Flipping through the pages of The Peloponnesian War today, this paragraph reminds of Sisyphus, Narcissus, Scylla's audience and all the other shades who are now free from Hades's tyranny. Athenian imperialists could brag about their might to Melians, but Athenian slaves would still run away from the empire every chance they got, bringing critical damage to the imperial interest.

Which is exactly what happens in Hades 2. The house of Hades claimed authority on shades, but shades lives were shitty. While Hades himself was living in a comfy palace, he downright forgot about leaving souls like Orpheus, Eurydice, Sisyphus in eternal solitude and torment. So now Hades himself is forgotten. Sisyphus ran away from Tarturus, not giving a flying fuck about Zagreus. Narcissus ran away from Asphodel, making the so-called eternal punishment looks like a joke.

1.

When Melinoe says Arachne's suffering is entirely deserved, she means it, literally.

Hecate brewing poisons for the Olympians to use at will is a totally reasonable act in Mel's eyes. Athena having the power to ruin any mortal' life is a natural part of Mel's idea of world order. Just like Zeus torturing Prometheus eternally is okay to Mel.

Prometheus protesting, however, is not okay.

2.

When Mel is low HP, Hecate does not cure Mel's injuries, and Mel responds with a masochist glee.

Her masochism ties in with her sadism towards Prometheus, Chronos and Arachne. As a third party, Moros confirms that Prometheus does not enjoy violence.

Mel, on the other hand, does.

She longs to traumatize Prometheus, an already traumatized victim of political violence, again and again. Just like she traumatizes Arachne even more by defending Hecate in front of Arachne.

She doesn't have to do that, but she does it anyway.

3.

And it all comes back to Mel's first win against Chronos, when she first shows her sadism.

Just like her conversation with Athena, Melinoe is also being literal here. Melinoe does value her mission of killing Chronos more than the actual well-being of her real family. She wants to be the Aetos to Chronos, not the Jesus to the Greek world. She brings nightmares, not salvation.

Why is it so? Because by completing the mission, she can gain praise and recognition from Hecate, who is the most important person to her in the world. More important than her real mother, more important than any sense of morality, and certainly more important than any mortal's human rights.

If Hecate decides to let her suffer her injuries, then Hecate must be right, pain is a teaching. Since pain is a teaching, then Zeus surely is right to teach Prometheus a lesson, Athena of course is right to teach Arachne and Medusa a lesson, and herself even righter to kill Chronos again and again.

Hecate raised Melinoe to be a weapon, but in her eagerness to please Hecate, Melinoe became much more than that.

Through her own choice, by consciously ignoring Arachne and Prometheus's pain, by refusing to listen to Nemesis and Moros's sensible commentary on divine injustice, she became a dedicated authoritarian. Now she is more loyal to Olympus than actual Olympian Dionysos ever could be, and more defensive of Hades's absolutist rule than Hades himself.

When she flies out into the world, she bows to the authority of the gods, and picks out everybody else's liver. She breaks the Titans' bodies, just like she breaks Arachne's heart, just like Hecate breaks her soul.

Poor, poor Arachne. Mel addresses Hecate respectfully, but doesn't address Arachne even once. Arachne is suffering so much, yet Mel is completely silent to Arachne's ordeal.

'Ah.' says Mel to Arachne's pain and Hecate's sin. 'But you stole fire for mankind so you deserve to be tortured forever.' says Mel to Prometheus's heroic martyrdom.

But Hades 2? Then the status quo is already great. Chronos destroyed Olympian authority long before Mel first embarked on her journey. Sisyphus and countless other souls are released. They are FREE. Meanwhile, genocidal rapists like Zeus and Poseidon are trapped on the mountain, unable to do anything to humanity ever again.

Mel can be an annoyance to Chronos and Prometheus, again and again, but she cannot fight the meta structure of the game itself. The siege is here, forever, just like Zeus and Hera's torturous marriage. Since now they are not able to torment the mortals out there, they can only torment each other. And Apollo.

There is nothing Mel can do. Mel cannot make the Olympians happy. Mel can belittle mortals, Prometheus and Chronos all she likes, but she cannot make the Olympians love each other, just like she cannot make Hecate her true mother.

As long as the basic roguelike gaming structure holds, neither Mel nor the Olympians could ever be free.

But Sisyphus is free. Prometheus is with Aetos, and both are happy. Though Chronos is clearly not happy about being beaten by his granddaughter again and again, he is at least no longer in pieces, which is still a tremendous improvement, and a permanent one nonetheless.

So, in a sense, Chronos and Prometheus has won already, while Mel is doomed by the game itself. She may have a character arc, she may be slapped in the face by Pandora's truth (mind you, Pandora is not bound by the roguelike mechanic, she is a NPC without encounter, if plot requires Pandora to break with Mel, Pandora can just leave the camp; but the player can only have Mel fights through the underworld or Olympus), she may change her outlook altogether. But her current goals? Death to Chronos, restoring the throne of Hades, and saving Olympus?

