#apollo's anecdotes

[apolloette]

okay fine it's pride month so time to admit I am also cool with they/them pronouns. Still she/her also; still a lady; I'm just also My Own Nebulous Thing. a genderqueer lady. hope this makes sense, hope this helps, hope this causes everyone immense confusion, xoxo, memento mori, we are all ash and bones at the end of the day

[literallyjusttoa]

A meme that came to me forty minutes ago + A visual representation of what I look like as I draw shitposts bc I'm a nerd that laughs at their own jokes.

[peachdoxie]

It's like yeah actually the most important thing is growing old with the people you love.

[tarnia2]

When I was a child, my uncle referred to Steven Universe as "the show where the boy has a diamond in his bellybutton". I calmly told him it was a rose quartz.

Guess who was right.

[corvidquartz]

Funny Interaction I Just Had With Apollo

Me: *minding my own business while at work; watching Markiplier and sipping on some Mountain Dew*

Apollo: *makes his presence known*

Me: Oh! Hello sir!

Apollo: *says nothing*

Me: Um...is there something you wished to speak to me about?

Apollo: *says nothing still; the energy akin to a puppy tilting its head ever present now*

Me: ...*raises eyebrow as I feel a sudden urge to look at my Mountain Dew*

Apollo: ...

Me: ...*looks around, then at my Mountain Dew, then back up again*

Apollo: 0-0

Me: Um...did you want some?

Apollo: :D

(I dunno if it's because of the citrus-y taste, the fizz, or what have you, but he REALLY wanted to have some. I think he just wanted me to figure that out on my own. XD)

[taniahylian]

Bessmert vs Vertin: Different ways of recording eras

So, after finishing the 1.9 event and pretty much confirming that the "Friend from afar" that writes articles for UTTU is Bessmert, I started reflecting on what she does, compared to Vertin, because at the end of the day they're quite similar characters, but with some key differences.

First of, they're both recording eras, but for their own reasons and in their own way. Vertin was given this task by the foundation, presumably so they'd have more information of how the storms work and how they affect historical events (plus, the way Manus interferes), while Bessmert seems to be driven by her own desire to share what she experiences in the form of articles and/or books, which leads me to the second difference; the medium.

Vertin takes pictures of everything she deems worthwhile, as we learn in the prologue, and also presumably makes some paintings, both of which are purely visual mediums. Meanwhile Bessmert, for obvious reasons, could never use those, and instead turns to writing.

But the major difference, imo, is what they choose to record. Bessmert writes about historical events (the theft of the world-famous rimmet cup, and how an unknown little town in the middle of nowhere saved itself and became prosperous) or major geological arcane discoveries (Pei city and it's Divination, and presumably Aperion and it's magical cave). Meanwhile Vertin records what she herself, personally, finds interesting; the single mother who wrote a play about the transantartica expedition, and a girl who had a collection of a futbol player photos are a few examples. Of course, some of the pictures she took happen to be of historical events, like the Apollo 11 launch, but they're not all she records.

What's even more interesting, however, is how Bessmert detaches herself from the narrative; she's never a protagonist in the stories she writes, and she doesn't try to influence their course or make connections with the people she meets; she's simply an observer. In Shuori she was forced to participate in the the story due to circumstances beyond her control, but even then what she wrote about the event seemed to be more like... collections of geological and cultural observations, rather than anecdotes of the people she met, or what she felt during the events.

Vertin, on the other hand, tends to be an active protagonist in any story she is in. See Green Lake and Uluru, for example; she interacted with the characters, helped them, used whatever resources she had to influence the story for the better, etc. Not only that; she formed personal connections and even invited them to the foundation and her suitcase, because this is the most valuable thing that Vertin deems worth preserving of each era; the people she meets and the bonds she made.

Vertin goes against the wishes of the foundation, to record what she sees without sparing any feelings for the people she met, while Bessmert... well, she really would be the ideal Timekeeper, wouldn't she?

