How do you make the other Greek Gods work as antagonists?

[Srebak]

I'm considering using a Greek deity as an antagonist in one of my stories, but, i was hoping to use one that wasn't becoming something of a cliche. You see, some of the Greek Myth stories out there (or those that used Greek Mythology as a theme for the plot of the day) have used the Greek Gods as villains in the past and a lot of them worked (if only to a degree). But what about the other Gods and Goddesses, how do i use them and be different, but still make it feel like it works?

In the past, the following Greek Deities have been used as main antagonists for stories and they made sense in their own way—
Hades - While using this character as a villain is not accurate to the actual mythology (Hades was not evil, you see) and is more of trying to relate him and the Underworld to the Devil and Hell, it does still work in its own way. Hades is the Lord of the dead and, therefore, has command over armies of zombies, ghosts, skeletons and various other monsters. The Underworld itself definitely works as a Villain's lair as well, and as the King of the Underworld, his motives for villainy could be to; try to reclaim Olympus or to just increase his dead soul population.

Ares - He is the God of War, and therefore, he would likely command vast armies and would no doubt enjoy watching people get slaughtered in battle. His motivation for villainy could be that he just wants violence to sweep the world without any end in sight.

Hecate - She's a witch and the Goddess of the Night and Magic, nuff said.

Hera - The Hercules myths have already established just how vicious and vile Hera can be. All the story would need to do is find someway for the main character to provoke Hera in some way.

Eris - She's the Goddess of Chaos, nuff said.

Poseidon - The Odyssey has already established how menacing Poseidon can be. Like Hera, the only thing that would be required is for the hero to offend Poseidon in some way.

Circe - Like Hades, Eris and Ares, I have seen this character from Greek Mythology used as villain by the media. Probably not as much, but still, she seems a little too obvious a villain to use.

Cronus or any of the other Titans - Once again; too obvious a choice for villains and one that has been used many times before.


Greek Mythology has several other Gods and Goddesses to use as characters, but, how can you make them antagonists?


Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love and Beauty, the most evil thing she could do is constantly come between a romantic couple and temporarily drive a wedge between them. Her son, Eros (Cupid); same thing. To be honest, that could get a little corny and weak pretty fast.

Athena, Hestia and Demeter can't really be villains either when you think about it; nearly every media I've seen has portrayed Athena as a helpful goddess who guides the heroes through their ordeals. And, since she's the Goddess of Wisdom, villainy would sort of be out of character for her (there's no wisdom in being evil). Hestia is basically just the patron deity of the olden day housewife and Demeter, like her mother, Gaia, is basically a female Captain Planet (and before you mention it, I'd rather not make her a Poison Ivy rip-off, thank you very much).

Hermes and Hephaestus are little more than servants to the other Greek Gods and that's basically all they would be good for, service. Hermes can only move fast and bring things to people, and Hephaestus is really only good at building things. Him actually using them; not something i can imagine.

Dionysus is just a party animal, there's nothing villainous about that (not that i can see, anyway).

I'm considering using Artemis and Apollo, but, aside from them possibly having a sibling rivalry, there's not much i can do to make either of them a villain. Artemis is a huntress, but she also protects wildlife from those who would hunt them for sport. Apollo may have Energy/Fire powers, but, he's the God of light, music, poetry and archery, where's the villainy in that?



For obvious reasons, i can't use Zeus, but, i don't want to due a cliche by using Hades, Eris, Hera, Poseidon, Ares or even Hecate or Circe either (especially since Hades was never a villain to begin with). Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Life]

Making an antagonist work all depends on your protagonist. If the two don't oppose each other, they won't work even if they're outstanding characters. It might help to know some more information on your protagonist so I can give a bit better advice, but for the sake of advice I'll stick to what I know.

You said that Aphrodite (and another slew of gods) cannot be villains because what they represent is not villainous or evil, but that's a subjective matter. Good is evil to evil, as my saying the old saying goes. If the protagonist is someone who hates loving, doesn't want to be in a relationship, and thinks that love is gross and stupid, then Aphrodite could easily work as an antagonist. Why? Not necessarily because love is evil, but because the protagonist thinks love is evil, and Aphrodite's values of love oppose theirs.

