Loose Canon: Hades

"i wouldn't name my DOG pluto" shamefully made me laugh

"Don't panic. Heroes burst in here all the time." I love the reference to the revolving door of the Greek underworld.

How Zeus, Aphrodite and Hera always get portrayed as good will always irritate me to no end. Hell, Aphrodite is the one that started the whole Trojan War, then kept it going just because she took her shipping too seriously.

I feel obligated to share the Dresden Files interpretation: "Do you know my dog’s name?” “Cerberus,” I said promptly. “But everyone knows that.” “Do you know what it means?” I opened my mouth and closed it again. I shook my head. “It is from an ancient word, kerberos. It means ‘spotted.’” I blinked. “You’re a genuine Greek god. You’re the Lord of the Underworld. And … you named your dog Spot?” “Who’s a good dog?” Hades said, scratching the third head behind the ears, and making the beast’s mouth drop open in a doggy grin. “Spot is. Yes, he is." ...there.....that is a thing you read now.

Honestly I feel for Hades man. He gets such a bad rap when he was basically the overseer of the afterlife and by all accounts a good god. Even the story of Persephone was more just... how marriages worked among the wealthy back then with a ritualized abduction of the bride. Yeah the greeks had a misogynistic society so this doesn't EXCUSE it but by that time's standards he was actually a gentleman who played by the rules and got the proper permissions first (which, again, misogynistic society as proper permissions did not include the mother or the actual intended wife). And heck it became kinda well known that Hades was the nice one- Persephone was the terrifying Queen of the underground who could be the most cruel. See: the story with Psyche. Which honestly kinda makes me think about our society where we erase all the strength and agency of Persephone in the religion and paint her as a wide-eyed victim and belittle her own strengths as queen of the undergound and goddess of fertility to instead simply make her a daughter and abducted wife, Not to mention I wonder how much of the continued satan imagery with Hades is because of America's (since many of these iterations are American made) fear of death and aging.

Hades is actually the god of the UNDERWORLD, not the god of death. Thanatos, Hades's right hand man, is the god of death

The Hadestown version of Hades is probably my favourite. He's dark, seductive, has some sense of empathy and humour genuinely loves Persephone.

As soon as she bought up the Percy Jackson movie I was like ‘huuussshhh if we don’t acknowledge this it didn’t happen’

My mythology professor compared Hades, to the introvert that preferred to stay at home and watch Netflix than party. Not evil. Yeah there is the Kidnapping of Persephone but in those days bride kidnapping was common and shouldn't be used as a blow against him. It's shitty but not evil by mythology standards. Basically the Osiris (lord of the underworld in Egyptian myth.) of Greece.

Just shows how tragically bad and horribly adapted Percy Jackso was. Hades wasn't even remotely villainous in the book and WAY closer to the original mythology version, and Persephone wasn't around at the time.

The portrayal of Hades in the Percy Jackson books is much closer to how he is in the actual mythology he's from. In it, he's grim, depressing, fond of complaining, and has anger management issues from time to time, but he's also content with his place and the power he has, always keeps his word, is never unnecessarily cruel, and isn't easily tricked. These are all traits that can't be found in pretty much any other god on Olympus except for Dionysus and Hephaestus.

Minor point: Zeus actually only ruled over the sky; his dominion over humans is... kind of an expectable outcome of that, but he holds no power over the earth itself. Hades' dominion, on the other hand, is what Ancient Greeks called "chthonic" — "of the soil." To the Ancient Greeks, the earth itself had, so to speak, "deep roots" and was dark and mysterious. It is of quite a bit of import that Hades, who was later renamed "Pluto" (Πλούτων), was often conflated with Plutos (Πλούτος), as his domain was the earth (as I mentioned), and the riches of minerals, gems and precious metals are found underground. The fact that their names were similar was also something the Greeks themselves thought was significant (a similar conflation did frequently occur between the gods Cronos (Κρόνος) and Chronos (Χρόνος)).

the percy jackson book series hades is not a villain. he's definitely not our protagonist's friend but he's not trying to take over olympus. and he cares about his children, which, exist. also persephone ain't trying to get away from him and even tricks percy, thalia, and nico into making hades a new cool weapon.

I just want one movie that has Hades as the good guy. He's weird and emo but he's not bad.

I really like that Hades has a dog called "Spot" (Cerberus).

As a Percy Jackson fan, my poor heart crumples at the mention of the movies. There was many things wrong with it, but hades was one. Yes, he was an asshole, but all of the gods were portrayed as assholes. Point is, he was not an antagonist. Why must he be portrayed as raging Satan? In fact, the author did a good job in separating his hades to the western held visual of his character. The movies unfortunately messed this up and put a bad rap on the pjo series.

Wasn't the Percy Jackson series set up as this is a summer adventure so Persephone was NOT present and Hades was extremely against getting more souls in his kingdom and pointed out that Percy was an idiot? .......I'm so glad I didn't watch the movie.

The Percy Jackson movies are fucking infuriating. I mean, they fail as movies for one, but as a fan of the book and someone with a passing knowledge of Greek mythology, it makes me furious. The book goes out of the way to differentiate the underworld and hell, giving you a cliffnotes version on the general idea of the Greek afterlife. In the movie, it's just hell, he's just satan, it's fucking awful.

"I GIVE YOU THIS DIAAMOOOOOND! BEHOLD ITS SIIIIIIZE." is a pretty good pickup line, to be fair.

In an earlier version, Persephone went into the Underworld herself. She was just skipping around in a field and found an entrance to Hades' palace then just refused to leave. Usually Hades just sit back and let Persephone handle all the punishment assignments and stuff, maybe goes off and build a train set idk