She'll never succeed. This is roguelike, not linear RPG.

But this also knits up the narrative beautifully. The answer to the question 'are we the baddies?' is 'yes'. The Olympians are baddies. Mel is a baddie for aiding these genocidal rapists.

Unlike Arachne, who didn't choose to become a spider, or Pandora, who didn't choose the jar, or even Odysseus, who could not choose Athena but could only be chosen, whenever Mel leaves camp to fight, she is knowingly choosing to fight for a bunch of murderous despots out of her own free will.

Survived a 120mm HE-frag that left him the only survivor, the bones in his right forearm completely severed apart, missing the trigger finger on his remaining hand, applied a wire tourniquet so he could keep fighting. Threw grenades when infantry tried to clear the building, and then grabbed a stick he would eventually throw at a drone before being finished off by another tank shell. Calmly fought literally to his last breath, his last actions being of resistance, and the IDF was too chickenshit to approach a solitary, mortally wounded 62 year old man (who had already suffered 22 years of torture in a military prison!). A man they said hid in a hijab, fled to Qatar, was a millionaire off of aide money, that handcuffed Israeli prisoners to himself so he couldn’t be assassinated. And instead he’s this clear cut example of the best of human bravery and dedication. The stupid fucking Israelis are parading the footage and saying he died like a dog, which really shows how spineless and debased they are to not recognize how the footage depicts him as a titan of a man and resistance fighter.

Hamas isn't hiding in hospitals

Hamas isn't using Palestinian as shields.

Hamas's leader died on the front lines in Rafah, fighting as any other man in the resistance.

A 62-year-old man, wearing a vest and carrying a riffle, with only two soldiers by his side. A leader of resistance against occupation.

Some quotes:

When I was 19, I made a large oil painting of the nerd I would eventually marry. I poured all my attention and care into this painting. It's the only art I have from back then that still holds up as a work I'm proud of today.

I entered it into a judged show at the local art center. It got an honorable mention. I went to see the show with my beloved model. One of the judges came up to talk to me, and highlighted that all the judges really liked the painting. It would have placed, except, you see, the feet were incorrect. They were too wide and short, and if I just studied a bit more anatomy-

I called over my future wife, and asked her to take off her shoe. Being already very used to humoring me, she did. The judge looked at her very short, very wide little foot. Exactly as I'd lovingly rendered it. I would never edit her appearance in any way.

The judge looked me in the eye, and to his credit, he really looked like he meant it when he said "Oh I'm so sorry."

Anyways the moral of the story is that all of those anatomy books that teach you proportions are either showing you averages, or a very specific idea of an idealized body. Actual bodies are much more varied than that.

One day, as the pain grew too much to bear, he goes to church after church, praying at each one that God send him a reason to live, or permission to commit the cardinal sin of suicide.

Finally, he comes to the last church, Our Lady of Saints, and prays for God's forgiveness as he is going to kill himself, having lost all hope for any reason to go on.

But then, from the rafters, descends the symbiote, who had been waiting there to die, after the being it loved most tried to kill it for the crime of being alive. Having survived trying to sacrifice itself to save the very person who tried so hard to kill it, too heartbroken to go on, it had resigned itself to die without a host.

But, in Eddie, it senses someone as filled with the same pain, passion, and loneliness as it is, and reaches out to stop him from taking his own life.

They bond and Eddie enthusiastically welcomes it, considering it to be an angel sent directly from God in his hour of need.

He then pretty much immediately has it take the form of a priest outfit and tries to kill the person who tried to kill the symbiote with the very same bell while he shouts biblical allegory and extremely homoerotic threats. Eventually they swap the priest outfit for a fuck ton of teeth and claws and tongue because Eddie is into that, and run around trying to kill Spiderman until they decide they are bored of that and want to go focus on their relationship.

The symbiote feeds off of the brain chemical produced by Eddie's love for it and supplemments it with chocolate when needed.

Eddie calls it "my other", "my love", "my beloved", "my darling". The Symbiote, who was seen as a genetic abnormality and sentenced to death by its own people for its desire to live in harmony with its host instead of destroy it, learns through Eddie what it is to truly love and be loved, as opposed to just trying to be whatever someone else wants it to be.

1. SPIDER MAN WAS T H E MOST IMPORTANT THING IN VENOM SYMBIOTE LIFE!! NOTHING ELSE EVEN BEGING TO COMPARE TO HOLY PETER!!

2. Flash Thompson was the one who taught Venom symbiote what is right and what is wrong. Without his influence Venom would’ve been evil, immoral creature!!