Hey, quick question if you don't mind me asking but what are your thoughts on Drew Tanaka as a character and how she was portrayed in HOO?
canon drew...well. i rbed this post that says "drew was not written as a character but rather a human obstacle who needed to be feminine so the ‘not like other girls’ could defeat her," and i think that summarizes it perfectly. she exists exclusively to make piper look good, which is a real shame bc drew could've been interesting. as-is, drew is not only uninteresting, piper is also uninteresting by extension. it'd be like if nancy was one of percy's greatest obstacles in tlt.
more under the cut bc i'm incapable of keeping things short.
here, in her introduction, not only is drew, a feminine girl, vain, she's also weak and unintimidating, a triple whammy right away! she has no reason to be antagonistic towards piper here, they literally just got to camp. piper's crime right now is *checks notes* not looking cute and existing next to a "good-looking guy." oh, yeah, btw drew likes jason for being hot and powerful.
this triple whammy isn't even restricted to drew, it's the entire aphrodite cabin. they all giggle when drew flirts w jason and when piper is uncomfortable being "gorgeous" and are too scared and weak to stand up to drew. the two exceptions are a guy who got in trouble for saying piper "might not be so bad" and a girl who's afraid of ugly shoes. what an uninteresting take.
anyway, moments like this
are everywhere. now, let's remember for a moment that the aphrodite cabin (including drew!) fought in a war where they were outnumbered and won. but yeah, their biggest strength is their ability to "make an orange t-shirt glamorous" bc piper is the only one out of them who can *checks notes* uhhh run? charmspeak on a quest? carry a knife? she doesn't even know how to fight in tlh! she wasn't at camp for more than two days, she never had any fighting experience! the fact that she's being called tougher than ppl who fought in a war makes me grit my teeth. and thalia was there when it happened!
and it doesn't even makes sense bc we see aphrodite like this is ttc
and she says this in tlh
(also sidenote: why is aphrodite's claiming so egregious and uncomfortable then? it's like rick has a moment of clarity and realizes he's being stupid and then immediately fucks it up again.)
this is interesting! and some of these kids (including drew!) would have met this aphrodite during the solstices. so portraying drew and the aphrodite cabin as a bunch of shallow kids obsessed w makeup that need to be saved by piper "not like other girls" mclean is so contrived. and constantly bringing up how piper's so much better than those shallow and weak aphrodite kids makes piper's entire character grating. rick brings up aneaus repeatedly throughout tlh, a son of venus/aphrodite that founded rome. why are we acting like aphrodite children are weak and stupid when we could be exploring literally anything else? like, you know, how they're traumatized?
and the thing is, he brings up silena! and it's done terribly. piper, who never knew silena and never will, lecturing drew, someone who knew silena and was betrayed by her, has always pissed me off. piper relating to silena bc she feels like she's in the same position? good, that's fine, i have no problem w this. but acting like she knew silena to ppl who actually did and then preaching abt what silena believed should've gotten her smacked (rick didn't even addressed the actual important part, which is how the other campers feel abt silena or how they feel abt surviving a war).
then when piper challenges drew, again, drew fought in a war while piper hasn't trained for a single day, why are we acting like piper could beat drew in a fight? piper can't even use charmspeak bc drew's resistant to it! that's the one advantage piper has! writing it like this comes off like piper is only strong as long as everyone else is weak. she's not rising to a challenge, her competitor is just so pathetic that she can overpower them. she didn't earn her strength. that's not good character development! so we're throwing two entire character arcs away for this!
what really gets me abt all of this is that piper didn't need to be a counselor. piper needed a place to belong. making drew nothing more than a stepping-stone was completely unnecessary, and making the aphrodite cabin weak and vain was redundant bc we already had an example w silena (and again, all the kids that fought in a war). as it is in canon, drew's character is a great example of some of rick's biggest writing flaws.
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heads up: reader struggling w friendships (feeling uninvolved + unheard)
felix hears the way you sigh as you come back into the room, and doesn't move quite yet. he knows you well enough. he listens as your footsteps draw nearer, and you pass in front of him as quickly as you can before throwing yourself onto the opposite end of the couch. it's enough to make him raise a brow--usually you'll sit next to him because you like being close to him--but he can't take his eyes off the tv screen quite yet.
