With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Yes, after their first vertical tango, she wanted proof that he was really Zeus and ask to see his true face. So Zeus in all his wisdom showed her, and she died instantly. This ability is stated just two chapters ago. Technically Dionysus would only be a few days old at most when this happened.

 

Why Kratos as a replacement for Ares? First thing I see when I click on the link is that he is a staunch supporter of Zeus’ oppressive regime, and the second thing is that he likes to mock Prometheus and Hephaestus?

 

You framing it like that removes or at the very least softens the responsibility off of Aphrodite for making the entire thing possible. She is the only one who could have created this entire circumstance to begin with. It all started with her.

I mean fucking Heph castrated him for sleeping with a woman who was actively seeking it out. She wanted Ares. Not Heph. Aphrodite was made party to a marriage she never wanted, and when she chose to cheat with Ares, that suddenly becomes Ares's fault?

That's absurd.

And I'm sorry, but saying Hephaestus and Ares somehow owe each other because they're family is honestly a weak argument. They are family in name only. They have no personal relationship. They weren't raised together. Their lives more or less seperate. Blood only means as much as you decide it does, and they were never close in the kind of way Ares choosing to accept Aphrodite's advances could constitute as some kind of betrayal.

Aphrodite was forced into a marriage with one brother, but actually cared about or at the very least wanted to sleep with another. Ares accepted sure, but the majority of the burden of responsibility was on Aphrodite for initiating, and you can even soften that by pointing out that Aphrodite never wanted the marriage to begin with and was essentially forced to be with Heph.

And Heph got pissy that the woman forced to be with him didn't want him and chose someone else. Castrating Ares for a decision that was only made possible by Aphrodite, who never wanted him to begin with.

Tl;dr: Heph thinks he has the right to punish Ares for something Aphrodite decided to initiate when placed in a marriage that was never her choice to begin with. It is an awful look

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Also it feels like Zeus, King of the Gods, Slayer of Campe and Defeator of Typhon. Winner of the Titanomachy, the Gigantomachy, and First Olympiamachy went out way to goddamned easily.

He has more experience in combat, practice with holding onto the power of a Titan, and a reputation that was apparently great enough to prevent any of the other pantheons more or less from playing fuck fuck games until Heaven, which is notoriously powerful even amongt the mythologies in DC came around.

Zeus is a big deal, and built his kingship by having the power and skill to defeat enemies like Typhon that none of the other Gods could even touch. And even in DC his power and superiority amongst the Olympians is pretty well established, so contrary claims of mythology not matching DC don't really fit.

Especially when DC straight up says that the Greek Mythos for the most part were still accurate.

Zeus may have his flaws, but he is strong, and defeating someone like that should feel more significant and be more difficult. The narrative tension essentially disappeared, and to me the story arc consequently loses a lot of its impact give the things I've mentioned.

 

For Hephaestus, I don't think people should be talking about whether or not he was justified in the castration. I doubt he ever took that matter into consideration himself. The fact is, he wanted to do that, and so he did it. Maybe this setting has things that Ares did to Heph that we don't know about that might explain the anger a bit more. I don't know. But this moment kind of sets up new Heph as someone who will use his power to get what he wants if he wants it enough, despite justification or necessity. If, from this point on, he only acts as a completely reasonable person, I would say this moment is a case of mischaracterization.

Also, the only explanation for why Zeus went down so easily would be if the fight wasn't an actual fight, but simply a conceptual battle expressed in physical form. I could see technology defeating storms, sky, might, and war. Although, seeing how the focus of technology is gradual growth and accumulation, and victory through careful study, understanding, design, and preparation, Heph grew way too strong way too quick, unless the concept of technology is just that powerful. If it was an actual fight, Zeus went down way too easy.

And finally, Paul's singing was weird. I'd be fine with it being all at the start or end, but having it randomly in the middle is especially weird.

 

He thinks it's right to punish Ares for having consensual sex with his wife. Which he did. Numerous times. What Aphrodite did or did not do is irrelevant to the fact that Hephaestus did not like that Ares was doing that, and is now punishing him for it.

 

I wonder, is Hephaestaean hooked up to Techne and Aether now?

 

Semicolon.

Nah, he's Deus in Machina.

 

That’s what Deus ex Machina means?

 

Yah. And that’s bad.

 

Because Zoat is re-writing things so everybody in the Greek pantheon hates Zeus.

That's because he did.

Zoat hand-waved all that so Hephaestus became an instant expert at drawing Titan power and god combat.

