with Persephone and the other female cast. They fluctuates a lot but that’s more of a nitpick. Second criticism is that we hardly see the story through the pov of the other characters. I know that it’s a retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth but we the Eros and Psyche myth and during the trial and Persephone’s banishment we barely see anyone else’s pov.
I think especially after episode 50 or so it becomes highly overrated and downright pretty awful, especially starting in season 2. Hopefully you'll be able to see our perspective as you continue to watch! Yeah, the art had always been inconsistent but it had a lot of passion and originality in it in the beginning so I didn't fault it for that. I moreso despise the current apparent lack of effort or care for the art and the continually nonsensical story. I think it's not so much the limited POV that bothers me in that respect, it's the constant introduction of characters and plots that get dropped left, right, and center as the comic goes on and becomes more and more entwined around Hades and Persephone as the center of its universe. Thanks so much for the comment! Sorry for the delayed response - it seems I accidentally held all comments for review somehow.
Thanks for that!! Luckily now we've invested in some proper lighting so we're no longer relying on the pesky sun for our videos. Also, apologies for the delay in response - I somehow accidentally held all comments for review. I appreciate the comment!
I LOVE both your styles so much. I love your channel's theme & the casual color coordination. And I adore people talking about art & story structure for hours on end. About to binge thru your whole channel
I think the whole story could have benefited if we were to follow Psyche. Think about it. Shes a human turned into a nymph and send to olympus. Throu Psyches eyes we could explore all three realms(because later in myth Psyche needed to go to underworld for Persephones beauty). Throu her eyes we could also see just how oppressed nymphs are and how they face rasism from gods.
I'm not a huge fan of Lore Olympus (I got bored of it, and I found the story and characters hard to follow) but I can understand why so much emphasis is put of Hades rather than Persephone if we imagine it more like a women's fantasy, kinda like 50 Shades. I've always felt like Persephone is so undefined and generic bc the writer and fans are putting themselves into her shoes. Just like Anastasia Steel, you're supposed to easily step into her role to engage with a fantasy where a very attractive, rich, powerful, closed off man suddenly can't think about anything but you. Maybe you feel lonely and ditzy and insecure in the rest of your life, but now you get to feel really important because you've managed to earn love and softness from someone who's usually very cold simply by virtue of who you are, no real effort required. I think that's why Persephone flip flops so much between innocent and flirtatious too. No matter how sanitized the webtoon becomes it's clearly (imo) meant to invoke the ideas of an erotic fantasy. And there's a lot of appeal in the idea that you (the one indulging in the fantasy) can be sexually appealing while also being sweet and innocent. It kinda aligns with the "born sexy yesterday" trope. Like I said I'm not a fan of the webtoon itself, and when made to stand on two legs as a narrative it definitely falls flat. But when serving the purpose of fantasy fuel I think it does fairly well. Also, obviously not all women are going to enjoy fantasy material like this, and not only women can enjoy said material. But I'm just saying it has merit to people who do.
I mean, you’re not wrong. As someone that was an early patreon supporter of LO, 50% of her patron content was her going through each chapter and talking about her intent for each panel, and the other half was just her drawing explicit smut of the OTP. There’s nothing wrong with the obviously, NSFW art is still art! But that was clearly the original intent of the comic, and I think it’s important we are honest with ourselves about that
@@LikeTheProphet That's honestly really good to know! I've watched all 11 (as of writing this) of these review videos now and seeing how the comic declines in quality makes me really think putting it on Webtoon and making it this long story with a ton of plot wasn't what the creator actually wanted or cared about. It's just what Webtoon required to make it profitable. Maybe she wouldn't have gotten as much money or become as popular, but personally I think Rachel would've made a much more cohesive comic that she enjoyed making if she did a suggestive (or even fully NSFW) comic and posted it on Gumroad while posting teasers/supplemental content on her twitter and tumblr.
Wait, wtf, did all the videos got taken down… I was just listening and suddenly they just disappeared 😒 Really enjoy them, loved the work, honestly I never payed much attention to those details, been following the comic for so long I never realized all the issues it had. I mean I just enjoyed it less and wasn’t expecting each chapter every week, it’s sad. Hope more comes out soon. Maybe, you mentioned Unordinary, would be interesting, idk, or any other comic❤
Wow thanks for the compliment! I've seen your other comments on our other videos, so sorry for not seeing this one - looks like I accidentally held all comments for review on this video. Appreciate the feedback and hope the series continues to be interesting for you!
Thanks!! We're both big lovers of fashion here. Sorry for the long delay in responding to this comment, I accidentally held all comments for review. Hopefully the rest of the series is interesting to you, and yeah...sharing that last sentiment ESPECIALLY as the series goes on and gets worse, and worse, and...even worse. Appreciate the comment!
I loved Lore Olympus at first. I stopped reading a long time ago. I lost interest when the photos were deleted off of Apollo’s phone. I don’t know if Rachel brought that particular plot point back around but she’d made such an issue of it and then, poof! They were gone. Also I had started feeling gross about Hades and Persephone. Yes. They are immortal gods. No, they are not human. So the age difference doesn’t matter in technical terms. HOWEVER. I kept waiting for Rachel to show that either Persephone was not as naive and immature, not as helpless or as fragile, as we believed. To put her on a more equal footing with Hades. She never did. Persephone just kept having stuff handed to her because she was cute. I wasn’t into it. Also the pacing sucked all throughout what I read. I know nothing about Greek mythology or anything so I had no issues there. But overall it stopped being enjoyable.
In the chess scene specifically I believe it was intentional. I think she is *unintentionally* characterized as a manipulative schemer in other instances, though - e.g., when she blackmails Minthe, how she treats the paparazzi guy in the hospital, and her interaction with Ares in the mortal realm. I wish we got a self-aware Machiavellian master manipulator who played people like she plays chess, but alas - her intelligence outside of this scene is pretty dull, and her characterization for the most part is very inconsistent. I've seen your comments on our other videos and I wanted to thank you for leaving so much feedback! Sorry for the delay in responding to this one - looks like I accidentally held all comments on this video for review. Thanks again!
@@pyrrhic_victoria i want to support your video because i find them very informative. you guys go into a lot of detail. my only problem is that i sometimes don't know where you guys are since i haven't read it in years but that doesn't stop my enjoyment. 👍
@@kendybanana3815 We'll try to make it easier to follow starting with timestamps correlating to each episode we discuss for those trying to read along with us! Thank you so much for your kind words :)
I've never read Lore Olympus, I don't like the Hades/Persephone myth so I just didn't even bother with it, (despite the concept of dating or loving death being a favourite trope or beat of mine) but I have always been intensely fascinated by it (how and why it got so popular, how it uses the framework of the myths to construct it's story and world, where it differs etc), so I am quite happy to be watching several hours of content. Can't say I'm particularly upset that I didn't go read it.
I personally don’t hate the myth, the Hymn to Demeter. What I do hate is the treatment of the myth as time goes by. The myth is a story of mourning between a mother and daughter. Persephone was around 11 when Hades kidnapped her and the story was about Demeter’s sorrow. But since like the 2010’s with the tumblr era people have turned it into a angsty love story where Demeter is the bad guy for wanting to keep her daughter safe. The only reason why it was romanticized so much is because of the concept of the goddess of spring and the god of death being in love with each other and people think he’s loyal to Persephone. In the myth Hades was married to someone he loved very much and was distraught by her death before kidnapping Persephone. And after marrying Persephone he cheats with minthe and Persephone has a “he’s mine” argument with Aphrodite about a mortal🥲😅
@@bobaparadise9419 Do share which wife Haides had before Persephone. And I have read the actual Hymn to Demeter which is our most complete version. The only two loves he has ever been associated with besides Persephone were Leuke and Minthe. The myth of Haides and Persephone is actually a marriage ritual gone awry. Ancient Greek weddings involved the bride's family mourning her. I'm not going to get way into it (and I've looked into this a lot because this is part of my religion), but when you understand the myth in its ancient context, there's a reason why Persephone is treated as equally feared as her husband.
As a fellow creator I really like this analysis of Lore olympus. The part where you talked about pacing and character interactions struck with me as I'm working on the follow up episodes for my call to action webtoon and in an early episode was going to hint at 5-6 characters but the first of them doesn't show up for at least 8-10 episodes which would be like 4 months in real time. so I realized i should move that scene back closer to when they start getting introduced. this is great sound for when working on my own stuff.
When you said this was first on Tublr everything came into place. I 100% agree that this was a series of imagined scenes and moments and good ideas that were set up poorly and very rarely followed through or explored the consequences of. Her assault from Apollo was shocking to me because it reflected my SA and I wanted to badly for it to be explored and persephone to process and heal from it. But I stopped reading when I realize it was just a plot device to make the mc more sympathetic.
I didn't realize how validating it would be to have somebody side with minthy as well! Stumbled on your video and sat and watched the whole thing. Your views are pretty much spot on with mine. I originally started reading cause I liked the art style but within a few chapters often found my self liking minthy and finding hades and persephone cringey but couldn't really place it. It wasn't until you pointed out that not only is the timing within a few days but you're right, she never gushes about him back. Ironically she did more character development for minthy and did it well. That coupled with the straight up obvious Mary Sue ish tendencies left me rooting for minthe. By the chapter u ended on for the video I was hate reading. Still am actually, mostly for the art. Thank you for putting my critique of the show into a more eloquent summary, subscribed!
A thing that bugs me is how in season one Apollo isn’t really threatening. It’s like the writer is scared to ever have Persephone be afraid of him, like it’ll make her weak. It’s this weird thing where Apollo needs to desire Persephone and go crazy for her (because she’s the main character), never be a threat to her (because she’s the girlboss main character) and also be a terrible person (because Hades is her love interest). It’s boring. It really feels like she wrote in the sexual assault just to make Apollo worse. If you take it out their relationship could be more interesting.
Thanks man!! Really happy to hear that haha. Well, we just started making videos a month and a half ago and our equipment/setup is admittedly a bit crap - hopefully that'll be solved this upcoming Black Friday. And, of course, all our viewers' support has been helping us grow pretty fast :) Thanks again!
I really enjoyed listening to this take. I really wanted to enjoy lore Olympus, I loved the unique style it had even if it wasnt as technically polished as other works. I was really interested in seeing how the story would turn out just based on the premise and art alone. And while I dont hate it, I cant get myself to really like it even tho I really thought that I would.
The way you guys analysed this was really interesting and I enjoyed it immensely compared to other critiques of Lore Olympus! I also really like the way you talk and discuss things.
Something I liked about persephone was her relatability. She was an heiress, but she had no money to her name, had never worked a job before, and was living for free in someone else's house. She tried not to ask for money, she cooked for artemis in some parts, and she insisted on paying people back or paying for stuff herself. She got her laptop by digging around in a garbage bin. This changed once she started dating hades and he just bought her everything and she accepted it. It was a total 180 for her
Yeah- adding to your point (I commented this on another vid), 🚨SPOILER: Persephone bought her own apartment in the Underworld following her 10 yr. sentence, cause Hades gave her a salary (a salary she wasn't supposed to earn as an intern), which was sitting in the bank during those 10 yrs. It was presented as a "girl boss" moment, but (again) that was only made possible by Hades.
I watched it a year or so ago! Shame that they felt they had to remove it because of the backlash, I remember their criticism being really, really good.
Oh hey, I just found your awesome podcast! Your takes are nuanced and I can totally understand where you're coming from. Also you guys look fabulous, love your colors and set up 🙌🫶
When I first started reading a Lore Olympus, I really like it and really didn’t think of the flaws. Watching some criticism videos I feel offended but then at the same time I also see where they are coming from. As I reread the comics. I started to really see some things that I didn’t pick up. Do I agree with every criticism not always but still.
I need to just scream it here but jesus the fucking treatment of Apollo and the complete disregard of his entire symbolism as a mythical figure just drives me nuttttts like I had to stop early on, both bc of the r* scene and that disregard. Like he's a god of youth. He protects them. Why would he fucking do that. Just why. He's not the god for this. He's just notttttttt
@@matchaleche oh yeah no he did kinda screw Cassandre up bc she said no, but I disagree that he screwed daphné up in the sense that screwing up implies he did so willingly? Like dont get me wrong *runninh after unwilling people is a big no no*, but there's a very specific context to it: he showed arrogance towards eros (lustful love) and thus paid the price for it. There's probably something to say about the idea that "men can't help it" which kinda shows itself shyly behind all of that, but it's 1am here so my brain is no good for analysis right now lol I do feel, however, like there's a huge chunk of cultural context we're missing. Dont mind my ftench i cant english right rn but grosso modo, avec Cassandre, il y a cette idée de s'opposer à la volonté divine, qui *est* une forme d'hubris, et donc doit être punis. Now if I remember tomorrow morning, I'll elaborate more and in english, but last thing i eanna point out is that godly relationships in ancient greece were v similar to the one in rome : do ut des; I give so that you give. By taking the gift of clairvoyancy frkm apollo, she thus owes him something back, which she refuses. Further more, in some instances of the myth, she tricks him by saying she would become his consort if he gave her clairvoyancy, but then back pedaled once the gift had been done. Also fun fact bc why not but Apollo is know as the one that pushes away (herkageros or smth), not only bc he's a bow dude, but also because he's the one god that remains the farthest from mortals (yeah, ik he's not that far from them so that says a lot lmao) in the sense that he doesnt tend to directly do things for r against them
Can I just say that I love the combo of it getting progressively darker outside as you two get more exasperated? lol Plus was the hair/hat/outfit coordination intentional?? Fabulous either way. Will be watching all of y'all's channel haha. And checking out your comics because clearly you care deeply about storytelling and comics as a medium!!
