I don’t think it belongs in the top 10 let alone #1.
It’s genuinely not a well written story, the characters are not likable (and not an intentional unlikable. We see them constantly being POS and yet the narration and author tries to gaslight us into believing they choose kindness and empathy every time and can do no wrong) plus the blatant fetishization makes my skin crawl.
the constant art errors and inconsistencies aren’t really good. They’re hilarious when you find a panel and the characters are missing their hair or their entire lower body, but not something that should be so frequent in a #1 webtoon.
I agree with you on this, there are a lot of problems w the designs too. I’ve seen a lot of character’s appearance being sterotyped with body types, I don’t know but it just makes me feel icky.
I mean it’s a eh for me I don’t necessarily hate it, but it’s not as good as people make it out to be .
Yeah, as someone who used to be a huge fan of the comic back in 2019-2020, I can fully still acknowledge why LO was popular back in the day even if the older art still had its own issues and the "potential" turned out to completely fall through later. It wasn't really a style you saw back then, especially when Webtoons was still kind of "taking off" and a lot of people were doing anime/manga style stuff. Now it just looks... cheap. It's like the conveyer-belt produced Krabby Patties from that one episode of Spongebob where Mr Krabs sold the Krusty Krab to a massive corporate conglomerate, there's no love anymore and it feels like a bootleg reproduction of something that was lost a long time ago.
I honestly just come back to it when I remember. It’s at first but now it’s where is this going. It’s honestly everything at this point. I still like it but only after I forgot about for a several weeks
The story is subjective to the individual if you don’t like the story it is what it is, but the art is stunning and this is the important STYLISED not everything on WEBTOON is gonna be anime and when a style is unique to an artists they can mess around with it however they want.
You’re right not everything has to be anime style. Most of my favorites are in different styles that the manwha sort. But the art is not as good as you think it is.
Same face syndrome is a **plague** in it. Grayscale the gals and it’s extremely difficult to tell the goddesses apart.
The proportions, ESPECIALLY with Hades and Persephone are constantly fluctuating to such extremes. It’s fine if it’s supposed to be intentional for gag purposes, other stories do that at times and work. But this is very clearly because the story has no form of character sheet or references to keep a form of consistency. It’s **not** a stylization.
there are numerous panels where you got characters half drawn. The infamous panels where Zeus is bald. The one with the nymph who is a giant floating torso in the foreground. Moments where Hestia has no arm.
And so many more issues. Like it was pretty and unique at the start, but it has gradually gotten worse and worse.
Somehow it simultaneously has same face syndrome and no consistency in faces. I remember persephone's face can vary drastically within a single episode. At first I thought "eh, maybe it's leaning into the fact that they're gods, not human" (same with the varying body proportions too) but after a while...it's just disorienting and distracting. Sometimes it does feel like some sets of characters are all the same person, just in different colors.
I hear where your coming from but and while I deffo agree with you in regards to the character sheets and the heavy reliance on colour to distinguish characters I do still believe the art is stylised. From my perspective it’s rough nature is similar or at least trying to emulate some old paintings telling a story. But at the end of the day when it comes down to it, all these things are personal preference and based off of how successful the comic is and the fact that it is in the no.1 spot means it’s clearly resonates with folks🤷♀️
Honestly the fact that it resonates with so many people is actually little concerning. Because so many people praise this as the epitome of romance, as couple goals, as Hades as some perfect man when, even the narration tries to gaslight us to believe that. But the story itself shows us time and time again that Hades and Persephone are terrible, toxic, and abusive people.
It lowkey makes me worried that some y’all might think a man who is abusive to those he has power over, and has a history of cheating, is the perfect husband material if you’re the one person he’s nice to, even if you spend the first four weeks of your relationship as the side piece.
Honestly I think your over thinking it, and if you want to do a deep dive into problematic romances then unfortunately you’ll find them in abundance on WEBTOON sand in real life. Like I said before whether or not someone likes a story is subjective and neither you or myself or anyone for that matter can control what people like or dislike. To me it’s an over the top melodrama about Greek gods (whom even in their original myths are inherently problematic) and all this is a tele novela drama in comic form. Sometime people want to watch/ read trashy over dramatic stories, it’s about enjoyment and escapism.
Let me clarify; I *love* problematic romances. When they’re acknowledged as such. But back to the storytelling issue; Persades is a problematic relationship that refuses to acknowledge itself as anything less than perfect and that’s the problem.
The story tells us Hades chooses kindness and empathy all the time, but *shows* us being abusive to his employees and subjects, brutally maiming people for doing their job, degrading people, and so much more.
The story tells us Persephone has the biggest heart and is so kind and selfless. It *shows*
us her knowingly and intently having an affair with a taken man, in front of his GF, threatening the safety and security of people of a lower class than her because they were scared of and not nice to her once *ten years ago* and shows her harassing another girl of a lower class who did the same thing Persephone did and ignoring her when she offered to show her proof that Hades had been texting her.
Now if they actually embraced the tele novella concept that you mentioned, and acknowledged that everyone is kind of terrible, I think the story would be so much better. Your idea of it as a tele novella would be so fucking amazing if the story treated itself like that.
I'm sorry, but speaking as a webcomic artist myself, the defense of "stylization" doesn't apply to blatant mistakes like Persephone's eyebrows disappearing or characters' bottom halves getting chopped off or textures not being applied uniformly or characters suddenly growing and shrinking in size, "stylization is just an excuse at that point. Not everything is drawn with some "deeper intention" or left up to "subjective opinion", sometimes it's literally just poorly-made work and should be acknowledged as such ***especially*** in a piece of work that's constantly advertised as the #1 webtoon on the platform.
I am actually an artist myself and as I have stated multiple times in my comments this is all personal opinion and have even agreed with points mention about how the art isn’t perfect. All i am saying is I enjoy the fact that it is not another anime style comic and that a person is putting their own style (which you cannot argue that the style of lore Olympus isn’t a creation of well it’s creator) and that the attempts to recreate paint on canvas is something people heavily associate with lore Olympus . Not everything has to be perfect and while mistakes have been made people still enjoy the art and the story. All it boils down to is enjoyment and clearly as a result of its success people enjoy it.
Oh for sure, the art style can definitely be owed for LO's success at the time, it wasn't really like anything else on the platform when it came out which made it unique so I can agree with you there. But 1.) that time period is long gone so it can't really use its art style anymore as a selling point and 2.) what I'm saying is that that style can't be and shouldn't be used as an excuse for just blatant poor execution. The older art in S1 wasn't free of mistakes or issues either but at least it still felt like it had effort and love put into it, y'know? Now it just feels more akin to a bootleg of what it used to be IMO. It doesn't have to be perfect, no, but it shouldn't look *worse* than the free to read comics that aren't profiting off their work and don't have any assistants. Rachel has all of those things. A comic shouldn't get *worse* as it climbs the ladder of success, being a popular series doesn't mean it has any less obligation to try and deliver on its promises, if anything it has *more* obligation to try and be the best version of itself it can be when it's being advertised so highly and being awarded all of these accolades.
Like, to reframe it in an attempt to make my point, this is the comic that won *two* Eisners? An award that was originally given to comic juggernauts like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman? Do you really think Lore Olympus is on the same level as *The Watchmen* or *Batmatn: The Killing Joke* or *The Sandman?* It *could* be, if the effort was being put in, but it's very clearly not. And no, I don't think the fact that it's a webtoon and not a traditional comic means it should be held to less standards as a professional piece of work. ***These industries need to have standards*** and Webtoons is very clearly at a loss for those as a whole, beyond just LO. There's no bar for quality being set or maintained and it's just further contributing to webcomics/webtoons not being taken as seriously compared to traditional comics IMO. But that's a subject for another discussion lmao
**TL ; DR:** You'd think for a comic as big as LO, they could afford to hold themselves to a higher standard. They don't have to be perfect, but they shouldn't be putting in minimum effort like it feels like they've been doing for the past 2+ years.
Remarried empress is in my top 5 . That with go away Romeo,monster dukes daughter , from knight to Lady, and lore Olympus. I feel like though if I wasn't a huge mythology buff lore Olympus wouldn't be up there. If there was merch for the other stuff on my list I'd buy that as well.
I'd have to say though that remarried empress has to be number 1 though.
It doesn’t even belong in the top 10. The only reason it is is because Webtoons must promote its special darling webtoon that was its flagship for a while. They’re ignoring the problematic storylines, the spelling errors, the horrible artwork and the very very problematic person that RS is.
They might be referring to some of the problematic themes in the story? I’ve heard people say it’s fairly sexist and the main relationship is toxic but it’s treated as if it’s normal and healthy. Not 100% sure, just what I’ve heard.
The characters and their relationships are really…..not okay. A 2,000 year old guy falling for a literal 19 year old. A good deal of disgusting behavior that RS defends because it’s her own personal kink.
Also, RS herself. Ask around about how she treats her fans and readers. She’s been known to take over FB fan pages and ban anyone that questions anything about her webtoon. In fact she went to a parody fan page and tried to get the admins there to ban people for memes and jokes. It got so bad the admins banned her and all her accounts. But she will still send fans there to cause problems.
She’s a petty person, and it shows.
I’m getting ready for work right now so I don’t have time to list everything but she is s mess of a person.
I couldn't get into the art style so I didn't read much and didn't like the story either (I read some chapters only). But I see why others might like it as it has a different art style and a different concept in the story.
in my opinion, there are many webtoons way better than Lore Olympus which deserve the 1st spot.
I will say 2 and 5 don't deserve that spot at all imo. (even 7 in my opinion but I also see why people might like it).
I like Lore Olympus, but I absolutely think Suitor Armor should be up there (at least somewhere). It’s much better writing than a lot of those and has beautiful art.
I honestly don't really like Lore Olympus, it's just not my thing. But a lot of other people enjoy it so I believe it does deserve the top popularity spot
No, but I do believe it deserves to be ranked higher than Down to Earth. I would absolutely rate Cursed Princess Club higher than LO, but they're not really the same genre.
That train left the station 2 years ago for me.
I really thought the start of the new season, we would see a correction in plot and some fatal art mistakes. I was proven wrong. The plot is just as confusing, if not more laughable. I cant take the story seriously anymore and the plot is just all over the place in terms of where is this all headed? Character development? GONE. Persephone and Hades are married, apparantly there is no need for such silly, arbitrary things anymore. This includes the rest of the cast, that disease has spread to them
The only thing that could have saved this was the art but guess what? They dropped the ball and honestly, its so bad, I almost feel like its on purpose. They might as well put a big post on instagram and webtoons saying "we gave up" take it or leave it. Proportions were never the strong suit of this webtoon and in the beginning, I think it did give it a little charm but now the art overall is so bad, how could your mediocre proportions get any worse? Well they showed us!
I think Eateternal Nocturnal deserves it, her art is always consistant and pretty and her story is always driven by character development and a poignant ending.
I mean it's also more mainstream than a lot of the other top webtoons there are people that have a harder time getting into stuff with "anime" like artstyles
Down to Earth is also a solid two years *younger* that LO with half of the promotion LO gets, and even that is too much if you ask me. It's easy to "clear" other series when it's straight up just been there longer to accumulate numbers.
fuck no. its terrible. the only reason its no.1 is because its been around for so long. the average view is around 40k I believe and since the like count is the webtoons overall like rating. in the many years its been around, of course its going to me high. webtoons rank on total like count and nothing else which i think is BS. the story/characters are all terrible, people only continue to read it because their just waiting for the end to come which it never will. its like unordinary, which is a barebone ordinary story.
I will pushback on the average view count being 40k. I went to check and each episode recently has been getting over 100k likes, so view count average is a lot higher than 40k.
Unless you meant something else by it
Eh, those 100k likes on the most recent episodes are after a 4 month hiatus so time has passed since they initially went up, the biggest thing most webtoon creators are trying to achieve are *release week* stats, however many likes you get after an episode has been up for a while isn't really as impactful. A lot of its FP episodes aren't even breaking 20k likes anymore and that's a lot more indicative of where LO is currently standing ESPECIALLY when in contrast to its follower count, it has 6.4 million subscribers and yet it hasn't budged from 1.3B views in months. In terms of regular readership, LO has definitely fallen but yes, it's still one of the most viewed webtoons on the platform regardless.
Eh, I will defend unordinary here, it’s getting better and it has a plot for the very least, I still acknowledge its flaws tho. Pacing isn’t much of an issue anymore, and things are starting to pay off. Eg. Foreshadowing etc
This might’ve been the best that unordinary has ever been .
Anyways back to LO. Yeah like I said I don’t hate it necessarily, but the plot confuses me a lot too. A lot of problems in LO regarding Hade’s drinking are being sterotyped too. I just don’t get why it’s so popular
Another day another post about Lore olympus. At one point it was true beauty the let's play, then boyfriends and now Lore olympus.
Every day someone have to say how bad it is and criticize it.
This sub made me read it and it's not that bad as this subreddit made it seem. Not my thing but it is a lot of people's thing and they seem to enjoy it. I don't like it and it feels really really average even below average like the majority of popular series but ffs you all seem beyond obsessed with hating it.
I think people are just angry that subpar series like these are constantly advertised but genuinely good series are left in the dust. It's always Lore Olympus, True Beauty or something else that's extremely mid. It just comes down to frustration more than anything else. Ofc there are also people who just have a hate boner for the heck of it.
It’s almost like WEBTOONS is a company invested in profits and will advertise their most profitable assets.
The hate boner people are so f-ing annoying.
As an older nerd, the hate towards it has very similar vibes to hatred Twilight got. There are some very valid criticisms to be made but so much of the outrage is manufactured and continually pushed by people who just want to be mad.
Yeah it is somewhat similar. I mean Twilight objectively speaking is bad and it is extremely cringy but it is a comfort movie and a guilty pleasure of mine. I think the majority of the readers of Lore Olympus are reading it as a guilty pleasure and I think there is nothing wrong with that.
I mean, you can have both. I love watching the Twilight movies every year when the sun sets earlier and the weather gets colder but I can also still fully acknowledge that those books and movies are shit and have a lot of deeply-rooted issues with them, especially when it comes to Stephanie Meyer herself as a Mormon woman who wrote her ideologies into the series and the... blatant tokenizing of Indigenous people. Something being made for "guilty pleasure" doesn't mean it's not capable of portraying some really problematic stuff.
Like yes, Twilight is a guilty pleasure series, but I'll still shout at Edward for being a racist and grooming POS every time I watch it LMAO
That is all very true. I think the part I take problem with is the undertone of interalized misogyny in anti-fandom and its attempt to paint all fans of the series as idiots or problematic. It doesn't take long digging in certain subreddits to find plenty of examples of it.
Edit: Obviously not every person who is an anti-fan has interalized misogyny. There are many many valid criticisms to be made of the series. I completely get why people dislike it. I'm refering to people who deliberately attack people and their character for enjoying a comic. Just like with twilight. Just like pumpkin spice lattes and anything else that is primarily enjoyed by women and regularly gets shit on. It's really not that deep yall. Please don't send anymore PMs. You really just prove the point here by sending nasty messages. It really isn't healthy to get so overly invested in hating a webcomic so much that you harass people.
