As the episode opens, she has a nightmare that she’s pregnant and wakes up to realize that her period is late. Though memories of that night (and Apollo himself) continue to haunt Persephone, she endeavors to ignore what happened and move on with her life, including her blossoming romance with Hades. However, for the purposes of this blog post, I want to look more closely at one episode in particular: “ Episode 83: Proserpina is Late.” (Warning: spoilers ahead!) At this point in the story, Apollo has already sexually assaulted Persephone, but she has not yet recognized what happened to her as rape.
Many aspects of Smythe’s treatment of sexual assault and rape culture demand investigation, including the limitations of affirmative consent the complications of acquaintance rape and the connections between purity culture and rape culture. Through this depiction, Smythe uses the fantastic world she creates to explore Persephone’s experience of acquaintance rape and the difficulty she faces in negotiating that event and its aftermath. One of Smythe’s most significant adaptations to the original myth, and the reason I examine the Webtoon in this post, is that Apollo (not Hades!) sexually assaults Persephone. As 19-year-old Persephone leaves home, starts college, and (of course) begins to fall in love with Hades, Smythe explores familiar young adult themes like identity, sexuality, and coming-of-age. Although Rachel Smythe lives and works in New Zealand, her work-and its engagement with pressing issues like sexual assault-reaches a global audience. Webtoon has had a significant impact on global webcomics more generally, and as one of the most popular comics on the platform, Lore Olympus forms an outsize portion of that influence. Meant to be read on the Webtoon app (though also available via web browser), Smythe designed Lore Olympus to be scrolled through, and thus, it lacks the traditional page turn, allowing for the use of different techniques than those in traditional print comics. In Smythe’s ongoing, Eisner-winning, Hugo-nominated webcomic Lore Olympus (2017-present), readers “Witness what the gods do.after dark” (ellipses in original) through Smythe’s adaptation of the Hades and Persephone myth.
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