I LOVED the original season, before the rewrite! I was following it weekly until it was rewritten, and adored the direction that the plot was going. The rewrite redid the plot that I was most excited for, of Hades and Hecate going after the guy that took the photo of the two of them early on, as well as introduced the Apollo sexual assault plot. I thought it was handled extremely poorly, and it was really just the most glaring change between the early days and the current story that I felt made it so much less compelling or interesting.
Interesting discussion! I come from a similar background of reading a lot of manga before moving to webtoon. I started with Lore Olympus because a girl I liked swore by it but I never really connected with it the same way. At first I thought maybe it was a webtoon thing... and I guess on some level it is... But I've since put in the time to find Webtoons I really connect with on the same level as manga. So I appreciate this discussion because it helped clear a lot of my confusion up as to why I wasn't connecting with Lore Olympus on the same level everyone else seemingly was.
honestly I haven’t read this comic but by looking at it something bothered me and I wanted to know if I was the only one. It doesn’t have to do with the writing or anything, just the designs. They’re GREEK GODS. Idunno, for a god of death hades looks so boring. He’s just a blue guy in a suit? At least make himself design in any way interesting. He looks like your average guy but blue and that doesn’t strike me as what a god would look like, even with a more casual aesthetic.
As someone who actively worships hades and works with him in my witchcraft, the way they portray him just gives me all the ick. Is hades this amazing person in the myths, gods no, let’s be real no gods or goddesses are perfect in anyway and that’s what sort of makes them so real, if that makes sense. But also to see the author infantilize this actual at times terrifying goddess, Persephone is called ‘the iron queen’ for a reason she’s often the one who doles out the punishments for the souls of the underworld. She’s not some ‘soft sweet UwU so naive cinnamon bun who doesn’t understand things’ she’s a full goddess who is feared and loved and is so wonderful in her way of being. And the fact they made the ages between hades and Persephone so stark, is even worse like apparently Persephone is 19?! And hades is thousands of years old. I won’t get on the Aphrodite side of things it’s just As a worshiper of hades, when people decide to ‘retell’ the myths and do it like lore Olympus where it’s such stark surface telling of the gods. I just get the ick and get so annoyed and sad. I stopped reading like pretty early on because it just….gave me this ick feeling in my stomach I couldn’t shake
hard agree with this take. as a hellenistic pagan, i currently mainly worship lord apollo and have just started working with lady persephone (boy howdy is she intimidating). were the gods 10000/10 moral in the myths? no. were the myths literal? NO. were the myths written and told mostly by men to explain natural phenomena and enforce the patriarchal society they created and upheld? in my view, yes. it's just, i get where she was coming from with the apollo thing (hello daphne, etc) but the apollo i and many others have experienced would never do such a thing. the gods are NOT the myths. it's just... ugh. i would much rather see people take aspects of something like a specific epiphet or title and turn that into a character trait, rather than rely on the same stories that are taken at surface value. apollo /=/ jock himbo abuser persephone /=/ soft flower uwu. like plz can we try something unique for once???
im not a pagan like u both but i find how humans depict gods as fascinating - like we project so much of ourselves onto them when they should be incomprehensible beings (to us). THEIR logic and reason should be on a different level i think the most interesting thing to me is how we depict gods, ex. in greek mythology, as strictly (loosely? in some myths cases lol) monogamus and then judge them on that metric maybe this is off topic bc i forget what point i had but :) yeah. ive never read this comic before but i assumed it was a modern retelling with humans, not gods, who just shared characteristics/powers/names with the inspirations. this videos deep dive was kind of a shock
Old comment but I love hearing takes on Greek retellings from people who worship those gods. I'm not pagan (I'm Christian) but I'm really into the Greek religions and cults and would love to write a respectful retelling of my own. So takes like these are so important to me, ESPECIALLY about the infantilization of Persephone. She's a terrifying badass and this version makes me feel gross.
No but I felt this. I used to really love Lore Olympus and I think the art is beautiful. But as somebody who studies mythology very deeply, everything they've been trying to do really is hollow. A lot of these myths weren't meant to be taken literally. They're metaphors that require an understanding of cultural context. It seems weird to make the decision to paint Apollo as a r*pist for example (as opposed to Zeus, which would be more accurate) but completely ignore the fact that it actually is the canon that Hades truly did kidnap persephone according to the Eleusinian mysteries. I feel like a lot of people take offense to that, saying that the myth doesn't give power to Persephone's story when on the contrary, the entire myth was meant in part to be an allegory for the unbreakably close relationship between mother and child. Which is why Lore Olympus' hollowness can be pointed out with that one detail- the fact that Demeter is merely a side-thought and is shown to be a crazy, over-protective mother Many of the other references to the gods are also pretty hollow. It just seems weird from my perspective to have a comic about greek mythology and clearly demonstrate no deeper knowledge or research on the subject. I know there's the argument that "oh this is just an artist's interpretation it's not that deep, etc. etc." but I would like to counter the fact that it IS that deep because the mythology didn't just die when Christianity overtook Europe. plenty of people still value and cherish the stories as they are, so to take them and turn them into a story about petty workplace drama and treat them as if they belong to everyone equally just because they've already been so heavily diluted in the mainstream is just....idk. Feels ick. Though I'm sure that's not Rachel's intentions, still feels bad nonetheless.
I can agree with everything but I always get very iffy when people talk about Persephone's height. As someone who is 4"6' - 4"9' I'm getting really tired of people saying short women are minor coded. I just so happen to enjoy expressing my inner child and am engaged to a 6"2' guy who is 3 years older than me. Now I get the proportions in LO can be weird. It's not consistent and it does infantilize Persephone but it would be better to clarify that the proportions in the art are the problem, not their height differences. If I misunderstood the intent though and you did mean the proportions I'm really sorry. I'm just tired of people basically saying tall man dating short women = creepy predator.
Yes!! It's not that she's a short woman that's the issue, but it's just.. how her own friends talk about her? People who are supposed to respect her, talk down at and/or about her , usually because of her height. It's weird. I can see this version of Apollo talking to her like a small child, maybe Demeter, definitely Minthe. But everyone else??? Why are they being so judgemental and infantilizing to someone who's apparently so kind and beloved.
Hey guys, considering Webtoons copyrighted entire playlist, would you consider uploading it outside TH-cam for archiving purposes? It was such detailed and constructive analysis
Yep, we mirrored part 11 on our website which you can find in our community posts. I plan to have the rest of them mirrored on the website by the end of the week. We're probably going to get our channel back soon but just in case something happens in the future it'd be a smart idea to have them all up there anyway. Thanks for asking!
Edited for terrible grammar mistakes/added spacing for long paragraph: I am enjoying this breakdown. I didn't stay with this comic (I randomly fell off checking webtoon out of the blue a couple years back) but did read I think the first season of this? Looking forward to the discussions surrounding it since the writing is hit or miss. I barely remember it but this is an interesting way to backtrack. To add, concerning 52:35 I want to say while I'm in no way defending the writing and its not bad to question this plot point but sometimes you don't know your family. At least, not the part they don't want you to see. Brother, sister, mom, dad, uncle, aunt etc, no matter their title, blood related or not, it's not strange to be unaware. Her not knowing her brother is a rapist is possible. I don't have sources or data (so could be wrong) or anything but close relations like family/family friend's ect. are more likely to hurt you or someone you know rather than a stranger or so I've heard. Whether it means being blind to red flags or said red flags were concealed well or whatever it's easy to fall victim to those close to you and those same people have the power to do so because they are close. Apollo being a gross creep may not have been something she'd have anticipated or was in denial or both. Sometimes family will make excuses too "I know he can be pushy but he'd never do that". I have learned that it's healthy to never say what someone, no matter who they are to you, will never do. No one is so transparent and even if so there are a myriad of factors to change that threshold, some unaware to those looking from the outside. Seeing as comments were hate for Apollo based on ship content and not being anticipation for future trigger content is a given (or poor set up/writing, or both). I think Lore Olympus has rough writing but ironically that part wasn't so off. I agree that while the trauma itself was handled well, the aftermath was not.
We live in a content driven world & while cutting scenes would have made the story move faster It seems to be about having as much detail oriented scenes as possible for fans to obsess over. But I started it when there were at least 100 episodes so binging the content was awesome I probably wouldn't have kept up with the comic in real time with how slow it moves. Personally I like the fan service of them constantly talking about how much they like eachother. But Rachel Smythe does shift motivations & personalities at the stop of a hat.
& re: 1:14:06 remember that no one has considered this assault yet. From Apollo's perspective they just had ***. She's too naive & he's a good who's probably done it before. How many times have we seen frat bros casually talk about date r**e as if its not assault. Same thing here. He's casual because the assumption is "of COURSE she wanted me" That's why he gets so defensive later. Idk the chapter isn't pointless because it lets us know Apollo doesn't think he did anything wrong
I think some fanservice isn't bad and it's good to add cute scenes between the main couple - that's what people want to read in a romance after all. The problem comes when the story takes a back seat to the fanservice, and even the core of the romance itself flies out the window in favor of a couple that is basically written as perfect instalove so the comic can keep shoving fluff in the readers' faces. As you said, in order to have some of the cutesy scenes she wants she almost has to rewrite the characters just to bring about her desired outcome, and it just gets really jarring and distracting, breaking the readers' suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the story. Thanks for the comment!
I hope you keep watching the series because we address this typification of Apollo since he definitely flip flops from appearance to appearance. First he assaults her the day he met her in a callous way, basically because he wanted to. Then, he convinces himself (?) that he's in love with her/obsessed with her and she likes him back??? Then, he tries to apply for a marriage license with Hera (???) His motivations and perspective on the assault completely changes on a dime and it's just not consistent and comes off quite goofy and unbelievable as the series progresses. It's part and parcel of how the assault plotline is completely mishandled imo, along with Persephone's trauma that flips on and off whenever Rachel feels like it, and the three episode long flirty phone conversation that occurs with Hades *directly after the assault*. Thanks for the comment!
@@pyrrhic_victoria Definitely agree there. If he's this ultimate villain that always wanted her as his fertility goddess then he's a genius, but he's also really hurt when she points out she didn't like it and didn't want him. Does he know he's Zues kid or not? Like it just seems all over the place with Apollo's motivations.
@@Mocha_x_svt Apollo is one of the most frustrating things along with Kronos, as they're both built up to be big villains but Apollo's motivations change every time he shows up, and Kronos is so wasted in the one episode "big battle" between him and Persephone. If the thematic elements were stronger and comparisons were drawn between Apollo and Hades but in a *good* way, i.e. with some sort of messaging, that would have been much more compelling. Just another thing to add to the pile of missed opportunities I suppose!
As someone who read the original run: after she decided to redo it, she ran a poll asking of her audience would like the serious to be darker/more dramatic, and I feel that run was less... sensual?
That's really interesting. I've seen some art from the original and it definitely had more personality, but from what I can see the pacing was even worse hahaha. I think there was no SA in the original version, and no plotline about fertility goddesses or whatever; it was mostly a celebrity gossip focused story around the gods. I honestly think Lore Olympus would have been better had she stuck to that.
Alex and Persephone not getting equal treatment under the law makes sense when you consider the racial and socioeconomic differences between them. There's no way that was intentional, though. That would require Rachael to be critical of the gods' prejudices.