[yourwitchybrother]

On Worshipping Lord Apollo;

I've decided to start a little series about the deities I worship, have worshipped, and will worship in the future. I've always found posts like these to be more helpful and, if I can help anyone, I think this is an amazing way to to so. In this post, I'm going to cover a lot, so buckle up! And I will make a master post for all of the posts I make in this series.

First up! Lord Apollo.

Hands down, he is the deity with whom I have the most experience and personal anecdotes. Apollo has been in my life since the very beginning. I go into a little bit more detail in this post, in which I detail how I view him as a worshipper, my patron, and a godspouse. For information's sake, however, I will try to keep this post a little bit more factual than UPG. UPG stands for "Unverified personal gnosis", which refers to a spiritual belief that stems from intuition or personal spiritual experience. So, while UPG may seem to line up with mythos or just "make sense" for the deity, it varies from practitioner to practitioner and from relationship to relationship. With that being said, I'll focus mostly on the facts with some little bit of advice thrown in from your older brother :)

Correspondences!

First, let's talk correspondences. Consider this a little cheat sheet if you will.

☀︎ You can refer to him by Apollo / Apollon, typically he will clarify which. Many regard him as "Lord Apollo/n", though it is fully dependent on your relationship with him. I drop the Lord unless I'm praying or invoking him, such is the nature of our relationship. For the sake of this post, I shall be referring to him formally as Lord Apollo.

☀︎ He has... a lot of epithets. You can view them here (theoi.com) if you'd like to see a full list.

☀︎ Apollo is typically associated with Sunday, and such is associated with the Sun.

☀︎ He has many sacred animals - The raven, dolphin, swan, mouse, and wolves.

☀︎ Tarot-wise, he is associated primarily, and most commonly, with The Sun. He has also been associated with The Star, though I do not see this one in many sources.

☀︎ He is the God of a plethora of things. The Sun (he is responsible for pulling it across the sky), Light, Poetry, Music, the arts, plague, prophecy, logic and reason, truth, beauty, agriculture, and archery. I am sure I'm missing things. And if you know other deities to be associated similarly, that is okay. Many Gods can share domains and rule over certain things.

☀︎ He is associated with the colors red, white, orange, yellow, and gold!

☀︎ Symbolically, he is related to the Sun, the Lyre, the Bow and Arrow, and the Laurel Wreath.

☀︎ For incense, he is linked to frankincense, myrrh, cypress, clove, cinnamon, and bay.

But that is a lot of correspondence. What can we do with these? Why, I'm glad you asked! With this list of correspondences, we can start to worship Apollo by the book. These would be some more traditional things that would assist you in learning what you want to offer him, what to associate with him, and what you should keep an eye out for. In a later section, I go over some familial ties that can prove useful as well.

Apollo, as an individual

Lord Apollo has typically been regarded as a "beginner deity." He is very easy to work with, incredibly receptive, and is universally known as being a little more laid back with things such as offerings, prayer, and worship. Though I've found all deities to be understanding of circumstance, there is no strict schedule unless you decide to adhere to one.

At the start of our relationship, I found Lord Apollo's energy to be rather bright. I was very new to picking up on spiritual energy and the metaphysical, so his energy felt very overbearing, and we did not spend much in-person time together because of this. He was understanding of my limitations, but he did not hesitate to push these limitations as much as he could for my personal development. This is something he continues to do to this day.

While he does tend to carry himself rather relaxed and carefree, he has no issue being serious and stern whenever needed. If there were signs he was sending me and I would intentionally ignore them because they pointed in directions I did not like, he would respond sternly and ferociously, forcing me to face the negative sooner or figuratively shoving my nose in the signs so I couldn't avoid it. If I needed to face a brutally honest truth, he had no issue being brutally honest. This makes sense, considering he is the God of Truth and Knowledge.

Lord Apollo is also very playful. He's easily excitable. He loves seeing the people he works with make good progress. And if you take a few steps back, depending on your relationship, he is absolutely there to catch you. He is reliable and present. Additionally, he likes attention. He absolutely adores being talked about, thought about, referenced, and thanked. He adores being said good morning to, or even just getting a wave. Some people regard such deities as "high maintenance", but I really just consider it part of his character.

