#also...unpopular opinion but i don't think Percy needed to be a main character again

[pain-is-too-tired]

It's so funny seeing people people joke about reading TLH and found "Where's Percy??? Who's this Jason guy???"

Cause that was not my thought process when started HOO

I went in thinking "Oh! Percy will be a background leader type character like Firestar was! :D" (because, despite people joking about it, Firestar really was just leading his clan after the first arc. He was not getting dragged into prophecies left and right until right before his death)

I was wrong of course- but I was going in use to different protagonists each series. especially in the dynamic Rick wrote HOO in versus how he wrote pjo.

You know what I WAS thinking for a good bit there before it became bluntly obvious he was a son of Jupiter/Roman.

I was considering the theory that Jason was a monster that had his mind wiped for some reason? Like that Couch Hedge was suspicious of him because of that but Jason just didn't know about his background or anything.

I even was like "oh, could he be one of those wind spirit things their fighting???" When he start flying during that fight and all that...

Yeah. That was my thought process. Let me tell you I was not bored with Jason's first few chapters, whether it was because of that or just in general I couldn't tell you.

Anyway. I'll defend my boy to this day.

[artemx746]

What are your thoughts on canon Percabeth?

Hmm, in more recent years canon Percy and Annabeth have gotten on my nerves both as individual characters and as a pairing.

It's probably obvious if you follow me that I did not like Wrath, there's a lot about it that just made me so frustrated but this is not about my opinions on the book but more on it's characterisation. There are people a lot more knowledgeable than me on how both Percy and Annabeth's characters have fallen in their time but I can summarise my own thoughts on them. (I could probably give some thoughts on Grover but that would mean I'd need to reread wottg which... no)

I actually really liked pjato percabeth, as a lot of people did, they were hardly my favourite ship or even my favourite characters but I could truthfully say they were well written as both characters and felt like a natural pairing. And then Hoo came along. I think the main reasons I have for disliking Percabeth in these books would be that they also suffer from the whole 'too many characters, not enough time' thing and also, they're constantly put on this pedestal of being a "Perfect romance" and it just gets so irritating that it gets hard to enjoy them.

Probably not too unpopular opinion (idk I haven't seen anyone else with it but I also don't stray beyond the ta fandom most days): I don't like Percabeth going to Tartarus. Nico? Yes I fw that, but having a whole book where the A plot is percabeth in Tartarus just feels weird. Personally, I think that trying to describe 'indescribable horror' makes them a lot less horrific. Again, not too sure if this is just a personal gripe but I don't see Tartarus as that much of a bad place anymore (esp. after tsats).

There are hoo-era books that do percabeth well, ie. demigods and magicians because they're allowed to be separate characters and work well as a team. Y'know, like how a good relationship is written.

Cotg and Wottg (plus that 1 scene in tsats) all suffer from dumbing down Percy and not giving Annabeth enough time separate from him. The closest we get to Annabeth alone time is the first book of mcga where she's in 2 scenes. In SotD she's there with Percy (sidenote: I don't like how they were written in sotd, bad vibes there I can't really describe it). Dumbing down Percy has a whole lot of problems but it also just loses one of the things I really like about pjato percabeth. Ta server can attest I've lamented about this before but one of my favourite scenes in pjo is the one in SoM where Annabeth fails to spell Cyclops and Percy realised that beneath all her pride Annabeth is still a disabled kid like him. Percy has always been very smart and having him lose that means he loses one of the parts of his character that makes him interesting.

Another interesting thing is that I have read all the main books, there are still some side stories I've yet to read mostly the ghostwritten ones, and I don't like percabeth that much but my friend has only read up to about half of moa if that and he is pretty neutral on percabeth but my other friend who has onky read pjo? She really likes percabeth. It's one of those things that I'd never expect to show how much the writing of them he devolved so quickly

This is getting very long oopsies but my opinion on percabeth depends on the era they are in and if that era is post-hoo chances are I will not like them

[crypticbeliever123]

I just want to say this. I first read Harry Potter last year and genuinely, HONESTLY hated it SO. MUCH. I wanted to like these books because it's the biggest book series out there and I could not stand them. Hermione was looked at as crazy, the characters as young as 11 would go on and on about hurting cats, the pacing was glacial and would include SO MUCH FILLER (like really why was Grawp even mentioned in book 5?), the main trio had such similar character voices that I had to keep rereading sections of dialogue because I'd often think Hermione was speaking when it was one of the boys or Ron was speaking instead of Harry etc, the numerous plot holes, and Rowling's insistence on using the cringy phrase "pregnant pause" repeatedly was just weird (pauses can't be pregnant Rowling, that'd be weird).

I DNF'd the series after forcing myself to finish that godawful 5th book, like why was it so fucking long and boring?! It didn't need so much filler and even if Harry had PTSD that doesn't excuse him being an asshole to his friends! And the Cho plotline was just so unnecessary! I don't even recall reading her being revealed as the Dumbledore's Army traitor which I had been expecting on my read through as that would've been interesting and everyone talked about it but I SWEAR it said some friend of hers was the traitor instead and just UGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! I HATED THOSE 1ST FIVE BOOKS AND DO NOT. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SANE UNDERSTAND WHY EVERYONE LOVES THEM SO MUCH!!!!!

That said I almost never mention how much I hate the books online because of how much they're loved for fear of backlash being like HOW DARE YOU! HARRY POTTER IS THE EPITOME OF LITERATURE! And getting a bunch of anon hate in my inbox over it. I'll bitch about how much I despise the books in person to my family or the occassional acquaintance but that has less risks involved imo. Even now after the Rowling discourse I still see people talking about how much they love the books and participating in fandom and honestly I like fanon HP more than canon because the fanon stories and interpretations are actually fun to read about. If people are saying they never really liked Harry Potter before, sure maybe some of them are lying, but I'll bet a bunch of them are in the same boat as me as a closeted Harry Potter hater because I cannot be the only one who can't stand these books.