Yup, but Zoat nerfed Zeus so none of that applied to the one in his story.

 

Tech's already gone through that growth, it's called human history.

The more people know the faster they learn even more, we went from the first working plane to landing on the moon in less than a century, and Heph's boost is working thanks to alien schizotech and a direct tap into The Collective Unconscious, the first of which is massively potent technology and the second is quite literally the single most powerful thing in the DC multiverse. If that doesn't give a functionally insurmountable conceptual advantage then absolutely nothing can.

Edit:Also, if any of that stuff with Boss Smiley actually happened (or was truthful for that matter) than he pretty clearly spelt out that the mythological forces sounding Humanity are very rapidly losing the ability to stop them from accidentally destroying the entire species because of how advanced our technology has gotten.

Combine that with the fact that Earth's deities are subject to The Collective Unconscious of Humanity making them far less noteworthy in the modern age compared to tech and that the idea of "The God Species" (Man vs Nature with Man already winning, essentially) most likely existing on Earth 16 saying that "Technology beats the sky" isn't very farfetched. Especially since Kordtech has very publicly announced they're making drones to control the weather.

 

What about the fight on Santa Prisca

I know there are others but that's the first one I know he sang during.

How do you know she gets away with it? The battle just ended and Hephaestaean was dealing with the cleanup of his new throne room. And Ares knew Aphrodite was married so that means, hands off, he wasn't innocent.

Ok first, if someone is Married they are not available! Having sex with someone else's spouse is wrong!
Whether its Zeus, Ares, or Aphrodite it's wrong.
Second, this link will take you to a translation of Aphrodite's five lovers but the important part is after that.

https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/AphroditeLoves.html

"Ares, god of the golden reins, was no blind watcher. Once he had seen Hephaistos go, he himself approached the great craftman's dwelling, pining for love of Kytherea [Aphrodtie]. As for her, she had just returned from the palace of mighty Zeus her father, and was sitting down in the house as Ares entered it. He took her hand and spoke thus to her : ‘Come, my darling; let us go to bed and take our delight together. Hephaistos is no longer here; by now, I think, he has made his way to Lemnos, to visit the uncouth-spoken Sintians.’"

So Ares went to Hephaestus' house and propositioned Aphrodite for sex on her bed. He is responsible for them having sex, if he had stayed away they would not have been caught in the net. Heck in greek society married women were kept away from non related men so Ares was breaking customs and vows. Now Aphrodite is just as responsible she should have said no every time Ares came around because I will point out,THEY HAD 4 KIDS, whether any or all of them were born before they were caught I don't know, but either she passed off someone else's kids as Hephaestus' or they continued their dalliance after they were caught and Zeus, in this story, forbid Hephaestus from divorcing her. So I would have no problem with a similar or worse punishment on her, but violence against women is frowned on especially when that violence is sexual violence. So it will probably be a stripping of her power or being forced into another lesser position.

Where? Where in her nature dose she have cheating? She is the goddess of love not just sex. None of the Gods knew she was schtupping Ares until Helios told Hephaestus. The cheating was her choice.

 

1. Aphrodite was forced into a marriage she never want. It's not like there was ever love between Aphrodite and Hephaestes to begin with. She never made any Oaths to him of her own free will. That changes the nature of the game dramatically. Is it really betrayal if you never chose to enter into the relationship to begin with? Modern sensibilities would straight up declare that if Hephaestus tried to force a relationship with Aphrodite that she didn't want, that would be the equivalent to assault and rape.

2. Aphrodite is the one responsible for them having sex. If she did not choose to invite Ares into her bed, unless he raped her there would be no sex. What you don't seem to get is that while it takes two or more to engage in a consensual sexual relationship, the decision to enter into it to begin with was a singular one. No Aphrodite actively wanting it means there is no relationship.

And in saying that he was responsible completely fails to recognize Aphrodite's agency. Without her consent, there is no relationship. Saying Ares alone is responsible completely writes off Aphrodite's choices and her greater "responsibility" to Hephaestus.

3. Hephaestus has no right to force Aphrodite's love, and to punish Ares for sleeping with a woman who never wanted to be with Hephaeustus to begin with is fucked up. And for him to get castrated by Hephaestus and that to be something which gets to happen unremarked or without issue is fucked up.

4. Aphrodite was not allowed to not be with Hephaestus, and given she was forced into the relationship and had no ability to leave him, guess what? I'm going to say it's just fine for her to seek comfort and build relationships with men or women that she actively chooses.