You have every right to decline to work with a deity, by the way. Don't feel as though there's any obligation to work with every deity that is considered "of your skill level", as there is no such thing, and you should only work with a deity once you are ready. The Old Gods do not come with stats above their head and white text that says "PREFERRED LEVEL." They are Gods. You should not get involved with them if you do not feel ready. And even if you feel ready, there is no pressure to invite them into your life.

Worshipping Tips!

This one is a bit lengthy. Apollo, being one of the twelve Olympians, has a lot of lore surrounding him. But this gives us a lot to work with! You can devote time to him in a lot of ways. This involves worshipping or leaving offerings to his family!

His mother is Leto, his father is Zeus, and his twin sibling is Artemis. Familially, he is not married to anyone, but he has had a series of lovers. One account says he was, at one point, a lover to Hekate and together they had Skylla, a sea monster. Though this is unusual. He was said to be a lover to each of the Nine Muses but married none. He fell in love with a myriad of nymphs; Aethusa who birthed Eleuther, Akakallis who birthed him twins Philanderos and Philakides, Daphne who was turned into a laurel tree, and more. There's famously Hyacinthous, a prince, who was accidentally killed. Hymenaeus, another prince, and Cyparisus, another prince, who died of grief and was transformed into the cypress tree.

This gives us a whole lot to work with. Especially for offerings! You can leave him a lot of things:

☀︎ Cypress tree leaves or seeds. ☀︎ Bay leaves ☀︎ Laurel leaves ☀︎ Sun imagery - charms, pictures, drawings, anything. ☀︎ Crystals - Sunstone, citrine, tiger's eye, amber, bumblebee jasper, orange selenite, carnelian, and other yellow, red, or orange stones. ☀︎ Coffee, energy drinks, or anything with caffeine in it. ☀︎ Citrus! Oranges and lemons! Grapefruit! ☀︎ Flowers - Hyacinths, sunflowers, orange roses, larkspur/delphinium, palm, aloe, or any plant that reminds you of him. ☀︎ Instruments - String instruments are the main thing people offer, however you can offer him any instrument. ☀︎ Art - Things you made. Drawings, sculptures, compositions, poetry, paintings, song lyrics, photography, literally anything you made with your two hands.

In terms of what you can do to worship him, there are a few things you can do.

☀︎ Maintain your physical and mental health. Go to the gym, take your medicine, and positively affirm yourself. ☀︎ Sing for or with him. Play an instrument. Learn an instrument! ☀︎ Write short stories or poetry. ☀︎ Go outside and bask in the sun for a little while. ☀︎ Say Good Morning and Goodnight; Thank him for pulling the sun across the sky. ☀︎ Write about him. ☀︎ Draw him offerings, or draw in his honor. Create in his honor. ☀︎ Do a paint-and-sip class, or follow a Bob Ross tutorial. ☀︎ Pick up a new creative hobby. ☀︎ Volunteer at a local hospital or nursing home. ☀︎ Grow some of the plants that are sacred to him! ☀︎ Go to your local museum or art gallery. ☀︎ Support small artists! Support local artists! ☀︎ Create a hymn in his name and honor. ☀︎ Wear jewelry with his symbols on it. I wear a sun necklace! ☀︎ Wear perfumes or colognes that are citrus-scented or scented like any of his preferred incense.

At the end of the day, you can really do whatever you want for Lord Apollo if it reminds you of him. And you can give him whatever you want, so long as it reminds you of him. If you think that it may not mean anything to him, let me give you a bit of brotherly insight. Offerings were left for The Old Gods as a thank you. A form of appreciation for the divine from the physical, mortal plane. People left whatever they had. And if they had nothing, they would pray and hope to be heard. While offerings are not optional, remember that your words count, as well. Even if it seems small.

And if you have any questions, as usual, please ask!! I love talking about Apollo. Not only am I godspoused to him but he's one of my biggest hyperfixations and I absolutely love talking about him and spreading his teachings and information on him. So this is me begging you to ask me questions, ask me anything, literally anything in the comments or in my inbox I will eat it up. Maybe I'll open up a brotherly advice box or something. Non lo so, ma vedremo!

