Percy Jackson rant: sex in Greek means f***ing around

What’s up with the sex lives of these Greek gods?!?

Hera, the goddess of marriage, is totally pissed off about Zeus’ fooling around. Yet she sticks it out with him for thousands of years. There’s some little quip that they went for couples counseling but I’m not that sure it really helped the divine king and queen so much. She’s still fuming and Zeus guiltily recognizes Thalia as another one of his own.

horny, frustrated and ready for more!

horny, frustrated and ready for more!

Hades, the god of the Underworld, is the classic example of a dude with a relationship handicap. As I recall he abducts and rapes his wife, Persephone. Then he goes around banging mortal woman and shoves it right in her face. It’s obvious the way P talks trash about Nico di Angelo that she’s not a happy “step-mother.” Hades himself is pretty awful to Nico as well. What’s up with him not recognizing Nico as his son for ages; verbally abusing him; lying to him when he makes an agreement to help Percy; and locking him away in that tacky Las Vegas casino for decades: all this while at the same time heavily pressuring Nico to be the hero of the Oracle of Delphi’s prophecy instead of Percy? Huh?!? The guy’s a total jerk!

Aries and Aphrodite seem to have a sweet deal. It’s true that he’s a total bully and she’s a huge diva, but hey, they act happy enough. Of course she’s got that ugly husband, but it sort of looks like they enjoy an open relationship. You don’t see any of them all bent out of shape about each other’s mortal kids, for example. Just because the two A’s irritate me doesn’t mean that they’re not living the dream. Hephestus is a little anti-social. That may be because of unresolved mother issues rather than because he’s been cuckolded for millennia. And it certainly hasn’t held him back from fathering a whole slew of heroes. I miss Beckendorf!

The Poseidon story is much the same. He comes across as this glamorous laid-back seafaring playboy type and clearly the ladies go wild for it. The huge army of Cyclopses alone suggests that this god really gets around. It’s also very clear that his divine son, Triton, and his wife, Amphitrite, are not happy campers having Percy swimming in ‘their ocean.’

It’s not all screwing around on Olympus. Aside from Hera’s matrimonial restraint, there’s Athena’s non-sexual sexual reproduction. That’s so weird! And it sort of short circuits one of the more fun parts of having a kid: the sex. Artemis, the dedicated virgin, seems to collect a huge entourage of like-minded virginal orphans and cast-offs. Maybe she’s fooling us. I always wonder if there’s a girl-on-girl thing happening in the silvery moonlight?

That raises another issue about Greek mythology: where has all of the same-sex stuff vanished to in the Percy Jackson series? These gods, godlings and monsters are a rangy bunch. Don’t they go for any cute little thing: man or woman, human or not? I’m sure that I’ve read in my Edith Hamilton about at least one or two peccadillos where the guys were after each other. Let’s face it, Ganymede didn’t become Zeus’ cup bearer only because he’s handy in the kitchen!

I know Mr. D feeds Percy this ridiculous crap that the gods need the demigod heroes to stay afloat. Blah, blah, blah! So the entire system is set up to force the gods to fool around for the sake of Western Civilization?! That’s convenient! “Sorry, honey, I needed to bang that hot mortal. It keeps the economy moving and it helps you, too, you know.” Can you imagine hearing a line like that in divorce court?

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  • mike Nov 10, 2009 @ 12:01

    yes that’s what was at stake in the last book civilization had to be protected so the Gods could go around to further populate the world with more half bloods lol