#literally grover is not going to show up because I barely remember grover

[helpallthenamesaretaken]

EPISODE 5……..🥺

Right off the bat, i love the idea of percy’s forehead peeking out of the water, like the mysterious mermaid he is

Annabeth was the best part of the episode as always

Thought they were gonna talk more about thalia percy parallels grover just looked a lil tad distressed and that was it but whatever

Percy and his lil ‘hi’s will never stop being funny

the usual “i thought annabeth was gonna punch me but she was actually nice to me guys who would’ve thought someone would be happy to see me” narrative still shining through WITH THE HUG PLS CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW SWEET THE HUG WAS

grover’s so confused like “literally an hour ago you guys hated each other….am i missing out on some plot point”

dude was ‘looking for new tickets in the st. Louis arch as if they were going to be on the floor lying somewhere💀

Percy’s face when he addresses grover after the hug, he’s so proud someone actually hugged him 🥹his face is just like “hey grover look SHE’S HUGGING ME🥺”

Can I just say the writing for percy is perfect

like he’s so 50% there like he’s so good at communicating and asking what’s wrong and trying to understand the other person’s feelings (sally jackson’s son for you) but at the same time he has NEVER had a friend before so he ends up embarrassing himself 😂😭

”im pretty sure that’s what friends do” “….at least i think that’s what they do” pls 😭

grover’s face too help you’re already tired of being third wheel???oh honey this is THE FIRST HALF OF THE FIRST BOOK get comfortable

not their lil heads popping out and going back in. Peak comedy right there

Seriously adam did reallyyyyyy good as ares. Theres no one else i can imagine anymore as ares. The delicateness of his ‘good mood’ as if it is gonna break any second, the rage and fury but at the same time being extremely funny???

the diner looks so cosy it’s so cute

was kinda missing some percy rage in this but it comes out at the last so its fine

The real reason for grover to be so okay staying back is not the strategy of getting answers out of ares but because of how tired he was of taking care of annabeth and percy.

I feel like they should be showing luke more (later on they will, i have faith) im already forgetting about him it wont hit as hard if i dont remember him

Percy “ive not seen many movies since im broke” jackson x annabeth “ive never seen a movie since i live in a magical camp” chase

but the fact that annabeth’s never seen a movie kinda erases the fact that later on in hoo, annabeth talks about watching cheesy old romance movies with her father which kinda contributes to their dynamic but

the fact that percy would probably be the first one to take her to the movies makes me not care

honestly tho IM REALLY REALLY HOPING THAT THEIR FIRST MOVIE WONT BE THE ONE AT THE START OF BOTL I’d rage as much as annabeth when i see percy with rachel (not that im a rachel hater, im a circumstances hater)

grover is such a good therapist, like he is THE EMPATH. He tripped the god of war into talking about his life this is a grover appreciation post

annabeth zoning out with fascination at the mechanics and also i love the “percy being done with annabeth” representation

i cant see anything so nothing to say here

SEAWEED BRAIN THIS IS A HISTORICAL MOMENT IN PJOTV HISTORY THE FIRST SEAWEED-

grover manipulating ares through his emotions>>>>>

also ares roasting athena

Percy sacrificing himself AGAIN like the depressed kid he is

annabeth immediately reassuring percy that she would save his mom the character developmentttttttt from being inconsiderate about percy losing his mom to promising that she would save the lady EVEN THOUGH SHE BARELY KNEW HER

This is giving me too many feelings guys the lady she’s promising to save is the lady who will be the best mother figure who will singlehandedly heal her mommy issues AND BECOME HER MOTHER IN LAW

“Its warm” i thought this was gonna be the last thing he says before whatever was gonna happen to him so i was like lol famous last words

but fr tho the intenseness of annabeth crying for percy to GET UP and percy’s just fading out of the world trying not to cry trying to reassure annabeth that he’s okay IN WHAT WOULD BE HIS LAST FEW WORDS, literally everything he does is for someone else even in his dying moments its just magelhi”gdsjihoawerhoudfjls

especially with the “im not…..” [okay] lol we have always known that percy, it aint a big surprise

i got to applaud leah for how she portrayed annabeth’s brain chemistry altering every minute with percy and how that influenced her speech with hephaestus

i cant believe thats leo’s dad hes giving santa claus i do like him tho

Now that i think about it the percabeth hug should have been after percy comes back to life not after the louis arch scene since they were just starting to have two minutes of chemistry there and have the “you dont have to feel bad about the hug” in the zebra truck scene

percy trying to intimidate ares lolllll walker scobell did his best to make it look real tho so good for him for not representing it as it was; a lil 12 year old child threatening a wrestler looking god of war

”Thanks for the emotional abuse and the cheeseburgers” will forever be in the cinema hall of fame

i feel like grover either is going to say the wrong person or he’s going to figure out it’s luke but something’s going to stop him from saying it out loud

or he’ll say it which causes some angst amongst the team who dont trust him cuz both annabeth and percy worship luke like there’s no tomorrow

RAINBOW?? OHH THEYRE GONNA IRIS MESSAGE LUKE??

LIN MANUEL MIRANDA

[rellik24]

Re-reading PJO and I'm gonna keep track of all the cute details I forgot about here. Or just random details I find interesting.

This post will just be the first book bc it would be a very very long post if it was all 5 because there's a lot more little details that I forgot about than I thought there were.

Percy said that he remembers being put down to sleep as a toddler in a bed with a snake and he killed the snake.

Sally is a great mom. When Grover showed up in Montauk, she didn't shove him and Percy out the door like 'you need to go.' Like some moms would. No. She risked her live to stay with her son and make sure he gets to camp safely. She's literally driving at night, in a massive hurricane-like storm, with the freaking minotaur chasing her car. How tf? And she's keeping calm during the whole thing so Percy doesn't also freak out more than he already is.

During the Minotaur fight on half-blood hill, Percy defeats it bare handed. It was raining that night. The water from the rain was what was probably giving Percy the strength to rip of a freaking bulls horn bare handed. Do you know how hard that would be?

Dionysus can grow fruit wherever he goes just by being close to it. The strawberry fields are flourishing because of Dionysus. There's also a satyr playing his pipe to keep the pests and bugs away which is also awesome. The strawberry fields are so nice all because of Dionysus (not the Demeter kids, they probably help out too tho) and a few satyr that just play their pipes. (I just wonder how the strawberries do in the winter bc if they can grow perfectly fine in the winter then they're probably making a lot of money)

Grover is 28 in The Lightning Thief. That means he's a grown ass man and has been alive for nearly 30 freaking years. He's literally 16 years older than Percy. (Since satyr mature half as fast as humans, does that mean Grover has the mentality of a 14yo?)

There's a camp store. Luke stole some stuff for Percy from there. They probably use drachmas as currency tho. That or bribery with chores or something. Also who works there?

Capture the flag games happen at night. When it's dark. Can you imagine how scary that would be for Percy, they did give him a fairly safe job but still. Standing there alone, in a dark, monster-filled forest. Knowing that you could have to fight people but it's night time so you can't see very well.

Percy was given a fairly easy role in capture the flag so technically Clarisse and a few of her siblings were targeting Percy (of course) and were willing to throw the game to beat him up

Also during capture the flag, Percy mentioned hearing growling right before Clarisse showed up so the hellhound was there basically the whole time and was probably waiting for the perfect chance to attack.

After being claimed, everyone avoided Percy. Annabeth almost dispised him and Luke pushed him harder than he probably should. Percy felt he was an outcast in a place he was supposed to fit in and be normal. Poor kid just wanted to be like the others.

Dionysus kids can make plants grow. Probably not as much as the Demeter kids and I imagine they can only grow fruit, like Dionysus

Zues and Poseidon apparently always squabble about who's better according to Chiron. They apparently fight about who Rhea loves more and who can cause worse disasters. Honestly I'm not surprised, I can totally see them doing that

It was a misty Gabe Ugliano that said the prophecy for Percy but why was it Gabe? Why did the mist appear as Gabe to tell the prophecy?

I think that Percy knows that Annabeth has a crush on Luke from the start because he keeps mentioning how she blushes and gets all shy around him.

Poseidon gave Chiron Riptide to give to a hero

Celestial Bronze will only harm gods, monsters and demigods because mortals aren't important enough to be harmed by it. That means we're all safe because we're not important

In chapter 11, when they just start their quest and got off the bus with the Furies, Percy observes that Annabeth was talking about CHB being her home in a rushed manner as if she'd get cut off. That makes me sad that that means people have probably stopped Annabeth from rambling about things

If you sevre a part of a monster before killing it, that part becomes spoiled of war. (Medusa's head, that giant's ear for piper, ect)

Anything Percy touches underwater immediately turns dry. Even a lighter works for Percy under water

Anaklusmos glows in the dark. It's a big, deadly glow stick

Percy can talk to zebras and probably anything else horse related

Percy convinced some random cabbie that he's a stunt double for child actors bc the cabbie recognized him from somewhere (probably the news tbh)

[yellowocaballero]

you've once again taken a child character who is lowkey traumatized and also internalized being a burden to caretakers and made being a "bad kid" as a shield so no one can use it against you and i fucking love that you nailed it wonderful job as always i'm going to go cry into my coffee 💜💜💜

Coffee? Bro, where do you Iive?

But okay like I really don’t have strong opinions on PJO, and I hope I never will, but I was reminiscing on the series with a friend of mine and I was just so strongly reminded of how I feel like RR kinda slapped Percy with a hilariously traumatic backstory and then didn’t explore that. 

It’s established that he’s really poor, that he had to switch around schools a lot, that due to his ADHD and dyslexia he didn’t do well, and that he was basically viewed as a delinquent. His mom’s the only person who’s ever always been in his corner. I do think that does things to a kid. Percy is a good kid - he really, deeply is - and I think it has to be crushing to have everybody around you tell you you’re not. After a little while, you begin to believe it. And a little while after that, then you begin playing into it and acting into that role, because it doesn’t matter anyway. This happens ALL THE TIME. 

Lots of things like that. His Mom made some bad decisions. It wasn’t fair to Percy to not tell him who his dad was, because that ignorance literally put him in danger. I also deeply, deeply hate the “Mom stayed with an abusive guy to protect him” thread that was barely even brought up again after that. Like, I hate it. It wasn’t explicitly stated in the story I just wrote, but I just tweaked it so his Mom had a string of bad boyfriends (I guess Gabe would have entered the picture when Percy was 10 or something but thankfully they were both saved from that in this fic).  It’s why he hates men and is over-protective and over-guilty about his Mom’s happiness. I think a kid like Percy would feel like the world was on his shoulders, because he persistently sees his mother’s unhappiness due to things he views as his fault but that he can’t control. He’s a guilty, unhappy kid, and he’s too young to understand why all of this is happening. 

So it’s interesting to take somebody who already maladaptively has Chronic Hero Syndrome, and then put him in the classical role of Greek Hero. He’s a child of prophecy, he’s the protagonist, the world is LITERALLY on his shoulders. You can do stuff with that. I probably could do stuff with that! However, Luke successfully blackmailed Olympus and organized demigods into a worker’s union so quests are an opt-in thing only and greatly reduced to only adults in as safe a setting as possible. So none of that whole thing is happening. Fix-it AU, let’s go. 

I think it would be funny to write Percy as a 16, 17 year old who is Such An Obvious Protaganist Who Is Great At Everything And A Prodigy Who Is Always Defeating Medusa Or Something, but he’s also just vibing and saying fuck you to gods and not giving a shit. I think the only way a happy ending can be had in PJO is if demigods completely remove themselves from Olympic affairs and decide to care about each other instead. So I like to think that’s Percy.