Blessed be, and may the sun be your guide! A domani!

[astraeajackson]

*apollo's anecdotes: game night with the olympians*

zeus, ONE point ahead of athena for the first time in a long-suffering game of scrabble: FINALLY

zeus, getting way ahead of himself: FELLOW OLYMPIANS, WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO WITNESS THE DEFEAT OF ATHENA, GODDESS OF WISDOM, WAR, AND LOSING

zeus: SUCK IT, DAUGHTER

apollo: *starts singing 'for the first time in forever' alongside zeus's cheers*

the fellow olympians in question: *start partying and throwing around congratulation bouquets*

athena:

athena, sighing dramatically: so sorry to cut the celebrations short so soon, father

athena: but I believe playing 'abraxial' here

zeus: holy me

athena: ...on a triple

zeus: HOLY ME

athena: puts me ahead by... five hundred thousand points

athena: meaning... I WIN

zeus:

athena: as they say...

athena: suck it, father

zeus: *proceeds to blast the top of a wholeass mountain off in his anger* WHY

[incorrect-sunflower-sibs]

Will: My siblings and I are trying to piece together our father’s life based on the horrific anecdotes he’ll casually tell us and then never bring up again.

Apollo: Did I ever tell you guys about that one time I was almost cast into Tartarus by my father?

Kayla, whispering frantically: Write that one down!

[rosewater-28]

PT 1. WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO BE AT A PAJAMAS PARTY WITH THEM (DEMIGODS VERSION). 👬🏻 💤 🛏️ 🍬

The sons of…

🌩️ZEUS:

-I think it could be really fun to spend a night telling stories and anecdotes with them. -Apart from the fact that it would not be uncomfortable to sleep with them, you could feel safe.

🔱🌊POSEIDON:

-They would be very cool and funny. -Surely they would propose to you to do some prank and, when you went out in the middle of the night to prepare the prank, you would find Hermes' cabin about to do the same.

🌱🌾DEMETER:

-They would be cinamonroll. -You could confess your problems and vent without any worry, they will support you and give advice to solve them.

⚔️ARES:

-Although at first they may seem very rude (and some are), you will see that they can become great friends with whom you can chat for hours. -And if you seem reliable to them, they will show you their own collection of weapons.

🦉ATHENA:

-Maybe they are serious people on the outside, but believe me when I say that you can have incredible conversations with them. -They will talk about their ideas and theories, you will discuss super random topics and you will have a great time.

🏹☀️APOLLO:

-They will tell you all the gossip they know (it's a lot). -And in the middle of the night they will take out a little box/bag that they had hidden and in which they have stored a lot of candy, (the next day your tummy will hurt, without a doubt) .

🔨🔥HEPHAESTUS:

-They will be super excited because a friend has met them at a pajama party and they will begin to talk to you excitedly about all their projects, about the new developments in the mechanical market… (You probably don't understand half of what they say, but they are really fun and funny friends).

💘APHRODITE:

-They will (not surprisingly) have a lot more gossip to tell than Apollo's cabin. -Surely they will recommend a boy or girl at the camp who is single and later they will shower you with real compliments (they are experts in them). -You'll probably stay talking until the sun rises.

🪽📬HERMES:

-They would surely prepare some fun activity to do in the middle of the night. -They would also listen to you whatever you say to make you feel understood. -Finally when everyone was asleep they would show you their secret drawer where they hide a lot of food that they have been stealing from the dining pavilion.

🍷🍇DIONYSUS:

-I think that together you would get to talk about quite psychological topics or at least about serious topics. -Something that I am quite clear about is that if you are true friends, they will give you a can of Coca Cola that Dionysus gave them for completing a mission or goal.

I've been thinking that I love doing these types of posts where I comment on how demigods would be or react, so I hope to do more. (Obviously including pt 2 of this post). Bye bye! 😊

[apolloette]

Me in canada for one (1) day, knowing full well that I have chronic No Money disorder: I am gonna move here :)

[demigod-shenanigans]

"I can go into why i dislike ToA (especially Tyrant's Tomb is. a book that exists) but box of pandora. Once open good luck shutting me up" (source: your tags)

Now that you said that, i'm geniunely curious. Open the box. I dare you

This should be obvious but @ the people who really enjoyed ToA, this post is not for you. I’m not sure I’ll even tag it because this is mostly me venting into the void because two people asked and not me wanting to ruin other people’s fun. These are just my personal opinions.

