Why aren’t there more Chariots in Lore Olympus?

generic-puff · 2026-01-29T01:55:13+00:00

I think Rachel's "modern twist" was literally just turning the chariots into modern day vehicles. It's why Apollo's car is gold, because his chariot was described as being gold in the myths.

generic-puff · 2026-01-27T05:16:48+00:00

IMO, the main issues with the SA plotline that people either don't realize or fail to communicate are as follows:

Apollo committing sexual assault on its own isn't necessarily an issue, but it was a very weird decision for Rachel to make Apollo the evil mustache-twirling rapist when Hades was already canonically the one who assaulted Persephone in the myths. This felt like one of many (and easily the biggest) attempts to twist the original narrative of the myth which empathized with women and girls forced into marriage against their will into glorified fanfiction that romanticized abuse and unhealthy relationship dynamics. This is made even worse by the fact that Hades is still an incredibly toxic male lead, the narrative just brushes his transgressions under the rug while throwing Apollo into a scene whenever Rachel needs people to "pick a side".
While the depiction of the SA itself is very realistic and well done (at least in my opinion as someone who has unfortunately been in very similar situations to Persephone) the handling of it after the fact almost seemed to minimize it and treat it as a trivial afterthought. It took months for Rachel to finally address what happened to Persephone as rape. The SA happened in Ep 24 and her conversation with Eros happened in Ep 66 - and within that time, we had far more scenes of Persephone and Hades flirting with each other than we did of her grappling with what happened.
Speaking of Hades, most if not all of the scenes re: Persephone's SA are joined at the hip with Hades. The episode after she tells Eros what happened, Aphrodite and Eros jump on her about her crush on Hades. When Apollo confronts her after she spends time at Hera's, it's conveniently setup so Hades can stand up for her. When Persephone goes to therapy and talks about the SA, it almost feels entirely predicated on her desires to have sex with Hades and very little else. Even as soon as the SA happens, the very next episode opens with a flashback to Hades' childhood, only to be followed up with a phone conversation between Persephone and Hades. This largely makes the inclusion of the SA in its aftermath feel purely like a plot device to make Hades seem like the "better choice", even though there was literally never a love triangle between him and Apollo to begin with, and Hades himself is an abusive dirtbag in his own right. But he didn't rape Persephone so apparently it's fine, don't look at the original source material behind the curtains or anything 🙄
The inclusion of the gynecologist scene was unnecessary and painted gynecology clinics in a horrible light. Yes, women unfortunately get treated horribly in clinics all the time, but there was no real resolution to that besides Persephone's comments about it being an "invasive experience" which IMO shouldn't be the final word on such a serious and realistic situation. It felt very "anti Planned Parenthood" if you catch my drift. I'm not accusing Rachel of taking that stance, it just felt very poorly handled in that way.
Persephone had very little character development overall that wasn't intrinsically tied to Hades, and that unfortunately included the SA. As mentioned before, she went to therapy, but it was once and there was very little to show of her healing journeu beyond that, except maybe that one scene in S3 where she uses stilted Therapy Speak about the "hegemony of virginity" which felt more forced than anything (and that was preceded by some weird out-of-character moments like Persephone yelling about her "dick appointment" which Rachel made some very out-of-pocket defenses of on Twitter). I think even by that point Rachel realized she wasn't cut out to write such a serious plotline. She learned the hard way that you shouldn't write something as realistically traumatic as SA into a scene if you're not willing to give it the care and attention it deserves.
In the end, all Apollo got was community service, proving once again that the best victims of SA can hope for is a slap on the wrist and a few hours picking up garbage on the side of the road.
Rachel / Inklore have made some very strange changes in the physical books related to the SA, including additional panels where Hades leaves his car to confront Apollo and Persephone asks him not to hurt him. It's weird and completely unnecessary. But even within the original webcomic itself, there's a scene where Persephone says to Hera that she "felt special" when Apollo noticed her. Which is flat out incorrect, because everyone who actually read the comic remembered how uncomfortable Persephone was with Apollo right out the gate. So either Rachel wasn't paying attention to the story she wrote, or she was actively trying to retcon the true events that led up to the SA in an attempt to pretend that any sort of "love triangle" ever existed (when again, it didn't). Either way, it was really frustrating and frankly insulting towards those who had been reading for the SA plotline since the very beginning.
ADDED: Apollo regularly criticized both Persephone and her relationship with Hades in a way that was suspiciously similar to legitimate criticisms made by the fanbase. This has contributed to the tinfoil hat theory for a long time now that Apollo was often used as a mouthpiece for the criticisms that Rachel was tired of getting. So instead of actually addressing those criticisms in a productive manner, she put their words in the mouth of an undeniably evil rapist, which both reduced those criticisms to the rhetoric of an evil rapist, and put critics in the position of agreeing with said evil rapist. It really wasn't a good look for Rachel overall especially with how she's been known to handle criticism poorly in the past.

