Hi Kata! I'm a huge fan (obviously, haha) and I was curious how/where you got your inspiration for portraying Thanatos the way he is. His interactions with Hypnos are adorable.
Yay! And thank for sharing your beautiful art! To answer your question…
When I first tried to figure out what Thanatos was all about, my first inspiration was the “Death and the Maiden” archetype from medieval western art. As for his personality, I… based Thanatos off a couple friends of mine.
Death is most often portrayed as being a staid and responsible presence, focused solely on the gravity of his role in the cosmos. And that’s definitely one believable reaction one would expect thanks to all the shit Death would see on a day to day basis. But the other way to deal with trauma (and the more human way) is by burying the pain under self-concealing and often self-destructive tendencies.
In my telling, he watched his family go from ruling the Underworld to being imprisoned within Tartarus. He watched his father dissipate into the darkness to save his him and his twin brother, he watched as his elder brothers were maimed by Cronus, and saw the balance of the world fall out of tilt and a whole other group of gods rise to power. He committed atrocities in the name of vengeance. He took it upon himself to exterminate the Golden Men during the war. He is hated almost universally by gods and men and he knows it.
Death takes everyone and everything, often without any cause or reason. I didn’t necessarily make Thanatos feckless— he does have reason and wisdom. He’s not a chaotic character. He knowingly chooses to indulge in his addiction to sex, and occasionally alcohol and hallucinogens as an outlet for the things that rage within him. And he does it because he’s convinced it is harmless fun at the end of the day.
He only sleeps with women whose life journey is over / about to end, or whose spiritual path he won’t harm. He forms no attachments, expects nothing beyond the act itself. It’s his coping mechanism. He craved what Eris has— the ability to not care at all, to forget so easily, and that’s the excuse he used for centuries. And he does this until cracks appear in his ethos (Merope) and when people actually do come to harm by way of his actions (Voleta).