And I like middle grade books. Percy Jackson kickstarted my love of reading back in 2018 and some of my favorite books are from the Rick Riordan presents label. Shout out to Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia and Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi both of which made me cry while reading which is a HUGE feat since I'm not much of a crier. I'm also not a 45 year old man. I'm a 23 year old woman and I don't even think I'd have liked reading these books if I read them as a kid because again: slow af pacing, kids who are pro-elf-slavery, and children wanting to kick cats. I wanted to like Harry Potter as much as I loved Percy Jackson and other middle grade books I've enjoyed. I couldn't. I just couldn't.

Tl;dr I hate Harry Potter with a burning passion and probably a lot of people just pretended to like the books because it was such an unpopular opinion to hate the books.

PS: I liked the movies better because they cut out the tedious filler, the Hermione being crazy for believing house elves deserve freedom plotline, and most of the cat abuse talk.

I’ve been wanting to make this post for a while, but...I’m fascinated by the fact that for well over a decade the Harry Potter series was nearly unchallenged publicly as one of the holy grails of YA/children’s fantasy, seldom criticized at all on quality (and usually by 45+ year old men who hated children’s books in general), and was widely acknowledged by a huge number of readers as having strongly impacted them, and now everyone supposedly never liked Harry Potter anyway and always knew it sucked and that J.K. Rowling was a talentless hack.

Please. This is embarrassing. You and I both know that Harry Potter has never been “obviously” garbage, nor is it “inexplicable” why it became successful. No, it’s not even close to the best fantasy ever written. Yes, its ideas are not really all that original. No, I don’t really give a shit about it anymore. But this amnesia about what an overwhelming phenomenon in culture it was is SO pointless. We both know that 10 years ago, it was not clear and self-evident that Harry Potter sucked and had no redeeming qualities, and 10 years ago, INCREDIBLY few people in the target audience would have said that. If anyone. I can’t remember ever hearing anyone say the books had no redeeming qualities before, like, a few months ago.

And like, just from a math point of view, it seems like most of us should have been among those who at least somewhat liked Harry Potter. I know I did when I was like 12-15. The number of people claiming they never liked it seems to be too large a proportion. Just considering my memories of how ubiquitous praise of Harry Potter was when I and many of those people would have been among the target audience. Like iirc just like 3 years ago the average rating for the books on goodreads was ridiculously high.

The number of people now who are coming out and saying that they literally can’t understand why Harry Potter appeals to people is just...I don’t know. Sad? That the idea of personally enjoying something that has bigoted or evil influences is so unacceptable we’re all trying to retcon our memories? And also just irritating? I mean maybe you did dislike JKR’s writing style since reading it in 2012, but...Having disliked JKR’s writing style since 2012 or whatever says next to nothing about you? For that matter, your opinion on her writing style has no relationship whatsoever to your attitude toward trans people?

Like??? What is the point??? To prove to one another that we were better and more moral 11 year olds because we always Saw The Truth about JKR’s work? Or are we just that uncomfortable with admitting that a bigot’s artistic work can be appealing to anyone other than a bigot? I don’t think it helps people to pretend that bad people cannot create good art or even art with good qualities. Or to pretend that good people don’t ever like art that contains bigotry.

I mean of course plenty of people always did genuinely dislike Harry Potter. But like. We can’t just hide our eyes and be like “Oh! I all of a sudden can’t understand why anyone would like Harry Potter! It was always so bad and unoriginal! Why on earth would Harry Potter be popular?” Now that JKR has come out as being a full blown transphobe. That’s not??? A critical attitude??? A critical attitude would be understanding why people like the thing (even if you personally don’t like it) not emphasizing how impossible it is for you to understand a person liking it, as if you’re so pure and untainted that you can’t even mentally understand the appeal in something?

And I guess something bothers me about the response to an artist’s bigotry that’s like,,,trashing every single thing about their artistic skill, even that which has no relationship to their bigotry? I see this constantly. It’s like we want to believe that being bad means someone can’t create good stuff, or if they did create good stuff, they stole their ideas from someone else. And that just doesn’t seem like how the real world works.

Of course, this is not referring to having the association with the artist ruin the art for you, or to seeing bigotry in the art that wasn’t visible for you before. (Definitely both happened to me with Harry Potter.) It’s referring to the sudden insistence that springs into being every time an artist’s evil actions or beliefs come about that they were never any good anyway and that all their good ideas must be stolen or not really good at all. And even that they only became popular because everyone else must have been evil and bigoted.

Like insisting that every piece of art by a bigot seems bad to you is the opposite of being critical of art. I don’t buy that anyone’s artistic taste can sniff out the bigotry of the artist for a second.

And I also don’t buy that it’s ever been a clear fact that one of the most popular book series of all time was shit. The quality of literature doesn’t easily come down to “objectivity,” for one thing. But also...obviously there was some reason people liked it, even if it was a complete accident on the part of the creator, or it came down more to timing. I personally think JKR had quite a bit of creativity and skill with worldbuilding on the small day-to-day scale, even if she didn’t think through the big picture stuff. She knew how to pick out strong, vivid descriptors in her writing, even though she liked to use that ability to describe side characters in nasty and sometimes bigoted ways. She at least sort of knew what she was doing with some stuff. It’s not...wrong to see that.

And also...they’re children’s books. Most of us read them for the first time AS CHILDREN. Children are able to be critical of stories, but not on the same level or in the same way as an adult. Everyone has liked a bad book at some point because they were a kid and they’d never encountered anything like it before. It happens.