MythsUnderstood: Ares. MythsUnderstood, #8

Ares has always been the god everyone thought they understood. To the Greeks, he was bloodlust incarnate. To Olympus, he was a weapon. Even to his own father, he was useful, but never truly loved. After hearing that judgment enough times, Ares stopped asking whether it was true and built an entire identity around proving his worth the only way he knew how: by winning. From his lifelong rivalry with Athena to his relationship with Aphrodite, his public humiliation at the hands of Hephaestus, and the myths that cemented his reputation as the most hated of the Olympians, Ares revisits the stories that defined him.
What he discovers is that beneath every act of aggression was a quieter fear-that if he ever stopped being useful, there would be nothing left to love. As his certainty begins to unravel, Ares is forced to confront a harder enemy than any he has ever faced: the story he has spent centuries telling himself. Learning to receive kindness without suspicion, to accept responsibility without surrendering to shame, and to believe that being seen is not the same as being judged becomes the greatest battle of his immortal life.
MYTHSUNDERSTOOD: ARES is the god of war's own account of masculinity, insecurity, love, and the cost of mistaking usefulness for worth. It is a story about the wounds that violence cannot heal-and the courage it takes to finally set down the armor.