#also idk if she'd be into white boys with “ELECTRIC BLUE” eyes 😭 /lh

[bayetea]

jason and hazel's beef in hoo was always way more interesting than whatever percy and jason had going on sorry. the differences in gravity and intrigue in the jason/hazel beef vs jason/percy was only further compounded by the ways they're connected and the ways that their stories are similar

because 1. they have a HISTORY they knew each other before he went missing!!!!! they were in the fifth cohort together!!!! yes they didn't know each other well but I really think that was a bad writing choice rick made. can you imagine if they used to be friends/if jason had been a big brother figure to hazel only to go missing for months and then they have a very awkward reunion on the argo because he barely remembers her and then she's even more betrayed because he doesn't wanna save nico initially. the drama. we could have had it all man

2. beef between a son of poseidon and a child of zeus/jupiter from the grace family? yeah been there done that why are we doing this again. god I wish we had gotten a big fight between a son of jupiter and a child of pluto instead

3. their beef regarding nico was way more high stakes than the silly alpha male posturing rick was trying to force between jason and percy especially considering how mega nerfed jason is written in hoo because no one's allowed to be on equal footing with percy

4. the tacit layer of betrayal in jason being hazel's ex-centurion/praetor only to end up choosing chb (this is a more interesting conflict between jason/reyna but since hazel is actually on the argo and reyna isn't she can still be an opportunity for this camp jupiter/camp half-blood conflict to be explored with jason)

5. I'm just gonna say it - I think hazel ought to have complicated feelings about white authority figures in a military camp as a black girl from the freaking jim crow era (not that this would have ever been explored in the books because as far as rick is concerned hazel is colorblind and never thinks about race ever. which is crazy unrealistic but whatever)

6. something something about the parallels that jason and hazel have about making hard choices about their pasts in order to have a more fulfilling future

7. this isn't necessarily interesting in and of itself but I just think it's neat that they're both big three roman kids with greek siblings that they didn't grow up with. what could have been interesting is jason seeing how close hazel and nico are and feeling some type of way about everything he never got to have with thalia and some exploration into how that impacts his feelings about the rescue mission

8. they both have really awkward romantic conflicts in their pasts that intrude upon the present (whether he and reyna were ever even slightly romantically involved or not) because the jason/reyna thing is written as a initial source of conflict/uncertainty for jiper in the same way that hazel/leo (sammy) was a conflict for frazel to grapple with. hell even their mutual connection to leo could have added something (unrelated but having no frank or hazel pov in mark of athena sucks So Bad because it's the first time they ever have relationship problems and we only see it through someone else's pov. I am going to bring this up forever because I'm still mad about it)

9. they both died. this bullet is a joke but I just thought I should put it here

10. percy is a well-established character and hazel and jason are new in hoo. percy has 50 povs in hoo and hazel has 28. economically speaking it would just be a more effective use of your limited pages to spend more time developing important interactions and conflicts between two new characters (esp new big three kids) who already have a more interesting foundation than the one involving our previous protagonist of 5 entire books

imo hazel and jason are the most weirdly written new additions to the main cast but I strongly feel that rick severely underutilized the way that characters like those two could play off of each other. hazel isn't just a sweet little cinnamon roll she is passionate and contemplative and morose and guilt-ridden and jason isn't just a bland rule-follower he is kind and committed and loyal and conflicted and they're both painfully self-sacrificing and I just think it's such a shame that these two characters with great concepts on paper and so many obvious threads to connect them didn't get as much as attention as.... whatever happened in kansas did

(if you like the jason/percy conflict that's fine, but I think it's worthwhile to compare them because rick chose to centralize and build up to one more than the other when he had such perfect material to expand on the other instead. I think part of the issue is that rick struggles with strengthening tension and applying complexity to conflicts between male/female characters that isn't romantic or onesidedly antagonistic like clarisse/percy. he also isn't very good at giving two female characters conflict at all that doesn't have love triangle-romantic subtext (the main exception is clarisse/annabeth, but this is a barely fleshed conflict in itself especially because percy is made the main focal point of clarisse's ire). honestly the best we ever get in pjo-hoo are thalia/zoe (I guess) and hazel/marie which is saying something)