After over a decade of absolute nonsense on the aptly-nicknamed Blue Hellsite, I finally deleted my Tumblr account in mid-March. This included my old pagan sideblog, lyresstrings, which had been on-and-off active since mid-2016. During the eight-ish years I spent running in Tumblr metaphysical circles, I began to notice how cyclical many of the community's hot-button topics were. Like trends of many other kinds, every topic would come back around every year or so, and more experienced users would feel obligated to rehash their sides of the issue as if it had never even been discussed before.
One topic that I rarely saw the other side of, however, was the discussion of fictional depictions of the gods. I was mostly present in Hellenic Polytheist circles, so my points will mostly focus on the Greek gods, but such discussions naturally spilled over to other gods in other pantheons who had famous fictional counterparts (a certain Norse trickster comes to mind). Pretty much across the board, pagans both new and old would step up to bat to talk about how disrespectful and awful modern fictional depictions of the gods are. Any time a show, movie, book, or comic showed the gods as less-than-redeemable, everybody suddenly needed to have a take on it, even if they weren't originally interested in the piece of media at all.
Now, I don't want to act like unflattering, one-dimensional fictional iterations of the gods aren't annoying to deal with. Obviously it sucks when your favorite god or gods get shown in a shitty light, and suddenly you've got pagans and non-pagans alike taking to the internet to talk shit about them. And of course it can get extra frustrating when you're already dealing with people constantly ragging on your gods because of their unflattering ancient myths. Your feelings are fine and valid and whatever else you want me to say.
However, you're also kind of barking up the wrong tree most of the time.
The problem with online pagan spaces constantly beefing with non-pagans and non-pagan media depicting the gods is that the two sides of the argument are coming at each other from wildly different perspectives. It's no wonder a resolution is never reached (and probably never will be)--we're viewing the gods and their stories in entirely different ways.
The largest contributor to this disconnect is the fact that the vast majority of people creating fictional media about the gods (as well as the people who use that media to talk lots of shit about certain gods) probably don't even think the gods exist in the first place. Like, that's literally it. One side of the argument sees them as real dynamic beings worthy of respect and reverence, and the other side sees them as a dead religion, as archetypes, and/or simply as fictional characters.
Fucking obviously these people aren't gonna be swayed by your platitudes about how the gods are great and special and Totally Wouldn't Do Those Things. They're not saying that your gods would do those things. They're saying that their idea of a fictional character with a name and a handful of traits related to your god would do those things, because they're fictional characters who can do whatever the author wants them to do. It's apples and oranges. These people are probably the last ones you'll ever get to change their minds, because it involves an entire paradigm shift into a world where the gods not only exist, but also where they manage to defy most of the expectations placed on them by people who only ever saw them as narrative devices.
But Riley, you might argue, these people are using ancient myths as ammo for their arguments too! Clearly they just don't understand how the myths work and if I explain to them how the gods aren't their myths, then they'll get it and change their minds! And then they'll realize just how disrespectful [x media] really is to them!!
Well, Reader, I've yet to see many discussions of ancient myth in pagan spaces, especially of ancient Greek myth, which bring enough nuance to the table to be changing anyone's minds. This is a topic I could write a whole nother article about and still probably wouldn't do it justice, because there's just so goddamn many contexts in which the myths were understood and engaged with in antiquity. I could write thousands of words and I'd probably still end up forgetting some, that's how many there are. That's why classicists and cultural anthropologists exist who do this shit for a living. So, with all due respect, I'm unsure if I trust many non-academics' abilities to use the polyvalence of ancient myth as a "gotcha" in this case. Sorry.
It's also pretty clear to see that a lot of people in the Divine Defense Squad take attacks against their gods as personal offenses. This is slightly more understandable to me. If you'd stick up for a friend being slandered when they're not around, then sure, sticking up for the gods makes sense and comes from a good place at heart. But realizing that these people are not attacking you is important. They're not even attacking a god, really. Like I mentioned before, they're more so attacking an idea than anything. They're shit talking the non-religious, non-spiritual idea of a god that they've put together in their head, with help from Percy Jackson or Hadestown or whatever the hell else.
What's better is that you can tell that the gods don't give a shit about their haters. How? Well, no one's really going around smiting anyone anymore, are they? Plus, what lesson would someone be able to learn from a god who, in their mind, doesn't exist or hasn't existed for thousands of years? Now I'm not a god, but that seems like a pretty huge waste of time and energy to me. The gods would be awfully busy striking down their nay-sayers if they really gave enough of a damn to put a stop to it.
Personally, accepting the fact that there will always be people out there who dislike the gods was pretty freeing. It made me feel so much less defensive whenever some rando would show up in a pagan social media space and spout their takes or use their preconceived ideas of my gods to try and, I don't know, shame me out of being pagan I guess. Instead of writing paragraphs on paragraphs about how My Gods Are Great, Actually, I can simply save my breath and everyone's time and tell those fuckers to kick rocks. It's much more cathartic, honestly.
I understand that many, many helpols and pagans at large come from--or are currently still living in--situations in which their religious inclinations were not taken as seriously as they should have, if not outwardly criticized. Naturally, this can make some people more sensitive to criticism of any aspect of their religious identity, especially the gods they love and worship. I know this because I live in one of those situations right now. I'm positive that the gods you've interacted with aren't the same as the fictional "gods" people love to drag. I know this because I worship them too.
The gods have made it this far and have been fine. I promise that they don't need a PR team defending their every move on the internet.