#and 'violence' and 'stick it to the gods' sounds good to angry traumatized nineteen year old

[rynnaaurelius]

(this got long, sorry, I just kept thinking)

I don't think you're wrong about how to judge Luke, but I think it's really difficult to separate Luke's feelings towards the gods from his personal relationships. The rage he feels is personal.

(Which, I think, is part of why Ethan is so important as a character)

I don't think the sky situation in TTC was that clean-cut, particularly considering his actions in the next book with Antaeus and trying to save Annabeth's life while being happy to let Percy die, in contrast. Luke outright says that he knows that Annabeth won't die holding up the sky since Artemis will save her, and there's a lot of ambiguity thrown around this entire situation (A lot around Luke in general in TTC, to be honest).

Moreover, he's basically running on righteous fury and trauma for the entire original series. From where he's standing, if the endgame is a safer world for all demigods, Annabeth included, there's a lot he's willing to do.

He owns the consequences, and he acknowledges that Annabeth may justifiably no longer love him as she once did at the end of TLO, neither of which strike me as the actions of a bad person. He doesn't dispute causing Annabeth pain, nor lack guilt for it, IMO. He does dispute what he did it for, and whether it's worth it, which is the question, I guess.

He genuinely struggles to end with reconciling his affection for Annabeth (and Thalia, too) with his determination to make Olympus pay, as long as they choose different sides of the war from him--I mean, hell, outside of the sky situation, Luke works pretty hard to keep Annabeth alive and unhurt when she's around--which I think is pretty revealing.

All of this rambling is to say, I think it's really, really difficult to call Luke Castellan a bad person. A traumatized mess taking it out on the world, and the king of rationalizing your life choices when choosing violence, yes. But he's also why Percy extracted that promise of better treatment for demigods, and it's hard to hate him when he cared as much for his siblings and cousins as he did.

(and this has gotten REALLY long but I also wanna tag on that I do think Annabeth has every right, and probably should be, mad at him over everything. People are complicated)

Every time I see a "Luke Castellan was a bad person" take cross my dash, I get closer to writing a five thousand word meta about how the entire point of The Last Olympian and, arguably, the entire original series, is that Luke Was Right, Actually, and that Percy should've been radicalized in Heroes of Olympus