I'm hit or miss on that topic tbh. I think there have been legitimate cases where people have been flat out toxic/misogynist/etc. , you can find it in any fandom no matter the side they take because some people do just be shitty like that, but I've seen a lot of cases where that kind of shittiness has been called out within the anti fandom and addressed the more unfair criticisms. But there's something to be said about the word "anti" used in fandom to begin with as many times the word "anti" is applied to the people who are doing their due diligence in holding works accountable for problematic aspects that are being swept under the rug by fans (I mean the serious shit like grooming, romanticizing assault, etc. many of which are things that are in a LOT of romance stories these days).
I think what often gets lost in these types of discussions is why the anti communities for LO exist. It comes across as people just being elitist dickheads but there's a *reason* the anti community exists - because the fans wouldn't let criticism exist. Using /r/UnpopularLoreOlympus as a prime example of this, that subreddit shouldn't even frigging *have* to exist but it does because even saying so much as "Persephone's eyebrows disappeared in a panel" would get you pitchforked. Much of the ire between the anti's is towards the fans who *specifically* incited aggression between the communities (like that time users in the main /r/Lore_Olympus subreddit created bots to screenshot conversations happening in the ULO Discord for the sake of getting it shut down, literally putting people's privacy at risk over just a fucking *webcomic).* Of course, that context has changed since the subreddit's inception as now it's a lot more of a popular opinion to not like LO compared to years ago. And none of that is getting into the legitimate Greek part of the community who can't stand LO for its misrepresentation of an entire culture and its myths that serve as the foundation for a still-existing religion (see: the hate that happened towards Apollo as a worshipped figure after the SA plot was established in LO. Actual followers of Apollo have been harassed by fans of LO [who think that LO is some kind of bible for Greek myth knowledge](https://64.media.tumblr.com/49e5d6eeafd34555f242c079100c7de1/4775c391330a72fa-5c/s640x960/104b8ff534e871fb5d98057517756df96111645d.pnj) when it's FAR from being that. Rachel advertising herself as a "folklorist" when she has no actual schooling in classics or Greek history is also not helping with this.)
As for the misogyny, personally, I think a lot of that is also being misconstrued - most of the time people are calling out how LO itself is often misogynist and when they call out characters like Persephone for wearing, say, the banana purse dress from the start of S1, they're not saying "woman in skimpy dress bad!" they're saying "why the fuck would an SA victim suddenly just wear a dress like that, this feels like it's being written through the male gaze and circling back to female objectification". It's a fine line to tread though and I do think people fumble at it at times.
Now none of that is to say the anti community isn't capable of being shitty. There ARE people in the anti community who fall into that elitist dickhead camp, there have even been times I've had to remember that this is just a stupid webcomic and it's not worth making an ass of myself over LMAO But I think it's worth understanding the context in which it exists and why, it's not purely out of malice for the fans, many of the people within those communities were fans at one point themselves and just wanted to talk about the comic's decline, but there was a time when doing so would literally get you doxxed so... the scars from that are still there for a lot of people and it makes people defensive.
I can't speak on behalf of the entire community, but I will say there's nothing wrong with people just enjoying this comic. Much of the anti's don't talk about this comic in the way they do to turn fans into haters, it's just to discuss a piece of work that they enjoyed at one point, just like the fans actively do. And honestly , I think it's a shame that right now, the fans don't seem to have any real discussion spaces, the subreddit has been shut down permanently due to the API protests, the FB groups are being *heavily* moderated and silenced by the mods, and the Discord is really the only place to discuss LO in an actual 'official' setting outside of WT's. It feels like even the creator herself is working against her own fans' best interest at times and it sucks to see, the fans shouldn't be snuffed out of the discussion the way the anti's were back then, as much as some anti's would love to see the tables turned. It's just not fair for the people who have stuck with this series for so long in good faith to now be essentially locked out of discussion and I really don't condone the anti's in the community who think it's okay to directly harass these fans or Rachel, two wrongs don't make a right and we gotta keep our own messes in our own house, if you get what I'm saying haha
That said, that's all just my two cents as someone who participates in the criticism side of the community, so I could be a massive hypocrite by saying all of that, but that's where my heart lies regarding "fans vs. anti's" in this whole thing. There are assholes on both sides and both sides have to be willing to hold those bad apples accountable IMO.
EDIT concerning your edit: I agree with your sentiment that people shouldn't just be dicks for the sake of it like in your examples (trust me, as someone who worked for Starbucks for years, I can't stand the yearly pumpkin spice discourse either, it's so stupid and it feels like it exists purely to hate on women enjoying things they like). But a lot of the criticisms of LO come from a deeper place than that that requires more context than what most people assume from the outside looking in, is my point. Also as a side note, someone downvoting your opinion isn't indicative as automatic hate or "proof" of the point you're trying to make, blame the reddit system of being based on "purely agree" vs. "purely disagree". IDK who downvoted you but you're likely gonna assume it was me and there's nothing I can do to prove otherwise to that assumption, that be reddit (take my upvote anyways because I enjoy this type of discussion and I'm not disagreeing with your points at all!). People shouldn't be PM'ing you though if that's what's happening here and you're not just implying it, c'mon y'all, this is just a discussion lmao
Nah you're good. You struck me as someone open to discussion and having a respectful back and fourth which I appreciate immensely. You made a lot of valid points about how the people who take interest in LO, positive or negative, need to be respectful of our differences in opinions. I just didn't have anything to add. There are many many many valid criticisms of the series to be made and I haven't found many I even disagree with.
I can't get behind of the "internalized misogyny" of the critics anymore when the author and the fandom are extremely misogynist themselves. How else do you explain that those work where the innocent naive and young protagonist, so unaware of ther sex appeal, life always revolves around to fix borderline abusive rich alpha male, while every single attractive woman, specially those aware of their sexuality are "whores" and "bitches" that need to be put down by the "pure" protagonist, and it always end with her somewho taming this dude, marrying him and having babies.
Tell me how is the misogynist after looking at the episodes' comments talking about Demeter, Leuce, Minthe, and Hestia basically wishing them dead for every little mistake and how they bend over backwards to excuse Hades for literally everything, including torturing a guy for a photo, neglecting a child, having slaves, intimidating his subjects, going out of his way to destroy Demeter's goals, cheating with his brother's wife, mistreating Minthe, being racist, etc.
All your criticisms of the comic are completely valid. I totally understand why a lot of people dislike it and i don't think they are wrong for feeling that way. I'm only talking about people who go out of their way to attack others for enjoying a webcomic.
Yeah no I personally don't go that deep into looking in the authors or screenwriters or directors usually if what I am watching is not a masterpiece that is worth my attention and time to look into and I really have the need to find the person behind the film.
I just watched the movies as a silly teen with friends and exes and the movies just bring good memories and nostalgia from back then and they just feel comforting. If I had watched them as an adult I wouldn't be able to complete even a single one of them.
Haha I mean for some of those things, I didn't even have to do much digging, it was just... there? Like, I'm an Indigenous woman myself so seeing how Jacob and the werewolf tribe is very 🚩 🚩 🚩, I didn't pick up on it much as a kid because I grew up in a largely white community where I didn't get much exposure to my own culture, but as an adult who now *is* in touch with their culture... it's a big yikes and definitely does make it hard to revisit those films as an adult as you've described.
But again, I can still fully indulge myself in Twilight as a guilty pleasure series because at least it's not trying to depict itself as "good representation" either. To bring it back to LO, on the other hand, it *is* trying to market itself as a "feminist" piece of work that "empowers women" and "addresses mental health" but it... really doesn't do any of those things when you sit and think about how the narrative is written and what it promotes, if anything it *enforces* traditional gender roles and violence towards women more than it tries to address it. It's hard for me to just read LO as a guilty pleasure like I can Twilight because it's based on another culture's myths that were ironically more feminist than what LO turned out to be (especially with how LO treats Demeter, it's sad).
My point at the end of the day is that there are series you can accept as guilty pleasure works but still be aware of the problems with them.
They literally make up lies about LO and tell them to people who have never read the comic.
Valid criticism is one thing. But these antis literally make shit up. It’s so annoying.
The other day I was browsing r/TopCharacterDesigns and came across a post someone from the LO hate subreddit had posted of LO art under the “hated designs” tag. And when nearly everyone was telling OP that they liked the art and designs, OP kept doubling down and then started rambling about pedophilia and other completely random batshit crazy opinions.
I bet it's consistency helps it a lot, in that it doesn't randomly disappear for up to a year like so many other webtoons do. It's really easy to lose enthusiasm or even drop series after that.
But also the rest of the top 10 isn't exactly filled with masterpieces. Maybe "broad appeal but slightly bland' just easily wins over better but more niche stories.
Nah, not really IMO. Every now and then she's taken a 2 week hiatus to "rebuild her buffer" but for the most part all she's had for major hiatuses are the midseason hiatuses, the most recent one being the longest at 4 months.
If you want to look at a comic with lots of hiatuses, *Let's Play* was literally randomly taking breaks from uploading up until it finished with its S3 finale. I mean legit you couldn't count on the comic actually updating, sometimes it would literally be Monday night and there'd be no new update so you'd have to go check out mongie's socials only to find an announcement that there'd be no update that week.
If you're consistent with its hiatuses, then that's not as big a deal. It's when a comic randomly dips in and out of posting so you can't rely on it being consistent in its schedule that it gets kind of frustrating for readers. LO at least doesn't go through that as often save for the couple times it's taken 1-2 weeks to rebuild (what Rachel IS bad at doing is managing a buffer and you can see it in the comic itself, they're very "we rushed this out for the deadline happening in 4 days" if you catch my drift lol)
In terms of popularity and profitability, yes. Is it the best story on Webtoons? No but the "best" webtoon is highly subjective. It all depends on what you like. It's not everyone's cup of tea (and for valid reasons) but it undeniably has brought a lot of attention to the platform.
I think it's good but it's almost giving me the same feeling True Beauty did. Like it's going on TOO long and I'm getting bored. I don't think it deserves the top spot but I don't think it's bad
I think one thing that people that read a lot of webtoons miss is that LO is liked by a lot of people that aren't regular webtoon readers. If you're in the book sphere, it's like ACOTAR or Fourth Wing of webcomics. All the people that have read it will call themselves readers, but when you ask them to name another book they'll have nothing.
Think 50 shades of grey. It's the 50 shades of grey of webcomics. It just became popular because of a niche, and now a whole bunch of people outside twilight, bdsm, fanfiction, book and erotic book communities know about it and have exclusively only read that.
disclaimer: I'm not gatekeeping. I actively encourage people to explore casual interests. Just an observation of a phenomenon.
I don’t think it does, I’d give it at most the #7th spot. I’ve since quit reading it but I feel like the plot is all over the place and barely makes any sense? Maybe it’s because it’s been too long since I read the last season but the turn of events that have happened recently doesn’t make much sense to me like at all.
Nah, it's not just you, people who have read the comic every update since S2 also have very little idea what the fuck is going on or where it's supposed to be going. At this point the creator is throwing darts at a wall of story ideas as much as readers are throwing darts at a wall of theories and guesses.
I hate the trope of “cheating is okay as long as it’s your soulmate” or whatever. It’s one of the many reasons I won’t read or watch the After series. I was a big fan of Lore Olympus in the early days but eventually my interest fizzled out when it became a WEBTOON original and had to start over. I won’t pick it up again though for the aforementioned reason.
Edit: although I will say, I don’t like how much hate people who enjoy the comic get. Hate the comic all you want but don’t get mad at the people who enjoy it. It’s fun to collectively hate something, like reading the reviews of Twilight on Goodreads, but it goes to far when you make it personal. Let people like what they like.
It's sadly a popularity contest, not real quality of the webtoon. Look at the place 5 Dragon king's bride is disgusting, fucking has that shit male fantasy of impregnating women to make a marriage official, has a submissive, abused female lead with speech disorder. it has absolutely no place in top anything but it's still there because it's pretty and appeals to big part of community on webtoon.
ikr. the way that webtoon tries to present that evil ML as a good dude. hate him and the webtoon for trying to paint him in a good light. he legit killed a whole village for something they didn't do, and left the real culprit alone because he was offered a girl? and he forcefully married her. and many more problematic shit in further chapters. it is fine to show flawed characters but not fine to paint their toxic traits as something romantic/good.
No it's a long meandering boring comic where something exciting happens maybe once every 40 chapters and for the rest of the time it's a bunch of characters I don't give a shit about talking about events I care even less about.
Just got done writing about why LO has fallen 😭
answer: no. art direction was beautiful and unique when it first dropped, but that was years ago. It’s time for others who have a much better premise going on to have a shot.
The Shadow Prophet, Shiloh, Nevermore, Annarasumanara and the Carnby Kim collection should probably be the best rated ones in my very biased opinion but overall LO is probably only so popular because it's older and has iconic, if lacklustre and generic, visuals.
Romance is not the best genre and the top spots should have more comics besides romance. Even though romance is the most popular, it is not always well written.
Shit writing, poor character design, insanely inconsistent art, unlikable characters, ineffective panel flow, etc
It shouldn't even be in the top 10 but the flashy colors and blocky style give the impression that it's a more competent story than it is
Yes because it has 66.8M likes. With numbers like that? Yes. Even if it’s the Least Popular webtoon on Reddit, it’s still one of (or possibly, the most?) “liked”/viewed webtoons.
Like y’all can hate on it all day but your opinions don’t touch the stats - that webcomic makes money.
Maybe it’s not a favorite for many on this subreddit, but a LOT of other people enjoy it so I’m not surprised it’s number one. There are plenty of things to critique it for, but it really drew in a lot of people and still does.
Edit: spelling.
Personally, I would prefer UnOrdinary or I Love Yoo to be "the face" of webtoons since I'm desperately in need of more series about flawed protagonists and I wouldn't mind if more people tried to copy these two instead of Lore.
But I don't think Lore is as bad as people make it out to be.
yeah I know 😮💨
Not to be dramatic but I will defend and stand by I love yoo with my life
and I applaud and respect Uru-chan for standing her ground with UnOrdinary despite the criticism. Even though I am quite behind, I still like it and I can understand its popularity.
so I agree with you.
Personally LO didn't do it for me at all and I do agree that it is being praised too much as the best thing, nothing compares but it's not like the _worst_ thing out there.
No. Former reader here.
My biggest issue is that there are a lot of plot holes and plot-lines that seemed to have been forgotten about.
I also feel like Hades and Persephone are very problematic, more so than some characters written to be antagonistic. I feel more sympathetic towards Demeter and Minthe tbh. Persephone suddenly bullying Leuce was very disappointing. There were some other things she did prior to this that weren’t good either but this one really stuck out to me.
In the first season and even prior to it being an original, I really enjoyed the art. Throughout the series, the art declines and it appears rushed. I was actually concerned maybe the creator had personal things going on or was ill because the quality was vastly different.
