Lore Olympus's Spotlight on Rape

Honest representation of difficult topics can be tricky to depict truthfully and realistically, which is why I am beyond thankful for Rachel Smythe's original webcomic, #LoreOlympus.

Image: Lore Olympus webcomic

TRIGGER WARNING: This post discusses themes of sexual trauma, mental abuse, and rape that may be distressing for some readers.

Representation.

It’s what any creator hopes to portray correctly, especially when writing about themes difficult to face head on, themes that everyday people don’t think about regularly.

Lore Olympus, a webcomic by Rachel Smythe on the Webtoons app, is a beautifully drawn and mindfully written deconstruction of the greek myth: Hades and Persephone. It tells the love story of the two gods in a modern setting, but also regularly deals with upsetting themes such as toxic relationships and emotional manipulation.

And rape.

As someone with an eating disorder, I’m fully aware that you don’t need to weigh 600 lbs and be on TLC to have issues with food. No pun intended, but eating disorders truly do come in all shapes and sizes. And so does rape.

It’s unfortunate how years and years of glitz and dramatic glam from hollywood have tainted the layperson’s understanding of that four letter word.

Just like my eating disorder, the reality of Persephone’s rape is not the first image people may picture. It’s not the sudden lightning strike from a psychotic stranger who attacks while a person is out alone, nor is it the sleazy character who coaxes the drunk into a bathroom at the back of a bar.

Rachel Smythe’s representation of rape calls forth a grave issue real people are dealing with this very second.

First, some context.

Image: Lore Olympus webcomic

Persephone, Hermes, Artemis, and her brother Apollo are out shopping for supplies. At the grocery store, Apollo meets Persephone for the first time. The sun god wastes no time optimizing every opportunity he sees to talk to the spring goddess––and wasn’t the nicest when doing so.

Back at Artemis’s house, Persephone begins to bake but ends up cutting herself with a knife. While Artemis and Hermes search for a first aid kit, Apollo takes the time to apologize to Persephone for his earlier unsavory behavior and remarks. Persephone thought it over and begrudgingly accepted his apology, willing to move on from his lackluster first impression.

That night, the four gods are on the couch watching a movie. Persephone turns in early, and Artemis follows a few minutes after, telling her brother and Hermes they’re welcome to finish the movie and leave when it’s done. Hermes dozed off watching the movie, and instead of leaving, Apollo made his way down to Persephone’s room (she’s Artemis’s roommate in Olympus).

In less than twenty four hours, Apollo meets Persephone, determines their make-up moment had somehow been flirtatious, woke the spring goddess from her slumber, and nagged her until she agreed to have sex with him.

Image: Lore Olympus webcomic

Forty episodes later, Persephone allows Eros, who she had befriended during that time, to use his powers to understand the full scope of what happened that night.

Images: Lore Olympus webcomic

“Persephone, that’s rape.” Eros states.

“But I said it was ok.” Persephone says with tear soaked eyes.

“Listen–listen.” Eros grasps her hands and looks her in the eyes with grave concern. “Nobody should be able to come into your bedroom, wake you up, and––you don’t just get to nag someone into having sex with you. That’s not how consent works. You didn’t mess up. Apollo did.”

Artemis was the one to stick her neck out for Persephone and allowed the spring goddess to say with her in Olympus––all without even knowing her that well. They grew to be very close friends. During the forty episode bridge between the rape and Persephone finally feeling comfortable enough to tell Eros, the spring goddess crushed her words every time Artimis talked about Apollo.

Artemis is her good friend, and Apollo is her brother.

In no way was Persephone suspecting Apollo to be capable of rape and yet, it happened.

Rachel Smythe, through her execution of this story, understands how rape, just like my eating disorder, is not black and white, not a textbook-case every time it happens, and not something anyone could ever be prepared for.

And just as she understands the complexities of how rape can occure, Smythe knows that rape isn’t something a victim is ready to report the second after it occurs.