The same applies with other gods/goddesses. For another example, Demeter could come across as an antagonist because she may oppose a city that is highly-industrialized and harming the nature and agriculture around them.

To sum up what I'm trying to say, what makes an antagonist is not their values/actions, but how their values/actions oppose the protagonist. After all, the antagonist is just the one who opposes the protagonist.

Hope this helps~ and made sense .-.

 

[Lord Kyuubi]

Mythology is something of an interest of mine, so prepare for a long reply.

Hades - While using this character as a villain is not accurate to the actual mythology (Hades was not evil, you see) and is more of trying to relate him and the Underworld to the Devil and Hell, it does still work in its own way. Hades is the Lord of the dead and, therefore, has command over armies of zombies, ghosts, skeletons and various other monsters. The Underworld itself definitely works as a Villain's lair as well, and as the King of the Underworld, his motives for villainy could be to; try to reclaim Olympus or to just increase his dead soul population.

As you rightly said, Hades wasn't ever actually evil, though he did have a certain bitter streak, resulting from him being tricked into control of the Underworld. I can see how this would work in his favour as a villain, for trying to achieve a place on Olympus, as you already suggested. So that would fit together nicely.

The Underworld itself was not however all Hell, and suchlike, that's just Tartarus. Generally speaking, death was largely an eternal numbness, or something like that. Drinking from the river Lethe (I think) caused a soul to lose their memories, and so death was a void of everything which constitutes life. It's like waiting forever, but since you don't have any memory, you don't have the knowledge of having been waiting at all.

Also one note is that the idea of increasing the population of the dead doesn't really work. As a god, Hades would have an eternity to wait for more souls, and the lifespan of a human would be nothing at all to him. Furthermore, I do believe this was parodied and successfully refuted in Percy Jackson, with the point that the population of the dead is ludicrously out of control, and so why would he want or need more subjects? Especially as they're largely just mindless shades.

Ares - He is the God of War, and therefore, he would likely command vast armies and would no doubt enjoy watching people get slaughtered in battle. His motivation for villainy could be that he just wants violence to sweep the world without any end in sight.

Basically, yeah. Ares was from Thrace, a land to the north of Greece said to be inhabited by barbarians. He stands for war and carnage and brutality, but also, following the role of a Homeric Hero, for personal honour and glory achieved through battle. If you're going for this sort of protagonist, I can see how they could be affiliated with him, but still, there's plenty of room for opposition.

Hecate - She's a witch and the Goddess of the Night and Magic, nuff said.

Again, yes. Primarily witchcraft, and as such, she was worshipped by people like Medea. I suggest reading the play Medea if you haven't done already, it's a good read. I do believe Hekate was technically a Titan, if that counts for anything.

Hera - The Hercules myths have already established just how vicious and vile Hera can be. All the story would need to do is find someway for the main character to provoke Hera in some way.

Firstly, if this is Greek, it's Herakles - Hercules is the Roman name. But yeah, that's definitely the best case of Hera being violent and spiteful. That being said, it's definitely not the only one. Hera was almost certainly the one most commonly portrayed as an antagonistic goddess. Generally, the others only cause troble when they or someone they care about is directly slighted or attacked. Hera, on the other hand, generally just didn't like heroes. Which is because most of them were children of Zeus, but not by her. Probably the only hero she actually liked was Jason, I'm not sure why. She's more or less indifferent to most of the ones with only mortal parents, but generally opposed to anyone who's partially descended from the gods.

Eris - She's the Goddess of Chaos, nuff said.

Would work well in combination with Ares, I imagine.

Poseidon - The Odyssey has already established how menacing Poseidon can be. Like Hera, the only thing that would be required is for the hero to offend Poseidon in some way.

It's not just Poseidon who's like that. Greek values stated that, if you were slighted by somebody, you should retaliate. As such, nearly every god, if not literally every god would respond as such if a mortal offended or insulted them. Zeus is a particularly common example. Technically speaking, your retribution was supposed to be in proportion to whatever was done against you in the first place, but the gods and heroes rarely kept to this - check out the Trojan War. Paris kidnapped Menelaus' wife, so he decided to burn the whole city down. Yes, that sounds reasonable.