Anyway, if I do write this then I know me and it would spiral so I'm still figuring out if this extremely, extremely weak premise (Fix-it fic writers: ‘everything is good now and conflict is gone’ is not a good story) can hold the weight of a plot. Stay tuned I guess. 

ALSO HOLY SHIT CHB IS NOT A FUNCTIONAL SYSTEM. IT SUCKS. IF YOUR SYSTEM HAS NOBODY SURVIVING TO 18, IT’S A BAD SYSTEM, PLEASE CHANGE IT. 

[rynnaaurelius]

Titan’s Curse But Make It Time Loop: Nico di Angelo Edition

-Okay so I’m at work and not doing much and who wants to actually edit your shit drafts for your actual WIPs so that they’re less bad? No one, that’s who

-So I had an idea: The Titan’s Curse. Also known as the book where people start to die. It sucks to be a demigod in this book--for the first time in the original series, it really does.

-Not everything is fixed, not everyone is saved, and people start to have to make really tough decisions.

-So we fix it. Not by throwing Percy, or Annabeth, or Thalia, or, hell, even Bianca or Grover into the mix.

-Throwing the marginally more grown-up, more trained, and more knowledgeable demigods into the fire, who’d get everyone alive and safe by the third time ‘round? Nah.

-We’re making Nico fix this.

-Because here’s the thing about Nico di Angelo: Sure, he grows up to become a major badass, the Ghost King, so on and so forth. But not yet.

-For now, Nico is baby, a ten-year-old whose experience with any kind of fighting consists of one (1) Capture The Flag game and who’s still half-reliant on Mythomagic to explain what the fuck is happening.

-He’s also got the worst knowledge makeup possible! He knows he’s a son of Hades, which is bad, he knows to stick monsters with the pointy end of swords but nothing else, he knows that Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace are Very Big Deals (But also doesn’t know why beyond parents), and he’s, at best, vaguely aware that there’s some kind of bad prophecy hanging around.

-Also by the end of the book, he’s just been told his last immediate family who isn’t Hades is dead in one of the worst ways possible, and he--pretty irrationally IMO, but Nico’s a kid who has been through a lot recently, so we’re not holding that against him--blames Percy Jackson.

-Literally, you probably can’t pick an angstier or worse choice to run through the time travel trope. I love it.

-We’re making this kid save Bianca’s life via time loop, which happens due to. . .hmm, we’ll say the Fates did it.

-So, Loop 0 = Canon, only at the end of the day on December 21st, after the conversation with Percy, Nico falls asleep only gods know where only to wake up the day he meets Percy Jackson:

Loop 1:

-Nico doesn’t actually change anything meaningful at first.

-Spends most of it shellshocked and not unconvinced the last week (For him, anyway) wasn’t a horrible nightmare; shellshocked and staring at Percy Jackson, anyway.

-(Percy’s wondering what’s up with the silent kid his sister had talked up as a cheerful chatterbox)

-It’s only when Bianca agrees to join the quest for Artemis that he starts kicking up a fuss; demanding to go, screaming that she can’t leave him even more, not again.

-(Bianca hesitates; briefly, enough to remind Nico that she loves him. But she’s not their mother, and she needs this)

-Bianca still dies. Percy comes back pale and guilty. Nico doesn’t yell at him when he returns--he already knows. He accepts the Hades figurine so that he can throw it into the lake.

-He slinks off back into Cabin Eleven and falls asleep, hoping desperately that he gets a third chance.

Loop 2:

-He does.

Loop 3:

-After a very painful death at the hands of Dr. Thorn, Nico, generally being a straightforward person at this stage of life, takes the obvious path this time around: He tries to tell Bianca--who brushes it off as a dream.

-Annabeth still goes over the cliff when Nico takes the initiative of attaching himself and his sister to Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace at the dance. He tries to tell Percy and Thalia when Bianca still joins the Hunt, promising Nico that whatever he saw, she’ll be extra careful.

-(Bianca’s fearful of what Nico's saying, and thinks that if these sworn sisters can’t keep her safe, who can?)

-Artemis gives Nico a speculative look but agrees when he begs her to protect Bianca at all costs.

-He doesn’t get on the quest. Being a reasonable demigod of questionable parentage, he sneaks out of camp.

-He gets caught, because despite being aware of his awesome new powers, he doesn’t know how to use them, and is still a ten-year-old who can barely hold a sword the right way.

-He gives Percy the puppy dog eyes and shows off said awesome new powers. Percy forces him back.

-Nico follows him.

-Repeat until Percy dies saving Nico from the Nemean Lion in Washington, DC.

-Nico can’t find it in himself to be terribly sad--especially when he doesn’t make it much longer.

Loop 4:

-He’s really stuck like this, huh?

-Oh, Di Immortales.

-(Before Percy gets his chest ripped to shreds by a lion and Nico meets skeleton cats, he learned how to hold a sword properly and curse fluently in Greek. Percy probably only meant to teach him one of those things)

-In unrelated news: Having a big crush on a guy who thinks he’s only known you for a couple hours? Terrible.

-Trying to hate the guy who let your sister die when he’s that stupid and nice? Even worse.

-That stupid lion.

Loop 5, 6, 7, 8, 9:

-Nico repeats: That stupid lion.

-Somewhere in Loop 7 he starts to steal supplies out of the camp store when he follows Percy following the quest.

-They forcefeed the lion enough trail mix and frozen ice cream in Loop 9 that they don’t die this time.

-At least until someone called the General shows up and Nico’s dead before he can raise his sword.

Loop 10:

-Nico wakes up in his and Bianca’s room in Westover and starts crying. Bianca tells the headmaster they’re both sick and Nico lets her hold him all day.

-They fall asleep and Nico swears he won’t let her die again.

Loop 11, 12, 13:

-He wakes up and he still can’t get out of bed without feeling that blade cutting between his ribs, burning like it’s on fire.

-Gods, he’s so sorry, Bianca. Dispiace tanto.

Loop 14:

-He can get up without feeling like he’s about to die again. Bianca fusses but assumes it was just a bad dream.

-Nico is caught stealing and can’t follow Percy until it’s too late.

-Everyone assumes this means he’s a son of Hermes, however, and Nico can’t correct them without opening his mouth and letting the sobbing laughter out.

-Figuring he’s about to get another chance next round anyway, he takes Travis and Connor Stoll up on their offer to learn a thing or two so that he doesn’t get Cabin Eleven slapped with kitchen duty from now until Doomsday.

-He likes the Stolls. He spent most of the time, pre-looping, actively avoiding everyone at camp as he waited for Bianca and Percy to come back, but they’re not that bad.

-Percy comes back with the figurine and no sister and Nico remembers why he’s stuck.

Loop 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23:

-After Loop 12 and being killed in Washington DC again, Nico realizes: He needs to learn how to fight.

-Unless he gets killed early or refuses to leave Westover, the loop resets after seven days. So, he has seven days to train each time.

-He gets to camp, finds the arena, and meets Clarisse La Rue. He demands she teach him how to kill monsters.

-She laughs, and tells him that attitude in his size will make monsters easy to kill, they’ll laugh so hard.

-Clarisse teaches him how to swing a sword each time--but only after mocking his unamused face.

-Somehow, Percy coming back with news of Bianca’s death only hurts more each time.

Loop 24:

-Nico wakes up before Bianca this time. He looks over at her bed and knows. He’s got to try this time.

-It’s disturbingly easy making friends with Percy Jackson after the last loops.

-Bessie’s new. Cute, but new.

-Nico wonders just how much he’s missed in the past--he thinks of Annabeth Chase, and hopes she hasn’t been dying each time.

-Percy doesn’t even argue when Nico shows up in the stables with a bag slung over his shoulder, and the sword he’s been stealing out of the shed strapped to his hip.

-Nico suggests the ice cream--again--to Percy in DC before

-Nico might be getting the hang of this.

Loop 25:

-Nico is not getting the hang of this.

-Zoë Nightshade’s refusal to accept Percy and Nico on the quest--violating a prophecy, and gods, Nico’s curious if that prophecy ever mentioned this--has so far gotten them attacked and killed by spartoi once.

-And again. As Nico bleeds out on the floor, he watches a panicked blond man--a demigod--plead for mercy.

-Isn’t he on the other side?

Loop 26:

-His name is Luke Castellan and he apparently wants the gods dead.

-Nico can relate at this point.

-The General is Atlas, and Nico knows enough about Greek mythology, real and wrong, at this point to know that is bad.

Loop 27:

-Twenty-six tries, but they finally make it out of DC. Threatening the questers with Atlas killing them all is more than enough.

-For the first time, Nico doesn’t know what happens next. He glues himself to Bianca’s side and glares at anything suspicious.

-With help that Percy refuses to name, even when Nico tries his hardest, they go to New Mexico.

-There’s a boar and it’s so close, they make it to what the others are calling “the junkyard of the gods”.

-Nico sees the Hades figurine on the ground.

-Bianca grins in delight and picks it up, calling for him.

-He can’t help it.

-Nico starts screaming.

Loop 28:

-His sister’s murderer was never Percy Jackson.

-His sister’s murderer was a force of mechanics that makes Nico fully understand, for the first time, what the gods are, beyond stats on a card.

-Talos.

-Nico is going to destroy him.

Loop 29:

-She dies.

Loop 30:

-Again.

Loop 31:

-Again.

-Loop 32, 33, 34, 3536373839FortyFo r t y O n  e--:

-Again. Again. Again. Again again againagainagainagainAGAIN--

Loop 42:

-Nico gets out of bed. He finds Percy Jackson at the dance, hugs him, and tells him he’s sorry.

-Nico walks outside and waits for Dr. Thorn in the snow. He can feel the shadows curling at the edge of the wood like a sixth sense, now. Waiting for him to summon the restless dead out of them.

-So many attempts to save his sister, ranging from sacrificing himself to sacrificing Percy--not that Percy needs the push, Nico has found--to any and all members of the quest.

-She dies. Always, always dies. Whatever Nico does, that junkyard is full of the death of Bianca di Angelo.

-He tried avoiding it. Once. Loop 33. Nico threw such a fit he’s surprised he wasn’t sent back to Camp Half-Blood by the Hunters, but it kept them out of the junkyard.

-He tries not to remember how little was left of his sister’s body by the monsters that time.

-Son of Hades. After all this time, Nico’s beginning to wonder if this is what it means. Death and death and death.

-Dr. Thorn walks outside, and Nico can feel a ghoulish grin crossing his face that has no place on a ten-year-old.

-One of them is going to die, this loop. And Nico will not go to New Mexico.

Loop 43:

-Nico wonders if there was a past life of his he needs to remember. Who could he have made this angry?

-He lies to Bianca and they stay in Westover again this time. Better than death, anyway.

Loop 44:

-Nico tries a different tack this time. A more roundabout way of things.

-He takes Bianca and throws the two of them in the way of the battle with the manticore.

-After all this time, he still doesn’t know much about Annabeth Chase. She gets kidnapped and returned safely to Percy every time, to the best of his knowledge.

-Nico dies holding up the sky, but at least Bianca lives, under the protection of Artemis.

Loop 45:

-Nico looks in the mirror and studies the new grey streak with fascination. And, maybe, some hope.

-Things can change.

Loop 46, 47, 48, 49, 50:

-Nico gets kidnapped a few times. Once, he’s killed in a rage by a Titan with horns, but it’s quick. Mostly, he holds up the sky to get Artemis out.

-She looks at him strangely each time and Nico wonders if she can see what he’s done.

Loop 51:

-They figure out he’s a son of Hades. They offer him Olympus. Olympus and Bessie--the Ophiotaurus, rather.

-Nico says no.

Loop 52:

-Nico says yes.

