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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3310 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Hephaestus is disabled in the lore, though.

Hephaestus is described in mythological sources as "lame" (chōlos) and "halting" (ēpedanos). He was depicted with curved feet, an impairment he had either from birth or as a result of his fall from Olympus. In vase paintings, Hephaestus is sometimes shown bent over his anvil, hard at work on a metal creation, and sometimes his feet are curved back-to-front: Hephaistos amphigyēeis. He walked with the aid of a stick. The Argonaut Palaimonius, "son of Hephaestus" (i.e. a bronze-smith), also had a mobility impairment. Other "sons of Hephaestus" were the Cabeiri on the island of Samothrace, who were identified with the crab (karkinos) by the lexicographer Hesychius. The adjective karkinopous ("crab-footed") signified "lame", according to Detienne and Vernant. The Cabeiri were also physically disabled.

In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods. In the Iliad 18.371, it is stated that Hephaestus built twenty bronze-wheeled tripods to assist him in moving around.

However in those cases when he is described as lame, such as in the Illiad, he is depicted as limping, dragging his foot, and/or using a stick to walk, not a wheelchair. I strongly suspect the reason why they put him in a wheelchair is similar to why WOTC printed a Wheelchair Accessible Dungeon for D&D, because wheelchairs specifically are treated as an icon of "disabled representation".

I was wondering where the Wikipedia article you quote got this:

In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods.

So I followed the citation and it's an essay in Rhetoric Review using "theory from the field of disability studies", and it doesn't use the term "wheeled chair" even once. Rather it describes him as riding a "proto-wheelchair" on the basis of a single cup showing him on a winged chariot. Nothing indicates this winged chariot is serving as a substitute for walking rather than as a chariot, nor is there anything about it "helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods". (Is it even specific to him or does there exist art of other gods in winged chariots as well?) And then the Wikipedia article makes it even worse by creating the term "wheeled chair" and putting it in quotes, so that people who don't follow the citation and get past the paywall will interpret "wheeled chair" as a literal translation of some Greek source.

In the Iliad 18.371, it is stated that Hephaestus built twenty bronze-wheeled tripods to assist him in moving around.[96]

And then this is just an egregiously false reading, it says nothing about helping him move around. They're tripods (a pot/cauldron with 3 legs to straddle a fire) that move themselves around. The same passage says "he moved to and fro about his bellows in eager haste".

I'd argue this is actually one of those areas where you can get away with it; Hephaestus is specifically the god of the forge and crafting, and does have a limp. It fits well within his character to have him develop a mechanism for easier mobility. I wouldn't object, for instance, to Artemis and Apollo being portrayed as redneck hunters armed with rifles, as it still fits well within their characters.

I feel like when situations come out like this, it's important to save ire for when the diversity for diversity's sake actually ruins the end product; like, the 2016 Ghostbusters wasn't bad because they chose an all female cast - it was bad because they didn't realize that the reason the original Ghostbusters was good was that it was more about the realities of starting a small business than it was about the paranormal. You could easily have made a 2016 "female leads" version of Ghostbusters that wasn't garbage; were I writing it, I'd have set it up as an allegory for the realities of balancing working at a small business with raising children and maintaining a household. You can even make the lead women in the show the daughters of the original cast; that way you don't shit on its legacy, while continuing to explore the themes that made the original great.

I think as long as you're sticking with the correct themes and characterization, you can get away fairly easily with including extra diversity; however, most of the people including the diversity have long since had their brains dissolved by the woke milieu, and can't write anything interesting that isn't just "diverse = good." It's not bad because of the diversity - it's bad because it's bad, and you're only seeing it because a lot of people have had their brains rewired to think 'diversity!' is the same thing as a good and interesting story, so approved it despite it's terribleness.

And, of course, religion is the perfect way to shield an inferior story (and writers), since you can just launder your failure with claims of the audience’s irreverence.

The parallels between being woke and being in a religion have definitely not gone unnoticed.

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