I also apologize if I get any details wrong, I did recheck a lot of the things mentioned but it’s been a minute since I read ToA and might not remember everything 100% correctly. Also, obvious spoiler warning.

*claps hands together* Okay, you asked for this but heads up, it’s going to be long. Maybe grab a snack and a glass of water beforehand.

My beef with ToA can be summarized into a few key points that I’ll elaborate on below but basically:

-It tries to wrap up character arcs for some of the seven (and Reyna) but does this through the eyes of someone with zero context and also treats these characters arcs as unimportant footnotes in the larger story

-Jason’s death and everything surrounding it was handled extremely poorly.

-I cannot remember any demigods staying mad at Apollo. Redemption arcs should not mean everyone has to forgive this character for all the shit they’ve done in the past.

-The death toll. This is not helped by the fact that a lot of the deaths feel like they exist solely for the purpose of making Apollo learn death sucks over and over again (Jason is the worst example of this, but there are others)

More grievances I have but don’t have enough to say about to justify a longer explanation:

-There are a whole bunch of new minor characters on top of the old ones already struggling for screen time. I don’t remember much about any of them, which is a shame because the idea behind some of them is really compelling.

-The story is centered around the Triumvirate as antagonists, with Python as a final boss, but book four just dumps an additional antagonist on you out of nowhere? Why?

-Reyna rejecting Apollo is nice and all but I still had to put up with him crushing on her and was very uncomfortable the whole time.

-Chiron sends a bunch of new demigods into what’s potentially a death battle and tells them it’s a fun field trip (what the fuck)

-This is a personal grievance more than anything but it took me ages (book five) until I really got attached to Meg. I feel like that could have been fixed if she at least got a few POV chapters.

-Dishonorable mention to the punch line joke. Two whole camps of people lining up to hit the canonically abused kid that saved them is not funny.

Details under the cut (Pandora’s box, I did warn you)

Character arcs:

The books really do try to tell meaningful stories for people whose arcs weren’t finished in Heroes of Olympus. With some of them, you can even tell the ideas behind wrapping up those arcs were solid. But the books also tells those stories through the eyes of a character who doesn’t know these people’s pasts and quite frankly doesn’t care a lot of the time. People will voice/do something that is huge for their character and instead of going into that it’s followed up with some random Apollo anecdote that’s only tangentially related at best.

Taking Leo as an example: Apollo has no idea why Leo settling down and finding a home somewhere after everything he’s been through is meaningful. That’s a story that could have been the focus of an entire book of its own, but instead it’s just a side plot to a completely different story. And that story really should have been told through Leo’s eyes, or at least through the eyes of someone like Jason or Piper who realize why this is huge for him.

Apollo also does not care why Leo and Calypso are fighting, so it’s not something that’s properly explored. Leo’s fights with Calypso are mainly mentioned/witnessed. You get some guesses as to how they started but they never mention the exact reasons. They both say they care about each other, but only to Apollo, when the other person isn’t present. When they sort things out it happens largely off-screen. I was also not a fan of the way many of their issues ended up being pinned on Leo being sexist when it was actually way more than that.

ToA does this a lot. It gives arcs to characters who honestly deserved to be explored more, but those arcs are barely footnotes in a larger story where these characters just cameo for a hundred or so pages.

The cameo stuff works okay for Percy and Solangelo because the books are very aware they’re cameos and they get to have fun but this is not their story. But the characters the series tries to give proper plots to are all over the place.

It’s said that Jason and Thalia are really close but they never interact in the books. Jason had a bit of a chance at a normal life finally but that’s barely gone into. (More on Jason later because my god did how the books handled him piss me off massively)

Piper’s struggles with her queerness get the random Apollo anecdote treatment. There’s some stuff about her reconnecting with her dad and her heritage but that’s not explored a ton either.

