From the highs to the lows

[dolorosa_12]

I spent the morning reading the entire first 'season' of the Lore Olympus webcomic, and now feel at a complete loss, given we're not going to get any more content until August. I then immediately did my usual thing of hunting down icons, fic, etc. The fandom seems active, but ... intense, so I think I will just do my own thing in my own corner. Today was the last day of my impromptu four-day weekend, and unlike Saturday, there was no freezing rain, just sunshine, and ice-cream, and pottering around in the courtyard garden.

From the heights, to the depths: I spent way too much time and emotional energy this afternoon writing an outraged email to my MP about Dominic Cummings. Given my MP is a Labour one, all he's going to be able to do in response is fulminate huffily on my behalf, but since making a loud, outraged nuisance of ourselves via email is all that we really have left, we might as well do that.

And then tomorrow it's back to work again — still at home, thankfully.

Comments

[wheatear]

Yeah, I watched the press conference earlier today. I don't think this news is going away anytime soon.

[dolorosa_12]

I hope you're right. A lot of Tory MPs now seem to be saying, oh, well, he's given us an explanation now, so that's all right and we can stop talking about this now. I think the only thing that will work is if their constituents (including the Brexity ones who actually voted for them) continue to make a huge fuss about this via email.

You wonder what he must have on them, given that most of them would throw anyone under the bus if it helped them hang onto power or make media scrutiny go away.

[wheatear]

I think that's the Tory line, yeah, but will it wash? I'm not sure.

You wonder what he must have on them

I'm wondering this too!

[merit]

I had never heard of Lore Olympus until the weekend and now this is the third time I have heard it mentioned. Second mention about the intense fandom too ^^;;

Yea, the Dominic Cummings affair is a disgrace. The Tories are expending a huge amount of political capital on him, too, which is interesting/horrid from a democracy perspective as he's an unelected official.

[dolorosa_12]

I'd never heard of it before, but I think a lot of people were talking about it because the first 'season' finished up on Sunday. I heard about it via the author Roshani Chokshi's Instagram account.

In terms of the intense fandom, the comic is a sort of fluffy retelling of the Hades/Persephone story, with a few gritty elements (trauma, recovery from the fallout of rape) thrown in, which is catnip to a certain Tumblr-y segment of fandom. As far as I can tell, some of the Lore Olympus fandom have decided that this is the superior (and indeed only worthwhile) Hades/Persephone canon out there, and get vitriolic when they see other retellings that don't conform to their tastes. I find this kind of thing really tedious — it's as if these people think of fandoms as a finite resource, so if too much attention is paid to a rival canon/character/ship it's somehow taking away from your preferred canon/character/ship. I'm sure the vast majority of Lore Olympus fans aren't like this, but as always the loudest ones spoil things for everyone else.

The Dominic Cummings thing really is appalling. This morning a Tory minister resigned over the whole situation, and many more have come out of the woodwork to criticise how the affair has been handled. It's got to the point that even Anglican ministers who spoke out about it are getting death threats from the rabid Brexit troll crowd, and a bunch of people allegedly broke lockdown rules over the past long weekend, citing Cummings' behaviour as justification for their own actions.

My assumption is that Cummings has some kind of dirt on a lot of MPs in the government, given they're generally perfectly happy to throw people under the bus if it helps them cling on to power and favourable media coverage.

[merit]

I generally have a more is merrier approach to retellings ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ even if a particular retelling doesn't interest me. I love different approaches to old stories, spinning new ideas and interpretations. So, that ~discourse probably wouldn't appeal to me. And yes, ship wars can be a time waste when people could be writing fic ^^;;

Hm yes, I have been following the story over the day. The eyesight thing was particularly galling. One rule for Tories, one rule for everyone else.

[dolorosa_12]

Your approach to retellings is the same as my own — it's my attitude to fannish interests in general. Someone having different tastes to me isn't hurting me, you know, or taking attention away from my favourites!

[naye]

Please tell me more about this Lore Olympus? (And what's up with the fandom?)

As for everything England & its government: *HUGS*

[dolorosa_12]

Okay, so Lore Olympus is a webcomic which is basically a Greek mythology retelling, with the main focus being on fluffy Hades/Persephone. I thought initially that it was a retelling in a modern setting, but what's actually going on is that the gods/nymphs/other supernatural beings live in a sort of modern setting (the underworld is set up like a huge corporate empire, there are universities and nightclubs), the actual human world is in the time of Ancient Greece — so whenever any of the gods interact with humans, they're back in Ancient Greek times, dress etc. It's a little bit sugary and sentimental (although there are also arcs dealing with sexual abuse and trauma in a rather Tumblr-esque manner), and objectively it's kind of silly, but the heart wants what it wants, and I absolutely adored it.

As you can probably tell from the outline above, it attracts a pretty young fandom, the type that is likely to get very intense about things, and also fly off the handle with pointless wank at the drop of a hat. (For example, generally in modern retellings of Hades/Persephone, the story goes one of two ways: the Lore Olympus route, where the pair are in love, the whole thing is entirely consensual, and her descent to the underworld is just an attempt to grow up and break out from under her mother's wing; or the opposite approach is taken and the abusive elements of the relationship are emphasised. Apparently a bunch of Lore Olympus fans took extreme offense at the fact that another webcomic by a Vietnamese artist came out during the same time, only this one retold the Hades/Persephone relationship as if it were abusive. Naturally this led to them taking to the internet to pour vitriol on this poor webcomic artist and generally make a loud nuisance of themselves.) As you can probably imagine, I'm not too keen to get involved in a fandom like that, even though I suspect that the majority of its fans are not like that — they're just drowned out by the noise of all the others.

I just can't with the UK government.

[naye]

Thank you! That's a really good rec - and a great rundown of what's up with this fandom (which I will avoid).