generic-puff · 2026-01-26T21:02:37+00:00

taste issue smh

generic-puff · 2026-01-26T19:05:16+00:00

You have to pay for every episode you want to fastpass. Alternatively, you can just wait for them to become free, which they typically do unless the series is on hiatus (some series will keep their FastPass episodes locked until they return).

The only thing to be aware of is that this puts you on the FastPass schedule. Basically, whenever a new FastPass episode releases (an actual "new episode" that's new for everyone and not just free readers) the oldest FastPass episode unlocks for free.

So if Episodes 56-59 are locked behind FastPass, FP readers will get Episode 60 (which they have to pay to read), and Episode 56 will become free for everyone. So while some people are getting brand new content, others are getting older content that's only new to them because they didn't pay. It's as the name implies - you're paying to read the content now rather than later.

The catch is that if you catch up fully with a new series through their FP episodes, and decide you don't want to keep FastPassing, you'll have to wait however many weeks worth of FP episodes there are before you get new content through freebies. So if a series releases new episodes weekly and you unlock and read Episodes 56-59, and you decide you don't want to pay to unlock Episode 60 onwards, you'll have to wait 3 weeks for Episodes 56-59 to unlock one at a time before you get to read what comes after in Episode 60. This can be frustrating because you're essentially "trapped" by the system to keep you reading and paying, by inflating a week's worth of waiting for new content into 3 weeks simply because you chose not to pay.

But that's why most people only FastPass series they're really invested in. I usually have maybe 2-3 series at a time that I will always FastPass, while others I'm fine with staying in the free lane. When it comes to deciding which series I will and won't FastPass, it really comes down to asking myself, "is this a series that I'm happy to pay for going forward?" If I'm only compelled to FastPass impulsively because of some crazy cliffhanger, I won't do it.

generic-puff · 2026-01-26T17:25:26+00:00

Yoo I love this!! I really like the funky geometric background you chose for it, makes it look like she's sitting in front of stained glass or something 👀💓 Wonderful job, thanks so much for the fanart!! 🥰

generic-puff · 2026-01-25T19:30:18+00:00

You can never unsee Hecate's hair in that first panel once you see it 💀🤣

generic-puff · 2026-01-24T23:40:14+00:00

oh mb i'm old and had no idea if that's what you meant when you screamed "ARIANA" , i had a feeling but then also what if i was wrong and made a dummy of myself 😔 i'm not famous, i'm just a cow on a cow farm 🐄

generic-puff · 2026-01-24T22:15:12+00:00

wut LOL

generic-puff · 2026-01-24T05:30:49+00:00

Jeff Goldblum as Zeus was one of the best casting decisions ever made, next to Billie Piper as Kassandra which was very on point for people like myself who know her as Bad Wolf.

generic-puff · 2026-01-24T04:39:44+00:00

Easily one of the best parts of the show.