Even after confessing to Eros, Persephone makes him promise not to tell anyone. Even weeks after the rape took place, she still isn’t prepared to report it.

She said she’s “not up to it.”

And, in Eros’s realistic, brilliantly written response, he said he will stand by his promise of keeping this a secret so long as Persephone promises see a therapist––and as soon as Persephone feels ready to report the rape, Eros will be right there to help her.

Hundreds of Lore Olympus fans who have personally experienced trauma applauded Smythe for her representation of rape and its aftermath.

Images: Lore Olympus webcomic comment section

I'd like to see more work like Smythe’s be released in the coming years. Rape, or any other trauma similar for that matter, is a difficult subject to incorporate into a story. Reading about it through the story of a fictional character with a very real, human life helps other real people come to terms with painful issues they have yet to face.

Hopefully Smythe’s Lore Olympus inspires other writers to showcase for their readers the reality of trauma––cleansed of the black and white picture mainstream media paints it as.

Why Steven Universe is a Believable Protagonist.

It's rare we see such well-written, realistic development of a kid hero's story. And that's exactly what Rebecca Sugar's Cartoon Network show #StevenUniverseFuture gave us.

Image: Cartoon Network

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Steven Universe and Steven Universe Future.

Cartoons have come far since the good ol’ days of Disney princesses and mickey mouse. With the changes in social values over the years, you could say we’ve become more “woke” in our perspectives. We know the lives of real people are not rose-tinted, so watching the content Disney or Dreamworks puts out today, while it has made some progress in representing reality, leaves something to be desired.

But have no fear! There are many cartoons from all over the world making strides in the right direction––the one we want to see stories we watch head in.

One of the most powerful and hopeful cartoons to date that showcase real problems that real people experience is that of Steven Universe Future, the descendant show of Steven Universe, both written and directed by Rebecca Sugar at Cartoon Network.

Sugar knows all too well the limiting tradition of kids shows: their tendency to dismiss the aftermath of whatever tragedy or trauma the child protagonist goes through in order to save the world. “If you win a fight, it’s as if that’s not a problem that you were in a fight,” Sugar explains while discussing her show with LA Times.

That particular quote exemplifies the point she was making at large with Steven Universe Future: she wants to unpack what happens to these child protagonists after they save everyone from impending doom.

And that’s the first issue Steven comes across: there is no more impending doom.

Image: Google Images

For those unfamiliar with the franchize, Steven is a half-human half-gem hybrid. For the entirety of Sugar’s first show, Steven Universe, Steven must master his gem abilities in order to stand a chance against defeating the looming threat of the Great Diamond Authority––all at the fragile age of thirteen.

No easy feat to say the least.

He spends so much of his childhood defending the earth, his friends and family, and helping those in need. All that time he was needed because the impending doom depended on him. He was the one who had to fight to save it all.

And then suddenly, it’s over, and he’s not needed anymore after being needed for a long, long time.

I'll restate Sugar's previous quote again.

“If you win a fight, it’s as if that’s not a problem that you were in a fight.”

In Steven Universe Future, that problem of being in a fight to begin with gets unpacked. The child protagonist who is the “chosen one” to save the world from impending doom is seen when their previous life purpose no longer exists anymore.

Fear takes root within Steven. More specifically? Fear of change.

Steven’s identity up until Steven Universe Future consisted of preparing to take on the Great Diamond Authority. His goals, ideals––his whole life revolved around being that vibrant chosen one. And now? He desperately attempts to make things go back to the way they were when he and his friends and family were preparing to fight.

He gets so afraid that life will change to the point where he––now at fifteen years of age––proposes to his love interest in the show, Connie.

Image: Cartoon Network

Connie has always been by his side. She helped Steven train, she was there to support him, and always had calming words of advice for him when he needed it most. They were two peas in a pod, as the saying goes.

The only difference between them is that Connie is fully human and Steven is not. Connie had a life and identity separate from Steven before she met him, and now that the Diamond Authority is no more, she peacefully resumed her normal, human life. And that terrified Steven.