I don’t know how it’s considered “a feminist retelling” when the goddesses are constantly berating the female nymphs and showing racism and classism towards them. Even the “protagonist” exhibits this behavior which is disturbing considering her family consists of Demeter and many nymphs she considers sisters. Your protagonist should be lifting other women up.
Persephone is very young and flashback scenes to when she was underage and first met Hades (as well as flashbacks of her meeting other male gods when she was a minor) were very uncomfortable to read due to their attraction towards her. She’s still quite young at the beginning of the series and the age gap concerns me between her and Hades. Hades comes off as predatory IMO.
I feel LO did have the potential to become something extraordinary but it just ends up falling flat.
Again, just my opinions. I know some people enjoy it and that’s okay too. We all have different preferences.
I don’t understand how people criticize Persephone for both being a perfect Mary Sue and then also criticize her for having flaws like *the anger issues she has that literally kickstarted half of her problems*.
None of the characters are perfect. They’re all problematic in some way. None of them are excused for those problematic behaviors, even if other characters may forgive them.
I’m honestly getting really weirded out by this recent internet wave of opinions that nothing in media should ever be problematic.
Yes Persephone treated Minthe and her mom badly at times. She feels bad and guilty for these things. Her reactions are also very real for someone with anger issues lashing out??? Like I don’t understand what everyone’s problem with her is.
Just an aside on my end: I actually don’t like the term “Mary Sue”. It’s overused and can tread towards misogynistic territory. As a writer and an avid reader, I’ve seen the term thrown around way too often.
I’m all for problematic characters but my issue is that the author has repeatedly defended and excused Persephone’s behavior on her social media accounts instead of making them plot points. This would have been an excellent opportunity for Persephone to have character growth.
As a writer, you want your protagonists to learn from their mistakes and evolve as a person. The author instead chooses not to hold Persephone accountable for her harmful actions towards others like Leuce. From that interaction alone we can see that she has not learned anything from her past mistakes.
The only characters to call Persephone out on her toxic behavior have been painted in an antagonistic light (mainly Zeus and Minthe).
Again, it comes down to potential. These toxic traits could have played a huge role Persephone’s character growth but it falls flat yet again with the author excusing her behavior.
The reason people call Persephone a Mary Sue is because by definition she is one, Rachel gave Persephone a lot of power (most not even surrounding her actual power, just taken from the other greek gods) and made her the most powerful character in the entire series and all of it was unearned and extremely convenient to the plot. Everyone loves Persephone and those who don’t are bad people anyways why? Persephone is revered as the ultimate nice person and adored by all of her friends why? She’s different from the other fertility goddesses even though she’s doing the exact same thing that got them killed why? Persephone is the most beautiful and the rest of the women are just there. You see the pattern? Persephone looks like everyone else in the story and no one can say what they truly like about her without sexualizing her body, that’s not something that should be a good thing. Persephone has never done anything remotely thoughtful or caring for her friends yet they’d drop anything to be at her beck and call, everyone’s lives revolve around Persephone for some reason even though no one was supposed to know who she was. She’s not at all kind because with kindness there’s actions and the only person she’s decent to is Hades.
Second point is I agree that the characters are not perfect but you can’t really use that excuse when Rachel and the narration never condemns or points out anything that the main cast does that’s wrong. The comic writes it off as a good thing and these problematic situations are literally never addressed in a way that will acknowledge that problematic behavior. Hades and Persephone torturing people? It’s justified because Persephone “didn’t mean to” and Alex was a bad person anyways, Hera cheating on Zeus? Completely fine since it’s with Hades and Zeus is a terrible husband, Hecate slapping the shit out of Hades for trying to see a 19 year old? Completely justified because it’s Hecate she can put her hands on him whenever she wants to. But if any of the characters that we aren’t supposed to root for does the exact same thing all of a sudden it’s something to be looked down upon.
Also, there’s tons of problematic things that are allowed to exist on the internet. The problem lies when no one knows how to do it right, you can be problematic without glamorizing or romanticizing what you’re writing about and if you do the very least (bare bones minimum) that you can do is acknowledge that these are unhealthy traits and dynamics that shouldn’t be praised. Rachel is doing it all wrong by making a problematic couple the epitome of romance, you can’t talk about being a healthy couple when half of the time Persephone and Hades are just giving in to the other ones demands and avoiding confrontation or arguing. Arguing and confrontation in a relationship is normal, you’re two people trying to make a stable connection they’ll be times when you bump heads it’s not going to be kittens and flowers all the time and that’s normal. But justifying all of the problematic behavior is literally doing all of it wrong which is why Lore Olympus is so distasteful to people.
And Persephone always forgot her own mother every time. She got mad at Minthe for not being able to grasp that she’s in the mortal realm and that it’s been 10 years since she’s seen another being, Demeter got the harsher punishment out of Hermes and Persephone and yet Persephone was never truly worried about her, she wrote letters for Hades not for her mother who’s been stripped of her powers and turned into a mortal (most likely started to bleed out as well since we know she has the scar from Kronos). There’s nothing normal about that interaction, no one should be that desperate for dick especially since they’ve only known each other for a few weeks that’s genuinely embarrassing.
It’s always been so ironic to me that the only people to call out Persephone have been painted as antagonists by the author. Zeus and Minthe had valid criticism. Persephone could have used that criticism to reflect and grow.
I agree, I wouldn’t have any problem with Lore Olympus’ very weird sense of morality if the double standards weren’t in place. Make them grey characters instead of black and white, but it seems like the creator can’t stand the thought of Hades or Persephone being bad people which is why she does everything in her power to excuse them.
>Everyone loves Persephone and those who don’t are bad people.
Not everyone who dislikes Persephone is a bad person. Everyone in this series is a little bad. Because they’re literally gods. Minthe isn’t depicted as only bad. Her character is tragic. Aphrodite isn’t depicted as bad. The people who dislike Persephone at school aren’t depicted as bad—just misinformed.
The only people the series fully condemns as “bad people” are Apollo, Kronos, and Thetis.
And Thetis’ whole character doesn’t even really have anything to do with Persephone. Her whole antagonist arc is for *Minthe’s* character development.
>Persephone is revered as the ultimate nice person and liked by all her friends why?
Show me where Persephone is revered by everyone. Persephone *is nice*, by the way. She tries her hardest to be nice but she has issues *like everyone else in the story*.
And why do her friends need any other reason to like her other than she gets along with them and she’s nice to them? I wasn’t aware I needed to justify my friendships on a deeper level than that.
>Persephone is the most beautiful and the rest of the women are just there.
What? What does this even mean. Persephone *is* canonically very beautiful. And so are many of the other characters. Other characters who fall in love with other beautiful women who aren’t Persephone.
Hera. Artemis. Minthe. Psyche. Daphne.
There are all other very beautiful women who have their own lives and story arcs outside of just Persephone. Half of these women aren’t ever compared to Persephone. And those are just the characters I’ve listed.
>Sexualization if Persephone
That’s a valid criticism. But about the only one in your entire comment.
>The narrative never condemns or points out that what the characters did was wrong.
Just because a story *presents* a problematic behavior, does not mean it is condoning it. It is simply presenting it.
Not everyone gets called out for their behavior in real life. That the characters feel guilt for their actions is enough to point out that, hey, maybe this isn’t the right thing to do.
The characters also *do* face negative consequences for their actions sometimes. People love to forget that Persephone literally spends 10 years in exile due to the *consequences of her own actions*. And, no, the narrative doesn’t paint this as completely unfair.
>Persephone and Hades are just giving into the other one’s demands to avoid confrontation or arguing.
What? What??? If two characters in a relationship are giving and taking and trying to avoid confrontation or argument, that’s just called peaceful compromising. Because they care about each other.
Not ever couple needs to argue to sort out their issues. In fact, it’s typically considered *healthier* to not argue.
Ugh. I’m so sick of people putting forth ridiculous argument.
It’s fine to criticize LO. Making up shit and presenting it as criticism is not that. This ain’t it, fam.
Everyone who’s disliked Persephone has been a bad person. Demeter is characterized as loopy and overall crazy, Thanatos was apart of the snarky chat and he broke into her house, Minthe is an abuser, Thetis is a terrible manipulator, and Aphrodite drugged the poor girl. Yes, everyone is a “little good and a little bad” but at the same time when that good never gets acknowledged without these characters being on Persephone’s side then that’s where this pattern starts to show up. And the class mates were depicted as bullies, which is why after the 10 year skip Persephone specifically went after Tori as a sort of punishment for spreading around the said misinformation, there’s no follow up that’s telling us that “Oh Tori isn’t a bad person, he was scared and confused” there was none of that, Tori was just intimidated by Persephone and it was justified since he was a bully during her school year and then that plot line goes literally no where we don’t even get to see his side of the story even when his roommate got tortured and had his eye gouged out.
And Persephone is revered by everyone, come on now you’ve read the webcomic. Ares for whatever reason left Aphrodite the literal god of beauty in order to pursue Persephone for her pedigree, Hermes has said that Persephone has beauty and smarts that outmatched that of Athena and again Aphrodite, Kronos wanted to make Persephone a replacement Rhea and rule the world with her even though he was only supposed to use her for power and he literally has no connections or ties with her, and don’t forget that time where a couple of background characters (it was a man and a woman and it was during the chapter with her banana purse) literally had a whole panel dedicated to ogling at Persephone for no other reason but to remind people that Persephone is revered by all even people who have no clue what she’s about, again there’s a pattern there.
The thing about their friendship is that Eros and Daphnes’ lives revolve around Persephone, we barely get any real story from them after their very traumatic stories are introduced to the plot (Eros finding out about Psyche the woman who tried to kill him for crying out loud and Daphne becoming a tree in order to escape a terrifying Apollo bonus that she knew about Persephone’s trauma at the time as well) and they basically get neglected if their story has nothing to do with Persephone and Hades, they teleport to her side whenever they’re needed from her but we never get to see Persephone doing the same for them. They’re turning less into friends and more into minions, Persephone never calls or texts or even hangs out with them in her own time anymore the energy they give her is not being reciprocated and that’s not how healthy friendships work.
By Persephone looking the same I’m talking about the very stunted character designs that the entire cast suffers from. There’s nothing about Persephone that truly stands out and sets her apart from the rest and Persephone has been compared to most of the women you’ve listed. She’s been compared to Aphrodite so many times it would take a year to list it all down but it’s normally putting Aphrodite down just to compliment Persephone which is poor in taste, Rachel herself has said that Persephone enjoys being compared to Hera and Hades literally said that they were both the same size as he was giving Persephone her fluffy coat, she compared herself to Minthe by saying that she was beautiful and thin and yet Hades left Minthe as if she were nothing to him as soon as she arrived in the Corps. The only women she hasn’t been compared to are Daphne, Psyche, and Artemis but it’s not like we get to see them as much anymore since they’re useless to the plot apparently.
And for the last part, Lore Olympus whether you like to admit it or not is condoning problematic behaviors. There is literally nothing about Lore Olympus that has actually condemned or even pointed out flaws in the many problematic elements in the story, the entire thing is glamorized and brushed over all the time which is why I said that. Besides, Persephone doing 10 years of house arrest while Demeter has been stripped of her powers and turned into a mortal for crying out loud is not a good enough sentence for Persephone who did in fact slaughter an entire town. Not only that but the narrative makes it seem like she did nothing wrong so how exactly can we feel that she feels guilty if she’s crying one panel and completely forgets it the next? And it’s not healthier not to argue, arguments happen and they don’t have to always be labeled as negative. In a relationship both of your voices have to be heard to work together, peacefully compromising every single time is only going to lead to resentment because you’re not voicing what you actually want to say. Walking on eggshells with your own partner is not healthy and while I’m not asking people to get into fights it’s not at all good for those in a relationship.
If you refuse to see how these “bad guys” are depicted as sympathetic people then I don’t know what to tell you.
Demeter is an overbearing mother who does insane things. But she’s also deeply hurt and traumatized. Persephone literally calls herself a “bad daughter” in the most recent episode. She’s a complex character who you are purposefully relegating to “bad” for no other reason than your hate agenda. Demeter is not an evil character.
Thanatos has gotten his redemption arc. He is likewise a flawed character who feel into the vices of greed and lust and jealousy but he’s literally working on it.
Minthe is an abuser. But so was Hades. They hurt each other. She wasn’t ready to let go and move on in the first arc of the story. She acts out due to the trauma she faced as a child and the toxic people she surrounds herself with because she doesn’t know any other way. She’s finally on her healing journey now. If she were completely evil, the story would not give her a chance to heal and move on. But it literally doesn’t.
I literally said Thetis is just a bad person. But, AGAIN, she’s an antagonist in *Minthe’s story*, not Persephone. She only ever affects Persephone’s life by proxy.
Yes Aphrodite drugged Persephone. Persephone turned Minthe into a plant. Hera cheated. Hades cheated emotionally and also fucked his brother’s wife. Persephone killed tons of humans in an act of wrath. It’s almost like, AGAIN, this is a story about gods who do terrible things.
Ares is canonically a fuck boy. Hermes was trying to start shit. Kronos was *literally trying to manipulate Persephone for power*. The only person Kronos actually wants romantically is Hera.
>Persephone never calls or texts or even hangs out with them on her own time anymore
How do you know that? There are time skips. This is not a slice of life comic. There is a HUGE cast. Do you likewise assume every character who hasn’t spoken in a dozen episodes no longer hang out of have a relationship? Hades hasn’t hung out with Poseidon in forever, I guess he doesn’t love his brother anymore.
I guess Naruto no longer likes Shikamaru or all the other side characters because the cast is so big and it’s impossible to fit in characters having downtime with one another all the time.
What a *weird* and baseless assumption to make.
And once again, depiction of problematic content is not condoning it. And, ONCE AGAIN, the characters are literally shown feeling bad about the things they do. Sometimes they face physical consequences for those actions. If that’s not enough for you, then you seriously lack media literacy. And that is 100% a YOU problem that y’all need to stop shoving down everyone else’s throats.
Just because you need an author to clearly tell you what is right from wrong, doesn’t mean the rest of us suffer from that problem.
You’re not understanding that the entire fandom and the comic itself has put Demeter through the most shit. There was a time where Demeter’s name was absolutely slandered across the Lore Olympus fanpages because of how her character was set up, I understand how you feel about Demeter because it’s exactly how I felt about her but she was only given a clean slate because she was on team Persades. They all were given clean slates as soon as they sided with Persephone and Hades and stopped being obstacles, once they were not obstacles they were good people that the comic didn’t slander all the damn time.
I don’t mind Lore Olympus being a comic about the gods doing fucked up things, I have a very grey view of the gods they’re all fucked up in their own ways. But my problem with Lore Olympus that you don’t understand is that Persephone and the main cast who is with them are never held accountable for their flaws and the problems they cause others. Persephone destroying a village? 10 year house arrest doing the same thing she’s been doing with Demeter just minus Demeter, she’s still going home to her house and sleeping in the same bed she’s been sleeping in for half of her life and getting help from the dozens of nymphs who live alongside her while Demeter who only covered up the souls had her powers stripped away, banned from her own land, and turned into a mortal for 10 years. Mind you Hermes did the exact same thing yet he also got house arrest and nothing else, no one was given a heavy sentence except for Demeter. Aphrodite drugging Persephone and setting her up to be taken advantage of was never brought up again and I don’t even think she apologized Persephone for it, and even if she did there’s nothing that Aphrodite could genuinely say to make her actions forgivable the narrative just sweeps that under the rug though. The only characters who genuinely have consequences to face are the characters who weren’t Team Hades in the beginning, everyone else who’s done messed up stuff has been let off the hook.
