I am not happy. Haven’t been happy for, well, longer than I care to admit. In my position, you can’t always announce that. Lead for the team, set the example, keep morale. It’s tree hugging hippy crap, and I hate it.
Were this the early days of civilization, I would wreak havoc. Storms created by MY hand would render the earth a wasteland. That’s how it was done back in the day. Turns out “back in the day” is just some phrase the kids use to describe things that are old, obsolete, or useless. Stupid kids. I’ll show you useless.
Those “biblical” floods, you know the ones. The story you believe where some jackass survived, in a boat he built by himself, a worldwide flood carrying all the animals of the world. Moron would’ve been eaten by a lion at the jump.
That was me. That was Zeus’ Deluge. Solid name, if I do say so. Simple. Direct. Maximum damage. Took hundreds of years to come back from that one, more or less. Gods don’t keep count of the meaningless time in between toys working and being broken. The point was made clear, and the mortals could not WAIT to worship me after that.
All it took was a push.
I’ve fought many battles, won most, survived a couple I probably shouldn’t have. You read the story of Typhon? No. I doubt it. Here’s the TL; DR: The Olympians ran away to Egypt when Typhon showed up. The cowards put on animal masks, lived in the desert, and forgot I was lying helpless with my tendons ripped out. Hermes gets my respect for surviving that one, though. Good kid, he gets a free pass from the rest of this tale.
I was made whole, and by my hand built an empire. Then the gods be damned, Romans shat the bed with it.
I will admit I allowed the transition, I let the theft happen. In my carelessness, I trusted in the Romans, because they had potential. They could have ruled, under my guidance, for eternity.
Make note here, kids, this is the one time I admit hubris on the record. I trusted my work. I believed my own bullshit, and I was the victim of a hostile takeover.
Constantine, the idiot, handed away the empire because a ghost, an old man, and his bastard son sold him on an inferior product. Thus ended the first Olympus Administration and began ‘Trinity Inc.”. Stupid name. Hated it then, hate it now.
I could have, should have, fought for it. I should have taken it back. Truth of it, I was tired. I labored to make my empire the epic it was. I watched it become legendary. Then watched it become myth, then memory.
Olympus became fun tales to make television and films about. Zeus was a name to cause men to piss themselves, now it’s a meme about letting Poseidon’s dog out. I used to be respected, now I’m some pansy in a children’s book.
I wanted change, I felt it necessary to reevaluate how I went about things. I gave the gods time to themselves. For two thousand years, I sat and watched another administration run MY empire into the ground. My family were off to the winds. Doing who knows what, who knows why.
I found myself becoming comfortable in the mortal world. I talked like them. I used their technology, I assimilated to them, when they should have been on broken knee, at my feet, begging me not to burn it all down.
The Olympians are cowards.
Ares, God of War? Not anymore. More like God of Shitty First Dates.
Poseidon, Lord of the Seas? Runs a tiki bar for wannabe pirates and drunken sailors.
Hades, God of Death, Lord of the Underworld? He sells timeshares to aging aristocrats. Hades, a capitalist? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Hera. My one time adversary, rival, love of my life. Her temper was legend, her wrath unparalleled. Now she tells bedtime stories to children. My gods, how we have grown old. Stale.
Where is the fear? Where is the respect?
I could go on and on. They all whine, they all complain. I rebuilt Olympus from shattered memories and broken temples, and they all bitch at me because I made them get jobs? I made them show me they’re worth a damn, and I have been proven wrong.
The only time anyone acted like a GOD was when they had to fight me for approval.
I know I told you there would be policy changes, and there will be. Just not today. It seems I need to go back to the well one more time.
The Primordials run from me.
The Titans tremble at my name.
The Olympians ran to Egypt instead of fighting by my side.
Fine.
If Zeus knows anything after all these years, it’s how to win a war.
So let’s go to war.
