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Today we aren't looking for the most virtuous person, or most likeable, but rather the most disturbing. Will it be Echo, the nymph who is doomed to...
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Hades (Pluto) and Persephone 1045 Views
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Description:
How would you like to spend your honeymoon in the Land of the Dead, surrounded by lost souls and despair? What, not the romantic vacation you were imagining? Unfortunately for Hades, Persephone would agree with you all too eagerly.
Transcript
- 00:05
Hades, a la Shmoop.
- 00:08
Persephone <<per-SEF-uh-knee>>, would you get out here? Now!
- 00:11
Forgive us...she gets a little moody sometimes.
- 00:14
Sephy Bear… if you come out here and tape this episode of Real Housewives of the Underworld,
- 00:20
your darling Hades will give you a special treat.
Full Transcript
- 00:25
Anything you want.
- 00:27
All the jewels of the Underworld can be yours.
- 00:32
I just don’t get it. You make a young goddess a queen, and all she can do is complain about it.
- 00:37
I even tried to start this reality show to make her feel special,
- 00:40
but she refuses to participate.
- 00:42
All I do is try to make her happy, but nooooo...
- 00:46
“My name is Persephone. I’m the goddess of spring.
- 00:49
I hate being the Queen of the Underworld...
- 00:51
blah, blah, blah, blah...
- 00:53
You think I like being stuck down here with all these dead people?
- 00:57
You think I don’t get depressed sometimes? Because I’m the Lord of the Dead.
- 01:01
Everybody thinks of me as villain. But, really, I’m not a bad guy.
- 01:08
I got stuck with this job when my brothers
- 01:10
Zeus, Poseidon, and I drew lots to see who got to rule over what.
- 01:14
Poseidon got the oceans; Zeus got the sky; and I got stuck with the Underworld.
- 01:19
Personally, I think it was rigged.
- 01:21
And wouldn't you know...
- 01:22
I thought things were going to be better for me the first day I saw Persephone.
- 01:27
She was so young and full of joy that I just
- 01:29
knew she would bring a little sunshine into my gloomy life down here.
- 01:33
So, the romantic that I am,
- 01:35
I burst out of the ground, took her in my arms, and
- 01:37
carried her down to the Land of the Dead to be my wife.
- 01:41
I’ve caught a lot of flak for this over the years. But before you think badly of me
- 01:44
you should know that I did ask her dad Zeus if it was cool, and he was totally fine with it.
- 01:50
Maybe he felt bad about rigging that lot drawing back in the day.
- 01:58
Some of you probably just did the math and figured out that if Zeus is my brother that
- 02:02
makes Persephone my niece.
- 02:07
To those of you who think it was creepy that I married my niece and that her dad was OK
- 02:11
with it, I say...um...you got me on that one. It was pretty creepy. What can I say? I was smitten.
- 02:18
I tried to tell this to Persephone’s mom,
- 02:20
Demeter <<duh-MEET-er>>, who’s also my sister.
- 02:23
You’d think she’d be more understanding about that sort of the thing since
- 02:26
she had Persephone with our brother Zeus.
- 02:30
I guess she saw the whole thing as “kidnapping” or whatever. She got so mad that she caused
- 02:34
nothing to grow on earth. People were starving and dying all over the place.
- 02:39
Talk about inconsiderate, right?
- 02:43
There I was trying to entertain my new bride,
- 02:45
and this awful famine was causing tons of dead mortals to flood the Underworld.
- 02:50
We had a major backlog going on.
- 02:54
Eventually, my lily-livered brother Zeus gave into her and said that
- 02:58
Persephone had to go back to her mom.
- 03:01
I wasn’t going to be defeated, though.
- 03:02
Before Persephone left, I offered her a few pomegranate seeds, which she ate.
- 03:08
I may have neglected to tell her that anybody who eats something in the Underworld...
- 03:13
...isn’t allowed to leave.
- 03:15
Man, Demeter was ticked when she heard about my little prank. You’d think she might’ve
- 03:19
given up then, realizing she’d been bested by the superior intellect, but instead she
- 03:25
determinedly starved the world until we were forced to compromise.
- 03:30
Now, Persephone stays with me for part of the year and goes back to her mother for the
- 03:33
other part. While she’s with me, her mother cruelly allows nothing to grow on earth.
- 03:38
*cough* Winter.
- 03:39
When I send her back to her mom, however, I take no revenge at all.
- 03:43
And yeah...Demeter allows the world to bloom again, and I do nothing to stop it.
- 03:49
I could drag the flowers into the earth and all sorts of bad things, but do I do that? Nope.
- 03:54
I love Persephone with all my heart. All I want is for her to be happy.
- 03:59
Now tell me, am I really such a villain?
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