I got into lore olympus because i fell in love with the style. I think i didn't notice how slow paced it was because i came into it very late and had around 100 episodes or so to catch up to. I still wouldn't say I liked the webtoon tho. I also found myself struggling to remember who characters were because a lot looked too similar or just didn't appear enough for them to stay in my consciousness. I was shocked when I first heard people didn't like the webtoon. I looked more into it and yeah, their points are valid lol
I loved the art in the beginning the composition, the colours and glow of the gods it was very appealing to me but the more I read the worse it got and i didn't like it as much but no one was pointing it out so I thought i was thinking irrationally but I couldn't find it pretty anymore it was boring and Inaccurate proportionaly the panels getting smaller i didn't feel like I was in the story anymore
Something that bothers me is how Apollo’s introduction and his major interactions with Persephone before he assaults her are the same as her interactions with Hades. Literally the same. And she reacts to him as though it’s creepy or a red flag (which it is) when before she was totally into it. LO loves to compare Apollo to Hades. I’ve seen several fans praise Hades for NOT assaulting Persephone “even though he totally could”. But this is just really weird and it feels like it’s setting up that Hades is a predator like Apollo, but I think the writer is just trying to make Hades look special. Like if anyone else did the things he did it would be creepy, but it’s cute when he does it. If it were me writing the story, I’d have Persephone be into Apollo a little bit. She reacts kind of how she did with Hades. And then he assaults her and she’s conflicted because NOW, when he says “you’ve been flirting with me all day” she knows he’s right. And while flirting does not equal consent, she would think that and believe it was consensual at first. Idk it just feels like a natural conflict that was sidestepped so Persephone could only ever show romantic interest in Hades. Like it’s a character flaw to be attracted to other people than the ML.
This is very off topic from the video and totally unnecessary, but I love how you guys sitting next to each other are like "swapped" versions of the other's colors (green hair above a red shirt, then orange-y red hat above mostly green shirt)
I'm here because I was hooked for the first 2 seasons of this series, and then I slowly but surely slipped off the hype train during the first few episodes of season 3 and want an explanation
One of the few examples were I really think they should change a lot of the original work to make it better. I just hope that it gets the same treatment they did with The Boys, Invincible and Bridgerton S2
Thanks pal! Hope you enjoy these videos as well as my more humorous/unhinged takes on reddit. And sorry for the delay in response - I accidentally held all comments for review on this video.
As a practicing pagan; I remember seeing commercials for this. I instantly rolled my eyes and didn't even want to touch it; cuz I know that it would be totally inaccurate to any actual myth. As well have little respect to original context
I want to say this, it does not need to be accurate, it just needs to make sense for the narrative. Look at Hades (video game) and Hadestown, they don't follow the myth accurately, but it makes sense for the narrative they wish to tell. These are fiction works based off thousand year old legends and I do agree certain elements are taken out of hand like Demeter being a bad parent or Hades being Satan. I just wanted to say this and not hate for what you believe in, "its not accurate to the myth, is not a strong criticism. A better criticism would be "does this story work well with the myth they are retelling" or "does this story does something interesting with myth." P.S. nothing is going to be 100% accurate due to culture clash and not repeating the same story over and again.
@@witchivy5905 almost all Mythologies and Modern day religions have fiction written about like the The Metamorpheses, The Divine Comedy, and modern re-tellings of myths. These are stories and you can believe them or not. Hell, the story that Lore Olympus is based of off, the Hymn of Demeter, is a re-telling of a Myceanean Myth, of how the season work, and the narrative of a mother's grief of losing her daughter in a Patriachal society. These myths have a narrative to tell as well, as stories do. To repects these mythogioies by creating something new is to say that this is these arn't accurate and here to tell a story, lore olympus never tried to be accurate. It has some outed tropes though, but it never was to be accurate. If want to go back and worship these figures, aall the power to you, but you can't flame people for making stories about these figures.
I really appreciate the comment! We plan to go every week until we catch up with the current episode - which at this rate may take months haha. Sorry for the delay in responding, I accidentally held all comments for review somehow.
2:37:37 My version of Aphrodite would be blue with white splotches and always sparkling- since she comes from the sea, I'd have her reflect the sea + seafoam. Think Daphne's splotches with Athena and Hera's shine, except Aphrodite would undeniably be the most beautiful (that's the point).
I started reading LO in the summer of 2019. It was just a fun story to read. I really liked the creators use of colors. IMO the story started out strong but at this point it is just being dragged out. I can't even call LO my fun trash comic to read because there's so many inconsistencies with the writing, the art, I get frustrated because characters or side stories get built up then become incredibly anti-climatic. The chapters are way too short. I really wonder if Rachel is even trying anymore.
i started reading this because my friends were at the time and I'm so glad you put all these things into words. I really found it strange and so many things just sorta didn't go anywhere but since my friends were saying that it was fine and stuff i sorta overlooked most things. i had no idea about the timeline of it i felt like each scene must've been spaced with like days of time but i guess not lol
I do like the comic in a lot of ways, but the things I don't like about it are basically responsible for making the comic.... thematically confused? Like I would have loved if this comic was a bunch of drama soaked rich people who are totally out of touch and dramatic and powerful and bombastic. but trying to put in these issues of assault and trauma and consent in a way trying thats to adress important topics that are serious and relevant to a lot of people. this kind of whiplash can only work if its very very carefully treated and balanced, and it feels like Lore Olympus was always meant to be a dramatic "Gaiaonline OC RP" fun and drama filled romp.
1:13:00 in ep 24, during Her interview with Hera, Persephone tells us that Her mom said EXACTLY this. If She wants to go to University, She would have to "finance my own way there," and goes on about how vital the scholarship is for Her future. Hera mentions the No Sex stipulation, and the dark figure of Apollo stretches over Kore's thoughts. She knows He HAS just basically made Her ineligible for the grant. Like Everything you want here is already here...😟😟 Like ALL of the stuff that you are saying would Humanize Persephone, make Her "rich but poor" etc. was already written into the story.. You're ignoring that she owns only 1 outfit, has no phone until Artemis gives her an old one, has to dig a computer out of the garbage...She _Ain't_ rich. Her mom is. She IS cut off. Sorry that this looks critical! I'm just keeping y'all honest, ha ha, as we say in the south!
I love Greek mythology, and I wonder when Lore Olympus will show Persephone's and Aphrodite falling in love with Adonis, and Persephone sending a boar to kill him vecause he chose to stay on earth/mortal realm instead of the underworld. Zeus is, according to the real mythology, Persephone's father, and he conspired with Hades/Aidoneus (who is technically her uncle) to abduct the goddess when she was a child. I'm not 100% certain if they meant teenager or under, but given the age for marriage in Greece in that era was circa 14 to 16, many scholars also attach the same age range (some go as high as 19 years old).
Honestly, I just got bored with it. The drama just became too much and it kind of seemed like they were dragging their feet with certain plotlines, like the whole trial, and I just didn't want to read it anymore.
do webtoons artists work directly with editors? i'm out of the loop with the process of it all but would have it been more beneficial if the creator had an influential editor to has some criticisms of the story line and art perspective to catch inconsistencies
BRUH did Webtoon really just copyright strike all your Lore Olympus videos?! I was only up to part 3 ): I don't even dislike the comic but abusing TH-cam's system to silence criticism is always such a petty move, not to mention makes you look SO insecure 🙄
i am glad someone make this VIDEO. i gota whatch all !!! but 3 episode buffer? that sort of weird excuse what was bothering her to write everything down? some ppl dont even use buffer lol bcs they spent month to planed down and outline :)
Thanks for the comments! I've noticed you've been commenting on all of our LO videos, we really appreciate the feedback! In regards to the buffer and planning it out, yeah there's definitely a merit to having at the very least a roadmap of sorts as to where the story's going. It doesn't have to be super rigid because plans change and you come up with better ideas, but stuff like major twists and character personalities should be tracked otherwise you end up with inconsistent character writing and plot twists that come out of nowhere...things that LO struggles with a lot as the story goes on.
@@pyrrhic_victoria BECAUSE I WRITE WEBTOON AS WELL- I JUST USING MY SECOND YOUTOBE PHONE ACCOUNT LOL. cuz i fell more confortible so i want support uuuu
![เปิดใจ “ต้นหอม ศกุนตลา” หลังโดนพาดพิงธุรกิจที่เคยทำ และผลกระทบทำถูกปลดฟ้าผ่า! | แฉ 24 ต.ค.67 [2/3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vCi5OIqlxaE/mqdefault.jpg)
I just realized that I inadvertently held ALL comments for review, so sorry about that everyone!! I'll be responding to all of y'all as much as I can. Sorry for the goof!
As a Greek gal, me and almost every other Greek girl I be spoken about this webcomic immensely dislike it for popularizing the idea that hades and persephone is a love story. Yes, the kidnapping of persephone *is* very much a love story, but not between her and hades.
Smythe takes one of the most feminist myths and completely twists it in the abusers favor while villainfing the hero/victim.
Smythe misses the cultural context. How things worked until very recently (our grandma's were the first women to jot have arranged marriages) was that the father of the bride and the groom would strike a deal about the marriage, and then the bride would go where her husband lives, that could be really far away from her home, causing her to rarely is ever seeing her family again.
the myth takes that reality and makes it so the mother steps foot, and demands her child back, after the deal was struck and the girl taken against her will (the myth is named the taking of persephone for a fucking reason) and Demeter succeeds, if not completely, she gets to have her daughter for half a year and that half of the year is when the earth is at its finest, the earth blooms because of the happiness of the goddess of grain and goddess of flowers being together.
Thank you for that explanation, I always love learning more about mythology and culture and this was more enlightening than most things I've read about the Taking of Persephone
Exactly! Although I woudln't go as far as directly blaming Smythe for that. The Abduction of Persephone has been recontextualised as a Romance story so many times before, which, I guess it can work in some contexts (it's a retelling, after all). But making Demeter become a toxic, controlling mother while presenting Hades (which is clearly grooming Persephone) as the good guy is... certainly a curious choice.
YES they turned the love story of a mother and child into this toxic pile icky.
"The earth blooms because the goddess of grain and the goddess of flowers are happy together" is such beautiful phrasing. 😭
fair point.
personally, I like the idea of hades being the nice brother of the big three (cos subversion with his death theme)
I always blame it on Zeus for giving Hades bad advice lol. Then again, I blame Zeus for everything.
I totally get how people being uninformed about myth is grinding your gears though, I feel the same when people are like Snow White was kissed back to life and I am like respectfully no. (I'm german and love fairytales)
however, it's really hard fsr to get proper greek myth info, I always loved Greek mythology but obv the kid version was dumbed down, and apart from the big epics it's hard to find cohesive stories, so perhaps smythe can't really be blamed since perhaps her first impression of hades and persephone was framed positively by some other author/ the internet and then the idea was in her head
LO is successful because it hits all the usual BookTok/romance genera buttons: young female protag without much personality for people to project onto, who then becomes a "girl boss" which she didn't actually earn, male lead that's rich and/or attractive to sweep said girl off her feet, drama and fighting over the girl, other females in the story being "jealous" or blindly simpering to her... LO reads like a self-indulget, self-insert fanfic. I would know; I read a lot of fanfic. Add in the "Greek mythology" (if you can even call it that by the barest whiff it has in there outside of the names, lbrh) and you solidified it. It *absolutely* appeals to the high school/fresh in college female demographic. It also does nothing innovative with said troupes and THAT is my problem, among many others.
I actually felt that too. Great explanation. It seems like she didn't do anything, she just dramatically gets all the powers. Her struggles are also shown in a shallow way.
Don't forget the kind of uncomfortable height differences!!!!!!!!!! :3
Can't forget that our leading lady is also virginal and too innocent and pure for this world. And she's also incredibly and effortlessly conventionally attractive, but has nooo idea that men find her hot. The author also does nothing interesting with these tropes, tbh.
Regarding the female envy point, in "Twilight" (for ex.), Rosalie being envious of Bella actually makes Rosalie's character more interesting; she's truly an old woman trapped in a young body, who'd love to switch places with Bella. In "Lore Olympus," Minthe's jealousy (fear of losing Hades) is shallow/too simply presented.
Is this the female equivalent of pulp novels? Formulaic fiction with no broader ideas
My pet peeve about LO is definitely that the characters just won't stay on model. It's super distracting when their noses change shape so much between consecutive panels that I get confused if I'm looking at the same character when they are even color coded to reduce that confusion.
The graphic design background makes so much sense. The composition and colors are beautiful, but sometimes it's so hard to tell which way the characters are supposed to move or what's even happening in general.
Also the writing is super juvenile. I think I would have loved this comic as a teenager, so I totally get its appeal but it's not for me at this point of time.
i can't find the source, so this is a bit of a 'trust me bro' moment, but iirc, rachel smythe just ... doesnt use character sheets for LO, which leads to that sort of inconsistent effect, especially when she started using other artists
I loved this comic in the beginning. I feel like I overlooked a lot of the issues because I believe this to be her first time doing a comic, and she was all alone. But as time has gone on and the more help she’s gotten the worse things are. And I agree she is not planning ahead for any of this, because everything has become so lost and hollow. I wish she would just hire a ghost writer to finish season 3. :(
Also, I didn’t mind all the plots because I thought we were going somewhere with them, but season 3 is just showing she didn’t plan well enough and we are slapping endings together if we touch on them at all.
