#1 baby girl zeus stan

step 1: convince ageless gods to go to therapy (they need it)

kjdfhbdn thanks for the question. i hesitate to ever assign a legitimate diagnosis to the gods because they are gods, but that being said... there is room to talk about it.

in my works, the most obvious would be things like hades' alcohol use disorder, demeter's depression, and yes - the abundance of ptsd among the big six hahaha.

but, there are other things. i've always written hades and athena as a bit autistic coded. hermes (and maybe poseidon) are my adhd kings. ares would be one of the few to get an actual diagnosis (of ptsd) due to his frequent proximity to it. zeus would have some kind of anxiety diagnosis due to frequent panic attacks (as would hades, poor dude lol).

zeus is closest with his wife, of course, on account of them being married for thousands of years and confiding in one another about (nearly) everything. and zeus just being generally smitten with her in every capacity. however, i would also raise hestia as an option. she is his best friend, really, and there is very little zeus would not go to her for / do for her.

likewise, hestia is closest with zeus. i mean, she's close with all of them, but she definitely spends the most time with him. not to mention the small part of her that still views herself as "mother" and her siblings as "children" due to her responsibility for them in her youth. zeus being the youngest makes her feel even more of that connection to him.

demeter is also closest with hestia, and it's not even a competition. she sees hestia the most / is visited by her often, and demeter has no baggage attached to hestia, which helps lol. demeter does not trust easily, but she trusts hestia wholeheartedly and that makes their bond all that much stronger.

poseidon is probably closest with hades. he's also close with hera and hestia, but i think he feels most comfortable around hades. they can relate to one another a bit more, ruling kingdoms away from olympus, but poseidon has also always looked up to hades a lot. they have a pretty deep understanding of one another.

hera would pick hades - her husband is a very close second, but there's a twin thing that cannot be ignored. she knows she can tell her husband anything, but no one will understand her like hades does. they have always been close and will continue to be, even as far apart as they are, and hera trusts few more than she trusts him.

Please yap about them? :3

i am so sorry this has taken me so long to get to, motherhood is No Joke kjdnfdmf

i do have so many thoughts on them, though a lot of that features in the novel i'm writing so i won't go into too many details about the narrative, though i will talk about them as people, if that makes sense

metis is, to me, the perfect woman for the job she is given and that is ultimately what dooms her. she is incredibly wise, cunning, and resourceful. she is fiercely independent and rebellious, one of so many sisters, and therefore forced to stand out on her own as much as she could. she has a temper, and she's not afraid to speak her mind - but at the same time, she is so so so kind and gentle when she needs to be.

zeus falls for her - as naturally as breathing, because she is incredible and exactly what he needs to be the leader everyone is depending on. she falls for him, because it's exactly what she's not supposed to do, and hey - she's always been a rebel at heart. she is a mastermind behind zeus' greatest triumphs, and a voice of reason in the chaos of war, and this perfect, kind person he and everyone else can confide in, and a spitfire when they need someone with backbone, and these are all of zeus' favourite things about her.

and it is, ultimately, what dooms her. because metis is incredible. she's impassioned and fearless and forgiving and capable and in the end it is too much for her now husband. she is, and could be, and could give life to, everything he has been taught to fear.

it breaks my heart, honestly. i like to imagine that the titanomachy would have gone a very different way without her, and how is she repaid? grim! very grim! and heartbreaking and beautiful, too.

prometheus on the other hand, is to zeus and the olympians, what metis was without the romance. he comes into zeus' life and is much of the same: wisdom, and charisma, and reason, and kindness, and passion. he is a guide to a young god still navigating this complex war, and zeus comes to depend on prometheus almost as much as he does metis.

prometheus, however, has the benefit of foresight. he knows what he must do to help the gods, and despite the betrayal he must enact against his own family, he does it because he knows. or, at least he senses. and he is this incredible chess master who orchestrates what he can around him, but who is ultimately still victim to his own emotions because he does love these gods. he loves the world they are fighting to create.

and it's his love that dooms him. he loves the gods, and he loves humans, and it may seem like he is a trickster but in the end it is love. he knows he must betray zeus. he knows he will be punished for it. and prometheus does what he does anyway, and that to me is so fascinating. he is a wise god, a manipulator of sorts, but even he is victim to fate.

its why, i think, that prometheus doesn't actually hate zeus. i don't particularly love that interpretation. he's bitter, naturally, but he understands and he's not hateful about his situation because prometheus ultimately had a choice, and he made it knowing what would become of him. (this isn't based in anything super factual, but just my own sense of the myths and what i enjoy about prometheus).

