Jerkass/Oral Tradition: Difference between revisions

* [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Mr.]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1ncADC9KM Douchebag.]

 

* Almost every single Greek Hero is one. Also every Greek God, varying between "Jerkass to some extent" and "Jerkass on steroids." (Athena is an example of the former, while Zeus is definitely the latter.) Considering the jobs of the Greek Heroes in Myth is to pretty much get completely screwed in the end [[Genre Savvy|(and they know it too)]] it is sort of understandable for them. Then you notice that the Greek Gods are doing most of the screwing on the Heroes and that most of the Heroes are children or grandchildren of the Gods, which only makes the Gods even worse Jerkasses.

** Among the noteworthy Greek Gods, the exceptions are arguably Hestia, Demeter, and Hades - and there are stipulations even there. Hestia hardly did anything in any myths, so her personality's a little flat, and Demeter ''did'' go into a sob-fest over not having her daughter Persephone by her side ''every waking hour of every day'' (case in point - it's when Persephone is with Hades that Autumn and Winter occur, never mind the mortals that suffer for her "grief"). Hades is generally considered a whole lot nicer that his siblings, but he can also be a [[Jerkass]] [[Alternate Character Interpretation|depending on which story featuring him you read]]. (Did he take Persephone callously? Did she seduce him? Did Aphrodite have him struck by Cupid's arrow?) Hades was at ''least'' a lot more lawful that the rest, and despite a capacity for cruelty he was more sympathetic towards others (particularly compared to his brother Zeus).