Circe - Like Hades, Eris and Ares, I have seen this character from Greek Mythology used as villain by the media. Probably not as much, but still, she seems a little too obvious a villain to use.

I think Circe would be an interesting character to use. She's technically a nymph and a witch, not a goddess, so that's an interesting variant compared to your other options. Gods aren't generally supposed to directly intervene, at least most of the time. Instead, they typically manipulate lesser gods and spirits, and other magical forces, like the winds and the Furies, and Eros, et cetera. Technically, they seem to feel free to break this when they really want/need to, but the principle still applies. The Fates are more powerful than the gods, and don't generally change their plans for anyone.

Going back to Circe, I think the matter of her powers could also be interesting. She specialises in transforming things, as you probably know, and also in taming wild animals. Barring her powers, she is far more like an actual person than any of the gods, due to only being a nymph/demi-god, and this would probably help her as a character. Still, I realise you've largely decided against her anyway, just wondering about giving you some food for thought.

Cronus or any of the other Titans - Once again; too obvious a choice for villains and one that has been used many times before.

Technically, Kronos is not evil, and neither are the other Titans. They were just the gods' predecessors. Guessing you already know the story of all this, but to run through the important points, Kronos was acting strictly under Gaia's instructions when he killed his father Oranos. Then, it was foretold that just like he had killed his father, he would be overthrown by one of his sons, hence why he ate all of his children. (You would have thought he'd consider just not having any children, but hey.) Zeus attacked him, recovered the other gods, and declared war on all of the Titans. The gods won, and the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus. Can you really blame them for not liking the gods much? I certainly can't. In fact, the time of Kronos' rule was known afterwards as 'The Golden Age'. So if you wanted to really turn the tables, you could have a protagonist on the side of the Titans, against the gods. Just a thought. I'm a bit of a Titan sympathiser.

Greek Mythology has several other Gods and Goddesses to use as characters, but, how can you make them antagonists?


Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love and Beauty, the most evil thing she could do is constantly come between a romantic couple and temporarily drive a wedge between them. Her son, Eros (Cupid); same thing. To be honest, that could get a little corny and weak pretty fast.

Acutally, a lot of the worst conflicts and tragedies can be traced to Aphrodite. The Trojan War, for example, was because she made Helen fall in love with Paris, as a reward for Paris judging her as the fairest goddess of them all (or in other words, the one who promised what he most wanted). She didn't care about the war or anything, she just cared that she'd been judged as the most beautiful. Which is quite scary, when you think about it.

Oh, and then there's also Medea falling in love with Jason, which ended extremely badly. Particularly for Jason, though you could say it was his fault for re-marrying.

Incidentally, Eros is just the being directly responsible for making people fall in love, because Aphrodite isn't supposed to do so herself.

Athena, Hestia and Demeter can't really be villains either when you think about it; nearly every media I've seen has portrayed Athena as a helpful goddess who guides the heroes through their ordeals. And, since she's the Goddess of Wisdom, villainy would sort of be out of character for her (there's no wisdom in being evil).

Athena was responsible for cursing Medusa, simply because she was raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple. Athena does tend to show a lot of the 'Homeric Hero' traits of the male gods, despite what the media may commonly show - she can be very vindictive and vengeful. But technically, she is still the goddess of wisdom, as you say, and more to the point of just warfare. She's supposed to always side with whoever's 'right', and as a result, they win. This is in contrast with Ares, who is more about the destruction and carnage of war. There's definitely a case to be made for Athena as a villain; I also suggest reading the play Ajax, which makes Athena a convincing antagonist.

Hestia is basically just the patron deity of the olden day housewife and Demeter, like her mother, Gaia, is basically a female Captain Planet (and before you mention it, I'd rather not make her a Poison Ivy rip-off, thank you very much).

Gaia can be very nasty, as Oranos found to his cost. But about the ones you're talking about here, I agree they're not villain material.

Hermes and Hephaestus are little more than servants to the other Greek Gods and that's basically all they would be good for, service. Hermes can only move fast and bring things to people, and Hephaestus is really only good at building things. Him actually using them; not something i can imagine.

