Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Olympian Ladies' Club

Question: What would you think about all the Greek goddesses getting together and going on strike like Demeter did (so Aphrodite can get a divorce, Hera to get Zeus to stop screwing around Athena and Artemis for more equal rights for women)? Etc.

Honestly, I'm not sure it would work very well, and they're probably better off trying to use their specialized social and political skills to get what they want instead. Demeter is kind of a special case; as the fertility goddess extraordinaire, when she decides to go on strike, it means that everybody on earth dies of hunger within a few months. It's serious business. The other ladies of the Dodekatheon going on strike is not necessarily going to have the same effect - so Hera left and now nobody can get married? Or Athena left so now nobody has war strategies anymore? Those would be annoying, but they're not on the same level as imminent global death of humanity.

There's also the problem of legality; Zeus is a serious business Justice god, and while Demeter had a legitimate greivance - the kidnapping of her daughter by another family member, definitely a crime that needs addressing - the other goddesses don't necessarily. Aphrodite may not like being married to Hephaestus, but it was Zeus' own decree that she do it, and he's fully able to smite her ass with Justice boons for the various laws she's broken if she starts irritating him (he could actually bust her for adultery about eighty times over already [the irony!], but presumably likes her and/or doesn't want to get involved). I'm sure Zeus would like to make his daughters happy if they want something, but disobeying the king is illegal, so he's under no onus to do so if they're asking for something he doesn't want to grant. He can just say no, and if they try to pull a walkout kick their asses with Justice. (Justice is great that way - he doesn't even have the guilt of having to raise a hand to them.)

Hera actually did stage a walkout on Zeus once in ancient myth; she was so peeved over his latest bout of misbehavior that she decided she was leaving and went to go live on a different mountain, refusing to see him. After realizing that she was serious this time and that he didn't like her being gone at all (this is a woman he pulled some epic stuntery to get to marry in the first place, after all), Zeus went out to find some wise men to advise him and then staged a fake wedding to a new woman. When Hera showed up, furious, he revealed that it was just a piece of wood he'd put a dress on in order to lure her out and begged her to come home, and she was so touched by the lengths he'd gone to for her that she did. She's the only one I could see getting away with pulling that kind of thing again; not only does she have plenty of political power as a queen in her own right, but dragging her home by her hair would not be good for domestic bliss, and since Zeus is pretty undeniably in the wrong when it comes to the adultery issue, Justice is not going to help him a whole lot. (Even Hera's not immune to Zeus' pissery, though - remember that time he hung her from the heavens by her foot because she sassed him?)

I do, however, think that Greek goddesses agitating for change from within the pantheon is an awesome idea (for PCs to instigate especially, but as meta-plot for the gods themselves as well). What worked for Demeter may not work for all of them, but a goddess with Hera's kind of Epic Manipulation doesn't really need to make grand gestures to start change - a Rumor Mill with an especially juicy lie about Zeus' scandalous behavior might be more than enough to rock the boat. Athena's a genius - rather than making a grand gesture, she's in a perfect position to pick her battles and once in a while refuse to give up a perfect tactic in the war on the Titans unless she gets some kind of concession out of it (though I doubt she'd do it too much - she doesn't want the Titans to win, after all, and Zeus can get very testy with the line between being-a-pain and outright-treason). And Aphrodite's tried-and-true trick of just making people fall in love, constantly, with either inappropriate or unappealing people, is a perennial favorite for making her displeasure known. It's almost always a better idea for them to just use their social or mental mojo to manipulate, convince or maneuver people into doing what they want, rather than staging grand gestures that might end with Zeus taking them to task.

In general, moving toward ideas like modern womens' rights or social tolerances are usually better left to the PCs, though. Goddesses (and any other minority group) of ancient pantheons are just as ancient as the gods, and having long been part of an established order that includes a certain treatment of various groups, they may not see anything wrong with it or actively want it to change. Some do, of course (exactly as many as your plot requires, in fact), but when it comes to dragging pantheons screaming into the twenty-first century, Scions are always in the best position to do so. I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a goddess nudging one in that direction, though.

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