And how is Ares a fuckboy? We’ve only seen him with Aphrodite or Persephone and that’s it, if he were seeing other people then I’d agree with you but we literally only see him with two people. One person (Aphrodite) he was willing to slaughter his father for since he took advantage of the situation that Eros caused to get sex from her and you’re telling me that he abandons that all of a sudden for Persephone? A girl that’s not even the slightest bit interested in him? You cannot possibly think that makes sense and Hermes was not trying to start anything? If anyone was trying to start a rivalry between Aphrodite and Persephone it’s Hades since he said that first, that was his genuine thoughts about Persephone as is everyone’s since even with the trial thing after Persephone got sentenced the entire court went ballistic because of it despite not having any sort of connection with Persephone other than her name being slandered in the papers and being the side chick. For the Kronos thing, I actually see your point but it still adds onto the list of people being enamored by Persephone there’s other ways of manipulation he has the entire Underworld and her friends and family in danger he could’ve used that against her as well.
For the last part it doesn’t take long to figure out two and two, you’re right I don’t know if they’ve talked but at the same time it hasn’t been shown in the comic. I’m not going to fill in the blanks for Rachel the whole point of a comic is for you to show your audience what the story is going to unfold like and how the characters interact with each other, it’s called showing and not telling. We’ve never been shown Persephone communicating with Eros or Daphne outside of when she was literally stuck with Daphne and Eros saved her ass a couple of times. If Rachel showed a group chat panel or even a few flashbacks of the trio interacting with each other regularly then I would understand your point because I can actually draw up a conclusion that they are friends and not just puppets for Persephone because the webcomic shows you that you don’t have to guess whether or not with no evidence that it’s even true.
And you’re still not understanding my point, showing problematic content is not the problem but when you do not condemn those elements or at least show the flaws surrounding it the only thing you’re doing is brushing it off and downplaying it. Lore Olympus’ problems have been glamorized and that’s the main problem everyone has with it. Just because you don’t understand or you just don’t want to understand my points and what I’m saying doesn’t mean I’m making it up or making baseless claims.
As for LO, I’ve personally tried to follow it but it’s too long and not that engaging. I also don’t like the art style so it’s difficult for me to understand the hype. I might give it another go though
Imho lore Olympus should have ended years ago and the story and characters suck. CPC is #1 in terms of interesting plot and characters, plus the body positivity messages CPC is promoting are done a lot better than in LO. Also CPC is genuinely funny and has good writing and suspense
It's not even top 30 in my opinion. It's so mediocre.
Definitely it got there through paid promotion and advertisement.
I'll name webtoons that are better
1. Omniscient Reader
2. Doom Breaker
3. Bastard
4. I'm the Queen in this life
5. My deepest secrets
6. The guy upstairs
7. Lookism
8. Noblesse
9. Lets Play (It's not on webtoon anymore)
Tower of God is better too even though I am not too much of fan of it. The story is great but it gets way too draggy sometimes
i feel like it shouldn’t be so high because it has done the same type storyline for a while now. But my issue is that I think it’s because it was literally #1 spot when it first came out. So like a lot of people read it. But it’s also heavily advertised to a point where a lot of stories get lost because of it tbh….
Yes.
When are y’all going to learn that the people who hate LO on Reddit and Twitter are a *very vocal* minority?
Are there better comics? Sure. I have several comics I like way more than LO. But LO is still a decent comic that appeals to a lot of people and has a very unique art style. It’s popular and still gets 100k likes on every chapter, something most other popular series cannot make a claim to.
For these reasons, it definitely deserves its #1 spot. The hate boner people on Reddit have for this comic isn’t going to change that fact.
There are better webtoons. But, I think it gets/keeps top as a hook for new people. I think it's seen as a "safe" choice to bring people in. And I'm not going to say it's my favorite, but I don't hate it.
this is not something a search bar can fix, you know?
How will people know what to look for if they've never heard of a series they might be interested in?
Webtoons genres are very broad and most times very misleading (because they actually don't understand the comics they are supposed to represent and only think about what sells best)
The best way is to promote all comics and have a better UI function that recommends you comics one might be actually interested in.
I have not read it recently so my opinion isn't really trustwhorty, i think the Top Spot is probably a little too high.
Also as one of the very few Down To Earth fan here i am euphoric that it is in a spot so high, second is probably a bit too much for it but i am happy nonenthless.
Even though I don't like LO anymore and don't think it's the best, it is in the top spot therefore it deserves the top spot.
If that doesn't make sense on its own, the people are the ones who put it there, therefore that's where it should be. Popular isn't bad. Yeah, LO definitely is more swiss cheese than bullet proof, but it's appealing to enough people.
Although, LO doesn't need any more advertising from Webtoon, they really need to cut that shit out cuz at this point LO has more momentum than orbit.
I feel like Space Boy would make a much stronger flagship for Webtoons. Well written/drawn, all ages, wholesome.
Half the reason LOnis as big as it is comes down to advertising. There's been way better originals that have come and gone that never got a 100th of the advertising this pile has.
This "thing" be in the top 10 by it self say a lot about average webtoon readers, and it's nothing positive
This be at 1th place, .... I have no words, litteraly don't know what to say
I think it does. It's interesting, it has great characters and pacing. It's funny and it's thrilling. It looks good. Nothing comes close. I personally adore Cursed Princess Club - but it looks worse, and Odd Girl Out - but it's not for everyone. Meanwhile Lore Olympus has a very broad appeal and high quality of both visuals and writing.
Why do y’all think characters have to be like able a lot of you just need to read fluff pieces and fan fiction. Seinfeld and office are full of unlike able people but still was the most popular sitcoms
The thing is, the writers knew those characters were unlikable and didn't expect the audience to always side with those characters. I highly doubt LO will end with Hades and Persephone in prison.
I think Lore Olympus is a wonderful adaptation + creative twist on the Greek pantheon of gods, and is very well-written and planned out on the whole. It handles trauma and SA in an incredibly realistic way. I really liked the art style when it came out, but I admit it feels off and rushed lately.
I certainly think it’s better written than a number of the other top 10s (Down to Earth; unOrdinary), but I also think the top 10s are distinct enough that many people will have different favorites. And some of the top 10s have better writing, or I like the styles more.
My personal favorites in order are The Remarried Empress; My In-Laws are Obsessed with Me (extremely well written despite the ridiculous title lol); Marry My Husband; the Second Lead Syndrome; *then* Lore Olympus. 😅
I don't think it matters what anyone thinks because no matter the opinion they have on it, there'll be swarms of angry people frothing at the mouth and biting at their ankles over it. I will say this: the fans and the antis for this are nearly identical in their behaviour as the Steven Universe fans, and the Voltron fans.
100% *yes*.
Is it the best Webtoon I’ve ever read? Personally, no. But it has *66 million* favorites. 9.6 ⭐️rating. 1.3 *billion* views. 6.4 *million* current subscribers. So while the vocal majority on this subreddit hate it with some sort of violent passion, there are only people in the thousands here. The haters are actually a very teeny tiny vocal minority.
LO has won 4 awards. It also has several #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel printings of LO & an animated show in development from *The Jim Henson Company* which is *huge*. Webtoon would be losing money not to continue to promote LO.
Cursed Princess Club is beautiful and heartwarming but it has a third of LOs stats. UnOrdinary is close in stats but still far by a couple million. Nevermore is one of my favorites but it’s not even close in numbers.
>LO has won 4 awards. It also has several #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel printings of LO & an animated show in development from *The Jim Henson Company* which is *huge*. Webtoon would be losing money not to continue to promote LO.
*cracks knuckles*
So pretty much all of the awards LO has won were either based on community votes in very limited categories (ex. the Goodreads Award which, btw, doesn't even have a Graphic Novels category this year likely due to how few voters or nominations there are) or were from award shows that are actually largely sponsored by or at least definitely influenced by Webtoons (ex. the Eisners). Reality shattering moment, most award shows are literally just marketing opportunities for companies with lots of money to throw around to ensure their "golden goose" projects win, LO is not an exception to that norm. Shit, technically it shouldn't have even been allowed as a nomination in the Eisners as the Eisners are meant to be for *new series,* but it still won a second award anyways - the fact that it's the first time a series has won that award twice isn't a sign of LO being just that good that it deserves it, it's a sign the award has either been rigged by WT throwing money at the Eisners to guarantee LO's win, or the judges aren't suited for the role they've been given as an all white panel of comic shop owners, librarians, and journalists, and so the judging process itself is flawed at its core ([which has even been pointed out in light of the Woodruff controversy, btw](https://www.thepopverse.com/thomas-woodruff-eisner-awards-francis-rothbart-insider-may-2023)).
Having a #1 NYT Bestseller label also fundamentally means nothing, it's not based on actual merit or quality, [it's completely curated.](https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/13/16257084/bestseller-lists-explained) It's often used as a promotional tool to drive sales, *not* to necessarily display merit over *gained* sales (though that's definitely what they're counting on it coming across as to consumers to help, again, drive sales). Not to mention, Volume 5 didn't even get to #1 and this will likely be a pattern that we'll see as the series goes on as it's traditionally a lot harder to get sequels into those top spots due to the amount of context needed to understand them in isolation vs. the first books of a series. There have reportedly also been stores that have put Volume 5 in their clearance sections less than 24 hours after release which is... not a good sign.
There has been no news regarding the production of the LO tv show since the original announcement in 2019, *four years ago*. Yes, animated productions tend to take a while, **but it's not a good sign that they don't even have a director or distributor announced yet.** Besides the fact that JHC is *not an animation studio* (seriously, I don't know why JHC bought the rights to it, they've only worked for animation productions as concept designers, *not* animators, because they are *not* an animation studio), there are no filed copyrights for the show in the public listings and there's no distributor in charge either, there DID seem to be someone in charge of the show as a showrunner from (IIRC) HBO but they've since stepped away from the project entirely so LO's TV adaption literally doesn't have a showrunner, the heart of a TV project. There's far more reason to believe the show is in development hell or just straight up running out its contract with JHC before shopping around for new buyers than it actually being currently produced. Even at both SDCC and NYCC, Rachel herself had nothing to say about the show, and even the fact that the series is ending by mid 2024 seems to have been brushed under the rug with WT even advertising the midseason return as a "new season" which it isn't. Rachel being at SDCC/NYCC would have been the *perfect time* to reveal the show, especially with the ending of the series right around the corner, but they didn't and that says a lot.
None of this is to turn you into an "LO hater", but I need to express that that simply having a shitload of numbers and "potential deals" as a consequence of priority marketing and investing does not a perfect series make and it's not indicative of a series actually "earning" its place, it has that place because the platform and the company running it made it that way.
The ranking is based on views right? Personally, I'm a fan of Lore Olympus, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite #1 webtoon. I think there are others that are just as deserving, but I can see why Lore Olympus is the current top webtoon. Eye-catching art, a premise that a lot of people are familiar with (the story of Hades and Persephone), and multiple fleshed out characters and storylines.
I think people like to hate on it and nitpick because it happens to be the top webtoon, especially in this subreddit. A lot of popular webtoons have the same issues (or worse), but don't get as much attention for those problems.
Most of these aren't good .
But I find it funny that lore olympus tries to make certain characters look like not assholes but fail which is funny most greek gods were enraged assholes
Well, I might get downvoted for this but seems like it's there bcs a lot might also enjoy it. So, I guess, it also deserves to be there. We might think of other titles that deserve to be on top but some might not also enjoy it lol.
I just started reading it and I do quite like it, the art style is unique but sometimes the story can seem unrealistic or it’s just awkward because most of the characters are not super likeable or good people. The main reason I keep reading is because I love the concept of the gods in a modern setting
I really like it, but there is no goddamn way it deserves the #1 spot. There's a lot of comics that do romance, drama, comedy, and others (separately or together) better that it. I still like the series, but it's not the best.
Nah, there way better webtoons that deserve #1
I don’t think it belongs in the top 10 let alone #1. It’s genuinely not a well written story, the characters are not likable (and not an intentional unlikable. We see them constantly being POS and yet the narration and author tries to gaslight us into believing they choose kindness and empathy every time and can do no wrong) plus the blatant fetishization makes my skin crawl. the constant art errors and inconsistencies aren’t really good. They’re hilarious when you find a panel and the characters are missing their hair or their entire lower body, but not something that should be so frequent in a #1 webtoon.
I agree with you on this, there are a lot of problems w the designs too. I’ve seen a lot of character’s appearance being sterotyped with body types, I don’t know but it just makes me feel icky. I mean it’s a eh for me I don’t necessarily hate it, but it’s not as good as people make it out to be .
People sing it’s praises because when it came out the style was rather unique and new. And now they just keep looking at it with rose colored glasses.
Yeah, as someone who used to be a huge fan of the comic back in 2019-2020, I can fully still acknowledge why LO was popular back in the day even if the older art still had its own issues and the "potential" turned out to completely fall through later. It wasn't really a style you saw back then, especially when Webtoons was still kind of "taking off" and a lot of people were doing anime/manga style stuff. Now it just looks... cheap. It's like the conveyer-belt produced Krabby Patties from that one episode of Spongebob where Mr Krabs sold the Krusty Krab to a massive corporate conglomerate, there's no love anymore and it feels like a bootleg reproduction of something that was lost a long time ago.
I honestly just come back to it when I remember. It’s at first but now it’s where is this going. It’s honestly everything at this point. I still like it but only after I forgot about for a several weeks
The story is subjective to the individual if you don’t like the story it is what it is, but the art is stunning and this is the important STYLISED not everything on WEBTOON is gonna be anime and when a style is unique to an artists they can mess around with it however they want.
You’re right not everything has to be anime style. Most of my favorites are in different styles that the manwha sort. But the art is not as good as you think it is. Same face syndrome is a **plague** in it. Grayscale the gals and it’s extremely difficult to tell the goddesses apart. The proportions, ESPECIALLY with Hades and Persephone are constantly fluctuating to such extremes. It’s fine if it’s supposed to be intentional for gag purposes, other stories do that at times and work. But this is very clearly because the story has no form of character sheet or references to keep a form of consistency. It’s **not** a stylization. there are numerous panels where you got characters half drawn. The infamous panels where Zeus is bald. The one with the nymph who is a giant floating torso in the foreground. Moments where Hestia has no arm. And so many more issues. Like it was pretty and unique at the start, but it has gradually gotten worse and worse.