Personally Poseidon is my favorite and because I love me some heartbreak with fluff, can i ask you how the big six reacted to Poseidon losing Nerites and the breakdown after?

No pressure if you do not want to ofcourse :)

thank you very much!

if we're talking about their reaction at the time, unfortunately i cannot say there was much of one. poseidon wears his heart on his sleeve for most things, but i think when it came to losing nerites, (or any heartbreak, really), poseidon can be quite close-lipped.

what happened with nerites wasn't a secret on olympus or anything, but nerites wasn't dead - just changed in a way that made him impossible to communicate with (in my headcanon, after which he was given back to his parents to be cared for). the part that was unknown was just how deeply poseidon cared for him. i wouldn't doubt that the expectation was that this was just another dalliance and not something deeper - and poseidon wasn't about to correct anyone. he was hurting, but he didn't let that show for a long time.

not to mention, his relationship with zeus, demeter, and hestia wasn't great at the time - at least, not deep enough to actually want to confide in them. so he kept it to himself, and most of his siblings were none the wiser.

however, i think poseidon talks about it eventually, when the dust has settled and things are better. he tells them about nerites, and how much it hurt to lose him, and they are naturally far more empathetic then. if you're referring to poseidon's breakdown in my fic "mnemosyne's curse", then they are naturally even more empathetic after seeing how much it truly affected him in that moment. someone requested this at some point, and i still have it on the brain, but i think zeus and poseidon actually have a pretty deep heart to heart on the matter after the fact! maybe i'll write that someday...

gosh it's been a while since i've talked about hera this way so i can't remember what i've said. have some rapid fire headcanons:

hera, in her youth, was a spitfire. she was wild, angry, difficult to control, and incredibly strong-willed. so much so, in fact (in my headcanons, anyway) that she led several missions on her own during the titanomachy without anyone's approval to .. varying levels of success. that's part of why she's sent to live with oceanus and tethys - at first, she views it as a punishment, but her love for her psuedo parents wins out in the end. it only sort of works, because she's obviously still very strong-willed even afterwards lol.

hera has the sort of charisma that leaves people walking away from a conversation unsure if they adore her or are terrified of her, but... the answer is usually both.

of her stepchildren, athena and hermes are her favourites, and its not a secret. in particular, she views athena as her own daughter and is very protective of her - but also, much more likely to butt heads with her in the way mothers and daughters do lol

i like to think hera's libido is incredibly high - sometimes more so than her husband's, so the jokes about him are silly LDHJMFD

hera is a very Strict mom in the sense that she has very high expectations of her kids, but those expectations vary. she just wants them to be the best at the thing that they're doing - so yes, ~chaos~ and war included. just go out and kick ass at those things, sweethearts!

i think hera and leto used to be very close friends, which only served to make that which transpired between them that much more painful - on both ends. there's a reason hera's punishment of leto is so much more severe than most, and it's because of how much of a betrayal her coupling with zeus was to hera. throw in hera's fear of her husband fathering a child stronger than her own children, and it's a messy situation, naturally.

i think hera's ire would dissipate eventually - maybe not enough to actually be close with leto again, but enough to stand being in the same room as her, you know? hera can hold grudges, but even she is reasonable and would learn to let her anger go enough to be civil - particularly because leto isn't going anywhere. she's the mother of two incredibly important olympians and a long-standing ally of olympus, so in order to stop herself from being miserable, hera probably comes around a bit.