"everything okay?" he says as he pulls one side of his headset back, and then he already hears changbin and jisung responding. "not--not you guys. hold on, i'll still be here--" he mutes his mic, and looks over to you. "babe?"
you curl in on yourself, frowning. "not really."
"you wanna talk about it?"
"you're busy--"
he shoves his headset down so it hangs around his neck. "i can multitask. once we're done with this, i'll stop, alright?"
you pout and he sees it from the corner of his eye. "i don't want to bother you."
"you aren't," he promises. "i'm listening."
"it's just... more of the same-old." you shift so you're a little closer to him. "feeling like some of my friends are closer with each other so i'm just kind of playing fifth wheel, platonically. other friends not listening to me when i speak meanwhile i feel like i file every little fact away..."
he's heard it before. he looks up, and he sees how upset you are, and he debates for a moment. he's going to play again with changbin and jisung this weekend... surely they can carry on without him? he pulls up his headset, unmutes, and says he's gotta go. all it takes is him mentioning your name for them to stop teasing him: felix wouldn't be ditching them if it weren't somewhat serious. he logs back out, and turns over, moving in to wrap his arms around you.
"hey." he smiles. "i love you. you wanna go out?" he says. "we can get dinner. talk more. maybe walk by the river?"
he knows you well: getting out helps. and walking by the river always helps you open up more. you peck his lips as you get up to find your shoes.
at least felix has your back when you need it the most.
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not to be too real but since we're talking about it... we always talk about will feeling lonely which is fair, but... it is such an Ugly, isolating, and genuinely heart-wrenching feeling to be the odd one out in your family, and to watch them treat others who aren't related to you the way you wish they would treat you, to watch them perform their familial roles with them and not you.
nancy's the only person in his family that mike could talk to, the only person that has the same trauma and would understand, and yet... he can't. they don't ever talk unless it's to be snippy and bite. nancy spends more time caring about max and will than she does mike, her own little brother.
holly is too young for him to bond with like that. she's just barely a kid, one that still needs to be cared for.
his mom tries her best, but he doesn't feel comfortable being vulnerable with her. considering the fact that she did everything "right" according to society's standards and married their dad of all people, i doubt he feels comfortable showing her who he really is. he lets her hug him when he's at his lowest, but we don't see them actually connecting.
his dad is just some ghost that haunts his house. he doesn't care about mike or think highly of him at all. the only times we've seen him pay mike any attention are when he belittles his interests, mocks him, punishes him, or shuts him down by telling him to listen to his mother. the only support he gets from him is financial in nature.
meanwhile, everyone else has a family they can turn to. dustin, despite lying to his mother to keep her out of his shenanigans, seems to have a decent relationship with her. even if he doesn't, he still has steve and robin. lucas is shown to have a healthy relationship with his parents and erica. will and el have their family.
max's situation is different, but she has the backing of the party; people that love her and actively try to help her and pull her back into the world of the living. she isn't thrust into a leadership role that doesn't allow for vulnerability. she has nancy who is willing to fight monsters for her, el who literally performed a miracle for her, and lucas who has stood by her since the beginning.
and mike... well. he has will back now, sure, but... things have been different between them for a long time now, even if they're both trying their best to be how they were before. and before then, will obviously was in california, not returning his calls or reaching out, making mike feel like he'd lost him for good.
so... all that being said, it's not that surprising that mike is the way he is: riddled with abandonment issues, wanting to be needed, immediately apologizing whenever he dares to open up, inclined to give others the protection and comfort no one's ever given him, prone to jealousy and possessiveness, unable to be completely and wholly honest about what troubles him, not exactly the most open to new people, and someone with appallingly low self-esteem.
you know how they say people that are drowning don't always look like they're drowning? that's mike.
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I am pushing the "Brand Bowman was swim team captain in high school and Kenji was on the team before camp™. So they bond over it when Kenji starts living with them. It's what makes him feel like he's not just Darius' brother, but Brand's too" agenda.
(Plus Brand loves getting to have a sporty brother bc he'd never got that...mentorship feeling that comes from teaching a younger sibling/cousin sports. Unless video games count bc that definitely Darius and Brand's thing.)
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