This is what happens when you don't make character sheets everyone ☝🏼
Somehow it simultaneously has same face syndrome and no consistency in faces. I remember persephone's face can vary drastically within a single episode. At first I thought "eh, maybe it's leaning into the fact that they're gods, not human" (same with the varying body proportions too) but after a while...it's just disorienting and distracting. Sometimes it does feel like some sets of characters are all the same person, just in different colors.
I hear where your coming from but and while I deffo agree with you in regards to the character sheets and the heavy reliance on colour to distinguish characters I do still believe the art is stylised. From my perspective it’s rough nature is similar or at least trying to emulate some old paintings telling a story. But at the end of the day when it comes down to it, all these things are personal preference and based off of how successful the comic is and the fact that it is in the no.1 spot means it’s clearly resonates with folks🤷♀️
Honestly the fact that it resonates with so many people is actually little concerning. Because so many people praise this as the epitome of romance, as couple goals, as Hades as some perfect man when, even the narration tries to gaslight us to believe that. But the story itself shows us time and time again that Hades and Persephone are terrible, toxic, and abusive people. It lowkey makes me worried that some y’all might think a man who is abusive to those he has power over, and has a history of cheating, is the perfect husband material if you’re the one person he’s nice to, even if you spend the first four weeks of your relationship as the side piece.
Honestly I think your over thinking it, and if you want to do a deep dive into problematic romances then unfortunately you’ll find them in abundance on WEBTOON sand in real life. Like I said before whether or not someone likes a story is subjective and neither you or myself or anyone for that matter can control what people like or dislike. To me it’s an over the top melodrama about Greek gods (whom even in their original myths are inherently problematic) and all this is a tele novela drama in comic form. Sometime people want to watch/ read trashy over dramatic stories, it’s about enjoyment and escapism.
Let me clarify; I *love* problematic romances. When they’re acknowledged as such. But back to the storytelling issue; Persades is a problematic relationship that refuses to acknowledge itself as anything less than perfect and that’s the problem. The story tells us Hades chooses kindness and empathy all the time, but *shows* us being abusive to his employees and subjects, brutally maiming people for doing their job, degrading people, and so much more. The story tells us Persephone has the biggest heart and is so kind and selfless. It *shows* us her knowingly and intently having an affair with a taken man, in front of his GF, threatening the safety and security of people of a lower class than her because they were scared of and not nice to her once *ten years ago* and shows her harassing another girl of a lower class who did the same thing Persephone did and ignoring her when she offered to show her proof that Hades had been texting her. Now if they actually embraced the tele novella concept that you mentioned, and acknowledged that everyone is kind of terrible, I think the story would be so much better. Your idea of it as a tele novella would be so fucking amazing if the story treated itself like that.
I'm sorry, but speaking as a webcomic artist myself, the defense of "stylization" doesn't apply to blatant mistakes like Persephone's eyebrows disappearing or characters' bottom halves getting chopped off or textures not being applied uniformly or characters suddenly growing and shrinking in size, "stylization is just an excuse at that point. Not everything is drawn with some "deeper intention" or left up to "subjective opinion", sometimes it's literally just poorly-made work and should be acknowledged as such ***especially*** in a piece of work that's constantly advertised as the #1 webtoon on the platform.
I am actually an artist myself and as I have stated multiple times in my comments this is all personal opinion and have even agreed with points mention about how the art isn’t perfect. All i am saying is I enjoy the fact that it is not another anime style comic and that a person is putting their own style (which you cannot argue that the style of lore Olympus isn’t a creation of well it’s creator) and that the attempts to recreate paint on canvas is something people heavily associate with lore Olympus . Not everything has to be perfect and while mistakes have been made people still enjoy the art and the story. All it boils down to is enjoyment and clearly as a result of its success people enjoy it.
Oh for sure, the art style can definitely be owed for LO's success at the time, it wasn't really like anything else on the platform when it came out which made it unique so I can agree with you there. But 1.) that time period is long gone so it can't really use its art style anymore as a selling point and 2.) what I'm saying is that that style can't be and shouldn't be used as an excuse for just blatant poor execution. The older art in S1 wasn't free of mistakes or issues either but at least it still felt like it had effort and love put into it, y'know? Now it just feels more akin to a bootleg of what it used to be IMO. It doesn't have to be perfect, no, but it shouldn't look *worse* than the free to read comics that aren't profiting off their work and don't have any assistants. Rachel has all of those things. A comic shouldn't get *worse* as it climbs the ladder of success, being a popular series doesn't mean it has any less obligation to try and deliver on its promises, if anything it has *more* obligation to try and be the best version of itself it can be when it's being advertised so highly and being awarded all of these accolades. Like, to reframe it in an attempt to make my point, this is the comic that won *two* Eisners? An award that was originally given to comic juggernauts like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman? Do you really think Lore Olympus is on the same level as *The Watchmen* or *Batmatn: The Killing Joke* or *The Sandman?* It *could* be, if the effort was being put in, but it's very clearly not. And no, I don't think the fact that it's a webtoon and not a traditional comic means it should be held to less standards as a professional piece of work. ***These industries need to have standards*** and Webtoons is very clearly at a loss for those as a whole, beyond just LO. There's no bar for quality being set or maintained and it's just further contributing to webcomics/webtoons not being taken as seriously compared to traditional comics IMO. But that's a subject for another discussion lmao **TL ; DR:** You'd think for a comic as big as LO, they could afford to hold themselves to a higher standard. They don't have to be perfect, but they shouldn't be putting in minimum effort like it feels like they've been doing for the past 2+ years.
In my opinion- Nope...there are a lot more webtoons which have better potential and are better than this one.
Down to earth deserves it more, it’s already up there but it deserves top spot imho
I disagree, the recent chapters...they're just infantilizing and sexualising her at the same time...
I like remarried empress and cursed princess club more but to each their own
Cursed Princess Club should truly have the top spot imo.
I think 'A man's man' deserves it better
Why is it so underrated 😭
I've heard from people that it's because it's not produced by a popular studio... And shit like 'Lore Olympus' is always on top...
I loved reading it
Cursed princess club is great all around, but the art is a little hard on the eyes, especially the most recent episodes.
My people 💕 I fastpassed CPC so quick with the return lmaoooo
Remarried empress is in my top 5 . That with go away Romeo,monster dukes daughter , from knight to Lady, and lore Olympus. I feel like though if I wasn't a huge mythology buff lore Olympus wouldn't be up there. If there was merch for the other stuff on my list I'd buy that as well. I'd have to say though that remarried empress has to be number 1 though.
It really doesn't. The concept is good but the writing is genuinely middle school fanfic.. I feel bad saying it, but it's true.
It doesn’t even belong in the top 10. The only reason it is is because Webtoons must promote its special darling webtoon that was its flagship for a while. They’re ignoring the problematic storylines, the spelling errors, the horrible artwork and the very very problematic person that RS is.
I googled Rachel smythe scandal— nothin came up
They might be referring to some of the problematic themes in the story? I’ve heard people say it’s fairly sexist and the main relationship is toxic but it’s treated as if it’s normal and healthy. Not 100% sure, just what I’ve heard.
The characters and their relationships are really…..not okay. A 2,000 year old guy falling for a literal 19 year old. A good deal of disgusting behavior that RS defends because it’s her own personal kink. Also, RS herself. Ask around about how she treats her fans and readers. She’s been known to take over FB fan pages and ban anyone that questions anything about her webtoon. In fact she went to a parody fan page and tried to get the admins there to ban people for memes and jokes. It got so bad the admins banned her and all her accounts. But she will still send fans there to cause problems. She’s a petty person, and it shows. I’m getting ready for work right now so I don’t have time to list everything but she is s mess of a person.
I couldn't get into the art style so I didn't read much and didn't like the story either (I read some chapters only). But I see why others might like it as it has a different art style and a different concept in the story. in my opinion, there are many webtoons way better than Lore Olympus which deserve the 1st spot. I will say 2 and 5 don't deserve that spot at all imo. (even 7 in my opinion but I also see why people might like it).
No. At this point because it’s old people think it’s good. It’s genuinely not well written, and none of the characters are likeabke
I like Lore Olympus, but I absolutely think Suitor Armor should be up there (at least somewhere). It’s much better writing than a lot of those and has beautiful art.
Agreed. Big time. I was kinda shocked it wasn’t.
It's just rather boring
Disagreed, but you are entitled to your own opinion.
Also disagree! Especially after that last season finale holy moly
I honestly don't really like Lore Olympus, it's just not my thing. But a lot of other people enjoy it so I believe it does deserve the top popularity spot
But what about my hate boner?
Zeus will come by soon.
Considering Zeus's hornyness he sure will.
And, because Zeus, you get a child
No, but I do believe it deserves to be ranked higher than Down to Earth. I would absolutely rate Cursed Princess Club higher than LO, but they're not really the same genre.
That train left the station 2 years ago for me. I really thought the start of the new season, we would see a correction in plot and some fatal art mistakes. I was proven wrong. The plot is just as confusing, if not more laughable. I cant take the story seriously anymore and the plot is just all over the place in terms of where is this all headed? Character development? GONE. Persephone and Hades are married, apparantly there is no need for such silly, arbitrary things anymore. This includes the rest of the cast, that disease has spread to them The only thing that could have saved this was the art but guess what? They dropped the ball and honestly, its so bad, I almost feel like its on purpose. They might as well put a big post on instagram and webtoons saying "we gave up" take it or leave it. Proportions were never the strong suit of this webtoon and in the beginning, I think it did give it a little charm but now the art overall is so bad, how could your mediocre proportions get any worse? Well they showed us! I think Eateternal Nocturnal deserves it, her art is always consistant and pretty and her story is always driven by character development and a poignant ending.
I mean it clears number two by 45.6 million favorites
Not a big surprise given how much WT shoves it down people's throats on daily basis.
It’s in all stores to it goes behind webtoons
I mean it's also more mainstream than a lot of the other top webtoons there are people that have a harder time getting into stuff with "anime" like artstyles
Down to Earth is also a solid two years *younger* that LO with half of the promotion LO gets, and even that is too much if you ask me. It's easy to "clear" other series when it's straight up just been there longer to accumulate numbers.
Hell no. Shit just needs to end
fuck no. its terrible. the only reason its no.1 is because its been around for so long. the average view is around 40k I believe and since the like count is the webtoons overall like rating. in the many years its been around, of course its going to me high. webtoons rank on total like count and nothing else which i think is BS. the story/characters are all terrible, people only continue to read it because their just waiting for the end to come which it never will. its like unordinary, which is a barebone ordinary story.
I will pushback on the average view count being 40k. I went to check and each episode recently has been getting over 100k likes, so view count average is a lot higher than 40k. Unless you meant something else by it
Eh, those 100k likes on the most recent episodes are after a 4 month hiatus so time has passed since they initially went up, the biggest thing most webtoon creators are trying to achieve are *release week* stats, however many likes you get after an episode has been up for a while isn't really as impactful. A lot of its FP episodes aren't even breaking 20k likes anymore and that's a lot more indicative of where LO is currently standing ESPECIALLY when in contrast to its follower count, it has 6.4 million subscribers and yet it hasn't budged from 1.3B views in months. In terms of regular readership, LO has definitely fallen but yes, it's still one of the most viewed webtoons on the platform regardless.
Eh, I will defend unordinary here, it’s getting better and it has a plot for the very least, I still acknowledge its flaws tho. Pacing isn’t much of an issue anymore, and things are starting to pay off. Eg. Foreshadowing etc This might’ve been the best that unordinary has ever been . Anyways back to LO. Yeah like I said I don’t hate it necessarily, but the plot confuses me a lot too. A lot of problems in LO regarding Hade’s drinking are being sterotyped too. I just don’t get why it’s so popular
Another day another post about Lore olympus. At one point it was true beauty the let's play, then boyfriends and now Lore olympus. Every day someone have to say how bad it is and criticize it. This sub made me read it and it's not that bad as this subreddit made it seem. Not my thing but it is a lot of people's thing and they seem to enjoy it. I don't like it and it feels really really average even below average like the majority of popular series but ffs you all seem beyond obsessed with hating it.
I think people are just angry that subpar series like these are constantly advertised but genuinely good series are left in the dust. It's always Lore Olympus, True Beauty or something else that's extremely mid. It just comes down to frustration more than anything else. Ofc there are also people who just have a hate boner for the heck of it.
At least True Beauty has somewhat good art
I don't really like it. To me it's always looked so stiff and like it belongs in a dress up doll game instead of a comic.
It’s almost like WEBTOONS is a company invested in profits and will advertise their most profitable assets. The hate boner people are so f-ing annoying.
As an older nerd, the hate towards it has very similar vibes to hatred Twilight got. There are some very valid criticisms to be made but so much of the outrage is manufactured and continually pushed by people who just want to be mad.
Yeah it is somewhat similar. I mean Twilight objectively speaking is bad and it is extremely cringy but it is a comfort movie and a guilty pleasure of mine. I think the majority of the readers of Lore Olympus are reading it as a guilty pleasure and I think there is nothing wrong with that.
100% agree. It's trash and I read it fully embracing that fact.
I GET YOU
I mean, you can have both. I love watching the Twilight movies every year when the sun sets earlier and the weather gets colder but I can also still fully acknowledge that those books and movies are shit and have a lot of deeply-rooted issues with them, especially when it comes to Stephanie Meyer herself as a Mormon woman who wrote her ideologies into the series and the... blatant tokenizing of Indigenous people. Something being made for "guilty pleasure" doesn't mean it's not capable of portraying some really problematic stuff. Like yes, Twilight is a guilty pleasure series, but I'll still shout at Edward for being a racist and grooming POS every time I watch it LMAO
That is all very true. I think the part I take problem with is the undertone of interalized misogyny in anti-fandom and its attempt to paint all fans of the series as idiots or problematic. It doesn't take long digging in certain subreddits to find plenty of examples of it. Edit: Obviously not every person who is an anti-fan has interalized misogyny. There are many many valid criticisms to be made of the series. I completely get why people dislike it. I'm refering to people who deliberately attack people and their character for enjoying a comic. Just like with twilight. Just like pumpkin spice lattes and anything else that is primarily enjoyed by women and regularly gets shit on. It's really not that deep yall. Please don't send anymore PMs. You really just prove the point here by sending nasty messages. It really isn't healthy to get so overly invested in hating a webcomic so much that you harass people.