Frank’s firewood burns up and he’s fine, which is just sort of hand-waved and doesn’t feel meaningful, especially because I think the fireproof pouch was already a fine solution? Congrats on being free of this, now you can get stabbed to death like all the other characters, I guess.

Reyna gets a sort of arc but it feels really weird because it happens almost entirely off-screen. She spends a large fraction of the book chiding Lavinia for leaving her post, then gets her leg broken, is off-screen for a while and then just DIPS with the Hunters after her home suffered huge casualties.

I also think her joining the Hunters is a super lame way to resolve her arc in general (she just lays down one responsibility to sign up for the next, and a character not wanting romance/not wanting romance right now should be allowed to exist without having to join the eternal maiden’s club, but that problem isn’t isolated to Reyna and could honestly be a whole post of its own)

This also comes down to the fact that I’m here mainly for the demigods. I care about these kids having good arcs and good lives. I care significantly less about Apollo having to learn really obvious shit like “murdering my pregnant girlfriend was perhaps a little messed up”

Jason’s death and everything surrounding it

Killing off a major character (especially one whose arc isn’t finished) can be a plot twist that works at times. But it has to be handled well. Doing it to a character that’s suffered horrifically and is starting to heal is also a hugely shitty move, but I understand you want meaningful deaths for the plot sometimes.

But you cannot do it the way Rick did it with Jason’s death. If he was going to kill off one of the seven, he should have done it in Heroes of Olympus, with that character narrating and their friends getting to deal with the aftermath and grieve.

Instead, Jason dies in a book that he appears in for like. A hundred pages iirc? Two-hundred at most? You get Apollo narration on it, and sure, he’s big sad about it, but he also knew this guy for two days.

Piper gets a few pages to deal with his death, then disappears from the book and comes back for a heroic rescue later. Leo gets like two pages to deal with the fact that his best friend is dead. They then proceed to fuck off to Oklahoma instead of going to the funeral. For what reason? No idea. The book doesn’t bother to explain it.

Jason gets a Camp Jupiter funeral, with none of his Camp Half-Blood friends present, because fuck the fact that him belonging to both camps was a huge part of his arc, right?

Piper and Leo know Jason is dead but they cannot be there because they’d already used up their time as ToA side characters, I guess. Percy and Annabeth can’t come, they don’t find out due to demigod communication issues until the end of the series. Thalia also doesn’t get to go to her brother’s funeral. She doesn’t find out until the funeral is already over. We don’t even really get to see her grieving, her finding out Jason died happens off-screen too.

Because this is the Apollo show, Apollo is the guy who leads the funeral procession instead of, like, Reyna, who knew Jason for years.

Also, for some reason, the person avenging Jason is Frank? Absolutely no offense to Frank, he’s a great guy and I’m sure he cared about Jason, but that choice still feels deeply comedic considering I can remember exactly one meaningful interaction him and Jason had in HoO (Jason giving Frank praetor position at the end of HoH) and not a single conversation they had beyond that. If Rick had to write Leo and Piper out of the plot, why not at least have Reyna avenge him?

Jason dies specifically because Apollo broke a stupid oath he made on the River Styx. We’re told that people around him will keep dying because of this. He dies as a chess piece in a stupid game between gods, for the sake of Apollo’s character development. He dies so he can be brought up every hundred pages for Apollo to waffle about how sad his death was but how he’d also definitely not want to be brought back (I get it, we cannot revive people constantly, but having Apollo make this point when, again, he knew the guy for two days, is still really stupid. Nico also gets to make the same point at the end just in case the reader didn’t understand before that we’re not bringing Jason back)

Apollo is forgiven by everyone

Related to the above point. Like I said, we’re outright told that Jason dying is a direct consequence of Apollo’s oath. Apollo also knew taking them along on the mission would get Jason or Piper killed and he did it anyway.