Loop 53:

-Being on the verge of overthrowing the gods and keeping everyone he’s grown to care for--in the case of several Hunters, against his will; in Percy Jackson’s case, Nico loves him as much as he hates him at this point--doesn’t do much, apparently.

-Nico stays in Westover again. He resists the urge to tell Bianca that would-be destroyers of Olympus don’t need to brush their hair, whatever she says.

Loop 54:

-Nico goes over the edge of the cliff again, but with Percy Jackson.

-This isn’t the first time; in Loop 46, Percy had taken the sky for both the sake of Artemis and Nico until it killed him.

-What’s different, is Nico’s in the middle of what’s become the usual panic attack when he’s about to die for the hundredth time, and his powers react.

-Percy holds him close and calls him cousin. Tells him he’ll never leave Nico.

-You have no idea, Nico whispers. You can’t leave me.

-You think I want to? Percy whispers back. You’re not alone, Nico.

-Nico’s sobbing sounds like laughter.

Loop 55:

-Nico tells Percy the truth for the third time. This is the first time he hasn’t told Bianca first.

-They’ve just found the Erymanthian Boar, Thalia’s told Nico his goth needs work--whatever that means--and Nico’s bracing himself for the junkyard again.

-Getting kidnapped by the Titans really gets old after a while.

-He still has the grey streak, and no number of excuses will fully soothe his sister, but the Hunt’s a good distraction from it.

-Nico doesn’t blame Bianca anymore for it. He thinks.

-Nearly a year into this loop and Nico’s finding it hard to blame anyone for much of anything, anymore. Especially when he sees what she’s faced. Again. And again.

-For now, this time, Percy Jackson is staring at Nico with wide eyes at what Nico’s told him--through these loops, Nico’s starting to wonder if he now knows more about Percy than Percy’s own best friends--and says he believes him.

-Once, Nico would’ve exploded from joy. Now, he just sighs and nods.

-Percy tells him how to condense the conversation for the next loop. He advises Nico to research Talos, “like Annabeth would.”

-He advises Nico to warn Percy’s next loop self about Annabeth’s kidnapping. Nico wonders if he’s gone insane that he’s considering it.

-Bianca dies.

Loop 56:

-Nico makes the executive decision this time to try and befriend Annabeth Chase. As such, he takes Percy’s advice.

Loop 57:

-It takes him two tries to befriend Annabeth Chase and learn about Talos.

Loop 58:

-Three times.

-But the nail. The nail in the ankle of Talos.

Loop 59:

-He hangs back at camp again this time and meets Charles Beckendorf, head of Cabin Nine, and son of Hephaestus.

-Nico figures that short of finding the god himself and committing temporary suicide--not that it hasn’t crossed Nico’s mind--his son will have to do.

-(He’s tried his hand at summoning ghosts, but Daedalus refuses to show, for some reason)

-Beckendorf frowns and tells Nico he would have to see Talos himself.

-Nico hadn’t realized just how much cursing he had picked up off of Percy and Thalia until that moment.

Loop 60:

-Nico knows what the prophecy says. One shall be lost in the land without rain.

-He knows it’s why he’s been failing so much.

-The trouble is, he no longer cares.

Loop 61:

-It took him a try, but he gets Beckendorf on the quest, prepared to defeat the Talos prototype.

Loop 62:

-Strike that, two tries.

-Nico really hates the Nemean Lion.

Loop 63, 64:

-Nico has solved half a problem: How to defeat Talos without putting someone inside the robot.

-The other half of the problem is now that they are all electrocuted by a dying automaton for their efforts.

Loop 65:

-Beckendorf’s crush--girlfriend? crush, they’re both insisting--Silena Beauregard comes along this time. Nico won’t complain over the extra manpower, even if he’s positive that eight campers and Hunters are patent overkill for one quest.

-Silena pulls Bianca out of the wreckage. Nico’s heart stops.

-Silena’s crying when she mentions that if they had been a bit earlier, she could have been revived.

-Nico wonders if Thalia’s going to stab him as he starts whooping. And takes notes about where Talos falls.

Loop 66:

-Nico swears, if Percy Jackson tries to sacrifice himself for Annabeth Chase one more time--

Loop 67:

-Bianca.

-I found you, he sobs. I found you.

-Gods damn the Hoover Dam.

Loop 68:

-And again.

-Despite having the distinct inkling at this point that he doesn’t much like like girls, Nico could kiss Silena Beauregard and Thalia Grace when they manage to revive his sister each time.

-She’s shaky and leaning on him and was dead, he could see her soul floating away--

-But she’s there.

-Nico refuses to let his sister out of the sight at the Hoover Dam and Percy befriends the Naiads this time.

-At least, until the Titans--who Nico made the very big mistake of taunting at DC--sends monsters he can’t control.

Loop 69, 70, 71, 72, 73:

-They keep dying in various combinations at the Hoover Dam now that Nico’s figured out how to save Bianca.

-At least, until he gets separated from Percy in Loop 73 and he meets a redheaded girl with a penchant for calling Nico pint-size.

-Athena dislikes Percy, Nico, Bianca, and Thalia in equal measure. Having learned of the Great Prophecy in Loop 16 and Percy’s mooning over Annabeth in. . .well, every loop, Nico can’t quite blame her.

Loop 74:

-Her name is Rachel Elizabeth Dare and Nico likes her. She takes none of their shit and if it weren’t for the fact that they already have eight people on the quest, he’d want to take her along.

-Bianca gets in a fight with the Old Man of the Sea. Thalia electrocutes him when he throws Bianca in the bay.

Loop 75:

-Nico wakes up in Westover with the distinct feeling that he was drowned on dry land.

-He stays in bed shivering, that day.

Loop 76:

-Atlas is the father of Zoë Nightshade. Nico learned this around Loop 50. He had realized around five loops ago that this probably meant she was going to die “by a parent’s hand.”

-He hadn’t realized that it was going to hurt to watch.

Loop 77, 78, 79, 80, 81:

-Now that he’s figured things out to about San Francisco, it seems the world is out to get him. The number of fights or mistakes that he either makes himself or has to head off are ridiculous.

Loop 82:

-Nico is so very tired. And wishes he felt ten years old again.

Loop 83:

-If Thalia gets in one more fight with Nereus, Nico's going to walk into the sea.

Loop 84:

-He wanders off, in this one. Grover had been killed in Hoover Dam, so Nico’s waiting for the reset at this point.

-In the meantime, Nico figures there are worse things to do than enjoy a good afternoon in San Francisco. He even meets a boy in a purple shirt.

-His name is Jason and he has hair like the sun.

-If he ever fixes this, Nico wants to find him.

Loop 85:

-Nico’s not fast enough in the junkyard.

-In San Francisco, he tries to find the ugliest, biggest trouble he can find.

-He finds a pair of teenagers in armor who yell Latin at him instead.

Loop 86:

-There’s a dragon that will attack them in the Garden of the Hesperides if they make it angry enough and Nico is so tired.

Loop 87:

- Zoë Nightshade is dead. They’ve won.

-Funny definition of “win”, considering they’ve all almost died this loop about a dozen times each, and Nico can’t explain why he’s crying on the body of a Hunter he only met a week ago, in their eyes.

-She hates him, some loops. More loops, she looks at him with ghosts of old grief in her eyes and hands him a knife.

-The gods execute Bessie, and then, Nico watches as his father turns to him and Bianca with sorrowful eyes.

-Nico should’ve figured, after almost ninety loops.

Loop 88:

-Luke offers one of them the entrails of Bessie again.

-Nico takes them.

Loop 89:

-For all the good it does. Nico wakes up as he does every time now: Powerless, in bed, and with only a grey streak to show for his efforts.

Loop 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98:

-Nico doesn’t know how to save Zoë Nightshade. Bianca, he could trick and fight his way into it. Beckendorf and Silena and Percy and a loophole in lost could save his sister.

-Her, she just. . .dies. Sometimes in DC, sometimes in San Francisco, sometimes on the hills of Mt. Tamalpais. Always at the hands of Atlas.

-Always, being murdered by her father.

-It’s not as gutting as watching his sister die, but it aches more in his chest, somehow.

Loop 99:

-He sticks close to Zoë this time. Same as he’s done with Percy, Annabeth, his sister, Thalia, and Grover, time and time again. But not her, Nico is realizing. Not the clinging he’s achieving now.

-Hoping for. . .something.

-He knows better than to tell the immortal Lieutenant of Artemis the whole truth. The loneliness is enough.

-She’s less frosty to him from the start than to, say, Grover or Percy, after Annabeth goes over the cliff again. When he shows up in DC, she’s much less angry than he’s seen her.

-Along the way to New Mexico and then San Francisco, he listens. He’s grown better at it, this far in. When the others are asleep, when Bianca is being fussed over after Talos, when everyone but them is asleep by the fire, he listens.

-And she tells him about her sisters. About her father, when the world was young and Atlas had looked on every daughter of his with pride. She tells him, pride glistening in her eyes, of the battles she has seen, the hunts she has overseen at the command of a goddess, the monsters she has killed, and the epithets she has been given.

-He doesn’t ask anything of her. Not until they’re in the house of Annabeth’s father, drinking lemonade the night before the battle, and Nico knows she is about to die again.

-What do you want, he asks. You’ve done everything. What’s left?

-She stopped, ice seems to creep over her again, and Nico wondered if he’d hit some sore spot.

-He’s opened his mouth to make his apologies when she answers, so quiet and quick he thinks he’s imagined it.

-To be remembered. When my lady has taken another lieutenant, as she must, and I have gone to where all gods go when they die, I wish for my memory to remain. And. . .

-Nico waits, and ignores the sudden, terrifying thought that he no longer knows what he wants.

-I wish to see the stars again. I was born a nymph of the sunset; starlight is precious to me. I want to see it again.

-Nico dies to preserve the memory of Zoë Nightshade.

100:

-Nico di Angelo wakes up in Westover Hall. He hopes for the last time.

-He does everything right: Annabeth goes over the cliff, his sister joins the Hunt, Percy is soon his friend, and he convinces Silena and Beckendorf to join the quest.

-The Nemean Lion never stands a chance, and Nico is glad to be rid of it.

-His sister lives.

-Nico watches Percy watch Rachel Elizabeth Dare go, looking like he’s just taken a frying pan to the face, and fights the urge to snicker.

-Thalia doesn’t start a fight with Nereus, but Percy certainly does. Nico could’ve sworn he saw the boy with sun-hair again, watching with curiosity.

- Zoë Nightshade dies in the arms of Artemis and is made into the stars she loves so dearly. Nico promises her soul that he will remember.

-For, he has found, the dead have a tendency of remembering things they shouldn’t.

-Annabeth and Percy now have grey streaks to match Nico’s, and Nico can’t wait to spend the rest of his life trying to explain that.

-It’s closer than he would like, but much less close than other lives with Olympus. The Ophiotaurus is alive and safe, and they are all alive.

-As Nico walks out of the council, he looks off to the side. By the fire is the familiar girl with red eyes--the Lady Hestia, looking much closer to Nico’s age than that of the Olympian she is.

-Besides her are three old ladies. Nico’s heard about them from Percy, in Loops 26, 53, 61, and 62.

-One lady holds a ball of string that is the color of a warm umber. The other is knitting what looked suspicious like socks. The last. . .

-Scissors, in one hand. Just as expected. Nico swallowed.

-In the other, was a knot of burnt string, tied to the socks. Behind her, Nico could see discarded string of all colors: an electric blue, a stormy grey, a black that seems to glisten with the promise of a storm, string the soft, hopeful pink of love, yarn run through with bright copper.

-Glowing threads that Nico could only describe as the color of starlight.

-As he walked out, firmly between Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace, the Hunt of Artemis behind him, Nico hears one last promise:

It is done, Nico di Angelo.