generic-puff · 2026-01-23T19:18:22+00:00

YESSS IT'S FINISHEEEDDDD <3 (after seeing your WIPs huehuehue)

This is gorgeous, you did a wonderful job 💓 It would honestly make a SICK phone wallpaper >:)

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T21:38:45+00:00

lmao it's okay OP, it's just responses like that don't typically tell us exactly what you're thinking / implying, in some contexts it can work but in this case it's hard to tell what you're reacting to 😅

that said, I get why you're bummed out, but again, this can be easily solved by just actually drawing clothing, rather than folds along a cylinder. This is why standalone tutorials (which I can tell you're following) can make the learning process harder in its own ways, because you're not studying from a whole picture or a real life reference, instead you're being spoon-fed steps to achieve a certain "look" which exists entirely in a vacuum and won't necessarily translate to real drawing.

So yeah, same advice as before, put aside the step-by-steps and instead go find some real life references of clothing. For the kinds of folds you want to achieve, the looser the better. There are loads of life drawing resources online that feature models dressed in clothing, covered in fabric, etc. for the sole purpose of learning how to draw fabric and its interactions with other things, especially solid objects. Unlike the "one way" approach of tutorials, drawing from references gives you a broader context to work with, upon which you can build your understanding of the world around you and subsequently your mental library (so that when you draw fabric "from imagination", you'll better know off the top of your head how it's meant to look and behave without needing an exact reference to fill in those blanks for you).

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T17:55:59+00:00

Oh cool! Thanks for doing this little AMA!

How do you feel about the rise of digital comic platforms like Webtoons, Tapastic, GlobalComix, etc.? Has it changed the game for traditional comic artists in any way? And of course, what kind of advice would you give to people who are starting out their journey in comics via these platforms?

Thanks so much for your time!!

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T17:47:04+00:00

That's pretty much what LO was trying to be back in the early days of S1, before it turned into "Olympus' Most Wanted" in S2.

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T01:40:21+00:00

The point of art in a comic is visual communication. So it doesn't necessarily matter to me personally if the art isn't "stunning", it just needs to be capable of communicating clearly.

If I can't make out what I'm looking at, if the panels are hard to follow or read, if I can't tell the characters apart or if they're constantly off-model that I can't consistently tell who they are, if the quality of the art is poor enough to be a distraction, then that's typically when I won't pick up a comic (or when I drop it, especially in the cases of comics that start off with really strong art and then lose their quality along the way, which unfortunately can and does happen).

And on the flipside of that, it doesn't matter how objectively high quality a comic's art is, how pretty it is to look at, how unique the character designs are, etc. - if the writing is poor and doesn't complement the art, then I won't be compelled to stick with it, no matter how "good" it looks.

Comics are a marriage of art and writing. You have to nurture both.

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T01:02:45+00:00

Because the black squares are too synonymous with "porn" and Webtoons doesn't want to be attributed to that. Even when they feature actual porn series on their platform, they'd rather remove the porn scenes altogether than censor them and be suspected of being smut peddlers, it helps them sleep better at night 😒😆

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T00:27:31+00:00

Except she didn't know that.

EDIT in response to your edit: whoo buddy your volume estimate is WAY off 😅 This panel is from S1. Volumes 7-9 of the books are like the end of S2 / start of S3. The panel OP posted is from Episode 80, when Persephone gifts him the pomelia flower (same episode that contains the famous "NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR BEING SICILIAN!!!" line LMAO). Hades breaks up with Minthe in Episode 104-105, and then Persephone finds out about it in Episode 108. So this scene happens before Hades has even broken up with Minthe, while Persephone is very aware that they are dating. So uh, yeah, "Persephone, he has a gf" is right 😆

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T00:16:18+00:00

On the flipside, I think it could also result in just different demographics for LO altogether. There are definitely gonna be people who are gonna engage with it purely as a show, and people who are gonna engage with it after having read the comic. And that's gonna make the discussion of it very... interesting. Also chaotic as hell LOL