Fuck whatever legal restrictions are binding her. Her marriage is nothing more than a construct forced upon her by Zeus and seemingly continued due to Hephaestus believing he has a right to her that he did not earn. That he has a right to love and fidelity that Aphrodite never chose to give and a right to take out his resentment on a man she did choose.

Castrating Ares for having a relationship with Aphrodite that Aphrodite herself chose to engage in reek of pettiness, jealousy, not only makes Hephaestus look absolutely pathetic given the circumstances involved, it's incredibly fucked up

 

Counterpoint, no one other than you seems to care.

Also, Ares is just generally an ass to Heph, same with a decent number of The Olympians in this story. You also seem to be under the impression that Heph, while in an emotional state, would stop for even a second to consider any of this rationally after having parts of his family mock and belittle him for millennia.


If you think that you wouldn't be an absolute ass about something like this to the people that did all of that to you in this situation, then more power to you and I hope you'd never have to go through any of that in the first place, but Heph is a Greek god. Rationality and considering your actions is for philosophers, not those on high.

Edit:Formatting, because something very clearly went wrong while I was typing that.

Edit 2:What the shit is happening?

Edit 3:No seriously, what the hell is causing this?

 

I wonder if you have actually been paying attention, because I'm not the only one who's mentioned similar points or seems to share my perspective. Moreover arguing that the majority is right simply because they are the majority, even if what you're saying is true, which it's not, isn't a good argument lmao.

And if Hephaestus is the kind of person to act like you're describing and looking how he's behaved so far, you could straight up draw enough comparisons to suggest that the Olympians are replacing one Zeus with another.

Because acting out of emotion and punishing people out of spite and pettiness, especially for things they don't deserve to be punished for is something straight out of the Zeus, and to a broader extent the generally shittier side of the Olympians playbook.

 

No but the odds of Zeus pulling off anything remotely like this are infinitesimally small

Firstly, it will likely take Zeus hundreds if not thousands of years to finish his punishment because he’s a self righteous asshole that’s spent literal millennia refusing to improve himself

Secondly, when he finally does return to Olympus not only will Hephaestaean be even stronger from improving his technology and his domain having grown even more important but Zeus himself will be extremely diminished as a general God of Weather, which in and of itself will be a domain largely undercut but humanities usage of technology, Hephaestaean’s domain, to control the weather themselves

Thirdly, even if Zeus were to attempt to do something similar to what Hephaestaean did not only would he need to find a group of allies willing to help him comparable to the one Paul gathered he’d also need the same tools Paul used and an emerging Titan that just so happens to fit into his much diminished domain. All while Hephaestaean now knows that this is a thing that can be done and would be keeping an eye out for it

Fourthly, Ares isn’t a threat anymore, he got his ass kicked when he was the God of War and now that he’s God of Eunuchs he’ll be even weaker

If you think castrating the man who has been openly and unapologetically fucking your wife for literal millennia is anywhere close to the horrific shit Zeus or some other Greek gods have done for much smaller offences then you haven’t read enough Greek myths

Okay even putting aside that as has been pointed out Ares pursued Aphrodite it is absolutely ridiculous to act as if Ares carried absolutely no blame for the affair when he by definition carried 50% of the blame

Ares knowingly, openly and unapologetically had sex with another mans wife for thousands of years on top of heaping several other abuses onto that man. Any decent person would not do that or at the absolute minimum not do so as brazenly

He wasn’t some innocent guy that was seduced by a temptress into unknowingly defiling her marriage, he was a scumbag who walked up to Aphrodite said “Hey, want to fuck?” despite knowing she was married and then made sure that the entire fucking planet knew he was ploughing Heph’s wife on a regular basis and mocked him for being locked in a loveless, sexless marriage with no way out

I feel like you’re pulling the “skill” thing out of your ass

Zeus was very strong as a result of his connection to Aether but he wasn’t the one that did the actual work on that and ruled by pure might rather than intelligence or skill, with what intelligence he did have largely been thanks to Mephis, and the Titanomachy was more the Gods doing to their Titans what Zeus did to his than an actual physical war that required him to fight

Not to mention that over the past few hundred years he’s lost almost all of his worshippers and his domain has become less and less significant as people stop being afraid of weather, started to learn how it works and manipulate it themselves compared to Hephaestaean who’s domain is new and extremely powerful

I would argue that it’s extremely unfair to say that being able to finally get revenge on one of the guys who has made your life hell and has been fucking your wife for thousands of years is unreasonable or the action that’s e should base all future interactions upon

Okay it’s pretty clear that you don’t understand the concepts of shared responsibility, sanctity of marriage, respect for your partner or even just how unrepentantly fucking a mans wife is a dick move and if you can’t grasp those basic concepts then there is absolutely nothing that can be said to convince you otherwise

 

I... was essentially comparing him to a bullying victim that had to endure it for, again, literal millennia.