[zazzander]

Scene Breakdown - Meeting on the Rooftop (House of Hades)

For more about Octavian's character see this post.

This scene is super awkward, since Jason is watching on, so all the descriptions come from him. This would have been a chance to develop Jason and Octavian’s past - but it doesn’t happen. Which lends more credence to my belief that Jason doesn’t really remember Octavian.

Regardless, I want to break it down because it gives us a lot of insight into Octavian’s character.

Bare in mind my previous posts:

Octavian’s Fatal Flaw is Wrath, which was triggered when the Greeks declared war on New Rome. He is boiling with rage right now.

Octavian knows that the Greeks have lied to them before. Percy Jackson specifically - he said the Argo’s arrival wasn’t a trick and it was

It’s more than likely that Camp Half-Blood planned the attack, as well as the brainwashing of Jason Grace, the praetor.

Comparing Octavian and Reyna - They're Portrayals

Octavian stood to one side [...] In the centre of the line stood Reyna...

As we can see, despite how Octavian holds more sway over the legion here, Reyna is front and centre. It's possible she has once more pushed him inside a position of less power for the meeting.

thin and pale, his eyes red-rimmed from sleeplessness or anger

[...]

[Reyna] looked tired. Others might not notice but he’s worked with her long enough to recognise the weariness in her eyes, the tightness in her shoulders under the straps of her armour.

Reyna is portrayed as this strong, unyielding person. While Octavian is weak.

Reyna gets the dignity of hidden tiredness “weariness in her eyes” Octavian’s is open to the world, “his eyes red-rimmed from sleeplessness or anger”.

This is literally that same body part, and how does the weariness in Reyna’s eyes show? Jason doesn’t say because the actual physical description would rob her of her strong commander vibe. Much as it robs Octavian of his.

Thus, as the reader, we are predisposed to once more dislike Octavian - this time based on physical location and appearance.

Rachel Dare and Grover arrive on the scene.

She stepped forward, her eyes fixed on Reyna. “You got my message.”

Octavian snorted. “That’s the only reason you made it this far alive, graecus. I hope you’ve come to discuss surrender terms.”

“Octavian…” Reyna warned.

“At least search them!” Octavian protested.

Once more, we have an Octavian and Reyna moment before a big peace meeting. Here, Octavian states his goals: he wants them to sit down and discuss terms. The Greeks attacked, now they must surrender. He is clearly frustrated by Reyna’s laissez faire attitude towards their enemies.

I would say it’s clear at this point that Reyna has been swayed by the Greeks. She definitely would have been more aggressive to these strangers at the beginning of Son of Neptune. And Octavian knows that.

He also wants to be a significant part of this meeting, hence why he speaks first. Reyna has visibly sidelined him already (“Octavian stood to one side”). And after what happened in the dining scene, I can see why he’s making his presence and demands known early.

Telling the truth while lying, a lesson by Rachel and Grover

Octavian is kind of an expert on this technique by the way (telling the truth while lying) so, if anyone picks up on it, it’s him.

“No need,” Reyna said, studying Rachel Dare. “Do you bring weapons?”

Rachel shrugged. “I hit Kronos in the eyes with this hairbrush once. Otherwise, no.”

The Romans didn’t seem to know what to make of that.

As a baseline, we know that in this world, common items can turn into weapons. Percy’s pen. Jason’s coin. So the same could be assumed for Rachel’s hairbrush, especially when she declares she hit Kronos with it - why would you throw a hairbrush if it wasn’t a powerful weapon in disguise? We know, having read PJO, that this isn’t the case. But Octavian has never met Rachel before. Nor has Reyna.

So could Octavian not go “well she just declared her weapon" - but then Reyna doesn't immediately demand to know more. Or to remove the hairbrush from Rachel's possession.

“But no weapons?” [Reyna asks this to Grover].

“Just the pipes,” Grover’s expression became wistful, “Percy always said my cover of ‘Born to be Wild’ should count as a dangerous weapon, but I don’t think it’s that bad.”

Octavian sneered. “Another friend of Percy Jackson. That’s all I need to hear.”

Music can be made into a weapon - that’s also established in this world.

Grover then proceeds to discount it. He adds to the statement in a way that dispels his skills. This is very underhanded. Because Grover is technically still declaring he did, in fact, bring weapons to the peace meeting. While pretending that he didn’t.

Also, recall that for Octavian, Percy is an oathbreaker, a liar, a spy and overall, an untrustworthy scoundrel. Percy is someone who abuses his rank to silence valid arguments made against him. So if Grover is Percy’s friend, then Grover is likely just as untrustworthy. Which is proved by this entire section.

Octavian now braces himself for more lies. The peace meeting, as far as he is concerned, is done. And honestly - he’s right. The Greeks have failed to show that they aren’t trying to start a war.

This only gets worse.

The Note from Tartarus

Reyna took the note. As she read it, her eyebrows crept higher. Her mouth parted in shock. Finally, she looked up at Rachel. “Is this a joke?”

“I wish,” Rachel said. “They’re really in Tartarus.”

“But how-”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “The note appeared in the sacrificial fire at our dining pavilion. That’s Annabeth’s handwriting. She asks for you by name.”

Octavian stirred. “Tartarus? What do you mean?”

Reyna handed him the letter.

Octavian muttered to himself as he read: “Rome, Arachne, Athena - Athena Parthenos?” He looked around in outrage, as if waiting for someone to contradict what he was reading. “A Greek trick! Greeks are infamous for their tricks.”

So a lot happens here.

First, we hear that Annabeth is in Tartarus and Rachel believes this. But it’s not like the dogs can tell if Annabeth’s letter tells the truth. Having the information on a letter is actually a great way of getting around the dogs - and since Percy knew about the dogs and their powers, he could have told everyone else. Octavian has been duped by Annabeth before, he likely doesn’t want to make the same mistake again.

Second, the mission itself. I’ve said before that the quest makes no sense to complete from a Roman perspective. In the here and now, it’s on the Greeks to make peace. The Romans are the victims. In fact, Annabeth may have even explained in the letter that Athena intended for this war to take place. That’s all but admitting guilt.

Reyna Considers Leaving

Reyna took back the note. “Why ask this of me?”

Rachel smiled, “because Annabeth is wise. She believes you can do this, Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano.”

[...]

“Look, we wouldn’t have risked coming here if we didn’t trust Annabeth’s instincts. A Roman leader returning the most important Greek statue to Camp Half-Blood - she knows that could prevent a war.”

So, once again,

they are already at war.

the Romans have no requirement to ask the Greeks for peace, they are the more powerful force who was attacked first.

it seems really suspicious that they want Roman’s remaining leader after taking away the other one (and making their spy a third).

Octavian Pleads with Reyna

“Reyna!” Octavian cried. “You can’t seriously be considering thai! Even if the statue still exists, you see what they’re doing. We’re on the verge of attacking them - destroying the stupid Greeks once and for all - and they concoct this stupid errand to divert your attention. They want to send you to your death!”

Note, the wording here, divert “your attention”, “send you to your death”. Octavian sees this trick is exclusively directed to Reyna, whose judgement is already compromised.

Octavian is appealing to her personally. Despite the struggles between them, I believe they were once friends (or at least worked together as partners with Jason). Here Octavian is actually worried about her safety as much as anything else.

Jason remembered how persuasive Octavian could be, and he was winning the officers to his side.

This is how Jason reads the words - that it’s a tool for Octavian to win over the officers. But Jason’s view is clouded.

Instead, if you look directly at the lines, Octavian is pleading with Reyna to stay. You would think after all the frustration he has had with her that he would celebrate the chance for her to leave - even to die. But he’s panicked and afraid. He legitimately cares for her fate.

The Nail in the Coffin

“Also, Ella has been murmuring lines from the Sibylline books-”

“What?” Reyna interrupted. “The Sibylline books were destroyed centuries ago.”

“I knew it.” Octavian pounded his fist into his palm. “She - she somehow memorized a copy of the Sibylline books.”

[...]

“Your friends lied,” Octavian said. “They told us the harpy was just muttering gibberish. They stole her!”

So Octavian really hasn’t gotten past the dining scene at all - and fair enough too.

I think it’s more significant for his character than others realise. Because the way Octavian reacted to being gaslighted by Annabeth is so different from how he reacts to everything else - it makes me thing he has been through it before. Likely by his family, since we are all in agreement that he was emotionally neglected at the very least by his parents.

Now, Rachel confirmed the facts, that Octavian wasn’t crazy or mad or overreacting. He was right.

And now the people who are just like Percy, just like Annabeth; the people who stole Jason and brainwashed him; the ones who started a war have the only source of the Sibyllines books. Remember Annabeth is the one who spoke about Ella in a disrespectful way.

(As a reminder: “Really, Octavian? Maybe harpies are different here, on the Roman side. Ours have just enough intelligence to clean cabins and cook lunches. Do yours usually foretell the future? Do you consult them for your auguries?”)

These are the people who have Ella. An innocent. An intelligent harpy. One that might have the same interest in the books as he does. Living proof that he was right all these years. So, yeah, they stole her. They took away her freedom - her ability to choose (I’m going to do an entire post about that).

Then we get this:

Grover huffed indignantly. “Ella isn’t your property! She’s a free creature. Besides, she wants to be at Camp Half-Blood. She’s dating one of my friends, Tyson.”

“The Cyclops,” Reyna remembered. “A harpy dating a Cyclops…”

“That’s not relevant!” Octavian said. “The harpy has valuable Roman prophecies. If the Greeks won’t return her, we should take their Oracle hostage! Guards!”

Well, no one ever said Octavian doesn’t play dirty. He’s the expert in playing dirty. I will say - there is no reason why Tyson cannot come to New Rome as well. Or for the Sibylline books to be recorded then Ella be allowed to live her life.

It's a question of culture. Romans are collectivists. It's about duty and sacrifice for the whole, not the individual liberties of any one person.

Plus, the Greeks have effectively taken what’s the equivalent to New Rome’s state secrets. So - the Romans will take the Greeks’. A fair exchange, yes?

Reyna Makes Her Choice

“And why would the Romans want peace,” Reyna asked, “after your ship attacked our city?”

“You know why,” Rachel said. “To avoid this war. To reconcile the gods’ Greek and Roman sides. We have to work together to defeat Gaia.”

Octavian stepped forward to speak but Reyna shot him a withering look.

I would like to imagine Octavian planned to call out all the bullshit that statement hauls. But, alas. Reyna doesn’t actually want to hear the other side of the argument. She’s already made her choice.

Reyna twisted the silver ring she always wore, with the sword and torch symbols of her mother, Bellona.

“Marcus,” she said, “bring Scipio from the stables.”

“Reyna, no!” Octavian protested.

She faced the Greeks. “I will do this for Annabeth, for the hope of peace between our camps, but do not think I have forgotten the insults to Camp Jupiter. Your ship fired on our city. You declared war - not us. Now, leave.”

Reyna's choice to leave really does drive home, for me, what a bad leader she is from the Roman perspective. As a centurion, this act would have been expected and reasonable - but she's their sole praetor. Leaving now is abandoning her duty to New Rome. The idea that she's so well liked after this boggles my mind.

Reyna and Octavian Fight

Octavian wheeled on Reyna. “Are you mad?”

“I am praetor of the legion,” Reyna said. “I judge this to be in the best interest of Rome.”

“To get yourself killed? To break our oldest laws and travel to the ancient lands? How will you even find their ship, assuming you survive the journey?”

[...]

“This is insanity,” Octavian muttered. “We’re already under attack. We must take the offensive!”...

Once more Octavian appeals to her. He asks her to stay. He tries to logic it out with her - knowing she has agreed to the conceptual plan, what about the practical one? But she refuses to listen. Again.