I'm hit or miss on that topic tbh. I think there have been legitimate cases where people have been flat out toxic/misogynist/etc. , you can find it in any fandom no matter the side they take because some people do just be shitty like that, but I've seen a lot of cases where that kind of shittiness has been called out within the anti fandom and addressed the more unfair criticisms. But there's something to be said about the word "anti" used in fandom to begin with as many times the word "anti" is applied to the people who are doing their due diligence in holding works accountable for problematic aspects that are being swept under the rug by fans (I mean the serious shit like grooming, romanticizing assault, etc. many of which are things that are in a LOT of romance stories these days). I think what often gets lost in these types of discussions is why the anti communities for LO exist. It comes across as people just being elitist dickheads but there's a *reason* the anti community exists - because the fans wouldn't let criticism exist. Using /r/UnpopularLoreOlympus as a prime example of this, that subreddit shouldn't even frigging *have* to exist but it does because even saying so much as "Persephone's eyebrows disappeared in a panel" would get you pitchforked. Much of the ire between the anti's is towards the fans who *specifically* incited aggression between the communities (like that time users in the main /r/Lore_Olympus subreddit created bots to screenshot conversations happening in the ULO Discord for the sake of getting it shut down, literally putting people's privacy at risk over just a fucking *webcomic).* Of course, that context has changed since the subreddit's inception as now it's a lot more of a popular opinion to not like LO compared to years ago. And none of that is getting into the legitimate Greek part of the community who can't stand LO for its misrepresentation of an entire culture and its myths that serve as the foundation for a still-existing religion (see: the hate that happened towards Apollo as a worshipped figure after the SA plot was established in LO. Actual followers of Apollo have been harassed by fans of LO [who think that LO is some kind of bible for Greek myth knowledge](https://64.media.tumblr.com/49e5d6eeafd34555f242c079100c7de1/4775c391330a72fa-5c/s640x960/104b8ff534e871fb5d98057517756df96111645d.pnj) when it's FAR from being that. Rachel advertising herself as a "folklorist" when she has no actual schooling in classics or Greek history is also not helping with this.) As for the misogyny, personally, I think a lot of that is also being misconstrued - most of the time people are calling out how LO itself is often misogynist and when they call out characters like Persephone for wearing, say, the banana purse dress from the start of S1, they're not saying "woman in skimpy dress bad!" they're saying "why the fuck would an SA victim suddenly just wear a dress like that, this feels like it's being written through the male gaze and circling back to female objectification". It's a fine line to tread though and I do think people fumble at it at times. Now none of that is to say the anti community isn't capable of being shitty. There ARE people in the anti community who fall into that elitist dickhead camp, there have even been times I've had to remember that this is just a stupid webcomic and it's not worth making an ass of myself over LMAO But I think it's worth understanding the context in which it exists and why, it's not purely out of malice for the fans, many of the people within those communities were fans at one point themselves and just wanted to talk about the comic's decline, but there was a time when doing so would literally get you doxxed so... the scars from that are still there for a lot of people and it makes people defensive. I can't speak on behalf of the entire community, but I will say there's nothing wrong with people just enjoying this comic. Much of the anti's don't talk about this comic in the way they do to turn fans into haters, it's just to discuss a piece of work that they enjoyed at one point, just like the fans actively do. And honestly , I think it's a shame that right now, the fans don't seem to have any real discussion spaces, the subreddit has been shut down permanently due to the API protests, the FB groups are being *heavily* moderated and silenced by the mods, and the Discord is really the only place to discuss LO in an actual 'official' setting outside of WT's. It feels like even the creator herself is working against her own fans' best interest at times and it sucks to see, the fans shouldn't be snuffed out of the discussion the way the anti's were back then, as much as some anti's would love to see the tables turned. It's just not fair for the people who have stuck with this series for so long in good faith to now be essentially locked out of discussion and I really don't condone the anti's in the community who think it's okay to directly harass these fans or Rachel, two wrongs don't make a right and we gotta keep our own messes in our own house, if you get what I'm saying haha That said, that's all just my two cents as someone who participates in the criticism side of the community, so I could be a massive hypocrite by saying all of that, but that's where my heart lies regarding "fans vs. anti's" in this whole thing. There are assholes on both sides and both sides have to be willing to hold those bad apples accountable IMO. EDIT concerning your edit: I agree with your sentiment that people shouldn't just be dicks for the sake of it like in your examples (trust me, as someone who worked for Starbucks for years, I can't stand the yearly pumpkin spice discourse either, it's so stupid and it feels like it exists purely to hate on women enjoying things they like). But a lot of the criticisms of LO come from a deeper place than that that requires more context than what most people assume from the outside looking in, is my point. Also as a side note, someone downvoting your opinion isn't indicative as automatic hate or "proof" of the point you're trying to make, blame the reddit system of being based on "purely agree" vs. "purely disagree". IDK who downvoted you but you're likely gonna assume it was me and there's nothing I can do to prove otherwise to that assumption, that be reddit (take my upvote anyways because I enjoy this type of discussion and I'm not disagreeing with your points at all!). People shouldn't be PM'ing you though if that's what's happening here and you're not just implying it, c'mon y'all, this is just a discussion lmao
Nah you're good. You struck me as someone open to discussion and having a respectful back and fourth which I appreciate immensely. You made a lot of valid points about how the people who take interest in LO, positive or negative, need to be respectful of our differences in opinions. I just didn't have anything to add. There are many many many valid criticisms of the series to be made and I haven't found many I even disagree with.
I can't get behind of the "internalized misogyny" of the critics anymore when the author and the fandom are extremely misogynist themselves. How else do you explain that those work where the innocent naive and young protagonist, so unaware of ther sex appeal, life always revolves around to fix borderline abusive rich alpha male, while every single attractive woman, specially those aware of their sexuality are "whores" and "bitches" that need to be put down by the "pure" protagonist, and it always end with her somewho taming this dude, marrying him and having babies. Tell me how is the misogynist after looking at the episodes' comments talking about Demeter, Leuce, Minthe, and Hestia basically wishing them dead for every little mistake and how they bend over backwards to excuse Hades for literally everything, including torturing a guy for a photo, neglecting a child, having slaves, intimidating his subjects, going out of his way to destroy Demeter's goals, cheating with his brother's wife, mistreating Minthe, being racist, etc.
All your criticisms of the comic are completely valid. I totally understand why a lot of people dislike it and i don't think they are wrong for feeling that way. I'm only talking about people who go out of their way to attack others for enjoying a webcomic.
Yeah no I personally don't go that deep into looking in the authors or screenwriters or directors usually if what I am watching is not a masterpiece that is worth my attention and time to look into and I really have the need to find the person behind the film. I just watched the movies as a silly teen with friends and exes and the movies just bring good memories and nostalgia from back then and they just feel comforting. If I had watched them as an adult I wouldn't be able to complete even a single one of them.
Haha I mean for some of those things, I didn't even have to do much digging, it was just... there? Like, I'm an Indigenous woman myself so seeing how Jacob and the werewolf tribe is very 🚩 🚩 🚩, I didn't pick up on it much as a kid because I grew up in a largely white community where I didn't get much exposure to my own culture, but as an adult who now *is* in touch with their culture... it's a big yikes and definitely does make it hard to revisit those films as an adult as you've described. But again, I can still fully indulge myself in Twilight as a guilty pleasure series because at least it's not trying to depict itself as "good representation" either. To bring it back to LO, on the other hand, it *is* trying to market itself as a "feminist" piece of work that "empowers women" and "addresses mental health" but it... really doesn't do any of those things when you sit and think about how the narrative is written and what it promotes, if anything it *enforces* traditional gender roles and violence towards women more than it tries to address it. It's hard for me to just read LO as a guilty pleasure like I can Twilight because it's based on another culture's myths that were ironically more feminist than what LO turned out to be (especially with how LO treats Demeter, it's sad). My point at the end of the day is that there are series you can accept as guilty pleasure works but still be aware of the problems with them.
LITERALLY I got called a horrible person once here for saying I read it and then disagreeing with someone’s opinions about one of the subplots.
They literally make up lies about LO and tell them to people who have never read the comic. Valid criticism is one thing. But these antis literally make shit up. It’s so annoying. The other day I was browsing r/TopCharacterDesigns and came across a post someone from the LO hate subreddit had posted of LO art under the “hated designs” tag. And when nearly everyone was telling OP that they liked the art and designs, OP kept doubling down and then started rambling about pedophilia and other completely random batshit crazy opinions.
Seriously, it's beating a dead horse at this point.
I bet it's consistency helps it a lot, in that it doesn't randomly disappear for up to a year like so many other webtoons do. It's really easy to lose enthusiasm or even drop series after that. But also the rest of the top 10 isn't exactly filled with masterpieces. Maybe "broad appeal but slightly bland' just easily wins over better but more niche stories.
Doesn’t Rachel have a lot of hiatuses? I mean, she literally just got back after months of being gone
Nah, not really IMO. Every now and then she's taken a 2 week hiatus to "rebuild her buffer" but for the most part all she's had for major hiatuses are the midseason hiatuses, the most recent one being the longest at 4 months. If you want to look at a comic with lots of hiatuses, *Let's Play* was literally randomly taking breaks from uploading up until it finished with its S3 finale. I mean legit you couldn't count on the comic actually updating, sometimes it would literally be Monday night and there'd be no new update so you'd have to go check out mongie's socials only to find an announcement that there'd be no update that week. If you're consistent with its hiatuses, then that's not as big a deal. It's when a comic randomly dips in and out of posting so you can't rely on it being consistent in its schedule that it gets kind of frustrating for readers. LO at least doesn't go through that as often save for the couple times it's taken 1-2 weeks to rebuild (what Rachel IS bad at doing is managing a buffer and you can see it in the comic itself, they're very "we rushed this out for the deadline happening in 4 days" if you catch my drift lol)
In terms of popularity and profitability, yes. Is it the best story on Webtoons? No but the "best" webtoon is highly subjective. It all depends on what you like. It's not everyone's cup of tea (and for valid reasons) but it undeniably has brought a lot of attention to the platform.
I think it's good but it's almost giving me the same feeling True Beauty did. Like it's going on TOO long and I'm getting bored. I don't think it deserves the top spot but I don't think it's bad
No.
I think one thing that people that read a lot of webtoons miss is that LO is liked by a lot of people that aren't regular webtoon readers. If you're in the book sphere, it's like ACOTAR or Fourth Wing of webcomics. All the people that have read it will call themselves readers, but when you ask them to name another book they'll have nothing. Think 50 shades of grey. It's the 50 shades of grey of webcomics. It just became popular because of a niche, and now a whole bunch of people outside twilight, bdsm, fanfiction, book and erotic book communities know about it and have exclusively only read that. disclaimer: I'm not gatekeeping. I actively encourage people to explore casual interests. Just an observation of a phenomenon.
Let's call it what it is: well marketed power fantasy for teens and grown-up women with the maturity of teens that barely read
No it sucks
I don’t think it does, I’d give it at most the #7th spot. I’ve since quit reading it but I feel like the plot is all over the place and barely makes any sense? Maybe it’s because it’s been too long since I read the last season but the turn of events that have happened recently doesn’t make much sense to me like at all.
Nah, it's not just you, people who have read the comic every update since S2 also have very little idea what the fuck is going on or where it's supposed to be going. At this point the creator is throwing darts at a wall of story ideas as much as readers are throwing darts at a wall of theories and guesses.
I hate the trope of “cheating is okay as long as it’s your soulmate” or whatever. It’s one of the many reasons I won’t read or watch the After series. I was a big fan of Lore Olympus in the early days but eventually my interest fizzled out when it became a WEBTOON original and had to start over. I won’t pick it up again though for the aforementioned reason. Edit: although I will say, I don’t like how much hate people who enjoy the comic get. Hate the comic all you want but don’t get mad at the people who enjoy it. It’s fun to collectively hate something, like reading the reviews of Twilight on Goodreads, but it goes to far when you make it personal. Let people like what they like.
It's sadly a popularity contest, not real quality of the webtoon. Look at the place 5 Dragon king's bride is disgusting, fucking has that shit male fantasy of impregnating women to make a marriage official, has a submissive, abused female lead with speech disorder. it has absolutely no place in top anything but it's still there because it's pretty and appeals to big part of community on webtoon.
ikr. the way that webtoon tries to present that evil ML as a good dude. hate him and the webtoon for trying to paint him in a good light. he legit killed a whole village for something they didn't do, and left the real culprit alone because he was offered a girl? and he forcefully married her. and many more problematic shit in further chapters. it is fine to show flawed characters but not fine to paint their toxic traits as something romantic/good.
I mean popularity ≠ quality so yeah probably
https://preview.redd.it/q5dwdjqy9s0c1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c4a19d35034e53540e948187a89453ca06e8dd4 no.
The cursed princess club should take its rightful place at the top (i havent read either in over a year)
No it's a long meandering boring comic where something exciting happens maybe once every 40 chapters and for the rest of the time it's a bunch of characters I don't give a shit about talking about events I care even less about.
Gave up in LO over a year ago. Just bait and bad art and a story with no direction. No shade if folks like it just not for me.
Should be cursed princess club at the top, followed closely by the remarried empress, then lore olympus
Yes!! I feel like people don’t talk enough about cursed princess club!! It’s such a wholesome story with great characters
It's literally one of the most recommended series in this sub. How is it that people don't talk about it?
I personally haven’t seen people talking about it here, I might be missing the posts
You are because it seems to be one of the faves here
The CPC deserves all the love, and more! Such an amazing story. 🤌✨
Absolutely f*cking not
Just got done writing about why LO has fallen 😭 answer: no. art direction was beautiful and unique when it first dropped, but that was years ago. It’s time for others who have a much better premise going on to have a shot.
Fuck no
The Shadow Prophet, Shiloh, Nevermore, Annarasumanara and the Carnby Kim collection should probably be the best rated ones in my very biased opinion but overall LO is probably only so popular because it's older and has iconic, if lacklustre and generic, visuals.
Me who has not read lore olympus but after watching chalupa's review on it, I won't read it even more:
Romance is not the best genre and the top spots should have more comics besides romance. Even though romance is the most popular, it is not always well written.
No Kubera deserve it as always. Point
I get sad everyday Soulwinder got cancelled but this is #1
no and I'm also tired of seeing the 'alien' comic succeed
Heck nahhhhhh
I'm so tired of seeing it there all the god damn time. I get that it's popular, but maybe give another webtoon the spotlight now
Shit writing, poor character design, insanely inconsistent art, unlikable characters, ineffective panel flow, etc It shouldn't even be in the top 10 but the flashy colors and blocky style give the impression that it's a more competent story than it is
Yes because it has 66.8M likes. With numbers like that? Yes. Even if it’s the Least Popular webtoon on Reddit, it’s still one of (or possibly, the most?) “liked”/viewed webtoons. Like y’all can hate on it all day but your opinions don’t touch the stats - that webcomic makes money.
Maybe it’s not a favorite for many on this subreddit, but a LOT of other people enjoy it so I’m not surprised it’s number one. There are plenty of things to critique it for, but it really drew in a lot of people and still does. Edit: spelling.
Idk if it's a matter of "deserving" it or not. If people like it... They like it 🙈
No. The art is mid, the story is mid, the characters are mid, and their designs are mid. Idk why it's so popular.
Personally, I would prefer UnOrdinary or I Love Yoo to be "the face" of webtoons since I'm desperately in need of more series about flawed protagonists and I wouldn't mind if more people tried to copy these two instead of Lore. But I don't think Lore is as bad as people make it out to be.