Yeah, I don't expect her to go anywhere in terms of the art except where she's already been. While flawed due to the nature of the weekly format, her early art had a lot of charm and originality in the otherwise mostly conformist art of Webtoon. And you could see her really improve, for example, between the first episode and the Tower 4/Tartarus sequences. But nowadays she has 5-8 assistants and the art is somehow getting worse, and despite the decreased physical workload of production the story has also massively declined. It's just such a shame all around.
BTW I've seen your comments on our other videos in this series and I wanted to apologize for the delay in responding to this one - seems I accidentally held the comments on this video for review! I appreciate all of your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy our discussions on LO!
@@pyrrhic_victoria I think I can explain this as a writer/comic artist (never really have published anything yet), I think Webtoon expects her to the manager of the team as the lead author. She's probably being pulled 4 different ways with webtoon wanting more content per chapter (or more chapters in general per month). Also these assistants can't read her mind to see exactly how she wants something drawn. There are other factors like time differences too that end up making communication harder. It's hard to experiment with your work when it's being controlled by another person y'know?
What I don't like is how she takes this opportunity and doesn't improve her writing, since it's her job now more than art. What other author on Webtoon has 8 assistants for a single comic?
It’s not even her first comic. She’s made other comics before, just not a webtoon formatted one.
She’s made multiple comics before LO and they are actually really good with pretty art.
In the mythology, Artemis and Apollo had survived a "childhood" of incredible trauma with only each other as support, including having to support their mother, isolated from the other Gods, even persecuted by some. This made them incredibly codependent on each other. *
This series could have used that sort of history to explain Artemis having a trauma-spawned Blindness to Her brother's (even obvious) flaws. Like neurotically incapable of processing them.
* in the very reductive secularization of the mythology that is the basis for these modern "re-tellings".
I didnt get very far because the r* scene made me incredibly incomfortable, but the treatment of the deep nature of the myths in Lore Olympus... look, I love the whole "modern olympus, ancient mortal world" it's such a good concept and I found the relationship between hades and zeus to be funny af, but to have Apollo, the god of youth, the one guy that protects them, do this? So many more gods would have been more likely...
Like the classic student that spent hours researching the roles of the twins in mythology and their symbolism just cannot not get annoyed to death with that
@@adrasthe314 It's because even today, Apollo is a popular god. I bet you that's why.
@@IceQueen975 more than just that, I feel like it has a lot to do with the jock caracterisation that he ends up getting in most modern medias simply because he's the guy in charge of the sun 😮💨
@@adrasthe314 "Apollo, filled with lust for Daphne, attempts to rape her. Even after she is turned into a tree, Apollo kisses her and gropes her bark. Jupiter is no better. He lusts after Io, rapes her, and turns her into a cow when his wife gets suspicious."
@@sommerblume9671 so I went back to ovid's metamorphosis book 1, the section where there is the myth of apollo and daphne and I checked both the French (I'm a francophone) version and the latin version (I'm a classic student at uni level so I had to learn latin lol). If I roughly translate the passage 1.550, I get something that goes along the lines of Apollo felt Daphne's hurting thumping behind the bark as he touched it and then he kissed it, but the bark (ie daphne) didn't want it. The precise word used in latin is oscula (plural of osculum) which Gaffiot tells me means either small mouth or kisses. Still not consensual, but like, very different from actual r*pe. Though like, let us not forget greco-roman myths have like a billion variations (@Ariadne and Theseus; there's like 3 main versions) so it may be different in other myths
I *am* curious though about the quotations mark you used (genuinely!) I'm assuming you cited something? I'm kind of curious about it, perhaps I could learn something new there? Would you mind sharing it with me? :)
when I loved this comic in the past I did feel sympathetic for minthe, but I was always conflicted bc rachel would first paint her like a sympathetic character and then all of a sudden painting her as an abusive bitch
Minthe is SUCH an underrated character. I think her sympathetic nature is ironically completely unintentional and the character-assassinating slap was a response to all of the sympathy she was getting in the comments.
Hot take, but I also think Minthe has more chemistry with Hades (from what we've seen). Persephone and Hades are so incredibly BORING, especially now.
I took that as Minthe's internal conflict. Like that's all she knows and is struggling (or afraid?) to let it go. I see a lot of characters and family trying to change. There's a slip.
I heard at one point RS was writing her to have Borderline Personality Disorder, but later retconned this when Minthe was getting her “redemption” arc. All of her conflicting feelings about herself were watered down to the result of bad parenting, and suddenly she gets to take care of kids and all her problems dissolved.
@@beedoesthings8037 this was over the time of 10 years tho like she didn't just woops I'm better. And on top of that she had a lot of time to reflect as a plant.
This webtoon isn't perfect but it's my kind of trash so 🤷🏽
To each there own.
@@pyrrhic_victoria The sympathy is absolutely intentional. She mimics real life people who self-sabotage by acting out and get defensive when they have to face their own flaws. The only thing I would criticise with her writing is that her development into a better person is rushed. It felt a little like the author wanted to give her a happy ending within the story and couldn't fit it in properly.
Yes! Acknowledgment that hades sucks and is also an abuser , and minthe is underrated and deserves better! She had interesting writing , personality, and lore, and yet she was tossed to the way side to make the otp look better. Just look how she and persephone contrast throughout said comic. There are definitely elements of purity culture there. Am I defending an abuser? No. (I see that argument a fair bit when people bring up minthe. It's okay to like chaotic characters , just be honest about them. )but I know for a fact that hades wasn't any better and got off pretty much Scott free for it, as well as most the ugly things he's done in said comic. He does have financial power over her among other things. I wish more focus was on Minthe, honestly. Missed opportunity.
Oh yeah great callout on the purity culture dichotomy between Minthe and Persephone!! How does one who goes into a work to "deconstruct purity culture" accidentally write that...? I also think it's significant/sinister that the other contrast highlighted between the two is Minthe's relative sophistication, age, and sexual confidence. Even her color, red, connotes more of the maturity and confidence of a woman whereas pink is connoted way more with girlishness and purity.
I don't consider Minthe to be an abuser by the comic's own logic because in the early episodes Hecate slapped Hades silly and even dragged her nails down his face and Hades nearly killed that paparazzi guy for KoMeDy, but when 90 lb Minthe slaps Hades we're meant to feel like she crossed a line. The framing of Minthe's "abuse" was so sudden, utterly lacked buildup, and didn't even match the established moral tone of the comic to the point that it just came off as character assassination. In the episode prior to the slap where we see Minthe getting manipulated by Thetis, she was getting a lot of positive comments, after all...
Thanks for watching and leaving a comment!
@@pyrrhic_victoria before that whole character assassination moment I honestly thought minthe and hades were just going to grow apart and break up
@@friendlyghosthost1830 me too, but Rachel chose to continue to pit women against each other. That's all I see in this comic is women attacking each other for the favor of a man
The more and more I learn about Lore Olympus, the more I am convinced this is just like.... a case of "The Author's Poorly Disguised Fetish"
Its a self indulgent age gap fantasy about being swooped off your feet by a rich hot older man with a plot just kinda stitched together to make excuses for these things to happen. It's not inherently wrong to create stories with that kind of fantasy, its just kind of a shame that it grew in popularity under pretenses of being more subversive or ambitious than it really is, and then really didn't examine itself or what it was doing.
The thing with Apollo not really showing any signs of being an assaulter is that they often don't show signs IRL. They are often great at acting like they're not bad people who would do something like that. This often is a big reason victims go unbelieved, cause "I know him! He's a good guy! He would never!" So I find the idea that Apollo wasn't obvious about this side of him fairly realistic.
Edit: Also, a r@pist's friends and family will often be the last people to believe this person is in fact not all he's cracked up to be and are also often huge victim blamers
Really solid points!
But I think there Were signs that Apollo has dysfunctional ideas about how men and women relate...I got Control Freak vibes from Him way early.
Yeah, I remember thinking he was a creep even before what he did
If I remember correctly, he felt kind of patronizing towards Persephone IMO. But I do get how someone might not pick up on that
Yes! Also, my friend was assaulted in a similar way (they partner pushed them and didn’t listen when they withdrew consent) and it took 2 months for my friend to register that they were assaulted. The entire time he acted like he normally did, and he even defended his actions as normal when it came out he did that to multiple people. Usually with that, they don’t realize they are wrong. They just want to be in control
"Apollo, filled with lust for Daphne, attempts to rape her. Even after she is turned into a tree, Apollo kisses her and gropes her bark. Jupiter is no better. He lusts after Io, rapes her, and turns her into a cow when his wife gets suspicious."
almost fully through the podcast episode and i never really realized how time crunched the whole comic was! The reason I tolerated season one was because I had interpreted episodes 1-70 to be over six months, not five fucking days oh my god. This also puts the whole comic under a really scary lens also. In 5 days, nay 120 HOURS Persephone-the-nineteen-year-old gets drugged, raped, bought out, media-ambushed, groomed, a new job, a scholarship revoked, visited TARTUS, and gets attacked by the dead. On top of that its depicted in this interpretation that she's had MANY sheer encounters with older male gods BEFORE all of this, like when she was what? 16? 14? there is some huge timing issues with this comic
I didn’t realize how close together everything was either until watching this. Really makes me question the writing even more.
I have two major problems with how the myth is interpreted in lore Olympus.
1. Persephone was actually like REALLY feared by mortals, she was almost definitely as, if not more feared than Hades and her name was used in some curses (so why is she, as Eros puts it, a cinnamon bun?)
2. Persephone was raped not once but twice and it wasn't Apollo, it was Zeus and Zeus was also her father (in the original myths)
Here's one bonus issue I have with it!
the Psyche and Eros myth is decently accurate, except Psyche had to complete deadly tasks to see Eros again, she wasn't Aphrodite's shopping buddy, she was more like her punching bag (Of course take this with a grain of salt cause I stopped reading the comic by maybe episode 80, 90ish)
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong cause this is basically all just knowledge I gained 2 years ago so some of it might be inaccurate given my faulty memory
Every point you make is (refreshingly) totally accurate. Most modern "retellings" of Greek myth, (esp. Medusa) grow out of a secularizing reduction that ends up bastardizing the meaning in the myth. I wish I could correct every instance that this occurs online, and give us back the value of the symbols. Not just the deconstructed modern fails.
I kept reflecting on how since Psyche's final task requires She find a way into Hades to get something from Persephone...better planning could have told the whole traditional Psyche story, wrapped up in soapy LO style drama, which could have satisfied the YA junkies AND the mythology fanatics that read her!
@@lullabi3234 I totally agree. I think really the only reason they don't show Aphrodite doing this to Pysche is because they want to keep it sweet and lovey but it also makes me think why did they depict other characters horribly (Apollo) but not aphrodite?
@@You-lw7cn Yeah she obviusly isn't trying to make Aphrodite a friend or mentor in the first season at all (I've only seen 1st season so far) so yeah, why the soft hand?
That said, there's an argument for Aphrodite sending Psyche on her trials as an act of maternal love, for both Eros AND Psyche, in versions of the myth historically, so leaning into those elements, a modern re-teller can easily give us an Aphrodite who we are Terrified of and stomps us into the ground, but *plot twist* suddenly and smoothly reveals Herself as an Aphrodite we can love gushingly and know we can rely on for the rest of the series...
And seriously, why does she use Apollo as her "Toxic Masculinity" pincushion? His (in secular reduction oversimplicity language) assshole tendencies towards women weren't in the date-rape spectrum, more in the "way too harsh responses to offenses" stuff...Poseidon and Hermes are more (to ignore any symbolic interpretation and lean on a lazy literal take on the myths) "rapey" than Apollo...
@@You-lw7cn but honestly, I can personally accept the rapey Apollo because I have been playing with the question of how different Sun Gods and Sun-Associated Gods (Apollo isn't the actual Sun, right?) would be seen in a kind of Chthonic "Sun In The Underworld" or "Nocturnal Sun" version of themselves, and some of the results are sociopathic as fvc*...
but I'm attention seeking now, so gonna get tf out of comment sections for a while, lol
Thanks for keeping some Dignity in the myths, while it's become the hot shit to make toilet paper out of em!
This is what we call interpretation or inspiration, it's a right to do something new
I always thought the Minthe's ears change to reflect her insecurities about dating a God because of lore olympus class rankings she would sometimes changes her ears to look more like a Goddess instead of a nymph. But I guess it's just one of the many things not explored more in depth.
I think it's an art mistake. Thetis later makes a comment about her "getting her ears done" like through plastic surgery or something. And there's no remarking about it in the story itself to indicate that it's intentional. I suppose it could be, but there are so many instances of glaring art mistakes that I wouldn't be surprised if this is another thing to add to the list.
Thanks for leaving a comment!
I'm still in the process of listening, but I love what I'm hearing so far. Hades is so icky, I'm rereading and there's a part in the early chapters when he unbuttoned his shirt cause he misinterpreted Persephone in wanting to sleep with him. 🤢 And when he talked about her mom when it came to about why he was single. Idk why that STILL didn't turn Persephone away, but yuck yuck.