Octavian Gives Up on Reyna

Octavian narrowed his eyes. “While you're gone, the augur is the senior officer. I will be in charge.”

“I know,” Reyna didn’t sound happy about it.

[...]

Once she was gone, Octavian turned to the centurions. “Gather all the senior officers. I want a meeting as soon as Reyna has left on her fool’s quest. There will be a few changes in the legion’s plans.”

I have no idea why the augur would be the next person in charge, in all honesty. It would have made 100% more sense if it was “the senior centurion of the First Cohort” or something - since that makes sense rank wise, though it’s less than graceful to say. The position of augur is a religious one, not a military one, that’s why Octavian is a centurion as well.

Regardless, Octavian only gives up on Reyna when she leaves. He even uses the threat of his own power to convince her to stay. But, she goes anyway. And Octavian still has the rest of the legion to protect. The rest of Rome. And without Reyna vetoing his ideas, he can now employ them in full.

What does this all mean?

Octavian, at least to me, seems to hold real concern for Reyna’s well-being. He tries multiple different arguments to convince her to stay, despite it being in his best interest for her to leave.

He doesn’t trust the Greeks and the Greeks prove to him, once again, that they cannot be trusted. They also confirm, for the first time with their own words, that this war started by the Greeks. Grover briefly tries to argue that it wasn’t part of the plan - but then Rachel shuts him up.

So, for those people who argue that Octavian was told about the possession - I haven’t come to that point yet and it's been one & a half books. As far as I’m aware, it doesn’t happen at all. And much of the reason for this is because the Greeks bullied him when they first met him. Would you trust the word of your bullies? Especially if they had hurt people you care about?

Can you imagine Percy in this situation - if Annabeth had been kidnapped, then Camp Half-Blood attacked, and then he was lied to by the very same people? Percy’s flaw is loyalty - he will risk his life (and even the world) for his friends and family.

It’s not the same, sure, but - just imagine if this situation was reversed. Would Percy risk the world for Camp Half-Blood? I think he just might.

[intergalactic-garbage]

things i would’ve loved to see in hoo:

- trans dude frank

- more homoerotic interactions between reyna and annabeth (think about it - both children of the war goddesses of their respective pantheons, their wits the sharpest of their camps; then cj is attacked by possesed leo and reyna thinks annabeth, whom she trusted and came to care for in those few moments they shared, betrayed her)

- jason “raised by wolves” grace - dude straight up lived with lupa’s pack for YEARS and got raised by them during his formative years (when going on how normal human memories, he wouldn’t have even remembered his mother - his earliest memories would have been of lupa), and yet we never see him tearing at a steak with his face? he’s never tapping his foot, wanting to scratch an itch with it? this would’ve been perfectly in line with riordan’s humor, he missed an opportunity

- rachel elizabeth dare and grover playing an actual role in the plot, not just being seen in that one scene in hoh. the different povs in chapers should’ve been played around with more - give us a pov of someone from the camps, or rachel/grover - the seven were only one part of the many moving elements in the plot and the dream sequences hardly made up for it

- romance being either tied directly into the plot like in pjo or eliminated completely; not seen as a plot device (eg. reyna considering getting involved with octavian when confronted with the possibility of him becoming praetor)

- a villain who’s more than literally just “ehehe i am earth. am bad. want to kill you. no i don’t have a particular reason”. pjo had luke which was so good because he spent the first book establishing how nice he is, how he’s an older brother to everyone at camp, how eager he’s to show you the ropes and young me knew he was going to turn but i had such a hard time believing it. the rest of the books don’t make things any easier because luke is plotting this horrible thing, but is it really horrible? until today people are fighting about whether he was right or not. and they have to stop him but he used to be their friend. they used to care about each other so much and that care doesn’t just go away when he betrays them. so they’re faced with one impossible choice and they know what they have to do but can they? anyways hoo wishes it was half as complex as pjo

- the leo/sammy doppleganger situation should have been expanded upon more beyond the exuse for the leo/hazel/frank love triangle. no i don’t know how. but it just makes it look like rick put it in there for funsies and never did anything with it. my mind keeps going back to a time travel plot but i know this is the riordanverse and We Don’t Do That Here

- octavian being more than “i created this character so fans could have someone to hate”

- the author not feeling so needed to write a blockbuster epic story like the avengers or whatever was in cinemas at that time. it was supposed to be a continuation of pjo, but instead of expanding upon the characters we had met in it, we barely saw any of them, they were forgotten, only the few main were placed in the spotlight, along with a bunch of new characters we’d never seen before. the focus was on the seven and a few other characters

- “the gods decided to not interact with mortals” was a stupid decision, especially considering the ending of tlo. percy asked the gods to be more present in their children’s lives, they, albeit reluctantly, accepted. and the next time we see them they remove themselves from their lives. the central conflict of the previous series had arised because nobody knew of the gods, what they were up to. there was no lexicon of rules, they just had to wait; and they grew tired of it. the gods should have been visiting them, awkwardly integrating themselves in their lives, not the exact opposite. not setting up for another demigod uprising

- i know this is just wishful thinking but. there should’ve been more of the riordanverse. yes i know there were already a bajilion other plot lines and we had the romans introduced but. i would’ve been fine with even just a little nod. or a character from a different pantheon appearing. this is all in the same universe as the huge chaos snake and the other, world snake and i just think it should’ve been expanded upon more

- frank’s firewood should have had. a role. you set up your character to be “the most powerful” of the seven, all extremely powerful protagonists, and then decide to ignore him for the last book and a half?

- by far one of the things that irritated me the most was how everyone survived. this was supposed to be a sequel series to a children’s series that had one of the main characters stab himself after realizing that this was the right thing to do. a daughter of the goddess of beauty got acid spit in her face. tlo is my favourite of the pjo books because it’s the climax, and it lays it down as it is - not as some heroic fight scene of good vs. evil, but people, being people. making choices for the ones they love and making mistakes because they don’t know what’s right. in boo, there’s an attempt at this “great last battle”, but if anything, this was undermined by the fact that nobody died. (i did like how leo coming back was framed, even if i’m not a terrible fan of caleo, nico feeling leo’s spirit alive, leo having a “surprise” chapter at the end.. goosebumps man) (though i suppose jason could’ve died right there and there. “to storm or fire” and everything)

- more hazel/nico getting confused by modern technology - i just think it would’ve been funny to see hazel hear about some event that happened between the 30s and present day and be like “you said what-” it’s good humor and also characterbuilding

- however, if we’re so horribly set on having romantic relationships, valdangelo is right there. nico can’t face his queerness. leo understands machines better than people. they both carry an immense sadness within, but it made them totally different people. and the dynamic? everything you could’ve wanted

[clementinefm]

𝑪𝑨𝑴𝑰𝑳𝑶'𝑺 𝑩𝑰𝑹𝑻𝑯𝑫𝑨𝒀 𝑩𝑨𝑺𝑯

summary → clem tries ( and fails ) not to hook up with grover during camilo’s birthday cruise . which unfortunately unlocks her stupid little heart and now she’s got feelings . 

featuring → @gdigrove​ 

triggers → nsfw ( kink / power exchange )

GROVER:        clem just seemed so sweet and they wanted to know just how literal it was. giving her an easy smile, grove leaned in to press a kiss to the crook of her neck. humming lightly at the warmth as skin began to flush, their lips parted and tongue gently dragged along the space there. “ fuck, “ the word was haggard, stormy blue eyes darting to hers before continuing, “ i bet you taste good everywhere. “

CLEM :       her lips curled inward as she tried not to giggle at the sensation of his tongue dragging across her skin . feet kicking as she fidgeted in his grasp , " listen - . " she started before laughed softly almost forgetting what she was going to say , " we um , we should stop , um.... this . whatever .... this is . " though she made no efforts to get out of their grasp . 

GROVER:     stepping closer to clementine, grover couldn’t keep their hands off her soft skin.  “ she says and doesn’t move, ” their voice was gravelly and teasing again, teeth biting into the soft skin of her neck before releasing as if it never happened. “ where’s the fun in that, huh? ” pulling back to look into her dark brown eyes again, grover repeated themself.  “ won’t the good girl behave for me ? “ calloused hands settling on her petite thighs and giving a squeeze.

CLEM :      " why should i be the one to leave , you move . " despite the voice in her head that told her to stop while she was ahead , her treacherous body lighting up with goosebumps in every place they touched ,  biting down on the inside of her cheek as her thoughts and her desires threatened to split her apart . " no . " one leg crossing over the other as she shook her head . " i - " letting out a breath as she shook her head . " i don't know . "

GROVER :    " maybe i don't want to move, " grover started, cheeky as ever. flashing a charming grin down at her as the goosebumps on her skin prickled under the pads of rough fingertips. an almost musical hum left their mouth as her legs crossed, wondering if it was because of what they thought. raising large hands easily as the magic word left her lips, taking a couple of steps back for good measure. consent is key. " at this rate, it's all up to you baby girl. " the words were measured evenly as his hands dropped down to undo the belt holding up black slacks, the sound of fabric hitting the floor and breathing all that filtered through eager ears. 

CLEM :      maybe the reason she liked being with grover was because she felt completely in control , one word and there's enough space for her to breathe , to think . she could surrender and never worry about what would happen if she did . catching her bottom lip between her teeth as they backed away . contemplating her choices until the distinct sound of a zipper being undone caught her attention . doe eyes trail over his form . she knows exactly what's under the thin scraps of fabric and her mouth is practically watering at the thought of wrapping her lips around it . a tentative step forward as she said , " well...maybe one more time won't hurt . "

GROVER:        it was always more satisfying when his prey surrendered itself willingly, making the choice on their own. blue green eyes were ever observant as her attention focused back on them, a smirk blooming across plush lips as her eyes trailed across bare skin. grover laughed openly at her and cooed at clem’s step forward. “  what a good girl, i trained you to crave my cock so well.  “ degradation forgotten for the moment, he closed the space between the two of them in an instant and grasped her chin firmly catching her gaze. “ on your knees. show me you remember.  “ 

CLEM :      her fingertips tingled as he sized her up . internally squirming as umber eyes meet smokey hazels jaw going slack under their grasp . " i remember . " she squeaked following commands without question . perched on her knees  , legs spread just enough that he could reach between them if he wanted , expectant eyes staring up at them like a pup awaiting a treat . " daddy , " she started clearing her throat as she forced herself to speak . " i um , i would like to give you head .... please . " punctuating the sentence with a sheepish grin .

GROVER :      if grover had anymore common sense, they'd realize that clementine inspired something different in them. an honest to god hunger but there was something softer hidden behind the layers of desire and nagging to make her come undone at their fingertips. " good job, mia bella. " the sweet italian reassurance left plush lips without hesitation, watching the petite girl sink to her knees eagerly. never able to delay gratification, pearly white teeth sank into their bottom lip already stroking their steadily hardening cock as green eyes took in her shy plea greedily. " how could i say no when you ask so sweetly ? " shifting toned hips grover let out a breathless laugh and pressed the leaking head of their cock to her soft lips, almost groaning at the sight. " make me proud. "

CLEM :      she's never been very good at separating her feelings from sex . something inside her yearns to be desired , it doesn't matter in what form , always seeking the warm fuzzy feeling that they seem to give her . face lighting up as he praised her practically melting as italian slipped from his lips . twisting her hair up into an almost ponytail handing it over to grover with a simple , " hold please . " without another word she swiped her tongue across the tip a quiet chittering as the salty tase of them . usually there's more build up , the girl loves a good tease , but today she's greedy . drool already pooling in her throat as she took him into her mouth .