He did the only thing he could think of to keep her at his side like they were before: propose.

When real human children grow up, some find it hard to leave behind the identity and things involved with their identity of the past. Some even go to the lengths of keeping people around who were once their friends but have now become twisted narcissists or pessimists. They may even realize the person their friend has become isn’t good for them, but hold on anyways because of that fear of change.

Steven’s action of proposing to Connie wasn’t born out of the love he has for her so much as the fear he has of her moving on and them growing apart with changing times.

Lack of impending doom sparked another all-too-relatable issue for Steven that is rarely unpacked for the child protagonists in kids shows.

What else besides fear of change happens to a hero when there is no need for a hero anymore? Steven becomes lost, purposeless, and hopeless. His role––his identity––of the hero was built around helping others, much like those we see in other cartoons such as Ash from Pokemon or Aang from Avatar the Last Airbender.

He is not needed as the hero, so he doesn’t feel needed at all.

Steven begins a downward spiral of trying to weed out places where he feels like he could help others, but this time around, he only ends up making things worse. When he finally realises there’s nothing for him to fix––nowhere for him to be a hero anymore––he breaks:

“You think I’m so great and so mature and that I always know what to do, but that’s not true! I haven’t learned a thing from my problems! They’ve all just made me worse! You think of me as some angel, but I’m not that kid anymore! I’m a fraud. I’m a fraud! I’m a monster!”

And then, because he’s half-gem, he literally turns into a pink, godzilla-esque monster: the very thing he spent his hero’s journey preparing to defeat.

Image: Cartoon Network Wiki

Rebecca Sugar shines a light on a very important topic for children in general. Other than a fear of change from how things were growing up, Sugar has taken the identity crisis all kids and teens feel and blew it up to an extreme.

Steven is fearful that everyone is moving on except for himself because he no longer knows who he is supposed to be.

I can personally attest to how Steven was feeling as a recent college graduate. Higher education is a time for many students where they may have been so sure that the goal they’ve been shooting at for a long time is what they wanted to do with their lives, but then, they have an ah-ha moment and are suddenly not so sure for the first time.

They become afraid. For so long, they had the clearest idea of what they thought they needed to do or what they thought they wanted. Suddenly, that all goes away.

Luckily for Steven, and what I hope is the case for most college students like myself, we have a safety net.

Sugar takes Steven––the hero of the story––and ruthlessly breaks him down to what he is without his identity.

And then, Sugar reminds the audience, who are mostly made up of kids just as the protagonist is, that your loved ones will be there for in your time of need:

A quote from Garnet, one of the motherly figures to Steven: “Steven. When I fell apart, you were there for me. I want to be there for you. Steven. I’m here.”

A quote from Peridot, an antagonist turned protagonist through Steven’s help: “Steven! You never gave up on me for some reason I don’t understand! I’ll do the same for you!”

And finally, a quote from Connie after seeing Steven turn into a monster: “Steven. You must have been so afraid to show us this side of yourself. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re all gonna take care of you the same way you took care of us.”

Images: Cartoon Network

While a hero protagonist’s friends fight alongside them, rarely do we see tough, meaningful moments that exemplify and firmly instate the loving bond the hero has with those they love, care for, and help.

Steven is not a hero anymore, and he’s terrified of that. But just as a real human child's friends and family would do, Steven’s are there to tell him that he doesn't need to be.

What he needs is to “exist as an individual,” Sugar says.

All of Steven Universe consisted of Steven existing as the hero for other’s needs, and now, he needs to discover how he wants life to serve him.

Sugar, in the sixteen episodes of Steven Universe Future, wrote the story that franchises like Disney and Dreamworks sometimes fail to show: the real, difficult, and frustrating process of the protagonist’s life without an impending doom to save people from.

It is my hope that more mainstream cartoon franchises will join Cartoon Network and Rebecca Sugar in showcasing what’s real. Because change and identity are issues all kids and teens will eventually come to face, and it’s important for them to know they don’t have to do it alone.