GOT TO THE SEX IN THE KITCHEN PART! DISREGARD!
Yeah Hades certainly is SOMETHING, and probably not what Rachel at all intended. I think he gets even worse as the story goes on somehow!!
Thanks for leaving a comment, and apologies for the late reply - it turns out I accidentally held all comments for review (whoops...)
In all fairness there were only 6 gods total at the time so... the dating pool was quite shallow & it was idk literally thousands of years ago.
It's not the fact that he dated or considered dating her mom that bothers me, it's how he talks about her. Later on in Ep 210 we see Hades and Demeter interact and he comes off as a misogynist tool who doesn't like Demeter because she's assertive and speaks her mind vs simpering and childlike *cough* Persephone *cough*. The fact that Demeter is coded as Hillary Clinton-lite doesn't help matters.
@@Mocha_x_svt I kind of take your last part of you being a smartass, so I will answer accordingly. You need to reread the chapter [it's chapter 28] and actually think it through. Why does Hades bring up Demeter as a former potential love interest to his CURRENT one, her DAUGHTER? Does that not rub you the wrong way? Even Persephone herself didn't want to hear it.
2:18:41 the pomegranate is linguistically named 'apple of seeds' and the product naming convention seems to echo tech companies so basically Hades's brand is. Seedy apple.
I personally would have made it so Persephone was just supposed to meet up with Artemis at the party, but something interrupts Artemis (maybe a minor myth) leaving Persephone (who's a couple hundred years old, isolated from Olympus for all those years and riding a freedom high) on her own. Then Eros happens, she vomits and cries in front of everyone, and Hades takes it upon himself to get her a hotel room to recover, also using it as an excuse to get away from the party and sleeps on the couch. Queue drunk trauma ramblings, an awkward Hades, and a regretful hungover Persephone who feels the need to prove herself to the rest of Olympus after her bad first impression.
This would have been a way better introduction!
God I wish she had been a couple years old in the comic isn’t she like 19???? It’s been years since i touched it because the behninnig just turned me off so bad
@@_TSC_46 Or change the relationship dynamic. Like they could be just uncle and niece, with Hades spending time with her as a parental figure because Zues doesn't bother and the whole kidnapping and marriage part of the greek lore could be a rumor.
Right! Then that way, Hades and Persephone can bond over being outcasts/ social pariahs (though, Smythe's version of Hades doesn't come across as a cold, intimidating, rejected bachelor).
I hated that persephones SA was sorta dangled over the viewer. Instead of exploring it and seeing her heal at a good pace, we got small teases (for lack of a better word) and as you pointed out we get more panels of hades sexualisng then we do of her inner turmoil.
I also expected her virginity cult thing would be explored more. It felt like it would be a theme - she's been SA yet she's in a virginity cult, feels theme worthy. I don't think Racheal had the guts or know how to do so. I've been reading a book on Virginity and the history of its concept (Preforming Virginity by Kathleen Coyne Kelly) and there's some really interesting interpretations on how virginity is reconciled with SA through history that are so relevant today. Like I wonder how exactly did she do her research.
What was pretty weird was the fandom after the thing with Apollo. I know the fans are young but still. Basically they thought that this story was accurate to greek mythology. And I've heard of hellenistic people who pray to Apollo who were harassed online for worshipping him, because of this webtoon. Like wtf? The Apollo from LO has nothing to do with greek mythology Apollo.
It’s nice to see a more nuanced discussion about this comic, and as an aspiring comic book writer your tips are very much appreciated!
Thanks for the feedback! We're also quite amateur as we're still confined to the canvas ghetto and haven't managed to monetize our comics yet, but we've been aspiring storytellers for years now. We like breaking down content like this to understand what makes the story tick - it helps us learn how to craft better stories ourselves when we see what works and what doesn't!
webcomics being a new thing is so weird since i've been reading them since probably 2005. back when drunk duck webcomics and smackjeeves were the dominating hubs. i gotta say the rapid, and sudden, corporatization of the medium due to korea and japan getting in on it is alien. webcomics now are such a far cry from the indie passion projects of the early 2000's. there are still a lot out there like that but the culture is so different, there are so many social rules now, and indie passion projects don't get near as much attention as the new mainstream, copy/paste stuff made my underpaid, over worked korean artists.
Corporations saw the value of webcomics and now are cashing big on them at the expense of creators. This is why I really advise people to just publish their web comic on their own website or sell their comic as a ebook on Amazon. The problem is that most of these web comics are either terribly written or artistically mediocre and wouldn't actually succeed anywhere but on Webtoons.
@@Nopeasaurus yeah it's sad. with the recent info leak about how webtoons treats their creators, i imagine a lot of the issues stem from poor work conditions, and corporate push for quantity over quality. doesn't help with how corporatized things have become its gotten harder for indie creators since readers are now getting used to unreasonably massive weekly updates, and certain aesthetics. there are good places to go like comicfury, hiveworks and spiderforest, but very few people have heard of them outside of the webcomic community. plus the former two require applications, and your work to be a certain quality, sooooo most of these 3D asset, generic looking webtoons probably wouldn't cut it.
Ok so I know I'm a month late but great video! Admittedly I've been hesitant to really speak out against Lore Olympus as a fellow Webtoon author, as I've been worried that people might see me as "attacking other creators", so this video is like a breath of fresh air. What bothers me with Lore Olympus's big cast is that Smythe COULD have made it work. Shonen casts are often very large, and while there are definitely some characters that get more love by the author than others, with enough time and care(and planning) they can flesh out multiple story arcs and characters. Also I love seeing more people talk about Cursed Princess Club! I love that series so much that when I first binged the series I couldn't put it down. Great job on the video and I can't wait to watch the other parts :)
I feel the same way about Cursed Princess Club, but it does have a similar problem to Lore Olympus in its depiction of abuse and violence. Gwendolyn's insecurity is always presented seriously, even with some horror elements. Things like King Leland's emotional, verbal and physical abuse of his family as well as torture (and possibly rape, if you read between the lines in Whitney's backstory about his family's treatment of political prisoners) are either presented neutrally or as a joke.
Haven't watched the full video yet, but so far you guys expressed my feelings about Lore Olympus pretty much exactly. I was never on the 'hater' camp but can't fall in love with the comic, either. There's some things it does alright, the artstyle and concept are appealing, but there are other areas where it falls flat. Inconsistencies in characters' behavior and the overall story, 'missing' panels that are needed to follow the story, as well as many scenes that are unnecessary to the plot and are just there to be 'cute/funny', all like you said. There's so many missed opportunities in this comic, but with webtoon's working schedule I understand that it's neigh impossible to make the comic the way Rachel might have intended. Anyway, thanks for uploading, I'll be watching the other video soon. :)
Thanks! Yeah, my feelings pretty much echo yours in the beginning, but as this comic goes on the absolute nosedive in quality yet persistent popularity has to be seen to be believed. Pretty much everything that can get worse, does - it's pretty shocking since I dropped the comic sometime in season 2 and only came back earlier this year. Hopefully the rest of the series is interesting to you from that perspective.
And sorry for responding to this comment so late! I accidentally held all comments for review, but we really appreciate your feedback!
@@pyrrhic_victoria Np! I’ve actually been reading the newer chapters along with the rest of your review and I gotta say, everything is spot on. This is by far the best and most in-depth critique of the comic I’ve seen so far. Can't wait for more from your guys (Lore Olympus-related or not)!
your analysis is deeply appreciated but i can't stop admiring how your outfits match so nicely with the green & blood-orange combo lol super cute!
I've always hated this comic so this review is just what I need. You two really explain the issues eloquently in a detailed way. I am totally here for this dragging.
Hahaha. I hope you keep watching, as we're quite fair to the webtoon when it was at its peak in episodes 1-50, but everything from there is a swift ride deep downhill.
Thanks for the comment!
The art composition is great and there's some interesting concepts in here, but the plot is just bad. It comes off as if EL James wrote Percy Jackson
@@Tareltonlives yeah the art is so good and the story starts off okay (kinda creepy in parts) but it quickly turns into an ugly mess. It's shocking how fast it completely nosedived
I think the timing is extremely difficult for Webtoon's weekly format. There were a few comics I got into at a later point, so I could binge through at least 50+ episodes. Once I reach the latest episode though and the weekly waiting starts, I often start to enjoy a series less. Even something like I Love Yoo, that I really like. Right now there's this flashback arc, that I also like. But it's been going since like half a year or so? It absolutely kills any pace the story had before. I understand creators want to show stuff. But you really have to think about if you can drag an arc or a scene over a span of several weeks or months and what you can do to keep people engaged (and I don't mean harsh cliffhangers, those get boring too when they happen every week).
I agree 100% and I'm not sure to what extent that's being pushed on creators by the editors at webtoon since it seems to pervade all of the top series on the app. I think LO is a special case, though, because it has some of the most *inefficient* writing I've ever seen, especially in the recent episodes. How many panels are just copy/pastes with no dialogue that achieve nothing from a story perspective? It feels a lot like stalling in the latest episodes.
If we were to do a rewrite we'd like to remain independent and approach the series in a goal-oriented way with the storytelling being paramount to the writing. I think that's the crux of where LO lost its way - leaning into the fluff and fanservice to the detriment of the plot, and this coincided with the art taking a huge quality dip.
Thanks for leaving a comment!!
@@pyrrhic_victoria I guess you're correct. It's similar with Let's Play actually. The more the series progresses, the more 4th wall break and fanservice stuff seems to happen. To a point where I'm just annoyed. Frankly, I am quite late to Webtoon, I discovered it 1.5 years ago. Not once was LO marketed to me an I only started reading it a week or so ago because I read some bad stuff about it. Now that I catched up I watched some videos about it. Because honestly, I did enjoy it very much. I basically binged through the whole thing. I'm also honest that the bad boy trope is kiiiinda a guilty pleasure of mine, but I'm 27 and understand that that's stupid irl. What got me were the comments. Like, what is wrong with a huge amount of commenters? And that was when I started second guessing the comic. And I also realized that I would definitely have dropped it, if I did not have had the possibility to read ~220 episodes at once but instead would have waited for years for the story to get somewhere. What's also a weird thing with Webcomics is the timeline. In sooooo many Webtoons stuff happens within a span of a couple of weeks. So realistically, you can't expect that much character/relationship development. But for readers it's not weeks, it's often 2-4 years. That makes pacing also pretty whacky. You don't have that issue with books, because you can read them within a few days. And with graphic novels that get a new issue once a year or so you also avoid this problem because 1, you don't follow the characters through the whole year but it's more like an event and 2, one issue of a graphic novel covers much more plot than weekly episodes. For me, the weekly publishing is both cool and shit at the same time and I don't really know how that shit part can be handled. Especially because, as you said, editors seem to push for certain things.
@@Eagle_Owl2 mybtake with this comic is that if you binge and don't thing too much about it, you can enjoy, but the moment that you start to question things, or worst, see the timeline, it is like a house of cards falls apart.
But what is your take about everything post trial? I'm really having a hard time with LO right now, the characters feel off, specially the side characters, and I can't stand Persephone and Hades right now
I'm (Victoria) actually writing reddit posts on the Unpopular Lore Olympus sub for each new episode that comes out in S3. It's GOD AWFUL. The commentary mostly centers on the art and the story in the episode itself, so you'll get a wider view when we get to that part in our videos, but in the meantime you can read my breakdowns if you need something to tide you over :)
This is our reddit profile: www.reddit.com/user/pyrrhic_victoria/submitted/
I think if they approached it like manga, it would be able to cover a lot more ground in the story in a single week's episode. Manga is black and white and the average chapter is at least twice as long as a webtoon chapter. Unfortunately it seems like the audience is being primed more for colored art and weekly dope-hits over following a continuing, complex story which simply can't be produced in color by a single artist alone. The writing for most webtoons as a result focuses on fanservice or comedy instead of storytelling because it's inefficient to do so in only 80 colored panels. If the audience accepted black and white or limited palette art and was interested in following a more complex narrative, that would help alleviate the writing quality issues. Webtoon also doesn't train their artists or exercise heavy editing control unlike manga publishers and seems to encourage this dope-hit tropey writing besides, compounding the issue.
I have a lot more to say and quite honestly we could do an entire video just based on our experience with webtoon as it, uh, wasn't very good lol
Apollo was one of my favorite gods, so when I saw the role she put him in, I didn't think I would read it. I read a bit and found so many problems with the story, the tons of characters that their colors tend to overlap, so I'll get characters confused, and I couldn't continue.
I actually really liked the art at the beggining more than later on. Poeple say it got better, I think it just got more basic, more how poeple should look like and it diverted from how original and different it was from everything else. Now its just people with different skin color, but before it had a special artistic flare to it. After the art changed and the story was not progressing I stopped reading it.