GROVER :      sex was a way to see people without expectations or false intentions, everything was purposeful. seeing her face morph with such a simple joy had them in awe, aqua eyes softening as clem pressed her long tresses into his hand. gripping her ponytail firmly, a groan echoed through the suite as she began. “ damn, i want to fuck that cute face of yours, “ filthy thoughts slipping from the vault of their mind as a hot wet mouth surrounded their cock, hips shifting forward desperate to feel more of her mouth on him,  “ you’re such a good cocksucker for daddy, baby. “

CLEM :      she doesn't address the way her heart nearly stops when they gaze at her with such soft caring eyes . though she's sure the moment will replay in her head all night , dissecting each micro expression on their face until she lost it . but now , now she's in her element , eager to please and happy to be of service . each movement slow , lips and hand moving in torturous unison , taking her time to savor deep slow strokes that fill her mouth and the way her hair tugs against their grip with each move she makes . letting out a quiet squeak though it was mostly muffled by the cock still in her mouth and the sloppy sounds of spit spilling from her lips and quiet pants for air .

GROVER :      if there was one thing grover wasn’t it was quiet, ever. the sounds leaving them were just another reassurance of exactly how into her they were. “ oh fuck, clementine. ” even though grover wanted nothing more than to force their cock to the back of her throat, they were desperately trying to hold back. moaning again at the mixture of sounds and sensations, the tight reign on their control disintegrated. “ daddy has got to feel his cock press against the back of your throat, get ready. ” the words were barely strung together before his strong hand used the leverage her ponytail gave him to force her mouth to the base of his cock and hold there for a few seconds. “ shit. ” muscles coiled under their skin as they resisted the urge to rut against her face, pulling her off of his cock completely instead. she was a sight with spit smeared across her lips yet grover just smiled then said. “ beg for me. ”

CLEM :      even now , her skin flushed and her fingers tingled , it seemed a bit silly to her . being embarrassed by the thing that she so desperately wanted and yet when her name leaves their lips she feels a sheepish desire to pull back though it was quickly quieted by the next thing they're saying . she would have nodded in confirmation , had she had the time , but before she could even form a thought he's deeper in her throat than she thought possible . hands pressed to the cool tile , a gasp for air , spit and pre cum  still on her lips , smokey eyes dart from his cock to his face . " but i already asked really nice . " she whined a pout on her lips leaning towards him tongue out only to be pulled away . letting out a quiet huff , " daddy will you please fuck my face , i don't care if i can't breathe or my eyes start to water , i just want you to cum down my throat . i want to taste you . "

GROVER :      the only thought that swirled through their head was how tight her throat felt around their hard throbbing flesh. another lewd sound left him at the wet gasp that left her as he pulled himself from her mouth, cock flushed and throbbing aching for her. something twisted in the most pleasurable way as her dark eyes locked with his. cooing softly over pout, giving her head a gentle tug once she tried to taste him regardless along with speaking softly. “ i know you did, mia bella. ” nostrils flaring while a dark expression came over grover’s face at her words, nodding without words. there aren’t any. they were going to give clem exactly what she asked for. “open that pretty mouth for me, my love. ” the endearment spilled out and they were too high on this moment to care. holy fuck, the way she sucks dick should be illegal. resisting the unbearable urge to close his eyes as she began to swallow his cock, grover forced themself to look down at the perfect sight before him. 

CLEM :      of course she complied with his request , what else could she do , she felt delirious with with desire . every cell of her being wanting , wanting , wanting . tongue swirling over the tip sure to steal that taste with greedy fervor . eyes flutter to a close as she falls into a familiar rhythm . one hand reaching up to stroke their length , the other at the base matching the slow bob of her head as she soaked up every sound she pulled from him . she wanted him to break them . to feel their hips buck against her face . teasing him with the promise of it by taking him deeper into her mouth , drawing him out again tongue swirling around the tip before sliding down his shaft . her slick soaked the thong she wore making her squirm with every movement half out of discomfort , half because she was aching for some sort of friction .

GROVER :      another moan left their mouth as slick tongue swirled around the head of his cock. “ oh my … ” the words trailed off as he watched her eyes close, too entranced with how the girl morphs into such a bewitching creature. air rushing out of his lungs as her soft hands went to work along with her mouth, unable to stop their hips from bucking. “ oh god. “ head falling back in sheer pleasure, grover began to lose themself in the feeling of her teasing. core tingling with anticipation, they used the grip on her hair to drive their cock to the back of her throat. “ use those hands to play with that wet pussy of yours, darling. “  pulling her off his cock in the most obscene way, a tender smile starkly contrasting the rough treatment she craves.  “ daddy is too busy. “ hips driving forward without much other warming as another loud moan leaves rosy lips, the pools of spit in her mouth running down her pale skin like a mural. “ you look the best like this, on your knees having a cock so deep in you that you forget your name. “ the degradation was doled out in between passionate sounds and wet squelches, pulling their cock to just between her lips. “ look at me, “ they began, harshly tugging at her hair, “ i want to watch you cum as i fuck your face and then maybe i’ll feed you my cum. ” not waiting for her confirmation before thrusting their member back into her mouth, sure she would obey as always.

CLEM :      the gruff sound of their voice , firm grip on her hair and pools of drool that spilled down her chin left her skin sizzling . heat radiating off every part of her . the sudden thrust met with a gag , still not quite used to the size of him it takes a moment for her to adjust , letting them control the speed that her head bobbed pools saliva dripping down her chest ( which would normally have her up in a frenzy , this was a brand new dress after all ) . her mind was hazy , too clouded to really understand anything he'd said , all the words morphed into one long sound . what she did notice was being suddenly yanked away desperate eyes meet his . frowning as she tried to make out the words being said to her . focus . she reminded herself though she wasn't sure how effective it was as moments later she was full of cock and thoughts were floating away like dandelion seeds in the wind . a grateful hum leaving her lips as her tongue is reunited with familiar skin . when she's yanked away again she can't help but let out a frustrated . " why . " but then they're explaining and her eyes go a bit wider . oh - not that she had time to respond before he was back in her mouth . her fingers find their way between her legs , slow deliberate movements that make her whimper against his member , growing faster to match his pace .

GROVER :      no one has ever craved them the way she does, wide pupils met her desperate gaze chest heaving as aftershocks of pleasure danced across their sweaty skin. a breezy laugh left rosy lips at her frustration, moaning soon after as she whimpered around their hot flesh. “ fuck, such a perfect whore for me. “ just the thought of her thin fingers circling that pretty little clit was enough for grover to drive his cock to the back of her throat, moaning raucously and holding his hips there. their cock was twitching and leaking precum furiously between her lips. “ god, i’m going to fuck your cunt harder than i’m using your mouth. “ smooth thick hair used as a pulley once again to draw her off before snapping his hips forward again, going deeper than before and she might gag but he was planning on buying her a new dress anyways. “ gonna fill you with my cum until you can’t live without it. “

CLEM :      each time she's pulled away her tongue sits waiting , drops of spit dripping onto the floor until he's back inside , eyes watering each time he hits the back of her throat and yet she's chasing that high . tugging against his grip while his moans ring in her head like a call to prayer . tongue swiping along the bottom of his length as she pulled away , letting her teeth graze softly against the sensitive head , thankful for the last gasp of air as she's pulled back down . held against his skin the smell of cologne and sweat fill her senses and her hips press back against her hand . a moan breaks up the wet sounds of skin meeting skin , warmth spreading down her thighs , clit throbbing against her frenzied fingers . it's the promise of him inside her that pushes her over the edge . she clenched in anticipation before the rising pressure released hips bucking against her hands as she tried to keep from toppling over or spilling a drop of the salty sweat and pre cum that's coating her tongue .

GROVER :      if you blinked, you missed the way their knees bucked for a moment as her teeth grazed the head of his cock. unsure if the moan was from clem or themself, grover couldn’t be bothered to care. sparks were practically running across their skin as he fed her his cock in desperation to chase that rush. green eyes fluttered shut at the sight of the pale girl coming undone beneath him, thrusting into her mouth erratically unable to get the image out of his mind. “ shit, i’m going to cum. “ words enunciated perfectly as toned hips slowed to prolong the building pleasure, throwing his head back again with a long moan desperately trying to focus on his last command. “ don’t swallow it right away, i want to see you taste it. “  last bit of control shot, grover whimpered as they came cock spurting rope after rope of cum between her lips. “ fuck,” the word was murmured as he slowly removed his still semi hard cock from her petals, “ open up baby. “

CLEM :      her clit is still twitching , aching between her legs but this time it's her turn to watch him . dark eyes flickering up to his face blushing as she watched jade pools flutter to a close . despite her constant struggling , she wasn't in control of this moment , forcing herself to stay still as his pace slowed . eyes scan over him , trying desperately to listen when he spoke though it was getting harder by the second . still she’d promised herself that she would be obedient , eyes widening as if that'd allow her to hear better . don't swallow it . she chanted letting cum collect on her tongue lips parting on command to show him how good she was a quiet whimper of upset as a few drops spill down her chin . swallowing down what was left before beaming up at him . " thank you . " she squeaked hand reaching up to wipe her mouth clean . " um...are you going to let my hair go ? "

GROVER :      by the point which she’s whimpered, their cock was fully hard again as their jaw clenched and unclenched thoughtlessly while hungry eyes took in every sight she was willing to give him. one of the muscles in his thigh twitching as his cum ran down her chin, so entranced that grover had realized that they were still holding her hair. blinking dumbly at her for a second and pivoting in an instant like they usually did. gotta keep her on her toes. using his grip on her hair to raise clem to her feet, more gentle than most people would expect in a position like this. she’s my favorite doll, it wouldn’t be any fun if i broke her. “ for now, sure. “ releasing her hair with a smile as they leaned in to kiss her throughly, nimble fingers undoing her dress as their lips moved to her slim neck. “ when i’m taking what’s mine i might use your hair again, who knows? “ nipping at the crook of her neck once strong hands pushed the spit slobbered dress down her hips, “ gives me much better leverage to fuck you with, mia bella. “

CLEM :      as soon as she's swallowed she'd all but forgotten that he might not be done yet . mind drifting off to what she should do with the rest of the day , well until another erection was staring right at her , eyebrows hitched as she looked at him as if to say again ? her eyes were too busy trailing over his glistening to member to notice the hesitation between her question and being raised her to her feet . eyes casting a longing glance towards his cock before finding his again , head tilting in confusion . " for now ? " as soon as she's released hands reaching up to give her scalp a gentle massage that's interrupted by his lips on hers . smiling into the kiss her hands moving to wrap around their neck . " what's yours . " eyeing them as she repeated the words a silent questioning in her voice though she didn't correct him or keep them from slipping her arms out of the puffy fabric . nipples hardening as soon as they're exposed to the cool air a shiver shooting up her spine .

GROVER :      ever observant and the fucking comedian, grover sent a pair of raised eyebrows back at her almost instantly to say yes and what about it ?  something warmed in him as her longing was once again mad painfully obvious, it was nice to be wanted. humming at her adorable question and nodding, never one to give much away ( they were both terrific and terrifying with surprises ) . the feeling of her arms wrapping around them was almost startling but grover just smiled into the kiss easily. “ the wet cunt between your legs, that’s what. “ no one else in history could have possibly had their talent of making the most vulgar words sound so tender. the lack of resistance is what had him addicted to clementine, it was baffling but made him so horny. “ i’ll buy you a new dress, baby. as many as you like, “  their words trailed off, calloused fingers tugging and teasing her nipples.  “ don’t you want to be mine ? ” where the fuck did that come from ?

