#i think canon focused more on verbal abuse so the food throwing could very much be reaching

[solar-halos]

hey!! I’ve been thinking about your Percy and Paul fic and i love how you approached that relationship (i always feel like we don’t get to see enough of his home life). Do you have any percy and sally thoughts, either about the Gabe era or about his life as a demigod? <3

hey thank u for the ask im glad you liked the fic!!! <3 in the first version of the pjo fic where percy is highkey traumatized by the lingering presence of smelly gabe, there was some lore that got dropped that didn’t make it into the fic with paul:

percy’s anger and helpnessness would manifest in earthquakes!! it sounds silly writing out but there was a situation in the original fic where gabe throws something at sally and ten-year-old percy knows from experience that sally won’t be strong enough to yank gabe off of him if he tries fighting back and he gets so frustrated that an earthquake is born

speaking of throwing things, i think this might be a reason why percy is so protective of his mom. i do think there was a chunk of his life where he resented her for keeping gabe around, but maybe someone like grover kinda helped him realize that she is actively suffering in the arrangement in a sorta similar way. like in the first book i think he only finds out that gabe hits sally (like with his hands) at the end of the book, but i think that there might’ve been more indirect forms of physical abuse happening that made percy realize that oh. they’re both in the same boat (or maybe percy is just more forgiving and was like. ew gabe is so mean to me and even though he isn’t mean to my mom in the same way he still talks her grossly and i hate him for that. who knows)

going off of that, i don’t really agree with the interpretation that sally didn’t know gabe was hitting percy (curse u fandom reddit). like, if this is a woman who was perceptive and open minded enough to realize the father of her child was a literal greek god, then i think she’d figure out pretty quickly that gabe was beating the shit out of her child. also, they live in an apartment. sound carries (and even if gabe wasn’t doing it when sally was around our girl would DEFINITELY notice the signs. like it makes sense why percy didn’t know cos he was a child but sally is an entire adult)

HOWEVER, i do think that sally was more complicit in percy’s abuse than we think, but not even in the “she stayed with him anyway” sense. i think percy met gabe was he was very young (five), and if there’s one thing we know about percy jackson, it’s that he has behavioral problems. and, unfortanely, i feel like there’s a lot more lienancy/social acceptance about hitting kids (esp boys) who have adhd. i do love the show for this reason, obv sally never hit him there but i like how it showed how fraught their relationship was when she dropped him off at boarding school. so like while i don’t think she ever hit him i wouldn’t be surprised if she let something like that slide at the very beginning with gabe because percy was acting up

speaking of gabe, i do think he did *try* to tolerate percy at first (extremely low bar). another piece of lore that didn’t make it into the paul fic was that when percy was young he and his mom did everything together, like sharing food and sleeping in the same bed, so i think gabe got fed up with this so quickly 

okay okay this is getting so long so i’ll just leave it at this thought: as much as im dunking on her, i don’t think sally jackson was a bad mom! i think she’s a very sweet and gentle and nurturing person who deserves all the happiness and it’s very nice and fuzzy and warm that she ended up with someone like paul (and that percy has someone like paul in his life!!). her situation was obviously very unique because she was intentionally picking someone SO stinky to cover up percy’s demigod scent (which also sounds silly all typed out) and im not saying alchohol drinkers and weed smokers are automically abusers but i AM saying that. yeah. her hands were kinda tied (but only kinda)

thank you sm for letting me ramble!! i forever have sally and gabe and percy and paul thoughts so sorry that it got kinda long haha