Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26184894-20150713122948/@comment-5106672-20150718191623

Edward Zachary Sunrose wrote: GothicNarcissus wrote: Personally I'd rather skip Hades altogether, unless they make him a neutral/good character.

As a Greek Mythology enthusiast, I'm really growing tired of this whole Hades = Underworld = Satan = Villain equation endlessly going on in Hollywood. He was the ONE AND ONLY Greek god who never ever antagonised anyone – usually people came to the Underworld to antagonise him, but that's hardly his fault. The two things he did were kidnapping Persephone, which pissed Demeter off, and a fling with the nymph Myntha, which angered Persephone; for the most part, he kept on the sidelines minding his own business. :v He's not typecast as evil because of any perceived similarities to Satan. He's typecast because he rules over the dead. Anubis is a benevolent Egyptian god, but because he's the god of mummification (commonly confused to be the god of the dead), he is always typecast as a villain. If anyone is related to death, they're usually seen as evil, whether that is true or not.

Especially in this society where death is literally our #1 fear, as proven by numerous psychological studies. Yes but not exactly: in my reasoning the Underworld was the middle link. Hades was not the god of death per se (which was Thanatos) but more specifically the god of the Underworld, as in everything beneath the earth's surface, including the place for the afterlife. Most of the symbolysm surrounding him has to do with underground, not death: his alternate name was Pluton (which the Romans borrowed and latinised into Pluto), which shares the same root as Plutos, the god of wealth and riches – which are found underground in the form of gold and gemstones. Also, his strongest connection was to Persephone and, by proxy, Demeter, the goddes of wheat and harvest: the symbolism is the power of the ground transferring to plants and life in spring and then returning to the ground itself in autumn. Indeed, in time his name came to represent the whole Underworld, not death.

Now, in many pre-christian cultures, the Underworld was either the next life only good people could access (see Egyptians) or the place where all souls would go to be then put in the rightful subsection. The identification os the Underworld as Hell came along with christianity and its ruler got a bad reputation because Hell is ruled by Satan. This is why Hades had much more impact on popular culture than Thanatos, who was actual death personified, or why Charon, who was the ferrier in the Underworld, is regarded as dark while Hermes, the psychopomp (meaning the one who actually collected the souls and brought them to the Underworld) isn't.