CLEM :      she couldn't help but giggle as his eyebrows rose back . fair enough . she thought staring deep into their emerald gaze scanning for whatever ‘ later ’ meant . her eyes went wide , skin burning bright red in sheer embarrassment , it was one thing to hear something like that whispered in her ear and another completely to look them in their eyes while they’re saying things like that . burying her face in their neck to hide her terrified eyes . " well...i do love shopping . " her voice coming out in a soft whisper . peeping out to look up at them heart thudding against her ribcage like the gallop of horses in a storm . glossed lip pinched between pearly teeth as she squinted at him , what is happening ? chest arching towards their hands as they tugged at her sensitive buds , " i - i don't know . "

GROVER :      there it is. laughter was easily one of his favorite things to bring out in others, the way her face lit up crimson was just magical. tugging off his t-shirt in the stunned pause, glimmering teeth sank into his bottom lip to contain a loud laugh at her scandalized expression from his words, aqua eyes twinkling and filled with mirth. wrapping their arms around clem without thought as she burrowed into his neck, all grover could focus on was their hard cock pressed against her thighs and it was sure to drive him mad. her soft voice snapped them out of it, smiling openly and noting it down for whenever the information would be useful. letting out a longing sigh at the sight of her reaction so sweetly to his touch. “ that’s okay, i plan on giving you lots of time to make up your mind. “ he said absentmindedly as greedy hands trailed from her chest to the slick between her legs, her hard clit begging for his attention. “ and a very convincing argument in my favor, of course. “

[cabin7-hufflepuff]

Would I be friends with these characters?

Percy: We’d probably only be friends because a mutual introduced us. He’s the type of person I’d want to be friends with, but when I get to know him, I actually get annoyed with him sometimes. We would be in the same friend group, but rarely talk to each other.

Annabeth: Short answer, no. I would get so irritated by her, I just know it. I would only ever talk to her because I know Percy and other people she does, but I might go to her for homework help.

Grover: I would love to be friends with Grover. I don’t think I would ever seek to hang out with him, but we’d get along swell. Not a best friend, but a good friend.

Luke: He’s someone who I would innocently be friends with until I found out the crap he’s done. Then, like I’ve done so many times before, I cut him out of my life, and years down the road, remember with an ache in my heart the friendship we used to have. (what I’m not drawing from life experience)

Nico: I would want to be friends with him so badly, but I think he would hate me. Maybe not hate, but it would never even cross his mind to talk to me. Plus, I’ve only ever had a few friends who are similar to him, and, uh, I was never close to them so. Rip him being my favorite character.

Will: YESYESYES. Will and I would get along so well, it’s not even funny. He and Leo are up there at the top. We could literally just go sit outside on a nice day and discuss random things about life and the world. I also want to be a Physical Therapist when I’m older, and boy howdy does Will probably know a lot of interesting medical terms and all that jazz. PLS I WOULD NEVER GET BORED TALKING TO HIM. Watch Nico maybe sort of become acquaintances with me cuz of Will.

Jason: I think we would get along a lot better than people would expect. We’re somehow polar opposites but also the same person. I don’t know if I would have a crush on him irl other than for his looks, but he’s who my friends pester me for having a crush on, so I, of course, think I do.

Leo: OF COURSE. Out of pretty much everyone in this group, I would probably be closest friends with Leo. We’re both smart (in different ways, mind you) but don’t get the best grades all the time. Stupid, silly jokes are literally my only version of humor, and watch the two of us just quip back and forth. He’s who I’d have a real crush on over Jason, honestly.

Piper: No. No way. I don’t think I would be able to stand her. Ever. She’s not mean, but there are just those people you don’t like. The only reason I even tolerate her is because of Jason and Leo.

Reyna: We’re the pair that are great friends on whatever team we’re both on (definitely volleyball, excuse you) and then we end up never seeing each other in the halls. The only discussion topic we know is volleyball or shitty gossip on our coaches lmao.

Frank: YES. oh my gosh, he would bring out the soft side of me. We’re the type of friends who could chat over tea or something. We would have deep, but civilized conversations about either the most useless things, or the most important. Also I love hugs, and he’s most certainly great at them.

Hazel: She’s like a little sister to me. I would give her tips about Frank even though I barely have any dating experience of my own. She would push me to create the art that I’m too scared to make. I would have such a fun time showing her a bunch of movies she was never able to see, and she would be so patient when I’m ranting about something stupid. She’s just the sweetest.

Lester: I- somehow, yes. I don’t really know why, but I know the answer is yes.

Meg: Nope. Nada. Non. Thumbs down. Sorry y’all, but just no.

Magnus: Not great friends, but yes. I honestly would probably think he’s weird and I have zero explanation as to why. I can’t blame him though, cuz I’m just as weird as whatever story I’ve made up for him in my mind.

Sam: Yes. Purely a school friend though. We’re in a few classes together, and there’s one of the teachers who always lets us be partners for things, because we’re so persistent.

Alex: PLS I’d wanna be friends so bad, but I would be invisible to Alex.

Carter: WE WOULD LITERALLY BE BEST FRIENDS I KID YOU NOT. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you that Carter is basically me as a book character. Sometimes we tire of having each other around, since we’re so similar, but we would always go to each other, if not our siblings, to vent or rant about something or someone. (aka us being flustered about Zia and Tom Hiddleston respectively). We try to sit next to each other in every class we have together, and the teachers miraculously allow it, because we’re well behaved students and always pay attention.

Sadie: YES. It’s a good thing Carter and Sadie don’t hate each other, or I would be doomed. The three of us plus my own brother would all get along so well, it’s ridiculous. Any time she and I are together, Carter is constantly rolling his eyes like Oh no, they’re at it again. Two Sadies? What will I ever do with them?

[timeandspacelord]

Fandom does not talk enough about how much shit Annabeth went through by the time she was 17.

Toxic family throughout her childhood led to her running away at age 7, fully intending to live on her own until she happened to meet Thalia and Luke, who she instantly bonded with. They go through their share of terrifying events until Grover finds them and as they're on their way to CHB at which point part of Annabeth's found family is ripped away from her and turns into a tree. And Annabeth is 7. She then spends the next 5 years working her ass off to prove herself to literally everyone around her. Then Percy shows up and she finally gets to go on a quest and nearly die only to find out that Luke, the other part of her found family, has betrayed her. So she's very broken up over that, but she still goes with Percy in SoM, she almost dies a lot, and it culminates with Thalia getting resurrected, which is a mixed bag because "yay found family" but also "this was a Plot by the bad guy who's also the last part of this found family". So you know, fun terrible times. And then she gets kidnapped and is forced to hold up the sky, and that ends with her kind of losing Thalia again, this time to the Hunters (and this all happens by the time she's 13). The Labyrinth happens and she thinks Percy died, but then he's okay, but then they're in the middle of an all-out, big scary war. At this point she's only 15 and still very conflicted over Luke. Then she spends a full year doing war strategizing and suchlike and the Summer To End All Summers kicks off with her thinking, yet again, that Percy died. Then all the war stuff happens, Percy becomes immortal, she almost dies for him, and she ultimately has to watch - and kind of implement - Luke's death. She's 16.

So she and Percy get together and hope they'll have time to have a relationship, but nope, they get about 2 months before Percy goes missing, which, considering all she's been through and the past 2 times she fully believed Percy was dead, is terrifying to her. So she spends months scouring the earth for him, but finds some randos instead, one of whom happens to be a sort of linchpin in a new Grand Scheme of the gods because there's a new Huge Danger, and he's also Thalia's brother. And so she helps them build a warship and come up with a plan to deal with this new Great Prophecy, and 8 months after Percy went missing, she can finally meet up with him again. Only to spend like, a couple weeks (?) with him before she has to embark, alone, on a highly dangerous, yet absolutely crucial sidequest that forces her to face her biggest fear ever and ends in both her and Percy falling into Tartarus. And then they go through Tartarus, which is literally hell and bundled with a bunch of trauma, and they've barely even gotten out when they have to hurry up and leave to go Boss Fight mother nature. So they do that, but it's pointless and they have to get yeeted all the way back to New York to fight Boss Fight 2: Electric Boogaloo against mother nature and some angry/mislead Romans. And finally that is done, and Annabeth has experienced loss and death and unimaginable pain and trauma, and she's still only 16 (maybe 17, I can't remember when exactly BoO ends).

But she's still not done, oh no! Some time after that (I think in the late fall?), she gets a call that her cousin on her father's side, from whom they'd been estranged due to Family Things, is dead. So she goes to attend his funeral or whatever only to find out that he's not actually dead. Well, he is, but only sort of, because it turns out he's a ghost (kinda) and his dad is also a god, just of the Norse variety, and he's living it up in the viking afterlife waiting for the end of the world. So now Annabeth knows she's blood related to two different pantheons of gods (and that there's a third one just chilling in Brooklyn), and her family is even more crazy and weird and messed up. And she's 17. And attending college.

I am 19 and if I'd experienced even a fraction of that in my lifetime, I would spontaneously combust due to the sheer damage to my psyche. Also, I'm struggling enough with uni with just my baggage and mental health stuff, I cannot imagine how she's juggling school work, really bad dyslexia, ADHD, training and/or likely monster attacks, and all the serious trauma she absolutely has to be dealing with after all of that.

[dottie-wan-kenobi]

Emotional anguish list round 4: Percy Jackson. And Annabeth Chase, because we need some girls in here

thanks!!!

Percy

1. okay we’re gonna start off with him not losing the Achilles’ Curse, which I am having 2 thoughts on: either he knows he has it BUT DOESN’T KNOW WHERE HIS SPOT IS, or he does know the spot but being in camp jupiter results in two things. 1) everyone hates his, as they see it, weird annoying disrespectful ass EVEN MORE because he’s fucking invulnerable, and 2) Percy spends every moment there itching with anticipation and hypervigilance that somehow someone will get in a lucky shot and KILL HIM. 

2. I honestly think coming home to find out that Sally is either pregnant or has had a fucking baby would send him spiraling. like. imagine you literally go to hell, you’ve been fighting non-stop for months, the world is narrowly saved from ending and your camp family almost dies. all you want is to go home and have things be normal for a while. but you get there and there’s a fucking baby. Percy “only child for 14 years” Jackson would suddenly……..not get all the attention he used to. and yeah I think he’d be able to be more mature about it than he might have at 14, but he’s traumatized and hurting and he wants his mom but she’s busy breastfeeding! he has to wait until she’s done! I don’t think he’d resent Estelle at all, just that he didn’t get to be there when they found out/all thru the Big Important Moments (instead he was in hell.) and now that he’s not getting what he needs and probably doesn’t feel like he can ask for it

3. Zeus was such a dick in TLT that I wouldn’t put it past him at all to strike down the airplane while Percy was in it, kill everyone on board, and grab his bolt of lightning and fuck off somewhere. I’m including this one bc I’m imagining Percy’s last moments, holding Annabeth’s and Grover’s hands, absolutely terrified and furious and so, so, so worried about his mom :)

4. IMAGINE IF ANNABETH DIED IN TLO. IMAGINE!!!!!!! she’s the tether between him and his mortality. I honestly think he would go crazy and probably kill Luke/Kronos himself. I hate chaos fics with my whole entire being so I feel like he’d probably end up being rude/disrespectful to the gods after the battle ends, and either get turned into a god (whether it happens against his will or not idk) or he’d go home and just. fall into such a depression. he did all that shit for the gods, for the world, he’s fundamentally changed himself FOREVER and yet, he lost one of his best friends, a girl he loved. a girl he loves. how unfair and cruel can life be

