Everybody Loves Zeus examples kinda misses why it was named like that

Everybody Loves Zeus has an interesting example list to say the least. The description and how it was meant to be an opposite of Everybody Hates Hades was quite obvious, yet somehow examples are mostly filled with sidestepping on things like "oh he is loved. But!" or a bunch of subversions or played with, rather than straight examples Everybody Hates Hades is. You'd think being depicted as an outright good force is an easy example.

Maybe it is too easy. I think people prefer to write about more interesting examples. The definition isn't super clear though. The laconic version refers to Zeus as a light god, which is not a classification I have seen before. Also the idea that Zeus is good is a bit vague. I don't think that the ancient Greeks viewed Zeus as evil. He was viewed more as great than good and that he behaved like a Greek king is a standard interpretation. He was also the champion of hospitality. So there is some values dissonance.

I thought the trope was more about how a complex god is generally seen as a good god because he is the equivalent of the abrahamic god.

I think that is closer to what it is supposed to be, but the article is poorly written. Some of the examples mention child appropriateness, so that may be part of the issue, as well as the general trend towards dualism, but a big part is interpreting the chief god through the lens of the modern western idea of God.

Many modern adaptations make Zeus essentially the Greek version of Yahweh, especially by omitting references that Zeus had the habit of raping mortal women.

That should be mentioned in the description.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 2nd 2024 at 7:19:03 AM

Original TLP draft. Part of the problem with the laconic may be that I'm not sure what the sponsor thought Zeus was the god of, considering all the talk about "gods of light or celestial bodies".

I kind of interpreted this trope as being related to Hijacked by Jesus. A work will take the supreme god of a pantheon and whitewash them to be the Big Good, fulfilling a similar role to the God of the Bible. I wouldn't call this a counterpart to Everybody Hates Hades which is rooted in death being dark and scary so the god of death must be evil.

I think this should be merged into Hijacked by Jesus, as a general "polytheistic pantheon being reinterpreted in a Christian, Manichean mold".

The Christian God isn't married. The most prominent example in the article is Disney's Hercules. There the changes were made to make the story more family friendly.

Maybe though there aren't that many examples of Zeus differing from mythology. Everyone learns his is a womanizer in school right?

Edited by ry4n on Jan 3rd 2024 at 12:41:44 PM

I didn't learn about Greek Mythology in school at all. I had to learn through personal curiosity (and Percy Jackson).

I'm not saying that these adaptations turn Zeus into a duplicate of the Christian God. What I was saying is that the tendency to turn the chief God of the pantheon into the Big Good is a form of Hijacked by Jesus.

It seems that the trope is a kind chairy. As other people have noted, the Greeks didn't consider Zeus evil, and according to this trope, neither does the modern media, so it's nothing like the situation in Everybody Hates Hades. Maybe we should consider Cut it?

Even the non-Zeus examples feel like they can't make it a straightforward answer either, like MCU Odin.

I think is a snowclone. Many works portray the top god (Zeus) as good, partly influenced by the portrayal of the Christian god, but the audience sees him as evil due to the Values Dissonance (Zeus is a rapist by modern standards). Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing that happens with the gods of death (Hades) but instead of an association with something negative (death) causing people to hate them, it's an Audience Reactions (they are basically Unintentionally Unsympathetic). This is... a mess, now I really think we should cut it.

Edited by SoyValdo7 on Jan 3rd 2024 at 8:05:20 AM

So, basically, just Historical Hero Upgrade but applied to mythology instead?

Exactly.

I think modern interpretations of old myths run into a more nuanced problem than simply recasting everyone in a Christian mold. After all you can view Catholicism as having a de facto pantheon of minor deified humans in the form of saints. There is something that goes into why Christianity has a top deity who is all-good.

Zeus and his family were not viewed as evil, nor as entirely good, but rather as embodying human qualities to the maximal extent, for good and bad. And as was said, they projected their relationship with their own rulers onto these gods. They worshipped and offered to these gods to gain favours, but this was very much a transactional thing. And that's because to most people of the time, universal values and justice were simply not a concern. They wanted material security for themselves and those they knew. You can see this in the rulers they followed; the Roman emperors were admired by the populace for their martial strength, never mind whether they were just.