But on a note I'm far more concerned with, is anyone else seeing my pervious post as just appearing in a quote box? Because that's what it is for me and I'm very confused as to why.

 

I am, I think it’s because you have an open quote near the beginning?

 

That was it, yeah. Thanks a bunch though, missed that entirely when I was trying to figure out what was happening.

 

What sanctity is there to a marriage that was forced, and that Aphrodite never wanted to be in to begin with? How can there be respect for a partner you didn't choose and had to remain in a legal relationship with due to it being enforced at the tip of a lightning bolt?

Aphrodite was only married to Zeus because she was forced to be. That to me is what seperates it from your general sense of relationships. It's slightly concerning why you can't seem to see the difference between a situation where a woman is forced to marry someone she never chose and is forced to stay in that relationship due to the power of Zeus, and a typical relationship.

Aphrodite was being held hostage in a forced relationship, so no, there is a difference there and I look at the dynamic between her and Ares differently because of it.

Which makes it ironic that you seem to be saying I can't seem to understand the dynamics of a relationship when you're the one presenting a significantly more fucked up perspective.

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The previous chapter straight up said that Zeus hasn't lost a step from the power he had in the past. Moreover Hephaestaen is extremely new to his power and has little experience with it, as compared to Zeus who fought in several wars and overcame and slew great monsters like Typhon who was said to be so powerful that if Zeus didn't act as quickly as he did he would have become king over the Gods and Man because none of the other Olympians could do jack shit to it.

Moreover you're forgetting that Zeus took Olympus back after the first Olympiamachy and slew the Giants in the Gigantomachy. Which I noticed you completely ignored in order to try to force through your perspective. He won several different wars and fought incredibly powerful monsters. The fight with the Titans lasted 10 years, meaning that even with Zeus's power it took more than that to win, otherwise it wouldn't have lasted that long.

Surprisingly common. Selectively ignoring, consciously or not, perspectives and information that does not affirm your current perspective.

 

He let his father, the man who crippled him and was the root cause of over half his sufferings, walk away. Either Ares did something worse to him, Heph is prideful to a previously unexplained degree, or he's just decided to be willful, and castrated the guy because he felt like it.

 

It's called an arranged marriage. They were very common and expected to be honoured. I'm sorry you never learnt history in school.

Edit:I feel the need to note that, while I've been overly dismissive, I haven't actually said I don't agree that what Heph is doing is wrong. I'm just saying I get why he's doing what he's doing. Violence, fools, all that jazz, yeah?

 

And arranged marriages are things we consider to be more immoral than not these days. Moreover forcing women to be in relationships they don't want to be in is kind of a big no no. Did you know that?

Are you saying that it is okay for Aphrodite to be unable to leave Hephaestus? For her to be forced into a relationship at the tip of a lightning bolt and bound to it by the same? That Hephaestus is entitled to the love and body of an unconsenting Aphrodite?

Is that what you're advocating for or trying to justify?

Come on. Answer. Because that's essentially what you're implying and that's the situation as it stood between the two of them

 

Ah yes, a typical arranged marriage. Where someone threatens to physically harm you if you don't comply. That makes it perfectly reasonable. They had to comply to the situation for practical reasons. They didn't want to be harmed, so they got married to not be harmed. But Aphrodite also wanted to have sex with Ares, and there was no consequence for doing so, so she did that for practical reasons as well.

 

By the standards of the time it tool place in? Functionally, yes, because large portions of the myth we have in the modern day come from Athens, and they weren't exactly paragons of women's rights.

By modern standards? This shit still happens all over the place, so depending on cultural context it could absolutely be considered fine, but most nations that are considered "Western" would find it deplorable.

Personally? I simply do not give a shit and hope Aphrodite gets a similar punishment for being just as much of an abusive fuck as Zeus and Ares, but am otherwise unsurprised by Greek gods being giant assholes at every opportunity.

 

Marital rape and forced marriages are immoral. Just because it was done in the past doesn't mean it wasn't fucked up. I mean, children today are still married to much older individuals, and some cultures consider that okay, yet that doesn't change the fact that it's fucked up.

