Okay NOW should be the last time I edit this comment! First here are my opinions about the series finale (but mostly Persephone's school life and her romance with Hades) on Twitter:
https://x.com/TooManyCrowns/status/1804667518428283229

Thank you all so much for the engagement. I didn’t think this video would go viral and I’m so happy it did! It’s also amazing how the Loona boycott worked, but keep boycotting their original music till BBC can’t own it anymore. Go support their new music now that they’re not under BBC either!

I misread the number of Lore Olympus views as readers; it has 1.2 billion VIEWS. Hadestown premiered to the public in 2006, but it debuted on Broadway in 2019. Persephone’s never described in Greek mythos as a spring goddess either. Supergiant’s Hades is also more complex than I made it seem, but I wanted to avoid spoilers; I’ve been trying to finish it on my PS4 and I love it! I always did! I also meant to be more objective with the other retellings besides LO and I never said Demeter and Hades were outright villains. But I still should’ve clarified the story’s complexity. My bad 😭

Always hated how the retelling slanders Demeter 😞 the whole story was meant to be a comfort for mothers in Ancient Greece. Back then daughters would taken against their will and never see their mothers again. The story about Demeter being able to stand up to THE Zeus and is able to get her daughter back was meant to inspire and reassure mother and daughter. So seeing how the retelling drags Demeter is just… man
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Edit; seeing people say it’s to explain the “seasons” (it isn’t about seasons but actually why CROPS don’t grow during certain time of the year and it may actually explain more so summer as due to the eleusinian mysteries as in Ancient Greece crops didn’t grow in summer and doing the math she was gone for like 3-4 months which would explain summer and crops dying.)
But a ways it can explain the crops, but the story can also inspire and comfort mothers too. Those two can co-exist.

Edit edit;
Additionally to explain more about the comfort for mothers. So in the Greek myths from the official sources aka the Homeric hymn to Demeter (not some 1970s rewrite) hades had asked permission from Zeus aka Perse’s dad which is what most bridal marriages from back then was like, needing the fathers permission and not the mothers (tho there’s also bride kidnapping where they don’t even ask.), often never seeing their daughters again. Hence why that even the chance of the daughters returning is a comforting idea.

The abduction of persephone is about maternal love.  A love so strong that a mother brings her daughter back from death, LITERALLY THE UNDERWORLD. Maternal love did the one thing romantic love— and by extension Orpheus— couldn’t.

"You could've married the God of doctors or the God of lawyers but noooo" Ok you gotta admit that's absolutely hilarious

She isn't Persephone, she's the creator's fantasy of herself being the most beautiful amazing perfect pure adorble woman who everyone cherish who dated the most cool guy in the place. That all.

Modern retellings also tend to forget how Persephone was the more fearsome one in the underworld. The Greeks were terrified of meeting her and not meeting Hades. Like. People would use her name in curses.
She was also very maternal.

I feel its kind of bad to remove her agency in that case? She was feared. Respected. More than just a kidnapped girl.

AND WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE PERCY JACKSON MOVIE.

Something I just realized is that Hebe, the literal goddess of youth, ages more than Persephone who stopped physically aging at 19.

I know this might be shocking for some writers to hear, but a mother can both disapprove of the person her child decides to marry AND not be overbearing.

So much of LO reads like a horror story. Thanks to nepotism and her employer’s attraction to her, a sheltered teenaged girl receives a position for which she knows she’s unqualified. Everyone around her knows this, too, ensuring that she’ll be isolated at her new workplace, resented by some and pushed into her employer’s arms by others. Old friends, like Hecate, turn out to be his friends, too.

Her employer illegally pays her, involving her in his wrong-doing. He sets up her bank account at a bank he runs, forcing the hand of employees he can fire at will.

Every attempt at independence ends in disaster. This isn’t a fairytale. It’s a dystopian nightmare.

Off topic, but I wish more media would stop exclusively portraying Persephone as an 'innocent flower spring goddess' and not the feared goddess of death and queen of the underworld that she was actually worshipped as. We already have Demeter and Gaia on nature goddess duty, give me dark goth Queen Persephone already.
Edit: She can be a perky goth, I just want her to be scary.

this entire series sounds like a PG-13 fifty shades of gray with a vaguely ethereal aesthetic and the names of greek gods slapped on

I will say that, as a survivor of rape, I wish I had a Mother as protective, powerful, and loving as Demeter. As much as I could give credit to my Mom for the other things she has done for me, I can't ignore that she was one of the reasons why my rapist could take advantage of me in the first place. She was too casual with him being around me, even sleeping over with no adult watching over us. My Dad was the one trying to protect me.

It's what makes me so upset over Demeter being portrayed as overbearing or evil when she is only looking to protect her daughter from the man literally kidnapping her and forcing her into marriage. We need more loving and well-intentioned mothers in media.

People mocking Demeter for being over protective is so wild to me. Like of course she's weary of men. Literally almost every man in her life has abused or mistreated her in some way. Her father ate her. Two of her younger brothers raped her. Of course, she'd wanna keep her daughter away from men for as long as possible. She was trying to protect her daughter from becoming an object of desire. But that didn't stop Zeus from taking her virginity and marrying her off.

Holy fuck I haven't even realized until now that Demeter is always demonized in persephone retellings. It's really weird how LO would rather villainize the mother and romanticize the much older, lowkey predatory man, than simply allowing the mother's grievances to be acknowledged

I wish there were more retellings that showed Demeter side and made it a detective mystery instead of a romance

As an SA survivor, I understand everyone processes trauma differently, but to me specifically, it feels like Lore Olympus never shows how Persephone feels about her assault when she's alone, it only showcases that whenever the plot wants it too. I would love it if Lore Olympus showed Persephone with the fear of being touched or just something, anything,  not when the plot needs it. It also seems like her trauma doesn't have any agency outside how other characters react to it. The scene itself was handled with care for sure, but the after effects were not.

Kinda ironic how the "feminist" retelling of Persephone's story is actually more sexist than the original.

One of the strangest (yet fascinating) classes I took at uni was my Women and Gender studies of classical civilization (hey I needed an elective, okay??). One of my favorite things that I learned was the role women played in funeral rites. At that time, girls who died before marriage was considered a really bad thing. Like a big upset for the family— basically meant that you were a shitty parent. So what the women in the family would do is dress their deceased daughters up as if they were going to get married. The funeral procession would play out like a wedding procession, and during the burial ceremony the daughter would “marry” hades. In other words, the deceased girls would marry death itself. The family thought that being a bride of death would mean that hades would take good care of their child, or at least show some mercy. Idk, it’s really weird but it’s kinda poetic too. The Greeks didn’t necessarily LOVE hades, but they knew he looked after his wife, so maybe he’d look after their daughters too 😢

Honestly, it’s kinda nasty that she gets cononically assaulted but is sexualized so much.

the whole thing about persephone walking around in her underwear feels really creepy...i know this isn't the accurate way to describe it but it reminds me of the born sexy yesterday trope where a woman somehow does or wears something in a sexualized manner while being completely clueless about it. it feels like an excuse to sexualize the female character without letting her be the active agent of it--because then that would mean she's sexually aware and potentially even, god forbid, "slutty"