I’ve always imagined him as both disabled and quite handsome

ritual-and-chaos:

I always see people refer to Hephaestus as the ugly god or the ugliest of the gods, and I can’t help but wonder–

I read a comment earlier about Hephaestus frequently being headcanoned in rps as the sole POC individual, meaning the “ugly” god would also be the POC god. Super racist, regardless.

I’ve straight up ignored the script of Hephaestus being the ugly god, in my own practice. I don’t see him as ugly. I think they meant imperfect, because at the time physical “perfection” (aka able bodied societal aesthetic pleasing people) was seen as favor from the gods.

If he was cast down and disabled because of it, that would make him lose favor via aesthetic perfection. I hate even typing that, but that’s how I understand that system to have worked.

So, I don’t think Hephaestus is ugly. If anything, I think he’s normal looking. Not even super buff. Just a hard working human-shaped divine being who has a disability.

Anyways, my mental picture of Hephaestus is non-white, in the sense of a typical “olive” or “bronze” skin color. I don’t even think I did that intentionally, meaning I picked that up from his aether/astral representation, but I wanna be clear that I wasn’t doing it because of racist undertones.

The idea that Hellenic gods would all be white is laughable anyways, so I imagine others of that pantheon appear to pagans and polytheists alike as non-white individuals all the time.

I just hope the rpers figure out how shitty that is, and cut it out.