Christianity (and Buddhism) was partly the result and partly the cause of people looking beyond their own community to ask themselves what was just for everyone. They could no longer worship a flawed being like themselves, it had to be one that embodied universal ideals and transcended this world. We can even see this among the brightest minds of the Greeks, like Homer and Ovid, who portrayed the gods as superhuman in might but not minds, and gave them little reverence.

Modern people are even further along in this process. Jerkass Gods is something we understand, but we cannot fathom why anyone would worship these beings. In many ways we are more comfortable with the Cosmic Horror Story that goes beyond "gods don't care what is best for humans" all the way into "gods don't care about humans". So when we picture a pantheon that is meant to attract some reverence, they may be flawed and limited, but they have to at least have good intentions and a vision that goes beyond their own community of followers. That is the lens in which modern writers see Zeus.

Using Zeus as the basis for this trope was a mistake. The trope need to be completely rewritten from scratch or just straight up cut.

I don't think that this trope was exclusive to Zeus, similar to how Everybody Hates Hades isn't exclusive to Hades.

No no no, what I mean is that Zeus doesn't really match what this trope wants to do. He isn't particularly associated with light and hasn't historically been seen that negatively (In any case, only recently has he been seen more negatively). So using it in the name and description hurts the trope.

Edited by SoyValdo7 on Jan 4th 2024 at 5:06:19 AM

My understanding is that Everybody Hates Hades and Everybody Loves Zeus are when people project concepts of dualism (evil/good, Devil/God, Hell/Heaven) onto religions where they don't exist. Abrahamitic religions tend to have such dualism, but Greek mythology and its Roman/Egyptian etc. equivalents don't.

Everybody Hates Hades involves taking a god of death/the dead who in myth was viewed, if not positively, at least neutrally, but making them into a pure evil god because:

(a) Death/the Underworld is scary and bad, so the god of them must be scary and bad

(b) They want to play out tropes/plots associated with Satan in a different cosmology

and

(c) In the specific case of Hades, the Christian Bible occasionally uses Hades (in reference to the Underworld, not the god) as another name for Hell.

By contrast, Everybody Loves Zeus involves taking a god who was viewed positively in ancient myth, and portraying them positively in modern works, too. Just that, to avoid Values Dissonance and/or to reconcile conflicting portrayals of the god, various unsavory traits from mythology are altered or ignored.

And that's something that can happen even in the cultures and religions those myths came from. Way back in Ancient Greece, Plato's The Republic has Socrates argue that the government should censor myths that portray the gods acting foolishly or immorally, believing that the moral instruction of society is best served if the gods are portrayed as flawless.

Or, heck, you can see the same thing happen with the Abrahamic God. You'll find plenty of modern works where God is portrayed as being all about love and peace, ignoring those parts of the Bible where God ordered the Israelites to commit war and genocide.

Edited by RavenWilder on Jan 5th 2024 at 10:39:50 AM

So interesting theories on religion aside, who thinks this trope is necessary?

If it's true that these top gods are actually washed out of their more negative traits to satisfy the modern public's taste, then that would already be covered by Adaptational Heroism or even God Is Good.

As for public perception itself, that shouldn't matter because this is an objective trope, so the only thing that should matter would be how they are depicted in the works, and most works depict them as good, which is how they were perceived in their original myths. that makes this trope a Chair. Heck, the fact that top gods are always portrayed as good is the reason why God Is Evil exists.

Edited by SoyValdo7 on Jan 5th 2024 at 5:32:26 AM

My main gripe really is that the examples don't really play the trope straight due to lots of "but"s unlike the Hades variant which are fine putting examples playing the trope straight.

Huh yeah, we have a God Is Good trope already. This feels redundant since it seems like it does the same thing.

Edited by Ookamikun on Jan 5th 2024 at 9:45:41 PM