i really don’t like sharing my opinions on my main but i remembered this sideblog exists

anyways here’s a lore olympus opinion since it’s one of the media’s im invested in

tbh the conversations about the portrayal of apollo have been done to death *however* i think it’s worth mentioning that, in the cultural context of ancient greece and ancient hellenic worship (emphasis on ancient), apollo was considered the patron god of colonization. mainly in the context of founding new cities, but that includes claiming the land to do so. aspiring settlers would go to receive blessings from delphi, and in practice colonies outside of greece were almost always patronized by apollo.

and by and large, many of his domains are associated with knowledge and civilization, as well as specifically things *created* by humanity. that’s a bit of a broad summary i’ll admit but it’s 3am. it’s worth a note here too that the dichotomy of nature vs civilization is very prevalent in ancient greek worship. among other dichotomies is order and chaos, masculine and feminine. as masculinity is associated almost always with order and civilization (the same can be said of zeus), it’s not entirely out of no where to have him act against persephone, who is closely associated with femininity and nature. while not inherently good, it’s easy to say that certain concepts like masculinity, order, civilization were more highly valued to the greek society. to have a narrative frame the negative aspects of those concepts i think is welcome

do i think the author intended for these things? eh, maybe. i remember her saying once on her long deleted tumblr that she wanted to flip the narrative of traditionally “good gods” like apollo and hestia versus “bad gods” like hera and hades. which i suppose i can agree with, though i think ideas like pure good and evil is very very christian, that i wish it had a little bit more nuance within the comic itself