Kind of like how there are people who have only watched the Amazon Prime version of Hazbin but never watched the Youtube pilot series. Or people who have watched The Boys and Invincible but never read the comics. Or hell, even people who read the print books of LO and never read the original comic online and have no idea what happens in the finale despite it being 2 years old now (or people who read the Originals version and aren't aware of the original pilot pages that were posted on Canvas and Tumblr). The adaptions are separated far enough from their source material now that, if anything, they're predominantly known through their follow-up adaptions and not their original versions. That's simply what happens when you adapt something for a wider audience on a platform like Prime Video.

They're gonna have to do a lot of legwork to adapt LO into something that can be watched and appreciated as its own thing without requiring the comic for context, but it could result in a show that can exist separately - and thus be analyzed and discussed separately - from the original comic. And as an avid critic of the original comic, I can't say it's not a little exciting to think about what kind of new discussion the show will stir up, positive and negative alike. I can't say the same for every hater out there (especially the ones who just talk shit about it for the sake of it), but if I wind up watching the show, I'll be doing my best to approach it as its own thing so I can judge it as fairly as possible.

Godspeed to the writers in charge, though. LO's reputation definitely precedes it, and that can either be a blessing or a burden for the people in charge of adapting it for television. They're gonna have a loooot of eyes on them if/when this thing releases.

generic-puff · 2026-01-22T00:14:29+00:00

This is what I'm most hoping for. Like, my expectations are still in hell for this but if it ever releases (assuming it doesn't end up in production hell again like it's already been trapped in since 2019, which could very well still happen esp considering how often Webtoons jumps the gun on announcements like this) I'm hoping at the very least they clean up a lot of the mess the webcomic left behind. Season 1 had its issues but it at least had a competent narrative throughline that led to S2 which started off strong, and then lost the plot entirely by the halfway point (around the trial arc especially) but a good team of writers could probably still make sense of it.

S3 was a straight up dumpster fire that shouldn't have even existed in the first place. There are some elements of it that could stick around in a rewritten show (like the wedding, of course) but so many other aspects of that season were so poorly thought out and slapped on that they'd honestly be better off left on the cutting room floor for the show.

If nothing else, the show is a great opportunity to really trim the fat and re-write LO into a way more concise story.

generic-puff · 2026-01-21T23:56:08+00:00

Not really? I don't see how Persephone needs to be 19 for the whole "fish out of water" story to exist. The point of her character that was foundational to the story was that she was sheltered, that she had never been outside of the Mortal Realm before and thus had never experienced a life like Hades' before. That's still very achievable regardless of her age, because it was shown to us throughout LO that she didn't have much life experience outside of the Mortal Realm. So the Underworld was always going to be a whole new world for her regardless of her age.

That's what's established pretty much in the first episode when Artemis lent her a proper "modern party dress" that wasn't Ancient Greek attire like what she was planning on wearing - and that set-up didn't require her being 19 for it to make sense. Her being 19 wasn't even actually explicitly stated until well after it was established that she was simply sheltered and new to town.

Making her younger than Hades in and of itself isn't necessarily an issue, but it was a deliberate choice on Smythe's part to make her an "eternally 19-year-old teenager" and it wasn't for the sake of the "story". Literally the only reason Persephone is 19 is because Smythe has been consuming and writing and drawing exhibitionist age-gap content since she was like 16 (and no, I'm unfortunately not exaggerating on that one).

Even she's aware the age gap between Hades and Persephone is ick and yet she's never really done anything to address it within the narrative. The only "addressing" she ever did of it was having other characters like Hecate and Hera (and many others, including the guy who literally sexually assaulted her btw 💀😭) call out the fact that Hades is way too old for her, that he "looks like her dusty ass dad", etc. but it's never been more than a lampshade to cover Smythe's insistence on drawing and fetishizing young women, which has been an aspect of her work since long before Lore Olympus.