Was She-Ra's Character Catra Rushed?

An antagonist either remains evil or becomes redeemed, right? If "yes" is your answer, take a look at #Netflix's She-ra and the Princesses of Power, and how Catra wasn't redeemed, but resolved.

Image: DreamWorks Animation

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Netflix's She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

Commitments. We’ve all been there.

Grabbing our food and drink of choice, cozy blanket, and remote, we sit down, get comfortable, and prepare for an amazing story we’ve heard so many good things about.

We laugh, cry, relate, get frustrated, and are relieved as our minds tumble through the long cave that is three or more seasons––only to reach the end and have our souls crushed. And not in the good or enlightening way.

Rushed characters are personally the bane of my existence.

They make the endless hours sitting in front of Netflix or Amazon or Hulu fruitless. Your love and devotion––wasted. All because the writers of a show had one season left and weren’t clever enough to come up with the ending a character needed.

So they rushed it.

After the fifth and final season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, viewer backlash against Catra, a central morally gray antagonist turned protagonist, revealed a strong opinion that her redemption arc was rushed.

Before we dissect this any further, here’s a bit of context for those unfamiliar with the show.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a Netflix reboot and re-imagining of the 80’s show, She-Ra: Princesses of Power. Netflix takes the plot and characters of the original show and transforms them to showcase the values of our present day: representing diverse body types, ethnicities, and LGBTQ+ characters––one of which is Catra.

Catra is childhood friends with the story’s main protagonist, Adora––that is, up until they go their separate ways.

Throughout season 1, viewers learn Catra and Adora are a part of what is called The Horde: an alien force stationed on planet Etheria. The Horde is controlled by one of the show’s antagonists, Hordak, and he has a mission: claim Etheria in the name of his brother from whom he is a biological/mechanical clone of, Horde Prime.

To secure troops for his army, Hordak takes children of conquered Etherian lands young enough to be brainwashed and integrated into The Horde––Catra and Adora among them.

Adora succeeded Catra in every way possible, and thus gained the favor of both Hordak as well as their caretaker (at the time), Shadow Weaver. Catra, from the moment The Horde began training them, was put in a very difficult situation: while she didn’t know it at the time, she loved Adora more than anyone or anything else, but the world beat down on her because the one she loved outshone her.

They are star crossed lovers. Outside forces certainly hinder their chances at love (Adora being the legendary She-Ra and Catra remaining as a force captain in The Horde) but more than that, their inner turmoil of how they’ve hurt each other and how they feel about themselves gets in the way, too––until season 5.

I would like to preface what I’m about to discuss.

Image: DreamWorks Animation

I do not believe Catra’s arc should be labeled as a redemption, but as a resolution.

Viewers get upset when a character with potential to be redeemed is not redeemed or when the writers attempt to redeem them but do it in a chiche or rushed manner. Redemption must be done with mindfulness of the character’s identity at large. And I fully agree with that, which is why I don’t believe Noelle Stevenson, the writer of the show, was trying to redeem Catra, but resolve her.

Redemption is characterized by Google Dictionary as “the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.” Stevenson did not save Catra from her sins and errors.

Everything that follows suit after season 5 (which we unfortunately won’t get a chance to see since the fifth season was the last one) would most likely be Catra’s redemption: traveling around Etheria and helping Adora and the Best Friend Squad rebuild and reform. And, along the way, talk through all of the difficult, personal, and hurtful issues left that need closure.

Now, Google Dictionary defines resolution as “a firm decision to do or not to do something.”

Throughout the episodes of season 5, there were many instances where Catra firmly decided not to do something: she did not choose to side with Horde Prime, she did not choose to argue with Adora anymore, she did not choose to let the anger get the better of her and, when it came down to the final moments, Catra made the firm decision to forever stand by the one she loves: Adora.

The way I see it based on what I witnessed in season 5, Catra knows that she is not yet redeemed.

There are more people than Adora’s immediate friend circle who she caused harm to. She, at one point, was a force captain of The Horde after all, and led dozens of soldiers to attack the towns of Etheria. As I said before, her redemption will occur off screen after the events of the last season.

