#i'm just utterly devoted to the light vs dark trope tbh

[happyk44]

Still kind of miffed that the sequel series wasn't Olympus versus the underworld like it was kind of setup throughout PJO. like the whole ending to the underworld stuff was sort of... boring. when you look at it. like hades gets blamed in TLT despite no proof, TTC his daughter dies and her body just disappears (and it's never brought up why they couldn't find her body, like??) and his son runs away, TBotL shows how powerful and deadly children of Hades' can be

(in a way that Percy really hasn't shown with his own powers imo, like Percy and his usage of his powers doesn't really happen very much until TLO, it's generally just small things like healing himself, or swimming, etc. nothing particularly big. like the most notable event prior to TLO is blowing up that volcano, and that's fucking four books in, bro, Percy please. why is the first time you summon a hurricane in the middle of a battle, baby, please hyperfixate on something other than your sword)

anyway Nico also states that children of Hades have never been accepted at camp (why, why, why - like the implication is because no one trusts Hades, but what does that mean for his children when they do go to camp? Plus Hades saying his kids rarely have happy endings in BoO, like WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, this is why my headcanon is they literally got bullied into suicide or "accidentally" killed off by other camper, and they just. fucking accepted it because they had to protect the other underworld kids and better they got beat and harmed than the children under their wing - they can handle it, they're stronger and they're not afraid of dying)

and then in one of the side stories we find out through Persephone that Hades may never have actually been on equal footing as his brothers, that Melinoe might've helped Ethan with Bob (and thus was on Kronos's side to some extent.

and in TLO we find out morpheus, born of the underworld, is on Kronos's side and also that Zeus straight up tried to kill Nico and Bianca and judging from Hades' insistence w/ trying to get Maria to agree to go to the Underworld with him, it's not a surprise to him that this happened, if anything it was anticipated - which means it had to have happened before, either with him or with anyone. he knows that if he refuses his brother's demand (his brother who is not a king to him, mind you, olympus has no bearing on the underworld) that his brother will strike and he will not be able to do anything direct about it because conceptually the underworld is smaller than olympus, and has few, probably none, allies outside of its underground walls, so he would be risking everything if he fought back at his brother for the death of his beloved and his children

it's also why my headcanon is that zeus wanted all his niblings rounded up into one place, and then he sent down the seed of "hey, kill your cousins to save the world" to his kids and there was a big all out battle, and everyone died (because it's so easy to blow up people without anyone noticing your involvement when lightning is being flung everywhere) and like. i am. jsut

this would've been so cool

but also rick probably would've effed it over so lmao because he's not the best at nuance and complex situations - see Hermes as an Olympian and a Chthonic deity, where would he sit if he had to choose, what side does he pick?

see Annabeth as a child who has grown up in camp, who views things from a logical perspective and can see why Nico would be dangerous to keep around, the risk he carries from the death that oozes off his fingertips with ease, who can see why past campers tried to get rid of him and his ilk.

see Percy who has no loyalty to Olympus or camp, he is only loyal to his friends and his friends belong to Camp, Annabeth belongs to camp, Grover is literally akin to an olympian deity right now, but Percy intrinsically feels the need to protect Nico and Nico belongs to the Underworld - what does he do when his heart belongs to different powers? does he steal nico away while his family burns and lets the kids hate him again, so long as he's safe? does he help him and watch the place he just worked so hard to save be brought to its nees? does he try to be diplomatic about it? try to mend things back together?

the complexity of it - the choices you'd have to make and the reasonings you'd have to apply to the characters so nothing seems out of place, but also so that no one is enraged by the characters they loved making decisions they don't agree with, so maybe it's a good thing this story never got told

but it would've been so cool to see, if it had