Piper gets to be mad at him very briefly, but when he tries to apologize at the end of the book, she interrupts him and tells him “it’s fine” (her voice is described as “no anger, just natural heat”)

Thalia doesn’t get to be mad at him at all. Her baby brother died and she just pats Apollo on the back and tells him “it’s fine, Jason made his own choices. That’s what heroes do.” And then it’s made about how Artemis lost Apollo when he got transformed into a human instead of. Like. The fact that Thalia just lost her baby brother for the second time in her life.

IT’S FINE?? THAT’S ALL ANYONE HAS TO SAY ABOUT THIS??

Hell, Apollo even has a sort of dream hallucination of Jason’s ghost so that ghost can forgive him too.

Was that really necessary? Why do people think that a character learning to be better means absolutely everyone has to forgive them? Wouldn’t it have been a better sticking point for a god to learn people are allowed to stay mad at you?

The death toll

A lot of people die in these books. People dying in pjo books has always been a thing, but it’s never felt this pointless or this much like it was solely happening for a single person’s character development.

Jason is the most pointed example of this, but there are more. Starting with the fact that two of Apollo’s kids almost get torched in front of his face in the first book (Austin and Kayla) and somehow that is not a sticking point. I don’t think it’s ever brought up again afterwards.

Other characters that die so Apollo can learn death sucks:

-Several Dryads die saving the grove of Dodonna

-Heloise the Griffin

-One random unnamed demigod in Dark Prophecy (mentioning them because that’s where it occurs to Apollo demigod deaths also suck)

-Money Maker (Dryad)

-Crest

-Harpocrates and the Sybil of Cumae

The death toll in Tyrant’s Tomb is completely ridiculous. Like, “feels worse than Last Olympian despite not even being the final battle”-ridiculous. And unlike how Percy at least gets to use that tragic battle to change things in a fundamental way, the Camp Jupiter demigods don’t win anything significant. Their home is only almost completely destroyed. Some of them aren’t dead. That’s it.

If you remember the name of any side character Camp Jupiter demigod from HoO, there’s a very high chance they die in this book.

We don’t get exact numbers for how many people die. The book actually explicitly refuses to give numbers, stating “We didn’t count the dead. They weren’t numbers. They were people we had know, friends we had fought with.” (Which gets even more ironic due to the fact that, again, we barely have any named CJ demigods to begin with)

The closest thing we get to numbers are that 25 demigod members of the legion died in the battle before the book started, and towards the end there are fourteen total demigods still standing of the first to third cohort combined. Even if half the missing demigods are “just” so severely wounded that they can’t fight anymore, that’s still 60 dead kids! The pre-book battle was mentioned to have been hardest on the civilians. We don’t know how many of them died, and losses among the fourth and fifth cohort are also unknown, but that is a ridiculous amount of losses. Why are there so many dead kids in this book and why are we all just supposed to be okay with this?

Jupiter explicitly forbids the other gods to intervene. The only one who does is Diana, after an offering, and she takes her sweet time to get there. That camp is named after the guy! That’s people’s kids down there! I know the gods not helping their kids isn’t exactly new, but this is on a whole other level.

There are funerals but those are largely skipped over, and Frank announces that they’ll resolve this by asking Lupa to bring in more demigods so they’ll come back stronger, which. Baffling statement. Let’s just fix the dead people by replacing them.

TL;DR: Good on Apollo for learning to be better, but I really didn’t like how it was done. There were a handful of things I liked in almost all the books, not including Tyrant’s Tomb which wins the award for rrverse book I most wanted to chuck out of a window. Some of the ideas were good. I think the first and last books are mostly solid (largely due to the fact that those don’t try to shove in entire side character arcs). But the things I did enjoy just get very heavily outweighed by everything that annoyed and upset me.

I really wish ToA had been mostly new characters with maybe some minor cameos, and other people’s arcs had been saved for different books. I also think splitting the perspective between Apollo, Meg and maybe the character who was trying to have an arc in that specific book would have helped.

[peachdoxie]

I'd like to imagine that Apollo takes over as director at Camp Half-Blood after Dionysus's punishment is over. Even if he can't interfere with quests, he can at least help support demigods at Camp.