Women being forced into relationships they don't want to be in is immoral. If you disagree then I think we see the world so differently we can't come to agreement. And that's the core of Hephaestus and Aphrodite's entire sham of a marriage.

Are you saying that it's okay to force a woman into a relationship and punish her if she wants to leave or doesn't give the man she was forced to be with love and her body? Yes or no?

Because it seems like you're essentially saying that Aphrodite should be punished because she did exactly that.

And castrating Ares for sleeping with a woman only with Hephaestus because she was forced into it under pain of smiting makes Hephaestus a monster

 

First, yes I would have enjoyed a longer battle or if there had been more time between when the spell surgery happened and when the fight started to give Hephaestaean more training with his new power, but those are things you have to accept in super hero stories things happen fast.

If Mr. Zoat had taken 4 days to just write "And then Zeus threw a lightning bolt, then Zeus threw two lightning bolts, then Zeus threw a rock, and a lightning bolt," people would be complaining the fight was to long.

I think what we got was really good, we have a man in post-futeristic armor, with the greatest weapons that have yet to be imagined fighting a man in a skirt and the man in the shirt is ripping the armor into pieces destroying the weapons used against him and the only reason the man in armor wins is because every attack is aimed at one target, the one weakness he knows his opponent has, because he originally split Zeus' skull before.

But, as far as I understand Mr. Zoat has no problem with other people playing in his sandbox, so If you are unsatisfied with the battle you can always make your own. If you do I would love to read it.

 

Cut to Hephestean training montage.

 

How about trying? Giving the other person forced into this loveless marriage a chance? Or at the very least not constantly fucking his abuser and not giving a shit that everyone knows?

Get off your high horse, just about everyone in Greek Mythology had a shitty marriage by modern standards, the same logic that says that Zeus should be ashamed for constantly cheating on his wife also applies to Aphrodite

My bad, I missed that part

Even if we assume that Gods don’t come into existence with preexisting knowledge on how to use their abilities, which they very well could, Hephaestaen‘s new domain is very similar to his old one and he’s been keeping up with technology despite it not being his domain for centuries

Again, raw might

First I didn’t ignore it you didn’t mention it and secondly it again doesn’t prove that Zeus possesses any skill

Hephaestaen‘s domain contains all of technology which is greater than just weather, especially when technology that can control weather exists

He didn’t just “let him walk away” he banished him and stripped him of his godhood

Ares was punished but he’s still a god, Zeus had the being that gave him most of his wisdom removed, his godly powers taken and was banished to have to live among the humans he spent millennia looking down on and abusing, most likely for at least a few hundred years, and when he finally gets back to Olympus and gets his godhood back he’ll have to accept that he’s now nowhere near top dog and his replacement has a huge grudge against him

Something you both seem to be intentionally ignoring is that it wasn’t Hephaestus who forced Aphrodite into this marriage, it was Zeus

Was Hephaestus happy about it in the beginning? Possibly but literally everyone wanted to marry Aphrodite and a few months into the marriage he would have bit your hand off for a divorce, he was just as much of a victim as Aphrodite for being locked into a loveless marriage but he did the responsible adult thing and didn’t go out of his way to make it worse whereas Aphrodite and Ares did

At the end of the day anyone who says they wouldn’t be mad when they learn that their partner cheated on them with one of their abusers even if they claimed it was for “true love”, which by the way if that’s true then Aphrodite will have no problem marrying the now castrated Ares once her divorce is finalised, is lying or a very strange person

 

Since I apparently haven't made my opinion clear to you, I suppose I'll just have to theatrically bluntly state it.

I truly, genuinely, with all of my heart wish that the Greek gods, scummy rat bastards they are nearly one-and-all, were dead and gone. All of the largely known ones are walking, living breaches of The Geneva Convention that have rapped, murdered, stolen, and destroyed whatever they so pleased throughout their miserable existences.

I don't care what they do, because at best I'm pleasantly surprised but otherwise unmoved and at worst they've just done as my admittedly biased view on them already knew they would.

They're gods, and they think that power and privilege should let them get away with all the worst things Mankind hates itself for doing. I don't care that Aphrodite was in an arranged marriage that caused her mildly suffering at worst for a few millennia because of all the people she got killed in The Trojan War. I don't care that Zeus was displayed as weak and idiotic arguably beyond what could be explained away by in-universe mechanics because of all the people he's raped and murdered simply because he could.

I don't care what happens to The Olympians, because if they were real I'd want worse done to them for everything they did to us.