#god damn it I will get this fandom to understand nuance and morally grey characters/antiheros if I have to jam it down y'all's throats

[candlecove-weaintdeadyet]

Something fascinating on the Wiki, re: Poppy and Percy's relationship

I know we all like to joke here about Poppy and his shit treatment of Percy and general lack of redeeming qualities, but I noticed something in the Wiki's episode synopses that kind of surprised me because if you ask the fandom it doesn't add up:

Yeah, in Season 1, Poppy generally treats Percy like garbage (save for the ending of Percy Plays Piano, but there he had an ulterior motive (using Percy as an anti-Horace weapon)), we all know that, but in s1e7 (The New Ship) after Janice calls him out on his bs and he takes the time to think...

well first he does the unthinkable (for an early 70's kids' show, at least) and apologizes to Janice, at least, for his weirdly cagey behavior. And even though neither he nor Percy properly address or even mention their absolute mess of a dynamic, afterwards he seems a fair bit...I guess nicer is the right word, to Percy.

In late Season 1 into Season 2, whenever the two interact (which is a rarer occurrence after that point, I've noticed. Seems Poppy mostly leaves Percy to his own devices for the most part), Poppy is noticeably calmer and more charitable-in The Map and The Key he's willing to humor Percy and his (apparently unwarranted, according to the ending) excitement, he either barely notices or doesn't care that much about Percy's nervousness in A Hole in the Ship when otherwise he'd have snapped at him about it-hell, in a scrapped synopsis for Milo's Race (curse ye, PirateJet, taking all the good plotlines from us!) he states outright that he cares about Percy, and was apparently fully ready to keelhaul Milo for hurting him had the trap chest worked as intended.

We love character development (and hate stupid retcons that get rid of it) in this house.