[wanderingmind867]

I've got very picky book taste. I'm picky in many ways. I'm a picky eater, I'm picky about the stuff i'll watch, i'm picky about the video games i'll play, etc. But I want to focus on my taste in books for right now. I have criteria for what i'll read. Let me go find my book collection, and list some of the time i've read over the years. So let's just list the stuff I see, explain it, and then see if we both don't learn about me:

Percy Jackson and everything else Rick Riordan did (I have all of PJO, all of HOO, all of TKC, All of Magnus Chase, and I read the first three books of the Trials of Apollo. I gave up that series after Jason died, both because COVID took me away from school (where I did my best reading), and also because Jason's death devastated me).

Harry Potter (I loved these books as a kid. Or well, I loved Dumbledore and the teachers. The last book was too full of death and no school stuff, so I didn't like it. But the teachers at Hogwarts? I loved them. Albus Dumbledore and Gandalf are still the reason I love Wizards so much. I read Harry Potter nearly five times in a row, because those first 5-6 books were amazing. Now that I know about JK Rowling being a horrible human being... it's hard to engage. But I still do hold love for some of the characters. I just haven't reread the books in a long time).

The Lord of the Rings (I haven't read these since I was really young. But in Grade 2, I read these books. And I read them again once or twice after that. But I never did understand Tolkien's mythos. It's too complicated. I never quite understood who Sauron was, or why he was evil. And the Silmarillion was too dry to read. But I did read The Hobbit, as that EA who died recently gave it to me when I was young. So again, I could never quite grasp them. But I loved Gandalf. I still really, really love him).

The Chronicles of Narnia (In elementary school, a teacher gifted these books to me. A worn out collection of them all. I managed to read the first four books (The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and his Boy and Prince Caspian). But I couldn't get past the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Too many confusing ship terms. It lost me, and I never could get past it. So I only ever read those first four books. I ended up feeling content with that decision, though.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (I never did see the whole Netflix show, and I still never fully understood these books. I heard there were prequels, but I never read them. So these books were always very mysterious. The narrator always talks to the reader, randomly shoving in anecdotes about his tragic life. Confusing books. But they were also very fun. I remember there was a whole lot of great comedy in these books. A lot of depression and existensial stuff too, but I always preferred the comedy).

This is getting too long. Apparently I own too many books. So prepare for a part two. Maybe even a part three. I'll make those shortly. Then we can hopefully evaluate my reading taste, and figure out what I like and dislike.

[tarnia2]

I'm watching The Owl House with two friends who haven't watched it before and...

Friend: "What if King isn't a demon? What if he's some other creature?".

Me:

[starlightshadowsworld]

I just saw your earlier post about Percy being protective over Jason and i sooo agree I mean it’s literally canon at this point because at the end of blood of Olympus, Percy was almost ready to fight alongside Jason when he was defending Apollo and asking Zeus to not put the blame on one single person (my precious Jason 🥹) and then in a lot of the other extra books such as Greek heroes and Greek gods, Percy mentions Jason when telling anecdotes and it’s so sweet like I don’t remember the exact scenes rn as it’s been years since I’ve read the book but I feel like they were surely there 😅😅 idk why people always pit them against each other so much when the only time they truly fought was during mark of Athena and that was under Hera’s influence 🥲 it truly feels like everyone is always projecting their hate of Jason on their favourite characters and it’s really sad to see 😓

But I also had to tell you I love your thoughts on Jason a lot so thanks so much for sharing them. It’s so hard to find people who like Jason in this fandom and I am glad to have found your account but funnily enough I first found your account because of Odasaku and loved your thoughts on him too 😅😅 (sorry for the rant!!)

Don't apologise this is so sweet 😊 I'm really glad you like my silly lil thoughts on these silly lil guys.

Unfortunately Rick decided trying to redo the Thalia Percy rivalry with Jason and Percy. And decided to pit em against each other.

Which, I'd argue is dumb and so I instead love to focus on them being friends. The only time those two fought was when they were possessed.

Jason is very underatted and I adore him. Percy would fight Zeus if that shit went too far.

I am suprised you found me through my Odasaku posts, man I should talk about him more. But glad to have you here :)