And so, because of Catra’s arc being a resolution and not a redemption, I deduce that the development of her character was not rushed.

That being said, I fully understand how others see it in a different, dissatisfying light.

I think the very first moment people became sceptical as to how Stevenson would wrap up Catra was in the first two episodes of season 5.

However, I’d like for those of you who were sceptical from the beginning of those first two episodes to revisit their thoughts.

The last we see of Catra in season 4, she is abducted, along with Adora’s princess pal Glimmer and Hordak, and taken to Horde Prime’s ship––the final boss of the show.

If you'll recall, before Horde Prime, Catra was at the mercy of his younger brother, Hordak.

Image: DreamWorks Animation

Hordak is a complicated villain.

His reasoning for taking over Etheria is to impress his brother, which, compared to the reasoning of Horde Prime I’ll explain in a minute, is a very human logic. Many of us have gone through life trying to impress the ones we look up to or love. Students sometimes pursue careers not because they enjoy the subject, but because they want to make their parents proud of them.

So long as Catra was useful to him in pursuing that goal (and the same went for all other Horde troops), Hordak let her be. However, unlike Horde Prime, Hordak assigned Shadow Weaver to look after Catra, Adora, and the rest of the abducted children in their group, and if that’s the case, we can assume he has other maternal or paternal figures within The Horde to look after other groups of children.

He recognises that children need care, guidance, and friends (along with the brainwashing in this case) if they are to grow up strong and capable––even if he employed all those things out of logic.

Like manipulating any other individual with emotions, it was not hard for Catra to evade, trick, and lie to Hordak.

Other than the fact that Catra has needed to rely on herself ever since Adora abandoned The Horde, so long as Catra put on the mask that she was going along with Hordak’s plan, Hordak let her do what she wanted. To him, if he got to give Etheria to his brother in the end, it mattered not what his subordinates did to help him get there.

And then, she meets Horde Prime.

Image: DreamWorks Animation

Where Hordak was a hot-tempered, frustrated and sad villain, Horde Prime is cold, unyielding in his pursuit, and views all who both help him and seek to hinder him as beneath himself.

He has one very simple goal: to bring peace to the universe by way of universal genocide.

Without the emotional complexities of Etherians or the ones his younger brother Hordak came to possess from living on Etheria for so long, Catra is powerless.

She is stranded on a ship far from without a single tactic in her toolkit.

She tries her psychological manipulation that worked on Hordak, but she learns very quickly that because Horde Prime has no emotion to manipulate, she’ll be dead rather than successful if she sticks around.

Catra can’t win if she stays with Horde Prime.

And so, she breaks Glimmer out of jail to join with Adora once more on episode three of season five.

"But come on, after four long seasons of Catra hurting others rather than helping them?" You may point out, and again, I fully understand where you're coming from.

But I return to my previous deduction of her arc being a resolution and not a redemption.

The first nail in the coffin for Catra was when she realized that she could end up dead if she ceased being useful to Horde Prime. The second was when Adora, Glimmer, and Bow came to rescue her and she was stuck in outer space with the one girl she both loved and hurt more than anyone else. The third consists of Catra’s slow but steady acceptance into the rebellion against Horde Prime, and the fourth was her reuniting with Adora after she left out of fear of Adora having to sacrifice herself to save Etheria.

And what a gorgeous reunion it was.

Image: DreamWorks Animation

I may be a bit selfish because I just want my poor cat girl to be happy and loved, but logically, I stand by Catra’s character being resolved, not redeemed, and after all the harm she did, I think a resolution is appropriate.

Stevenson knew this much, and thus allowed the audience to imagine how Catra could be redeemed after the final battle was won.

I hope from this point forward, my readers benefit from having this new, third option of resolution to think about when facing an antagonist turned protagonist.

Did the writers redeem them? Or did they resolve them? And how can doing the later aid in preventing a character’s development from being rushed?