This! The art style is what drew me in initially, although it might look more polished for some now, to me it just missing the original aura that made it different. Without that art aspect and the plot defects just makes you loose interest
1:28:00 yeah I would have preferred to spend a few chapters exploring Pers coping with Her assault, and only picking up on the courtship stuff after we've spent time with the Aftermath.
Also y'alls spreadsheet format looks hella useful!
I used to be a LO fan, but after reading some criticism, like the age gap, and Persephone’s Mary Sue-ness, then the plot just kept getting bigger and emptier, and the episodes started to drag with endless plot hangers, I lost interest. While I think the story had merit, I think it lost it
Minthe is easily the most interesting and well-written character in this series don’t @ me 😂
Edit - the algorithm gave me these videos today, and I only got to episode 2 before Webtoon had them removed lmao.
They really and truly can’t handle criticism of their biggest property
Yesss, i was just gonna comment on that. I was really disappointed as I was watching this series because of its useful insights into scriptwriting and character writing and now it’s gone. Hopefully they can get it back up :( !!
She really is. I loved how in depth Minthe's character was and every stan would get pissy at me for defending her and pointing out that Rachel wrote her that way so why call her names! I'm glad she's doing better and she and Persephone aren't friends but I think they ok
Oh and to add to the very end: a popular webtoon that is wholesome with great writing, gorgeous art, unexpected twists, awesome setup and payoff, and a cute romance has to be Castle Swimmer!
Yh, Lore Olympus had potential but it was biting more than it could chew, while the author of Castle Swimmer takes the story, themes and characters into consideration and even cuts or redoes old plot ideas or characters when she feels it won't work with the story (because e.g. no space for said plot or too many characters to focus on).
I’m here as a Punderworld/Mythology fan that has never read Lore Olympus but really enjoyed your breakdown of the series.
Thanks for this comment! We really appreciate the feedback. And sorry for the long delayed reply, I didn't realize that I'd accidentally held all comments for review until just now!
Another Punderworld fan! Woot!
Punderworld is INFINANTLY more respectful to the source myth and has WAY more interesting characterization and art.
I fricken love Plunderworld, I can’t wait till there’s more of it! I respect that creator wayyyyy more than LO
They took all of your videos down!!! I was just watching them. I hope you guys can get this resolved soon :(
Yep we just made a community post and Pyrrhic's working on a short addressing the "issue."
Thanks for letting us know and thanks for watching :)
LO is a little overrated but it’s not a bad thing. 2 major criticism, for me at least, is the art style mainly the height inconsistencies mainly with Persephone and the other female cast. They fluctuates a lot but that’s more of a nitpick. Second criticism is that we hardly see the story through the pov of the other characters. I know that it’s a retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth but we the Eros and Psyche myth and during the trial and Persephone’s banishment we barely see anyone else’s pov.
I think especially after episode 50 or so it becomes highly overrated and downright pretty awful, especially starting in season 2. Hopefully you'll be able to see our perspective as you continue to watch! Yeah, the art had always been inconsistent but it had a lot of passion and originality in it in the beginning so I didn't fault it for that. I moreso despise the current apparent lack of effort or care for the art and the continually nonsensical story.
I think it's not so much the limited POV that bothers me in that respect, it's the constant introduction of characters and plots that get dropped left, right, and center as the comic goes on and becomes more and more entwined around Hades and Persephone as the center of its universe.
Thanks so much for the comment! Sorry for the delayed response - it seems I accidentally held all comments for review somehow.
Can't wait for more. Also I did not notice the light going down at all, I was legit surprised when you turned the light on.
Thanks for that!! Luckily now we've invested in some proper lighting so we're no longer relying on the pesky sun for our videos. Also, apologies for the delay in response - I somehow accidentally held all comments for review. I appreciate the comment!
I LOVE both your styles so much. I love your channel's theme & the casual color coordination. And I adore people talking about art & story structure for hours on end. About to binge thru your whole channel
Thanks so much!! Hope you enjoy :)
I think the whole story could have benefited if we were to follow Psyche. Think about it. Shes a human turned into a nymph and send to olympus. Throu Psyches eyes we could explore all three realms(because later in myth Psyche needed to go to underworld for Persephones beauty). Throu her eyes we could also see just how oppressed nymphs are and how they face rasism from gods.
I'm not a huge fan of Lore Olympus (I got bored of it, and I found the story and characters hard to follow) but I can understand why so much emphasis is put of Hades rather than Persephone if we imagine it more like a women's fantasy, kinda like 50 Shades. I've always felt like Persephone is so undefined and generic bc the writer and fans are putting themselves into her shoes. Just like Anastasia Steel, you're supposed to easily step into her role to engage with a fantasy where a very attractive, rich, powerful, closed off man suddenly can't think about anything but you. Maybe you feel lonely and ditzy and insecure in the rest of your life, but now you get to feel really important because you've managed to earn love and softness from someone who's usually very cold simply by virtue of who you are, no real effort required. I think that's why Persephone flip flops so much between innocent and flirtatious too. No matter how sanitized the webtoon becomes it's clearly (imo) meant to invoke the ideas of an erotic fantasy. And there's a lot of appeal in the idea that you (the one indulging in the fantasy) can be sexually appealing while also being sweet and innocent. It kinda aligns with the "born sexy yesterday" trope.
Like I said I'm not a fan of the webtoon itself, and when made to stand on two legs as a narrative it definitely falls flat. But when serving the purpose of fantasy fuel I think it does fairly well. Also, obviously not all women are going to enjoy fantasy material like this, and not only women can enjoy said material. But I'm just saying it has merit to people who do.
I mean, you’re not wrong. As someone that was an early patreon supporter of LO, 50% of her patron content was her going through each chapter and talking about her intent for each panel, and the other half was just her drawing explicit smut of the OTP. There’s nothing wrong with the obviously, NSFW art is still art! But that was clearly the original intent of the comic, and I think it’s important we are honest with ourselves about that
@@LikeTheProphet That's honestly really good to know! I've watched all 11 (as of writing this) of these review videos now and seeing how the comic declines in quality makes me really think putting it on Webtoon and making it this long story with a ton of plot wasn't what the creator actually wanted or cared about. It's just what Webtoon required to make it profitable. Maybe she wouldn't have gotten as much money or become as popular, but personally I think Rachel would've made a much more cohesive comic that she enjoyed making if she did a suggestive (or even fully NSFW) comic and posted it on Gumroad while posting teasers/supplemental content on her twitter and tumblr.
Wait, wtf, did all the videos got taken down… I was just listening and suddenly they just disappeared 😒
Really enjoy them, loved the work, honestly I never payed much attention to those details, been following the comic for so long I never realized all the issues it had. I mean I just enjoyed it less and wasn’t expecting each chapter every week, it’s sad. Hope more comes out soon. Maybe, you mentioned Unordinary, would be interesting, idk, or any other comic❤
Yep *someone* didn't like us talking about the comic hahaha.
Don't worry, they'll be back soon as the strikes are clearly farcical.
I love seeing your perspectives! I haven't seen such a great criticism of the comic before, in video form I mean.
Wow thanks for the compliment! I've seen your other comments on our other videos, so sorry for not seeing this one - looks like I accidentally held all comments for review on this video. Appreciate the feedback and hope the series continues to be interesting for you!
Came from Reddit, gonna put this on while I play sims.
Side note, amazing vibes outfit wise. I love the makeup and outfits as much as I despise LO.
Thanks!! We're both big lovers of fashion here. Sorry for the long delay in responding to this comment, I accidentally held all comments for review. Hopefully the rest of the series is interesting to you, and yeah...sharing that last sentiment ESPECIALLY as the series goes on and gets worse, and worse, and...even worse. Appreciate the comment!
I loved Lore Olympus at first. I stopped reading a long time ago.
I lost interest when the photos were deleted off of Apollo’s phone. I don’t know if Rachel brought that particular plot point back around but she’d made such an issue of it and then, poof! They were gone.
Also I had started feeling gross about Hades and Persephone. Yes. They are immortal gods. No, they are not human. So the age difference doesn’t matter in technical terms.
HOWEVER. I kept waiting for Rachel to show that either Persephone was not as naive and immature, not as helpless or as fragile, as we believed. To put her on a more equal footing with Hades.
She never did. Persephone just kept having stuff handed to her because she was cute.
I wasn’t into it. Also the pacing sucked all throughout what I read.
I know nothing about Greek mythology or anything so I had no issues there. But overall it stopped being enjoyable.
I read somewhere that perse's naivity, is actually her masking her actual intelligence and that the chess scene was proof of that.
In the chess scene specifically I believe it was intentional. I think she is *unintentionally* characterized as a manipulative schemer in other instances, though - e.g., when she blackmails Minthe, how she treats the paparazzi guy in the hospital, and her interaction with Ares in the mortal realm. I wish we got a self-aware Machiavellian master manipulator who played people like she plays chess, but alas - her intelligence outside of this scene is pretty dull, and her characterization for the most part is very inconsistent.
I've seen your comments on our other videos and I wanted to thank you for leaving so much feedback! Sorry for the delay in responding to this one - looks like I accidentally held all comments on this video for review. Thanks again!
@@pyrrhic_victoria i want to support your video because i find them very informative. you guys go into a lot of detail. my only problem is that i sometimes don't know where you guys are since i haven't read it in years but that doesn't stop my enjoyment. 👍
@@kendybanana3815 We'll try to make it easier to follow starting with timestamps correlating to each episode we discuss for those trying to read along with us! Thank you so much for your kind words :)
I've never read Lore Olympus, I don't like the Hades/Persephone myth so I just didn't even bother with it, (despite the concept of dating or loving death being a favourite trope or beat of mine) but I have always been intensely fascinated by it (how and why it got so popular, how it uses the framework of the myths to construct it's story and world, where it differs etc), so I am quite happy to be watching several hours of content. Can't say I'm particularly upset that I didn't go read it.
I personally don’t hate the myth, the Hymn to Demeter. What I do hate is the treatment of the myth as time goes by. The myth is a story of mourning between a mother and daughter. Persephone was around 11 when Hades kidnapped her and the story was about Demeter’s sorrow. But since like the 2010’s with the tumblr era people have turned it into a angsty love story where Demeter is the bad guy for wanting to keep her daughter safe. The only reason why it was romanticized so much is because of the concept of the goddess of spring and the god of death being in love with each other and people think he’s loyal to Persephone. In the myth Hades was married to someone he loved very much and was distraught by her death before kidnapping Persephone. And after marrying Persephone he cheats with minthe and Persephone has a “he’s mine” argument with Aphrodite about a mortal🥲😅
@@bobaparadise9419 Do share which wife Haides had before Persephone. And I have read the actual Hymn to Demeter which is our most complete version. The only two loves he has ever been associated with besides Persephone were Leuke and Minthe. The myth of Haides and Persephone is actually a marriage ritual gone awry. Ancient Greek weddings involved the bride's family mourning her. I'm not going to get way into it (and I've looked into this a lot because this is part of my religion), but when you understand the myth in its ancient context, there's a reason why Persephone is treated as equally feared as her husband.
As a fellow creator I really like this analysis of Lore olympus. The part where you talked about pacing and character interactions struck with me as I'm working on the follow up episodes for my call to action webtoon and in an early episode was going to hint at 5-6 characters but the first of them doesn't show up for at least 8-10 episodes which would be like 4 months in real time. so I realized i should move that scene back closer to when they start getting introduced. this is great sound for when working on my own stuff.
When you said this was first on Tublr everything came into place. I 100% agree that this was a series of imagined scenes and moments and good ideas that were set up poorly and very rarely followed through or explored the consequences of.
Her assault from Apollo was shocking to me because it reflected my SA and I wanted to badly for it to be explored and persephone to process and heal from it. But I stopped reading when I realize it was just a plot device to make the mc more sympathetic.
I didn't realize how validating it would be to have somebody side with minthy as well! Stumbled on your video and sat and watched the whole thing. Your views are pretty much spot on with mine. I originally started reading cause I liked the art style but within a few chapters often found my self liking minthy and finding hades and persephone cringey but couldn't really place it. It wasn't until you pointed out that not only is the timing within a few days but you're right, she never gushes about him back. Ironically she did more character development for minthy and did it well. That coupled with the straight up obvious Mary Sue ish tendencies left me rooting for minthe. By the chapter u ended on for the video I was hate reading. Still am actually, mostly for the art. Thank you for putting my critique of the show into a more eloquent summary, subscribed!
A thing that bugs me is how in season one Apollo isn’t really threatening. It’s like the writer is scared to ever have Persephone be afraid of him, like it’ll make her weak.
It’s this weird thing where Apollo needs to desire Persephone and go crazy for her (because she’s the main character), never be a threat to her (because she’s the girlboss main character) and also be a terrible person (because Hades is her love interest).
