Hephaestus has his day
Who is the smith god of Olympus? Why is he married to Aphrodite, and why can't he catch a break? This week, it's all about Hephaestus and his journey of self discovery where he (hopefully) doesn't fall off a mountain. Again.
The creature is the Sea Hare. It's a hare that lives in the sea and also is relentlessly vicious.
Links
That disclaimer: https://myths.link/318
Membership, anyone? https://mythpodcast.com/membership
Music:
"Pink Skies" by Chad Crouch
"Soft Light" by Chad Crouch
"Evening Overture" by Chad Crouch
"Among the Reeds" by Chad Crouch
"Grand Caravan" by Blue Dot Sessions
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Disclaimer
Oof. Lots of talk of Zeus forcing himself on different women, including his soon-to-be wife, Hera. There's a scene of infidelity where a husband traps a wife and her lover in order to humiliate them (in a not-weird way...). At the end, a male character is a little too quick on the draw and accidentally fathers a child with the earth. Obviously we don't get explicit with any of this, but you can only dance around it so much.
That was a really low move to end the episode with Hephaestus’ one infidelity instead of a happy ending; you didn’t have to do that. Is there any repentance or mercy given in the Greek myths? They can’t all be as miserable & hedonistic as this episode’s, can they?
I definitely wanted Hephaestus to have a happy ending, but I felt like it would be glossing over what wasn’t really infidelity, but attempted sexual assault that ended up impregnating his grandmother. I *really* wanted to ignore it because I do like the character, and it would have been better for his story arc, but I can’t be so critical of characters like Zeus and others and then not mention a character attempting sexual assault just because I like them more than the others.
Hephaestus’s story is certainly more miserable than most, and they won’t all be like this.
It doesn’t seem right to me to suggest that Hephaestus & Aphrodite’s arranged marriage or anything else justified her cheating on him with Ares. Saying that “the way the world should work & the way it does work are different” doesn’t mean you give up & do what shouldn’t be done, or let what shouldn’t be done happen & say “Who cares?”
This is something interesting we’ll get to when we tell Aphrodite’s story because the Greeks were *very* biased toward men and the stories show that. It’s definitely not justified, but there is an ocean between a happy, consensual relationship between two people who love and respect each other and a forced marriage between two people who dislike each other and from which there’s no escape. I mean, according to some sources, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus as a cruel joke, because she was so beautiful, and he was seen as so ugly.
Once again, in our world it’s not justified, but it was an attempt to show that maybe Aphrodite isn’t just the insatiable lust monster that she’s portrayed as in the originals, but someone with human desires and weaknesses, and who makes human mistakes.