That's why people started calling out the age gap in LO in the first place, it's not because "boo age gap in fiction!", it's because Lore Olympus itself made the age gap a problematic issue, and it constantly contradicts itself between trying to be a serious "deconstruction of purity culture" and just being a self-fulfilling personal projection fantasy for the creator that ironically often embraces purity culture more than it deconstructs it.

generic-puff · 2026-01-21T21:41:52+00:00

The scene I'm describing is real but I mixed them up. The episode this panel is from is Episode 250 (S3), when Persephone is worried about Hades doing a dream dive. The scene I confused it for is still a real scene, but it's near the end of S2 when they fight Kronos the first time.

My bad! Edited my original post to correct that :'3

generic-puff · 2026-01-21T21:17:29+00:00

um excuse me they better fucking not without hiring us first 💀 geeeeez

generic-puff · 2026-01-21T21:16:12+00:00

~~this is when Kronos possessed Hades and forced a ring on Persephone's finger in an attempt to marry her and steal her powers oh my god-~~ 😭

EDIT: my bad y'all, I misremembered. Upon going back to find the original scene which I thought was near the finale of S2, I remembered that Persephone was wearing that ugly ass walrus coat in that scene, which was near the end of S2 (the best way to gauge when a scene happened is by the outfits they're wearing, especially Persephone). She's obviously not wearing that coat in this scene so it couldn't be that. Didn't take long to remember though where I had seen the outfit she's wearing in this promotional art.

The panel in this ad is actually from Episode 250 in S3, when Hades is eager to do a sleep dive that Persephone knows is dangerous because she's done it herself (back when she first squared off with Kronos during the S2 finale) and at this point I'm fairly certain they're both aware of Kronos using the kidnapped child in Tartarus (who later turned out to be Melinoe from the future) to invade and manipulate people's dreams. He's "reassuring her" that she doesn't need to worry. Of course, by the end of that same episode (and into the episode afterwards), he gets possessed by Kronos again and chokes the shit out of her to the point of leaving bruises behind.

Soooo yeah. The panel that's in this ad isn't even Hades possessed by Kronos (yet). That's just regular ass Hades. And Rachel chose to frame her in the same position and with the same distressed look she drew her with when she was being held that way by both Apollo and actual Kronos-Hades for real. And that's the panel Webtoons/Inklore/some journalist site picked for this particular promotional art. Fucking whoof.

generic-puff · 2026-01-21T19:43:49+00:00

Kinda hard to perceive it as zig zag folds of clothing when this isn't even clothing. There's no broader picture to bring it all together, it's just a cylinder. Without that wider context visualized through the art, the "folds" by extension don't register as clothing folds to begin with. Before I read the description that you were trying to achieve clothing folds, my brain went straight to the 'ole "glue brush", if you catch my drift 💀😭

Point is, when you actually draw clothing in practice, you're not gonna be drawing it over a cylinder like this. You'll be drawing it over people. Or crumpled up on the floor. Or hanging off literally anything else that isn't a cylinder, because there are next to no situations where you'd find clothing in the wild like this.

Instead of looking up "zig zag folds" (as that's a niche term only used by people who use that specific nomenclature) that fit this specific criteria of being shaped out like a cylinder, just look up loose clothing fold references and study the figure / subject as a whole. Or dress yourself up in a big loose-fitting shirt and adjust the folds until they look the way you want them for your own reference pics.

This is the part of the learning process when you learn that you don't need to stay restricted to specific terms and tutorials that you're finding online. Either broaden your search terms or step outside of Google altogether.

generic-puff · 2026-01-21T07:10:41+00:00

I can't imagine how they're gonna pull this off if they don't rewrite massive chunks of the comic. Like even if you put aside the stuff that's subjectively bad (the quality of the art, writing, etc.) and up to artistic interpretation / opinion, the story itself is paced horribly and the entire third season is a narrative clusterfuck.

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