It may be worth noting that Hermes is also the god of thieves, but it's not worth making him a sort of crazy kleptomaniac just to have a villain. Only if it suits the situation at hand. Hephaestos isn't really capable of doing much on his own, due to being lame. He's a considerable asset to the other gods, though, but couldn't do much outside of a 'supporting villain' at best, I imagine. Still there's a lot of potential for fancy traps and weapons and other stuff he could potentially make.

Dionysus is just a party animal, there's nothing villainous about that (not that i can see, anyway).

Dionysos is an interesting case. As well as standard worship, he had a following of a specific cult consisting of only women - I forget what they were called. But basically, on a regular basis they would run away from the city and just run rampant through the countryside, hunting and things. If they crossed paths with any men, they would tear them apart. It's quite crazy really. I can see how you could implement this side to Dionysos, if you wanted to.

I'm considering using Artemis and Apollo, but, aside from them possibly having a sibling rivalry, there's not much i can do to make either of them a villain. Artemis is a huntress, but she also protects wildlife from those who would hunt them for sport. Apollo may have Energy/Fire powers, but, he's the God of light, music, poetry and archery, where's the villainy in that?

Again, these two as you say, aren't really villain material. Artemis, as well as protecting wildlife, is also responsible for the protection of children and young animals. Apollo, as well as what you identified, is important to medicine, but also to plague. Something often overlooked is that his arrows caused pestilence, while Artemis caused gentle, easy deaths. There's some potential for a rivalry, I suppose, though probably nothing too violent.

For the role sun god, I would recommend not using Apollo. The sun was more directly associated with Hyperion (who was a Titan) and Helios. Apollo did have some connections to it, but was more directly linked to light, and then to the sun as a consequence.

For obvious reasons, i can't use Zeus, but, i don't want to due a cliche by using Hades, Eris, Hera, Poseidon, Ares or even Hecate or Circe either (especially since Hades was never a villain to begin with). Anyone have any thoughts?

Well, I've said my piece. I'm personally a fan of having the Titans shown in a more positive light. Anyway, hope this was helpful.

 

[Persephone]

The thing is /any/ god could probably be made into a villain with the right source material or a character who opposed their element. Hestia might be the hardest, but even that could maybe be bent by a character who slighted her in some way and got retribution for it.

As noted above, Aphrodite is very doable as a man-behind-the-man villain in that someone more obvious gets set up and eventually everyone realizes this is entirely Aphrodite's fault, as it often is. I actually started working on a story once where Aphrodite was sort of the Bigger Bad to, of all people, Zephyr.

And Apollo/Aphrodite can definitely be villainous, or at least less than fully noble. They basically killed a woman's entire family because she bragged about having more kids than Leto, their mother who had two (or three because Helen, but people forget that one...). In the epic cycle Artemis held the Greeks in place for weeks because one of them accidentally killed a deer sacred to her. The situation only ended when they ritually sacrificed the leader's daughter, as Artemis commanded. And then if you count the Erymanthian Boar as one of her creations/sacred animals, that thing did a lot of damage. before getting take down. Then with Artemis there's always the myth of Orion, where she was either quite justified in what she did or... not. It all depends upon the version of the myth you read. In some she had consensual sex with a guy and then killed him or ordered him killed in the cover up. In other versions Apollo didn't like his sister getting engaged to a man so he either manipulated Gaia or Artemis herself into killing him. Continuing on with Apollo, there's also the general nastiness in the myth of Hyacinth which may or may not be his fault. Point is, the twins are definitely not impossible to spin as villains.

Really, most of the "good guys" of Greek mythology were absolute jerks at times and most of the "bad guys" weren't necessarily evil. Everyone really had shades of grey, not at all helped by shifting moral standards with time, that makes it fascinating to read and write about.

 

[chaos_Leader]

Dionysus is just a party animal, there's nothing villainous about that (not that i can see, anyway).

For Dionysus in a frighteningly villainous role, I refer you to The Bacchae, written by Greek playwright Euripides. Dionysus can be manipulative, vindictive, and cruel, but usually not in any kind of straightforward way.

 

[chaos_Leader]

Dammit terrible Piney Point Merchant Mariner base internet, making me double post!