It’s boring. It really feels like she wrote in the sexual assault just to make Apollo worse. If you take it out their relationship could be more interesting.
HOW IS YOUR CHANNEL THIS SMALL??????? ive been listening to the whole video while working on my stuff and its sooo high quality!!
Thanks man!! Really happy to hear that haha. Well, we just started making videos a month and a half ago and our equipment/setup is admittedly a bit crap - hopefully that'll be solved this upcoming Black Friday. And, of course, all our viewers' support has been helping us grow pretty fast :)
Thanks again!
I really enjoyed listening to this take.
I really wanted to enjoy lore Olympus, I loved the unique style it had even if it wasnt as technically polished as other works. I was really interested in seeing how the story would turn out just based on the premise and art alone. And while I dont hate it, I cant get myself to really like it even tho I really thought that I would.
The way you guys analysed this was really interesting and I enjoyed it immensely compared to other critiques of Lore Olympus! I also really like the way you talk and discuss things.
Something I liked about persephone was her relatability. She was an heiress, but she had no money to her name, had never worked a job before, and was living for free in someone else's house. She tried not to ask for money, she cooked for artemis in some parts, and she insisted on paying people back or paying for stuff herself. She got her laptop by digging around in a garbage bin. This changed once she started dating hades and he just bought her everything and she accepted it. It was a total 180 for her
Yeah- adding to your point (I commented this on another vid), 🚨SPOILER: Persephone bought her own apartment in the Underworld following her 10 yr. sentence, cause Hades gave her a salary (a salary she wasn't supposed to earn as an intern), which was sitting in the bank during those 10 yrs. It was presented as a "girl boss" moment, but (again) that was only made possible by Hades.
The video is on the web archive now but clementines criticism of the at the time top 4-5 webtoon comics was sooo good.
I watched it a year or so ago! Shame that they felt they had to remove it because of the backlash, I remember their criticism being really, really good.
Rachel went rabid on your channel after seeing your LO videos lol
Oh hey, I just found your awesome podcast! Your takes are nuanced and I can totally understand where you're coming from. Also you guys look fabulous, love your colors and set up 🙌🫶
Thanks pal! In addition to storytelling, we're also both quite interested in fashion and aesthetic. Appreciate the feedback!
@@pyrrhic_victoria Yeah you guys looked really great! love your styles
When I first started reading a Lore Olympus, I really like it and really didn’t think of the flaws. Watching some criticism videos I feel offended but then at the same time I also see where they are coming from. As I reread the comics. I started to really see some things that I didn’t pick up. Do I agree with every criticism not always but still.
I need to just scream it here but jesus the fucking treatment of Apollo and the complete disregard of his entire symbolism as a mythical figure just drives me nuttttts like I had to stop early on, both bc of the r* scene and that disregard. Like he's a god of youth. He protects them. Why would he fucking do that. Just why. He's not the god for this. He's just notttttttt
But didn't Apollo screw Cassandra and Daphne over in the myths also?
@@matchaleche oh yeah no he did kinda screw Cassandre up bc she said no, but I disagree that he screwed daphné up in the sense that screwing up implies he did so willingly? Like dont get me wrong *runninh after unwilling people is a big no no*, but there's a very specific context to it: he showed arrogance towards eros (lustful love) and thus paid the price for it. There's probably something to say about the idea that "men can't help it" which kinda shows itself shyly behind all of that, but it's 1am here so my brain is no good for analysis right now lol I do feel, however, like there's a huge chunk of cultural context we're missing. Dont mind my ftench i cant english right rn but grosso modo, avec Cassandre, il y a cette idée de s'opposer à la volonté divine, qui *est* une forme d'hubris, et donc doit être punis. Now if I remember tomorrow morning, I'll elaborate more and in english, but last thing i eanna point out is that godly relationships in ancient greece were v similar to the one in rome : do ut des; I give so that you give. By taking the gift of clairvoyancy frkm apollo, she thus owes him something back, which she refuses. Further more, in some instances of the myth, she tricks him by saying she would become his consort if he gave her clairvoyancy, but then back pedaled once the gift had been done. Also fun fact bc why not but Apollo is know as the one that pushes away (herkageros or smth), not only bc he's a bow dude, but also because he's the one god that remains the farthest from mortals (yeah, ik he's not that far from them so that says a lot lmao) in the sense that he doesnt tend to directly do things for r against them
Can I just say that I love the combo of it getting progressively darker outside as you two get more exasperated? lol Plus was the hair/hat/outfit coordination intentional?? Fabulous either way. Will be watching all of y'all's channel haha. And checking out your comics because clearly you care deeply about storytelling and comics as a medium!!
I LOVED the original season, before the rewrite! I was following it weekly until it was rewritten, and adored the direction that the plot was going. The rewrite redid the plot that I was most excited for, of Hades and Hecate going after the guy that took the photo of the two of them early on, as well as introduced the Apollo sexual assault plot. I thought it was handled extremely poorly, and it was really just the most glaring change between the early days and the current story that I felt made it so much less compelling or interesting.
Interesting discussion! I come from a similar background of reading a lot of manga before moving to webtoon. I started with Lore Olympus because a girl I liked swore by it but I never really connected with it the same way. At first I thought maybe it was a webtoon thing... and I guess on some level it is... But I've since put in the time to find Webtoons I really connect with on the same level as manga. So I appreciate this discussion because it helped clear a lot of my confusion up as to why I wasn't connecting with Lore Olympus on the same level everyone else seemingly was.
honestly I haven’t read this comic but by looking at it something bothered me and I wanted to know if I was the only one. It doesn’t have to do with the writing or anything, just the designs. They’re GREEK GODS. Idunno, for a god of death hades looks so boring. He’s just a blue guy in a suit? At least make himself design in any way interesting. He looks like your average guy but blue and that doesn’t strike me as what a god would look like, even with a more casual aesthetic.
His* not himself
As someone who actively worships hades and works with him in my witchcraft, the way they portray him just gives me all the ick. Is hades this amazing person in the myths, gods no, let’s be real no gods or goddesses are perfect in anyway and that’s what sort of makes them so real, if that makes sense.
But also to see the author infantilize this actual at times terrifying goddess, Persephone is called ‘the iron queen’ for a reason she’s often the one who doles out the punishments for the souls of the underworld. She’s not some ‘soft sweet UwU so naive cinnamon bun who doesn’t understand things’ she’s a full goddess who is feared and loved and is so wonderful in her way of being.
And the fact they made the ages between hades and Persephone so stark, is even worse like apparently Persephone is 19?! And hades is thousands of years old.
I won’t get on the Aphrodite side of things it’s just
As a worshiper of hades, when people decide to ‘retell’ the myths and do it like lore Olympus where it’s such stark surface telling of the gods. I just get the ick and get so annoyed and sad. I stopped reading like pretty early on because it just….gave me this ick feeling in my stomach I couldn’t shake
hard agree with this take. as a hellenistic pagan, i currently mainly worship lord apollo and have just started working with lady persephone (boy howdy is she intimidating). were the gods 10000/10 moral in the myths? no. were the myths literal? NO. were the myths written and told mostly by men to explain natural phenomena and enforce the patriarchal society they created and upheld? in my view, yes. it's just, i get where she was coming from with the apollo thing (hello daphne, etc) but the apollo i and many others have experienced would never do such a thing. the gods are NOT the myths. it's just... ugh. i would much rather see people take aspects of something like a specific epiphet or title and turn that into a character trait, rather than rely on the same stories that are taken at surface value. apollo /=/ jock himbo abuser persephone /=/ soft flower uwu. like plz can we try something unique for once???
im not a pagan like u both but i find how humans depict gods as fascinating - like we project so much of ourselves onto them when they should be incomprehensible beings (to us). THEIR logic and reason should be on a different level
i think the most interesting thing to me is how we depict gods, ex. in greek mythology, as strictly (loosely? in some myths cases lol) monogamus and then judge them on that metric
maybe this is off topic bc i forget what point i had but :) yeah. ive never read this comic before but i assumed it was a modern retelling with humans, not gods, who just shared characteristics/powers/names with the inspirations. this videos deep dive was kind of a shock
Old comment but I love hearing takes on Greek retellings from people who worship those gods. I'm not pagan (I'm Christian) but I'm really into the Greek religions and cults and would love to write a respectful retelling of my own. So takes like these are so important to me, ESPECIALLY about the infantilization of Persephone. She's a terrifying badass and this version makes me feel gross.
No but I felt this. I used to really love Lore Olympus and I think the art is beautiful. But as somebody who studies mythology very deeply, everything they've been trying to do really is hollow. A lot of these myths weren't meant to be taken literally. They're metaphors that require an understanding of cultural context. It seems weird to make the decision to paint Apollo as a r*pist for example (as opposed to Zeus, which would be more accurate) but completely ignore the fact that it actually is the canon that Hades truly did kidnap persephone according to the Eleusinian mysteries.
I feel like a lot of people take offense to that, saying that the myth doesn't give power to Persephone's story when on the contrary, the entire myth was meant in part to be an allegory for the unbreakably close relationship between mother and child. Which is why Lore Olympus' hollowness can be pointed out with that one detail- the fact that Demeter is merely a side-thought and is shown to be a crazy, over-protective mother
Many of the other references to the gods are also pretty hollow. It just seems weird from my perspective to have a comic about greek mythology and clearly demonstrate no deeper knowledge or research on the subject. I know there's the argument that "oh this is just an artist's interpretation it's not that deep, etc. etc." but I would like to counter the fact that it IS that deep because the mythology didn't just die when Christianity overtook Europe. plenty of people still value and cherish the stories as they are, so to take them and turn them into a story about petty workplace drama and treat them as if they belong to everyone equally just because they've already been so heavily diluted in the mainstream is just....idk. Feels ick. Though I'm sure that's not Rachel's intentions, still feels bad nonetheless.
I can agree with everything but I always get very iffy when people talk about Persephone's height. As someone who is 4"6' - 4"9' I'm getting really tired of people saying short women are minor coded. I just so happen to enjoy expressing my inner child and am engaged to a 6"2' guy who is 3 years older than me.
Now I get the proportions in LO can be weird. It's not consistent and it does infantilize Persephone but it would be better to clarify that the proportions in the art are the problem, not their height differences. If I misunderstood the intent though and you did mean the proportions I'm really sorry. I'm just tired of people basically saying tall man dating short women = creepy predator.
Yes!! It's not that she's a short woman that's the issue, but it's just.. how her own friends talk about her? People who are supposed to respect her, talk down at and/or about her , usually because of her height. It's weird.
I can see this version of Apollo talking to her like a small child, maybe Demeter, definitely Minthe. But everyone else??? Why are they being so judgemental and infantilizing to someone who's apparently so kind and beloved.
Hey guys, considering Webtoons copyrighted entire playlist, would you consider uploading it outside TH-cam for archiving purposes?
It was such detailed and constructive analysis
Yep, we mirrored part 11 on our website which you can find in our community posts.
I plan to have the rest of them mirrored on the website by the end of the week. We're probably going to get our channel back soon but just in case something happens in the future it'd be a smart idea to have them all up there anyway.
Thanks for asking!
it seems like none of these characters pass the bechdel test, not even the men
Edited for terrible grammar mistakes/added spacing for long paragraph:
I am enjoying this breakdown. I didn't stay with this comic (I randomly fell off checking webtoon out of the blue a couple years back) but did read I think the first season of this? Looking forward to the discussions surrounding it since the writing is hit or miss. I barely remember it but this is an interesting way to backtrack.
To add, concerning 52:35 I want to say while I'm in no way defending the writing and its not bad to question this plot point but sometimes you don't know your family. At least, not the part they don't want you to see. Brother, sister, mom, dad, uncle, aunt etc, no matter their title, blood related or not, it's not strange to be unaware.
Her not knowing her brother is a rapist is possible. I don't have sources or data (so could be wrong) or anything but close relations like family/family friend's ect. are more likely to hurt you or someone you know rather than a stranger or so I've heard. Whether it means being blind to red flags or said red flags were concealed well or whatever it's easy to fall victim to those close to you and those same people have the power to do so because they are close.
Apollo being a gross creep may not have been something she'd have anticipated or was in denial or both. Sometimes family will make excuses too "I know he can be pushy but he'd never do that". I have learned that it's healthy to never say what someone, no matter who they are to you, will never do. No one is so transparent and even if so there are a myriad of factors to change that threshold, some unaware to those looking from the outside.
Seeing as comments were hate for Apollo based on ship content and not being anticipation for future trigger content is a given (or poor set up/writing, or both).
I think Lore Olympus has rough writing but ironically that part wasn't so off. I agree that while the trauma itself was handled well, the aftermath was not.