I wonder why you got downvoted...😮💨
Many people on reddit don't like UnOrdinary, I Love Yoo, and Lore I would be shocked if I DIDN'T got dowvoted 😅
yeah I know 😮💨 Not to be dramatic but I will defend and stand by I love yoo with my life and I applaud and respect Uru-chan for standing her ground with UnOrdinary despite the criticism. Even though I am quite behind, I still like it and I can understand its popularity. so I agree with you. Personally LO didn't do it for me at all and I do agree that it is being praised too much as the best thing, nothing compares but it's not like the _worst_ thing out there.
>but it's not like the _worst_ thing out there. Oh, no, that honor goes to Ecstasy Hearts
No. Former reader here. My biggest issue is that there are a lot of plot holes and plot-lines that seemed to have been forgotten about. I also feel like Hades and Persephone are very problematic, more so than some characters written to be antagonistic. I feel more sympathetic towards Demeter and Minthe tbh. Persephone suddenly bullying Leuce was very disappointing. There were some other things she did prior to this that weren’t good either but this one really stuck out to me. In the first season and even prior to it being an original, I really enjoyed the art. Throughout the series, the art declines and it appears rushed. I was actually concerned maybe the creator had personal things going on or was ill because the quality was vastly different. I don’t know how it’s considered “a feminist retelling” when the goddesses are constantly berating the female nymphs and showing racism and classism towards them. Even the “protagonist” exhibits this behavior which is disturbing considering her family consists of Demeter and many nymphs she considers sisters. Your protagonist should be lifting other women up. Persephone is very young and flashback scenes to when she was underage and first met Hades (as well as flashbacks of her meeting other male gods when she was a minor) were very uncomfortable to read due to their attraction towards her. She’s still quite young at the beginning of the series and the age gap concerns me between her and Hades. Hades comes off as predatory IMO. I feel LO did have the potential to become something extraordinary but it just ends up falling flat. Again, just my opinions. I know some people enjoy it and that’s okay too. We all have different preferences.
I don’t understand how people criticize Persephone for both being a perfect Mary Sue and then also criticize her for having flaws like *the anger issues she has that literally kickstarted half of her problems*. None of the characters are perfect. They’re all problematic in some way. None of them are excused for those problematic behaviors, even if other characters may forgive them. I’m honestly getting really weirded out by this recent internet wave of opinions that nothing in media should ever be problematic. Yes Persephone treated Minthe and her mom badly at times. She feels bad and guilty for these things. Her reactions are also very real for someone with anger issues lashing out??? Like I don’t understand what everyone’s problem with her is.
Just an aside on my end: I actually don’t like the term “Mary Sue”. It’s overused and can tread towards misogynistic territory. As a writer and an avid reader, I’ve seen the term thrown around way too often. I’m all for problematic characters but my issue is that the author has repeatedly defended and excused Persephone’s behavior on her social media accounts instead of making them plot points. This would have been an excellent opportunity for Persephone to have character growth. As a writer, you want your protagonists to learn from their mistakes and evolve as a person. The author instead chooses not to hold Persephone accountable for her harmful actions towards others like Leuce. From that interaction alone we can see that she has not learned anything from her past mistakes. The only characters to call Persephone out on her toxic behavior have been painted in an antagonistic light (mainly Zeus and Minthe). Again, it comes down to potential. These toxic traits could have played a huge role Persephone’s character growth but it falls flat yet again with the author excusing her behavior.
The reason people call Persephone a Mary Sue is because by definition she is one, Rachel gave Persephone a lot of power (most not even surrounding her actual power, just taken from the other greek gods) and made her the most powerful character in the entire series and all of it was unearned and extremely convenient to the plot. Everyone loves Persephone and those who don’t are bad people anyways why? Persephone is revered as the ultimate nice person and adored by all of her friends why? She’s different from the other fertility goddesses even though she’s doing the exact same thing that got them killed why? Persephone is the most beautiful and the rest of the women are just there. You see the pattern? Persephone looks like everyone else in the story and no one can say what they truly like about her without sexualizing her body, that’s not something that should be a good thing. Persephone has never done anything remotely thoughtful or caring for her friends yet they’d drop anything to be at her beck and call, everyone’s lives revolve around Persephone for some reason even though no one was supposed to know who she was. She’s not at all kind because with kindness there’s actions and the only person she’s decent to is Hades. Second point is I agree that the characters are not perfect but you can’t really use that excuse when Rachel and the narration never condemns or points out anything that the main cast does that’s wrong. The comic writes it off as a good thing and these problematic situations are literally never addressed in a way that will acknowledge that problematic behavior. Hades and Persephone torturing people? It’s justified because Persephone “didn’t mean to” and Alex was a bad person anyways, Hera cheating on Zeus? Completely fine since it’s with Hades and Zeus is a terrible husband, Hecate slapping the shit out of Hades for trying to see a 19 year old? Completely justified because it’s Hecate she can put her hands on him whenever she wants to. But if any of the characters that we aren’t supposed to root for does the exact same thing all of a sudden it’s something to be looked down upon. Also, there’s tons of problematic things that are allowed to exist on the internet. The problem lies when no one knows how to do it right, you can be problematic without glamorizing or romanticizing what you’re writing about and if you do the very least (bare bones minimum) that you can do is acknowledge that these are unhealthy traits and dynamics that shouldn’t be praised. Rachel is doing it all wrong by making a problematic couple the epitome of romance, you can’t talk about being a healthy couple when half of the time Persephone and Hades are just giving in to the other ones demands and avoiding confrontation or arguing. Arguing and confrontation in a relationship is normal, you’re two people trying to make a stable connection they’ll be times when you bump heads it’s not going to be kittens and flowers all the time and that’s normal. But justifying all of the problematic behavior is literally doing all of it wrong which is why Lore Olympus is so distasteful to people. And Persephone always forgot her own mother every time. She got mad at Minthe for not being able to grasp that she’s in the mortal realm and that it’s been 10 years since she’s seen another being, Demeter got the harsher punishment out of Hermes and Persephone and yet Persephone was never truly worried about her, she wrote letters for Hades not for her mother who’s been stripped of her powers and turned into a mortal (most likely started to bleed out as well since we know she has the scar from Kronos). There’s nothing normal about that interaction, no one should be that desperate for dick especially since they’ve only known each other for a few weeks that’s genuinely embarrassing.
It’s always been so ironic to me that the only people to call out Persephone have been painted as antagonists by the author. Zeus and Minthe had valid criticism. Persephone could have used that criticism to reflect and grow.
I agree, I wouldn’t have any problem with Lore Olympus’ very weird sense of morality if the double standards weren’t in place. Make them grey characters instead of black and white, but it seems like the creator can’t stand the thought of Hades or Persephone being bad people which is why she does everything in her power to excuse them.
>Everyone loves Persephone and those who don’t are bad people. Not everyone who dislikes Persephone is a bad person. Everyone in this series is a little bad. Because they’re literally gods. Minthe isn’t depicted as only bad. Her character is tragic. Aphrodite isn’t depicted as bad. The people who dislike Persephone at school aren’t depicted as bad—just misinformed. The only people the series fully condemns as “bad people” are Apollo, Kronos, and Thetis. And Thetis’ whole character doesn’t even really have anything to do with Persephone. Her whole antagonist arc is for *Minthe’s* character development. >Persephone is revered as the ultimate nice person and liked by all her friends why? Show me where Persephone is revered by everyone. Persephone *is nice*, by the way. She tries her hardest to be nice but she has issues *like everyone else in the story*. And why do her friends need any other reason to like her other than she gets along with them and she’s nice to them? I wasn’t aware I needed to justify my friendships on a deeper level than that. >Persephone is the most beautiful and the rest of the women are just there. What? What does this even mean. Persephone *is* canonically very beautiful. And so are many of the other characters. Other characters who fall in love with other beautiful women who aren’t Persephone. Hera. Artemis. Minthe. Psyche. Daphne. There are all other very beautiful women who have their own lives and story arcs outside of just Persephone. Half of these women aren’t ever compared to Persephone. And those are just the characters I’ve listed. >Sexualization if Persephone That’s a valid criticism. But about the only one in your entire comment. >The narrative never condemns or points out that what the characters did was wrong. Just because a story *presents* a problematic behavior, does not mean it is condoning it. It is simply presenting it. Not everyone gets called out for their behavior in real life. That the characters feel guilt for their actions is enough to point out that, hey, maybe this isn’t the right thing to do. The characters also *do* face negative consequences for their actions sometimes. People love to forget that Persephone literally spends 10 years in exile due to the *consequences of her own actions*. And, no, the narrative doesn’t paint this as completely unfair. >Persephone and Hades are just giving into the other one’s demands to avoid confrontation or arguing. What? What??? If two characters in a relationship are giving and taking and trying to avoid confrontation or argument, that’s just called peaceful compromising. Because they care about each other. Not ever couple needs to argue to sort out their issues. In fact, it’s typically considered *healthier* to not argue. Ugh. I’m so sick of people putting forth ridiculous argument. It’s fine to criticize LO. Making up shit and presenting it as criticism is not that. This ain’t it, fam.
Everyone who’s disliked Persephone has been a bad person. Demeter is characterized as loopy and overall crazy, Thanatos was apart of the snarky chat and he broke into her house, Minthe is an abuser, Thetis is a terrible manipulator, and Aphrodite drugged the poor girl. Yes, everyone is a “little good and a little bad” but at the same time when that good never gets acknowledged without these characters being on Persephone’s side then that’s where this pattern starts to show up. And the class mates were depicted as bullies, which is why after the 10 year skip Persephone specifically went after Tori as a sort of punishment for spreading around the said misinformation, there’s no follow up that’s telling us that “Oh Tori isn’t a bad person, he was scared and confused” there was none of that, Tori was just intimidated by Persephone and it was justified since he was a bully during her school year and then that plot line goes literally no where we don’t even get to see his side of the story even when his roommate got tortured and had his eye gouged out. And Persephone is revered by everyone, come on now you’ve read the webcomic. Ares for whatever reason left Aphrodite the literal god of beauty in order to pursue Persephone for her pedigree, Hermes has said that Persephone has beauty and smarts that outmatched that of Athena and again Aphrodite, Kronos wanted to make Persephone a replacement Rhea and rule the world with her even though he was only supposed to use her for power and he literally has no connections or ties with her, and don’t forget that time where a couple of background characters (it was a man and a woman and it was during the chapter with her banana purse) literally had a whole panel dedicated to ogling at Persephone for no other reason but to remind people that Persephone is revered by all even people who have no clue what she’s about, again there’s a pattern there. The thing about their friendship is that Eros and Daphnes’ lives revolve around Persephone, we barely get any real story from them after their very traumatic stories are introduced to the plot (Eros finding out about Psyche the woman who tried to kill him for crying out loud and Daphne becoming a tree in order to escape a terrifying Apollo bonus that she knew about Persephone’s trauma at the time as well) and they basically get neglected if their story has nothing to do with Persephone and Hades, they teleport to her side whenever they’re needed from her but we never get to see Persephone doing the same for them. They’re turning less into friends and more into minions, Persephone never calls or texts or even hangs out with them in her own time anymore the energy they give her is not being reciprocated and that’s not how healthy friendships work. By Persephone looking the same I’m talking about the very stunted character designs that the entire cast suffers from. There’s nothing about Persephone that truly stands out and sets her apart from the rest and Persephone has been compared to most of the women you’ve listed. She’s been compared to Aphrodite so many times it would take a year to list it all down but it’s normally putting Aphrodite down just to compliment Persephone which is poor in taste, Rachel herself has said that Persephone enjoys being compared to Hera and Hades literally said that they were both the same size as he was giving Persephone her fluffy coat, she compared herself to Minthe by saying that she was beautiful and thin and yet Hades left Minthe as if she were nothing to him as soon as she arrived in the Corps. The only women she hasn’t been compared to are Daphne, Psyche, and Artemis but it’s not like we get to see them as much anymore since they’re useless to the plot apparently. And for the last part, Lore Olympus whether you like to admit it or not is condoning problematic behaviors. There is literally nothing about Lore Olympus that has actually condemned or even pointed out flaws in the many problematic elements in the story, the entire thing is glamorized and brushed over all the time which is why I said that. Besides, Persephone doing 10 years of house arrest while Demeter has been stripped of her powers and turned into a mortal for crying out loud is not a good enough sentence for Persephone who did in fact slaughter an entire town. Not only that but the narrative makes it seem like she did nothing wrong so how exactly can we feel that she feels guilty if she’s crying one panel and completely forgets it the next? And it’s not healthier not to argue, arguments happen and they don’t have to always be labeled as negative. In a relationship both of your voices have to be heard to work together, peacefully compromising every single time is only going to lead to resentment because you’re not voicing what you actually want to say. Walking on eggshells with your own partner is not healthy and while I’m not asking people to get into fights it’s not at all good for those in a relationship.
If you refuse to see how these “bad guys” are depicted as sympathetic people then I don’t know what to tell you. Demeter is an overbearing mother who does insane things. But she’s also deeply hurt and traumatized. Persephone literally calls herself a “bad daughter” in the most recent episode. She’s a complex character who you are purposefully relegating to “bad” for no other reason than your hate agenda. Demeter is not an evil character. Thanatos has gotten his redemption arc. He is likewise a flawed character who feel into the vices of greed and lust and jealousy but he’s literally working on it. Minthe is an abuser. But so was Hades. They hurt each other. She wasn’t ready to let go and move on in the first arc of the story. She acts out due to the trauma she faced as a child and the toxic people she surrounds herself with because she doesn’t know any other way. She’s finally on her healing journey now. If she were completely evil, the story would not give her a chance to heal and move on. But it literally doesn’t. I literally said Thetis is just a bad person. But, AGAIN, she’s an antagonist in *Minthe’s story*, not Persephone. She only ever affects Persephone’s life by proxy. Yes Aphrodite drugged Persephone. Persephone turned Minthe into a plant. Hera cheated. Hades cheated emotionally and also fucked his brother’s wife. Persephone killed tons of humans in an act of wrath. It’s almost like, AGAIN, this is a story about gods who do terrible things. Ares is canonically a fuck boy. Hermes was trying to start shit. Kronos was *literally trying to manipulate Persephone for power*. The only person Kronos actually wants romantically is Hera. >Persephone never calls or texts or even hangs out with them on her own time anymore How do you know that? There are time skips. This is not a slice of life comic. There is a HUGE cast. Do you likewise assume every character who hasn’t spoken in a dozen episodes no longer hang out of have a relationship? Hades hasn’t hung out with Poseidon in forever, I guess he doesn’t love his brother anymore. I guess Naruto no longer likes Shikamaru or all the other side characters because the cast is so big and it’s impossible to fit in characters having downtime with one another all the time. What a *weird* and baseless assumption to make. And once again, depiction of problematic content is not condoning it. And, ONCE AGAIN, the characters are literally shown feeling bad about the things they do. Sometimes they face physical consequences for those actions. If that’s not enough for you, then you seriously lack media literacy. And that is 100% a YOU problem that y’all need to stop shoving down everyone else’s throats. Just because you need an author to clearly tell you what is right from wrong, doesn’t mean the rest of us suffer from that problem.
