- “Mini’s owl is full of information about me. The awful little girl has been spying.” + “The owl is your creation, you can access it. Delete the recordings. Only those who have seen it will know.”: Ananke suggests that there is more info in Bubo than she would like there to be. She deliberately made one recording, there are multiple recordings she wants deleted.
- Beth and her crew have a recording of Ananke killing Mini’s parents, knocking Mini out and dragging her from her bedroom. Ananke does not tell Woden to take care of them. Has she actually forgotten about them? Her downfall was not caring about Laura’s family and the impact their deaths would have on Laura/Persephone. Now she has killed Mini’s family and left other mortals with the evidence. Perhaps Ananke’s weakness is forgetting to factor mortals into her plans.
- Ananke tried to kill Persephone, and killed Inanna in her place. Persephone would have been the third. How would that fit with P. being the big bad? Putting aside the fact that it’s Ananke who ‘discovers’ P. and calls her forth as a goddess. And calls her ‘of the Pantheon’.
- The etymology of Persephone’s name has been traced to Indo-Europeon roots giving a meaning of ‘female harvester, thresher of corn’. (Beekes). I.e. There are competing etymologies for her name: there is no reason to favour ‘destroyer’ over ‘harvester of grain’. The conceptual connection, however, between harvesting sheafs and harvesting lives is embedded in our cultural heritage. Off the top of my head I do not know how strong that conceptual connection would have been for the ancient Greeks. I also don’t know how much the answer to that question matters in this context. It is somewhat disappointing that Cass didn’t point this out to Ananke when Ananke told her to think what Persephone’s name meant. Someone with a masters in Comparative Mythology *should* know better. But perhaps it’s actually meant to be a critique on the academic failings of Comparative Mythology. It’s an incredibly essential field, but so much crap comes out of it due to the people doing it not actually knowing enough about any of the cultures they’re comparing. It’s a joke how bad some of the comparative myth articles I’ve read are. In peer reviewed academic journals, ffs. But I do want Cass to be better than that. :/
- The etymology of Ananke is uncertain: “The word has been compared with Celtic words for ‘necessity, fate’… which may go back to *ank- <h*2enk-, and also the Germanic group of OHGâhta, MoHG Acht ‘outlawry’. However, Matasovic 2008… reconstructs the Celtic group as belonging to *neku- ‘violent death’. NPhr. ανανκαι has an uncertain meaning and possibly a Greek loanword. Oettinger 1979: 175f. argued for the connection with the Hitt. Henkan- ‘death’…” (Beekes). Violent death would certainly be accurate: both in terms of what she has inflicted and what has been inflicted upon her.
- Nergal was associated with the sun at the hottest part of the year. Whilst winter is the barren period in northern climes, in Mesopotamia the barren period is high summer. Scholars have also speculated that this might also apply to Greece, and that the time in which Persephone is underground is actually high summer rather than winter. No ancient Greek source specifies the time of year in which Persephone is underground. The assumption that it is winter is based on geographic transliteration: barren period is winter for us, must be winter for everyone else too. But if we assume high summer, Nergal and Persephone are a good fit for a fling.
- Ancient sources do not say that Persephone is underground/in the underworld for half the year/6 months. It’s usually a third of the year, or thereabouts. Persephone was gone for six issues, but only two months of time in-universe. I think that might be called managing to have it both ways.
‘I heard “Hey beautiful! Hey goddess!” turn into “I’m going to rape you, bitch” enough times to know that the former is just the latter with a bow on it.“ - Tara
Wicked & Divine #13 pulls no punches in its criticisms of rape culture and media & public treatment of female celebrities, cyber bullying, etc.
It’s a tough read, it’s full of hurt - the hurt that real people, real women, have felt at the hands of anonymous masses online. It might be fiction, but this issue is very much a mirror to grim reality. And it’s sad, it’s really sad. But it’s handled well. Really well.
On a lighter note, The Wicked and the Divine also continues to effortlessly be the most diverse comic in terms of representation that I’ve had the pleasure to read. It’s almost as if portraying people who aren’t cishet white men is actually pretty easy. Who knew?
From the writer’s notes for WicDiv issue three (the one where she goes to check out Morrigan, and discovers Baphomet as well: “Generally speaking the idea of this issue is to have Laura go and have herself a nice adventure in the underground (framed in the structure of something akin to the gig) before returning to the surface.”
She literally goes under the ground, and then returns to the world above.
Retrospectively really obvious foreshadowing of Laura as Persephone.
There’s a sort of poetic justice to the opposition that’s being set up between Baphomet and Baal, that it’s right somehow that Baal should be the one to confront Baphomet, given that both names have been associated with Satan. Baal Hadad specifically isn’t taken to be Satan, but there are so many Ba'als (partly because Baal was a title meaning something like “Lord”), and many of them in a biblical context, so it’s inevitable that at least some of them would come to mean Satan (Jezebel’s god is a Baal). Ba'al Zebub is where we get Beelzebub, who was taken to be Satan by later Christian writers. Crowley makes Baal one of the 7 demon princes of hell is in goetia (Crowley makes use of Baphomet, too). They even clash symbol-wise: both have a goat/ram’s head in their symbol. So the semantic associations are there, but in this context, both of them are “fakes” - neither of them are the “real” Satan: Lucifer was. Perhaps they’ll kill each other, each dying by the other’s hand.
But it’s also right that Ba'al should fight him, given that Baal Hadad is the equivalent of Zeus, Jupiter, etc., of so many thunder gods who lead their pantheons (and yet another god who has had their position usurped by Ananke). In this context, too, it is perhaps fitting that he should die: it is his duty to fight Baphomet to establish the legitimacy of his rule. But it is a rule he cannot have, because Ananke has denied it him.
Ce n’est pas parce que vous êtes immortel que vous vivrez pour toujours… The Wicked + The Divine tome 1 : Faust départ, chez Glénat Comics, en HD et Vue Guidée chez comiXology.
“You will be loved. You will be hated. You will be brilliant. Within two years, you will be dead. Child of the sky, betrothed to darkness. Your mother’s tears freeze us all. One part of a two-part mystery.“
If you don’t already know, The Wicked + The Divine is an excellent ongoing comic written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Jamie McKelvie that I recommend you all read if you happen to like comics, mythology, the idea of pop stars as gods, (or vice versa - the actual premise of the comic!) FEELS, or having good things in your life. Please just read it, for me, so we can talk about it later.
I had this idea while re-watching Misfits that Antonia Thomas would be perfect casting for Laura, but I’m not sure how much it really ended up looking much like her? Well, you can’t always win.