Hey just discovered this podcast, hope you guys start posting again
We live in a content driven world & while cutting scenes would have made the story move faster It seems to be about having as much detail oriented scenes as possible for fans to obsess over. But I started it when there were at least 100 episodes so binging the content was awesome I probably wouldn't have kept up with the comic in real time with how slow it moves. Personally I like the fan service of them constantly talking about how much they like eachother. But Rachel Smythe does shift motivations & personalities at the stop of a hat.
& re: 1:14:06 remember that no one has considered this assault yet. From Apollo's perspective they just had ***. She's too naive & he's a good who's probably done it before. How many times have we seen frat bros casually talk about date r**e as if its not assault. Same thing here. He's casual because the assumption is "of COURSE she wanted me" That's why he gets so defensive later. Idk the chapter isn't pointless because it lets us know Apollo doesn't think he did anything wrong
I think some fanservice isn't bad and it's good to add cute scenes between the main couple - that's what people want to read in a romance after all. The problem comes when the story takes a back seat to the fanservice, and even the core of the romance itself flies out the window in favor of a couple that is basically written as perfect instalove so the comic can keep shoving fluff in the readers' faces. As you said, in order to have some of the cutesy scenes she wants she almost has to rewrite the characters just to bring about her desired outcome, and it just gets really jarring and distracting, breaking the readers' suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the story.
Thanks for the comment!
I hope you keep watching the series because we address this typification of Apollo since he definitely flip flops from appearance to appearance. First he assaults her the day he met her in a callous way, basically because he wanted to. Then, he convinces himself (?) that he's in love with her/obsessed with her and she likes him back??? Then, he tries to apply for a marriage license with Hera (???) His motivations and perspective on the assault completely changes on a dime and it's just not consistent and comes off quite goofy and unbelievable as the series progresses. It's part and parcel of how the assault plotline is completely mishandled imo, along with Persephone's trauma that flips on and off whenever Rachel feels like it, and the three episode long flirty phone conversation that occurs with Hades *directly after the assault*.
Thanks for the comment!
@@pyrrhic_victoria Definitely agree there. If he's this ultimate villain that always wanted her as his fertility goddess then he's a genius, but he's also really hurt when she points out she didn't like it and didn't want him. Does he know he's Zues kid or not? Like it just seems all over the place with Apollo's motivations.
@@Mocha_x_svt Apollo is one of the most frustrating things along with Kronos, as they're both built up to be big villains but Apollo's motivations change every time he shows up, and Kronos is so wasted in the one episode "big battle" between him and Persephone. If the thematic elements were stronger and comparisons were drawn between Apollo and Hades but in a *good* way, i.e. with some sort of messaging, that would have been much more compelling.
Just another thing to add to the pile of missed opportunities I suppose!
As someone who read the original run: after she decided to redo it, she ran a poll asking of her audience would like the serious to be darker/more dramatic, and I feel that run was less... sensual?
That's really interesting. I've seen some art from the original and it definitely had more personality, but from what I can see the pacing was even worse hahaha. I think there was no SA in the original version, and no plotline about fertility goddesses or whatever; it was mostly a celebrity gossip focused story around the gods. I honestly think Lore Olympus would have been better had she stuck to that.
@@pyrrhic_victoria yeah to my memory, no SA whatsoever
Alex and Persephone not getting equal treatment under the law makes sense when you consider the racial and socioeconomic differences between them.
There's no way that was intentional, though. That would require Rachael to be critical of the gods' prejudices.
I got into lore olympus because i fell in love with the style. I think i didn't notice how slow paced it was because i came into it very late and had around 100 episodes or so to catch up to. I still wouldn't say I liked the webtoon tho. I also found myself struggling to remember who characters were because a lot looked too similar or just didn't appear enough for them to stay in my consciousness. I was shocked when I first heard people didn't like the webtoon. I looked more into it and yeah, their points are valid lol
I loved the art in the beginning the composition, the colours and glow of the gods it was very appealing to me but the more I read the worse it got and i didn't like it as much but no one was pointing it out so I thought i was thinking irrationally but I couldn't find it pretty anymore it was boring and Inaccurate proportionaly the panels getting smaller i didn't feel like I was in the story anymore
Something that bothers me is how Apollo’s introduction and his major interactions with Persephone before he assaults her are the same as her interactions with Hades. Literally the same. And she reacts to him as though it’s creepy or a red flag (which it is) when before she was totally into it.
LO loves to compare Apollo to Hades. I’ve seen several fans praise Hades for NOT assaulting Persephone “even though he totally could”. But this is just really weird and it feels like it’s setting up that Hades is a predator like Apollo, but I think the writer is just trying to make Hades look special. Like if anyone else did the things he did it would be creepy, but it’s cute when he does it.
If it were me writing the story, I’d have Persephone be into Apollo a little bit. She reacts kind of how she did with Hades. And then he assaults her and she’s conflicted because NOW, when he says “you’ve been flirting with me all day” she knows he’s right. And while flirting does not equal consent, she would think that and believe it was consensual at first.
Idk it just feels like a natural conflict that was sidestepped so Persephone could only ever show romantic interest in Hades. Like it’s a character flaw to be attracted to other people than the ML.
This is very off topic from the video and totally unnecessary, but I love how you guys sitting next to each other are like "swapped" versions of the other's colors (green hair above a red shirt, then orange-y red hat above mostly green shirt)
I'm here because I was hooked for the first 2 seasons of this series, and then I slowly but surely slipped off the hype train during the first few episodes of season 3 and want an explanation
Lore Olympus will be one of the few Examples of why taking creative liberties is not a bad thing to do, when the animated show gets made
One of the few examples were I really think they should change a lot of the original work to make it better. I just hope that it gets the same treatment they did with The Boys, Invincible and Bridgerton S2
i found you on reddit! this video is great, it deserves way more likes :D
Thanks pal! Hope you enjoy these videos as well as my more humorous/unhinged takes on reddit. And sorry for the delay in response - I accidentally held all comments for review on this video.
omg I'm like halfway through the video and keep jumping at y'all putting your glasses down lol. absolutely loving the commentary so far
As a practicing pagan; I remember seeing commercials for this. I instantly rolled my eyes and didn't even want to touch it; cuz I know that it would be totally inaccurate to any actual myth. As well have little respect to original context
Same here. Knowing it was going to be another story that disrespects Demeter in her OWN myth was really disappointing
@@bobaparadise9419 litterally 💯
I want to say this, it does not need to be accurate, it just needs to make sense for the narrative. Look at Hades (video game) and Hadestown, they don't follow the myth accurately, but it makes sense for the narrative they wish to tell. These are fiction works based off thousand year old legends and I do agree certain elements are taken out of hand like Demeter being a bad parent or Hades being Satan. I just wanted to say this and not hate for what you believe in, "its not accurate to the myth, is not a strong criticism. A better criticism would be "does this story work well with the myth they are retelling" or "does this story does something interesting with myth."
P.S. nothing is going to be 100% accurate due to culture clash and not repeating the same story over and again.
@@gabbypenny6884 it's about respect of religion and culture; not some modern B's narrative for them to play with
@@witchivy5905 almost all Mythologies and Modern day religions have fiction written about like the The Metamorpheses, The Divine Comedy, and modern re-tellings of myths. These are stories and you can believe them or not. Hell, the story that Lore Olympus is based of off, the Hymn of Demeter, is a re-telling of a Myceanean Myth, of how the season work, and the narrative of a mother's grief of losing her daughter in a Patriachal society. These myths have a narrative to tell as well, as stories do. To repects these mythogioies by creating something new is to say that this is these arn't accurate and here to tell a story, lore olympus never tried to be accurate. It has some outed tropes though, but it never was to be accurate. If want to go back and worship these figures, aall the power to you, but you can't flame people for making stories about these figures.
It’s a great video and I can’t wait for more from you guys!
I really appreciate the comment! We plan to go every week until we catch up with the current episode - which at this rate may take months haha. Sorry for the delay in responding, I accidentally held all comments for review somehow.
2:37:37 My version of Aphrodite would be blue with white splotches and always sparkling- since she comes from the sea, I'd have her reflect the sea + seafoam. Think Daphne's splotches with Athena and Hera's shine, except Aphrodite would undeniably be the most beautiful (that's the point).
I would love to see a video of how you guys plan comics and write down in excel like you mentioned in this video! Great video and breakdown 😊
I started reading LO in the summer of 2019. It was just a fun story to read. I really liked the creators use of colors. IMO the story started out strong but at this point it is just being dragged out. I can't even call LO my fun trash comic to read because there's so many inconsistencies with the writing, the art, I get frustrated because characters or side stories get built up then become incredibly anti-climatic. The chapters are way too short. I really wonder if Rachel is even trying anymore.
Man, Webtoon I swear.. I love your work so much, I hope things get better for you soon!
i was in the middle of watching part 5 when the rest of these videos got copyright claimed
i started reading this because my friends were at the time and I'm so glad you put all these things into words. I really found it strange and so many things just sorta didn't go anywhere but since my friends were saying that it was fine and stuff i sorta overlooked most things. i had no idea about the timeline of it i felt like each scene must've been spaced with like days of time but i guess not lol
I do like the comic in a lot of ways, but the things I don't like about it are basically responsible for making the comic.... thematically confused? Like I would have loved if this comic was a bunch of drama soaked rich people who are totally out of touch and dramatic and powerful and bombastic. but trying to put in these issues of assault and trauma and consent in a way trying thats to adress important topics that are serious and relevant to a lot of people. this kind of whiplash can only work if its very very carefully treated and balanced, and it feels like Lore Olympus was always meant to be a dramatic "Gaiaonline OC RP" fun and drama filled romp.
this is like, exactly what i've been waiting for
Hahaha thanks man! Sorry for the long delay in responding - I accidentally held all comments on this first video for review. Appreciate the comment!
1:13:00 in ep 24, during Her interview with Hera, Persephone tells us that Her mom said EXACTLY this. If She wants to go to University, She would have to "finance my own way there," and goes on about how vital the scholarship is for Her future. Hera mentions the No Sex stipulation, and the dark figure of Apollo stretches over Kore's thoughts. She knows He HAS just basically made Her ineligible for the grant. Like Everything you want here is already here...😟😟
Like ALL of the stuff that you are saying would Humanize Persephone, make Her "rich but poor" etc. was already written into the story.. You're ignoring that she owns only 1 outfit, has no phone until Artemis gives her an old one, has to dig a computer out of the garbage...She _Ain't_ rich. Her mom is. She IS cut off.
Sorry that this looks critical! I'm just keeping y'all honest, ha ha, as we say in the south!
I really like this podcast, perfect background sound while I draw my WEBTOON!
I just know lore Olympus through the complaints but theres a missed opportunity for Persephone to feel really bad for minthe because of her backstory
No way I got a webtoon ad on this bro 😅
I love Greek mythology, and I wonder when Lore Olympus will show Persephone's and Aphrodite falling in love with Adonis, and Persephone sending a boar to kill him vecause he chose to stay on earth/mortal realm instead of the underworld.
Zeus is, according to the real mythology, Persephone's father, and he conspired with Hades/Aidoneus (who is technically her uncle) to abduct the goddess when she was a child. I'm not 100% certain if they meant teenager or under, but given the age for marriage in Greece in that era was circa 14 to 16, many scholars also attach the same age range (some go as high as 19 years old).
17:56 biggest mistake in the history of writing.
Honestly, I just got bored with it. The drama just became too much and it kind of seemed like they were dragging their feet with certain plotlines, like the whole trial, and I just didn't want to read it anymore.
do webtoons artists work directly with editors? i'm out of the loop with the process of it all but would have it been more beneficial if the creator had an influential editor to has some criticisms of the story line and art perspective to catch inconsistencies
Timestamps would be so nice!! Like around 8:53 the intro ends, etc. Excited for upcoming stuff!
BRUH did Webtoon really just copyright strike all your Lore Olympus videos?! I was only up to part 3 ): I don't even dislike the comic but abusing TH-cam's system to silence criticism is always such a petty move, not to mention makes you look SO insecure 🙄
i am glad someone make this VIDEO. i gota whatch all !!! but 3 episode buffer? that sort of weird excuse what was bothering her to write everything down? some ppl dont even use buffer lol bcs they spent month to planed down and outline :)
Thanks for the comments! I've noticed you've been commenting on all of our LO videos, we really appreciate the feedback!
In regards to the buffer and planning it out, yeah there's definitely a merit to having at the very least a roadmap of sorts as to where the story's going. It doesn't have to be super rigid because plans change and you come up with better ideas, but stuff like major twists and character personalities should be tracked otherwise you end up with inconsistent character writing and plot twists that come out of nowhere...things that LO struggles with a lot as the story goes on.
@@pyrrhic_victoria BECAUSE I WRITE WEBTOON AS WELL- I JUST USING MY SECOND YOUTOBE PHONE ACCOUNT LOL. cuz i fell more confortible so i want support uuuu