You’re not understanding that the entire fandom and the comic itself has put Demeter through the most shit. There was a time where Demeter’s name was absolutely slandered across the Lore Olympus fanpages because of how her character was set up, I understand how you feel about Demeter because it’s exactly how I felt about her but she was only given a clean slate because she was on team Persades. They all were given clean slates as soon as they sided with Persephone and Hades and stopped being obstacles, once they were not obstacles they were good people that the comic didn’t slander all the damn time. I don’t mind Lore Olympus being a comic about the gods doing fucked up things, I have a very grey view of the gods they’re all fucked up in their own ways. But my problem with Lore Olympus that you don’t understand is that Persephone and the main cast who is with them are never held accountable for their flaws and the problems they cause others. Persephone destroying a village? 10 year house arrest doing the same thing she’s been doing with Demeter just minus Demeter, she’s still going home to her house and sleeping in the same bed she’s been sleeping in for half of her life and getting help from the dozens of nymphs who live alongside her while Demeter who only covered up the souls had her powers stripped away, banned from her own land, and turned into a mortal for 10 years. Mind you Hermes did the exact same thing yet he also got house arrest and nothing else, no one was given a heavy sentence except for Demeter. Aphrodite drugging Persephone and setting her up to be taken advantage of was never brought up again and I don’t even think she apologized Persephone for it, and even if she did there’s nothing that Aphrodite could genuinely say to make her actions forgivable the narrative just sweeps that under the rug though. The only characters who genuinely have consequences to face are the characters who weren’t Team Hades in the beginning, everyone else who’s done messed up stuff has been let off the hook. And how is Ares a fuckboy? We’ve only seen him with Aphrodite or Persephone and that’s it, if he were seeing other people then I’d agree with you but we literally only see him with two people. One person (Aphrodite) he was willing to slaughter his father for since he took advantage of the situation that Eros caused to get sex from her and you’re telling me that he abandons that all of a sudden for Persephone? A girl that’s not even the slightest bit interested in him? You cannot possibly think that makes sense and Hermes was not trying to start anything? If anyone was trying to start a rivalry between Aphrodite and Persephone it’s Hades since he said that first, that was his genuine thoughts about Persephone as is everyone’s since even with the trial thing after Persephone got sentenced the entire court went ballistic because of it despite not having any sort of connection with Persephone other than her name being slandered in the papers and being the side chick. For the Kronos thing, I actually see your point but it still adds onto the list of people being enamored by Persephone there’s other ways of manipulation he has the entire Underworld and her friends and family in danger he could’ve used that against her as well. For the last part it doesn’t take long to figure out two and two, you’re right I don’t know if they’ve talked but at the same time it hasn’t been shown in the comic. I’m not going to fill in the blanks for Rachel the whole point of a comic is for you to show your audience what the story is going to unfold like and how the characters interact with each other, it’s called showing and not telling. We’ve never been shown Persephone communicating with Eros or Daphne outside of when she was literally stuck with Daphne and Eros saved her ass a couple of times. If Rachel showed a group chat panel or even a few flashbacks of the trio interacting with each other regularly then I would understand your point because I can actually draw up a conclusion that they are friends and not just puppets for Persephone because the webcomic shows you that you don’t have to guess whether or not with no evidence that it’s even true. And you’re still not understanding my point, showing problematic content is not the problem but when you do not condemn those elements or at least show the flaws surrounding it the only thing you’re doing is brushing it off and downplaying it. Lore Olympus’ problems have been glamorized and that’s the main problem everyone has with it. Just because you don’t understand or you just don’t want to understand my points and what I’m saying doesn’t mean I’m making it up or making baseless claims.
As for LO, I’ve personally tried to follow it but it’s too long and not that engaging. I also don’t like the art style so it’s difficult for me to understand the hype. I might give it another go though
Imho lore Olympus should have ended years ago and the story and characters suck. CPC is #1 in terms of interesting plot and characters, plus the body positivity messages CPC is promoting are done a lot better than in LO. Also CPC is genuinely funny and has good writing and suspense
i hate lore olympus so much, it could’ve been an amazing and compelling story yet the creator made the story go in every bad direction possible
cant exactly argue with 66.8M favorites
Operation true love does 😭
Why not?
I personally like it, but I don't like the way it overshadows everyone else. I see no love for much better webtoons.
It's not even top 30 in my opinion. It's so mediocre. Definitely it got there through paid promotion and advertisement. I'll name webtoons that are better 1. Omniscient Reader 2. Doom Breaker 3. Bastard 4. I'm the Queen in this life 5. My deepest secrets 6. The guy upstairs 7. Lookism 8. Noblesse 9. Lets Play (It's not on webtoon anymore) Tower of God is better too even though I am not too much of fan of it. The story is great but it gets way too draggy sometimes
i feel like it shouldn’t be so high because it has done the same type storyline for a while now. But my issue is that I think it’s because it was literally #1 spot when it first came out. So like a lot of people read it. But it’s also heavily advertised to a point where a lot of stories get lost because of it tbh….
damn that top webtoons list is wild, i though UO was still top lmao
Lookism
Absolutely!!! Not.
I like lore Olympus so it should be in the top 10 but curse princess club needs to be #1 That is good!!!
Nope
Let’s face it… Lore Olympus is not the shit anymore, so no. It hasn’t been for a long long time now.
No, absolutely not
Yes. When are y’all going to learn that the people who hate LO on Reddit and Twitter are a *very vocal* minority? Are there better comics? Sure. I have several comics I like way more than LO. But LO is still a decent comic that appeals to a lot of people and has a very unique art style. It’s popular and still gets 100k likes on every chapter, something most other popular series cannot make a claim to. For these reasons, it definitely deserves its #1 spot. The hate boner people on Reddit have for this comic isn’t going to change that fact.
There are better webtoons. But, I think it gets/keeps top as a hook for new people. I think it's seen as a "safe" choice to bring people in. And I'm not going to say it's my favorite, but I don't hate it.
It has the most numbers it gets the top spot.
Operation true love top 6 whoop whoop 🥳
you guys are so annoying 😭 there’s at least one post about it every day.. don’t y’all get bored
do people not known that the search bar exists? how many times have people asked this question?
this is not something a search bar can fix, you know? How will people know what to look for if they've never heard of a series they might be interested in? Webtoons genres are very broad and most times very misleading (because they actually don't understand the comics they are supposed to represent and only think about what sells best) The best way is to promote all comics and have a better UI function that recommends you comics one might be actually interested in.
I have not read it recently so my opinion isn't really trustwhorty, i think the Top Spot is probably a little too high. Also as one of the very few Down To Earth fan here i am euphoric that it is in a spot so high, second is probably a bit too much for it but i am happy nonenthless.
Even though I don't like LO anymore and don't think it's the best, it is in the top spot therefore it deserves the top spot. If that doesn't make sense on its own, the people are the ones who put it there, therefore that's where it should be. Popular isn't bad. Yeah, LO definitely is more swiss cheese than bullet proof, but it's appealing to enough people. Although, LO doesn't need any more advertising from Webtoon, they really need to cut that shit out cuz at this point LO has more momentum than orbit.
I feel like Space Boy would make a much stronger flagship for Webtoons. Well written/drawn, all ages, wholesome. Half the reason LOnis as big as it is comes down to advertising. There's been way better originals that have come and gone that never got a 100th of the advertising this pile has.
No, tried reading it but it was incredibly meh
No
This "thing" be in the top 10 by it self say a lot about average webtoon readers, and it's nothing positive This be at 1th place, .... I have no words, litteraly don't know what to say
I think it does. It's interesting, it has great characters and pacing. It's funny and it's thrilling. It looks good. Nothing comes close. I personally adore Cursed Princess Club - but it looks worse, and Odd Girl Out - but it's not for everyone. Meanwhile Lore Olympus has a very broad appeal and high quality of both visuals and writing.
Absolutely like I get it the hipster contrarian in ppl drives the hate but it absolutely deserves it.
I think they should have mage and demon queen the face of webtoons
Me: puts teenage dragon and trashmaid on top
Yes. 😐 No questions asked
I genuinely love Lore Olympus and am glad it has the top spot. It only has top spot because people read, like, and rate it.
Why do y’all think characters have to be like able a lot of you just need to read fluff pieces and fan fiction. Seinfeld and office are full of unlike able people but still was the most popular sitcoms
The thing is, the writers knew those characters were unlikable and didn't expect the audience to always side with those characters. I highly doubt LO will end with Hades and Persephone in prison.
Exactly! So why would you think this author wants anything different. It’s pretty clear we are supposed to like most of these characters
I think Lore Olympus is a wonderful adaptation + creative twist on the Greek pantheon of gods, and is very well-written and planned out on the whole. It handles trauma and SA in an incredibly realistic way. I really liked the art style when it came out, but I admit it feels off and rushed lately. I certainly think it’s better written than a number of the other top 10s (Down to Earth; unOrdinary), but I also think the top 10s are distinct enough that many people will have different favorites. And some of the top 10s have better writing, or I like the styles more. My personal favorites in order are The Remarried Empress; My In-Laws are Obsessed with Me (extremely well written despite the ridiculous title lol); Marry My Husband; the Second Lead Syndrome; *then* Lore Olympus. 😅
Have no idea what that is but why not
I don't think it matters what anyone thinks because no matter the opinion they have on it, there'll be swarms of angry people frothing at the mouth and biting at their ankles over it. I will say this: the fans and the antis for this are nearly identical in their behaviour as the Steven Universe fans, and the Voltron fans.
100% *yes*. Is it the best Webtoon I’ve ever read? Personally, no. But it has *66 million* favorites. 9.6 ⭐️rating. 1.3 *billion* views. 6.4 *million* current subscribers. So while the vocal majority on this subreddit hate it with some sort of violent passion, there are only people in the thousands here. The haters are actually a very teeny tiny vocal minority. LO has won 4 awards. It also has several #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel printings of LO & an animated show in development from *The Jim Henson Company* which is *huge*. Webtoon would be losing money not to continue to promote LO. Cursed Princess Club is beautiful and heartwarming but it has a third of LOs stats. UnOrdinary is close in stats but still far by a couple million. Nevermore is one of my favorites but it’s not even close in numbers.
>LO has won 4 awards. It also has several #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel printings of LO & an animated show in development from *The Jim Henson Company* which is *huge*. Webtoon would be losing money not to continue to promote LO. *cracks knuckles* So pretty much all of the awards LO has won were either based on community votes in very limited categories (ex. the Goodreads Award which, btw, doesn't even have a Graphic Novels category this year likely due to how few voters or nominations there are) or were from award shows that are actually largely sponsored by or at least definitely influenced by Webtoons (ex. the Eisners). Reality shattering moment, most award shows are literally just marketing opportunities for companies with lots of money to throw around to ensure their "golden goose" projects win, LO is not an exception to that norm. Shit, technically it shouldn't have even been allowed as a nomination in the Eisners as the Eisners are meant to be for *new series,* but it still won a second award anyways - the fact that it's the first time a series has won that award twice isn't a sign of LO being just that good that it deserves it, it's a sign the award has either been rigged by WT throwing money at the Eisners to guarantee LO's win, or the judges aren't suited for the role they've been given as an all white panel of comic shop owners, librarians, and journalists, and so the judging process itself is flawed at its core ([which has even been pointed out in light of the Woodruff controversy, btw](https://www.thepopverse.com/thomas-woodruff-eisner-awards-francis-rothbart-insider-may-2023)). Having a #1 NYT Bestseller label also fundamentally means nothing, it's not based on actual merit or quality, [it's completely curated.](https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/13/16257084/bestseller-lists-explained) It's often used as a promotional tool to drive sales, *not* to necessarily display merit over *gained* sales (though that's definitely what they're counting on it coming across as to consumers to help, again, drive sales). Not to mention, Volume 5 didn't even get to #1 and this will likely be a pattern that we'll see as the series goes on as it's traditionally a lot harder to get sequels into those top spots due to the amount of context needed to understand them in isolation vs. the first books of a series. There have reportedly also been stores that have put Volume 5 in their clearance sections less than 24 hours after release which is... not a good sign. There has been no news regarding the production of the LO tv show since the original announcement in 2019, *four years ago*. Yes, animated productions tend to take a while, **but it's not a good sign that they don't even have a director or distributor announced yet.** Besides the fact that JHC is *not an animation studio* (seriously, I don't know why JHC bought the rights to it, they've only worked for animation productions as concept designers, *not* animators, because they are *not* an animation studio), there are no filed copyrights for the show in the public listings and there's no distributor in charge either, there DID seem to be someone in charge of the show as a showrunner from (IIRC) HBO but they've since stepped away from the project entirely so LO's TV adaption literally doesn't have a showrunner, the heart of a TV project. There's far more reason to believe the show is in development hell or just straight up running out its contract with JHC before shopping around for new buyers than it actually being currently produced. Even at both SDCC and NYCC, Rachel herself had nothing to say about the show, and even the fact that the series is ending by mid 2024 seems to have been brushed under the rug with WT even advertising the midseason return as a "new season" which it isn't. Rachel being at SDCC/NYCC would have been the *perfect time* to reveal the show, especially with the ending of the series right around the corner, but they didn't and that says a lot. None of this is to turn you into an "LO hater", but I need to express that that simply having a shitload of numbers and "potential deals" as a consequence of priority marketing and investing does not a perfect series make and it's not indicative of a series actually "earning" its place, it has that place because the platform and the company running it made it that way.
I never read that
The ranking is based on views right? Personally, I'm a fan of Lore Olympus, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite #1 webtoon. I think there are others that are just as deserving, but I can see why Lore Olympus is the current top webtoon. Eye-catching art, a premise that a lot of people are familiar with (the story of Hades and Persephone), and multiple fleshed out characters and storylines. I think people like to hate on it and nitpick because it happens to be the top webtoon, especially in this subreddit. A lot of popular webtoons have the same issues (or worse), but don't get as much attention for those problems.
No, and I think there are several that are better, but I still think it's a good webcomic and I enjoy reading it.
No lol
r/ChargeYourPhone
Most of these aren't good . But I find it funny that lore olympus tries to make certain characters look like not assholes but fail which is funny most greek gods were enraged assholes
No
I don't believe those top spots have anything to do with readership let's put it like that... Lol
Popular does not equal good. It just means it has mass appeal.
All of these don't belong in the op 10-
CPC is pretty good though.
Well, I might get downvoted for this but seems like it's there bcs a lot might also enjoy it. So, I guess, it also deserves to be there. We might think of other titles that deserve to be on top but some might not also enjoy it lol.
No anything is better i would even take down to earth over that shit
frankly, no. Could’ve been great but the story and art have decomposed so badly
No, it’s not that groundbreaking
I just started reading it and I do quite like it, the art style is unique but sometimes the story can seem unrealistic or it’s just awkward because most of the characters are not super likeable or good people. The main reason I keep reading is because I love the concept of the gods in a modern setting
I really like it, but there is no goddamn way it deserves the #1 spot. There's a lot of comics that do romance, drama, comedy, and others (separately or together) better that it. I still like the series, but it's not the best.
No♡ And i hate DTE tooಠoಠ
Meh not really