5. Percy, miraculously 31 years old, being dragged into ANOTHER war by the gods:

Annabeth

1. she and her dad and step mom having some kind of miscommunication that ends with her running back to camp (or Percy, whatever) thinking that she’ll never talk to them ever again. I’m picturing her being about 15 maybe? I can’t remember all the issues she and her family had in canon but dskjfhdjshafjk if it’s bad enough, what if they don’t talk for years? what if Frederick and Step Mom never find out that she survived the end of the world? what if, when Frederick goes looking for Magnus, he goes looking for her too? he shows up at the Jackson’s door, and whether she’s there or not, hearing that her dad wants her…….that would be A Lot and she’d have to go back and reevaluate the argument that lead to her running away again and just have lots of emotions about it

2. I saw a fic recently where somehow (I didn’t read it :/) Annabeth didn’t end up falling into Tartarus, just Percy did. and I think this would ABSOLUTELY DESTROY HER. that’s her best friend, her boyfriend, her soulmate and he’s down there ALONE, for HER, because of her. who knows how he’s doing, and if he’ll make it out, and also leading a quest without him is super hard and it’s so difficult to sleep knowing he’s literally in hell, and she’s just falling apart with worry and fear

3. tbh after falling into hell, I think any kind of falling would be traumatic. so what if she falls off the lava wall? or like, Jason picks her up and flies? the first has happened a hundred times before & the second has def happened at least once, she shouldn’t be panicking so hard, but she is and she can’t stop it. the feeling of the air all around her just throws her right back into that moment, that gut wrenching agony and anticipation, waiting for the fall, waiting to land and either die or open her eyes in the worst place she will ever possibly be

4. Percy really dies when he blows up the volcano. first of all, the grief of him and what they could’ve had would be terrible and I imagine she would probably feel awful about going to Sally with her emotions, bc Sally lost her son and that has to be way worse. plus it’ll just remind her he’s dead. but even more so, suddenly the only person (that they know of) left to take on the curse is Nico...who won’t be 16 for several years, which they DON’T HAVE TIME FOR. Kronos is definitely rising sooner than that. Annabeth is a natural leader and tho it would probably take a little while for her to get back on her feet, she would take over what she had to/could, and. there are two options here: either Kronos rises and dies in basically the same way (Annabeth gets the Achilles’ Curse but her lifeline, Percy, is dead?????) and neither Annabeth or Nico is the prophecy kid, Jason is. but they don’t know that??? so Annabeth is haunted by this prophecy, wondering what the hell it means, and waiting anxiously until Nico turns 16 and NOTHING HAPPENS??? or, Kronos rises and Annabeth, furious w the gods who are barely helping or almost never saying anything, and also alone and vulnerable to Luke, switches sides :)

5. tbh... moving to New Rome. I don’t think she’d be able to live there without some issues, namely that it would feel wrong????? she’s a Greek? it’s not home? the architecture is off (she could do better, but if she says that, everyone will hate her EVEN MORE.) and there’s either no shrine to her mom, or it’s small and shitty like Neptune’s? plus she’d miss all of her friends and Chiron desperately? she’d be away from Sally and Paul, who are her and Percy’s main support system, and closer to her dad, who she’s not very trustful of? also how is she gonna be there without thinking about Leo accidentally firing on the place, which reminds her of the rest of the quest, which reminds her of falling into Tartarus. ?????????????? going there would do nothing but lead her to a small mental breakdown imo

send me a character and I’ll put them in 5 situations that’ll cause them maximum emotional anguish

[melancholyicedtea]

Rick Riordan could totally make Percy the villain in a future book series

Think about it, if he spent more time acknowledging that Percy is really big on revenge and likes to inflict inhumane amounts of pain to anyone who slightly threatens the people he loves, and in some instance LAUGHS as he watches them suffer.

It was first mentioned in SoM that his fatal flaw is fatal loyalty and that’s what lands him in Tartarus.It gets to points when he goes overboard and genuinely scares the people he is fighting for (annabeth taking a step back from him when Percy chokes a monstress with her own poison in HoH). Or how when him and his mom literally KILL his abusive step dad in TLT, he is really happy about it but he regrets not being the one to have given the final blow to finish Gabe off for good.

Or how during SoN when he’s traveling with Frank and Hazel through the north west to get to Canada, Rick made the point that they weren’t bothered by gangs while going through those rough neighborhoods because Percy was just THAT threatening.

The reason why Percy fights for camp half blood is because it’s his found family there. He could care less about saving the world if it didn’t really affect him, even though he would most likely not admit it. He could care less about quarrels between the Gods, but him and his friends keep on getting wrapped up in it.

With the people he trusts it's easy to see him in his happier, goofier, joker side. But with strangers and people he doesn’t know, he has this blank almost angry expression. You know how cold and intimidating Percy was to like Leo, Piper, and Jason until he understood that Annabeth trusted them and he decided their his friends in MoA?

He’s a little overpowered being the son of The Big 3 as well and keeps on pushing himself to unlock new abilities that get more frightening as he grows into his powers. When he says “why” when Apollo shows up at his door isn’t really meant to be played for laughs, it's just that he’s so DONE and so ANGRY at the gods.

As he grows up, he starts to align more and more with the radical ideologies that Luke had. Luke and Percy aren’t that different after all with what they think about the Gods. Luke was just willing to betray everyone who trusted him and kill his own found-family to achieve his revenge. If Percy wasn’t doing all he could to protect what he loved, nothing would stop him from being able to rip apart Olympus with his bare hands.

I’m just saying all it really would take for Percy to completely snap is to go overboard and accidentally scare away/hurt someone he loves, or have one of them die and have him be unable to save him, the most impactful examples being; annabeth, sally, his little sister, and possibly Grover (a lot of people overlook their friendship :c ) So yes, Percy just needs a little push to send him over to him embracing his dark side.

I predict that when he finds about Jason’s death he’ll be really upset and blame Apollo, one of the Gods who keep on ruining their chances of a normal life (remember Jason was just trying to pass his classes and stuff until Apollo came and asked for his help.) Jason is similar to Percy in power and leadership, but Jason agreed to help because he believed it was the right thing to do and he was raised at camp Jupiter with the values of honor, duty, and serving the Gods. Percy would have said no, and he DID say no in TOA book one.

Because he doesn’t do what he does because it’s the right thing to, but because in saving everyone he gets to save the ones he loves as well. He made the decision he would rather to let the world be taken over by the giants instead of letting annabeth fall to Tartarus on her own. He didn’t think they would survive. He just wouldn’t leave her. This has been my dark!percy analysis, thank you for coming to my ted talk

[gallifreyandemigoddess]

Listen, I have a lot of emotions about “The Burning Maze” and everything that unfolded in this particular book. It destroyed my soul in many ways, but it also gave me an immense amount of satisfaction and joy.

But, to start it off in the same way that I’ve started my other two posts about “The Hidden Oracle” and “The Dark Prophecy”, I will start with my favorite sun god, Lester Apollo.

    I’m really happy with how profound his character development has become.

“All of this,” I announced, “is my fault.”

You can imagine how difficult this was for me to say. The words simply had not been in the vocabulary of Apollo.

We have this former Olympian who was used to having everything he could ever desire and who was arrogant and self-centered (though in the first book he admitted that his self-centeredness was a pretense, something to hide how lonely and heartbroken he actually was, more specifically on the twenty-seventh chapter, on page 258) I add the source to show that I’m not making shit up. And through the course of his trials he has, in a way, grown to accept his fate as a human.

He still laments his fate, and he still wishes he could become a god and leave all those problems behind, but he has grown to understand what it means to be a human, and to accept his emotions and to feel.

“In times past, I would have scoffed at any nymph who dared to call me poor thing. Now, Mellie’s show of concern caused a lump to form in my throat. I was tempted to rest my head on her shoulder and sob out my troubles.”  

“Gods wouldn’t normally mourn the loss of a griffin, or a few dryads, or a single ecosystem. The longer I was mortal, the more affected I was by even the smallest loss.”

There are several parts where he is gentle to Meg and to Grover when they seem to be hurting. The Apollo from the first book would have never done that, he would’ve cared only about himself and his own feelings.

The few times he mentioned how much he missed being a god, he wasn’t thinking only about how he could simply pass his duty to the demigods and return to the safety of Olympus, he was also thinking about the lives he could’ve saved had he still been the god of healing.

This part, however, shows great depth because in the past (around the first book maybe), he wouldn’t have given the choice a second thought, he would’ve just left:

I wondered, if my own father, Zeus, appeared to me just then and offered me a way back to Olympus, what price would I be willing to pay? Would I leave Meg to her fate? Would I abandon the demigods and satyrs and dryads who had become my comrades? Would I forget about all the terrible things Zeus had done to me over the centuries and swallow my pride, just so I could regain my place in Olympus, knowing full well I would still be under Zeus’ thumb?

Also, the little fucker tried to sacrifice himself so many times in the story I was about to tear my hair out. I lost it when he actually impaled himself with the Arrow of Dodona, I was very, as the scientists call it, shooketh.

“Let my friends go,” I said. “All of them. Then you can have me.”

The emperor’s eyes gleamed like a strix’s. “And if I don’t?”

I summoned my courage and issued a threat I never could have imagined in my previous four thousand years of life. “Ill kill myself.”

On a familiar note, Apollo is starting to realize that perhaps Zeus had a valid reason for sending him down to Earth as a mortal, which shows more growth, because on the last books he had only seen his punishment as something unfair.

“I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Zeus had been right to send me to earth, to correct the wrongs I had allowed to happen.

 Sassy Apollo is the best thing to happen:

“Girl, I see you- I felt like saying- You are not subtle, and we really need to have a talk about crushing on dryads.”

“Full points for vagueness, girl, but I want the dirt.”

Supporting (and charming) Apollo is also an amazing thing:

“Such a gorgeous blade held by the most beautiful woman ever to walk the earth. (No offense to the billions of other women out there who are also quite enchanting; I love you all.)”

Also, this part in which he was literally the Dad Friend?

“Meg!” I chided. “Sit back and buckle up, please. Grover, stop eating your seat belt. Your setting a bad example.”

Just imagine this scene please, “Meg summoned her golden swords. Grover fumbled for his reed pipes. I prepared to run away screaming.” because I pictured little Lester shifting uncomfortably on his spot as his friends prepared to fight like in a scene of The Avengers, and he just, he had nothing.

The time in which Meg was a straight up savage:

“Unbelievable,” I muttered. “After four thousand years, I am still discovering new things.”

“Like how dumb you are,” Meg volunteered.

“No.”

“So you already knew that?”

 Caligula’s character.

Caligula wants to be the new fucking sun god, and his whole plan to extract what is left of Apollo’s divinity? Fucking twisted but at the same time so...I don’t know how to explain it. I hate his character and I would die if anything happened to Apollo (I’d be damned if by the end he doesn’t go back to being a god) but at the same time, that plan shocked me to my very core. Its unnerving and unsettling but it makes sense. He always wanted to be seen as a god.

On the past book, the second emperor revealed turned out to be a former lover of Apollo, but on this book, it is shown that Caligula’s personality startled the god since ancient times. I find it curious how he seems to have history with each emperor.

Finally, Caligula laughed. “Well done!” He patted my shoulder, then snapped his fingers. One of his servants shuffled forwards and handed me a heavy pouch of gold coins.

Caligula whispered in my ear, “I feel safer already.”

After that, I stayed away from Rome for decades. It was a rare man who could make a god nervous, but Caligula unsettled me. This particular part though, I could almost feel the sexual tension, and no one can convince me otherwise that this wasn’t Caligula flirting with the disguised Apollo.

Another thing I found really interesting is the explanation for when Apollo became the new sun god, and his words to Helios nearly at the end of the book:

“But I remember you- your brilliance, your warmth. I remember your friendship with the gods and the mortals of the earth. I can never be as great a sun deity as you were, but every day I try to honor your memory- to remember your best qualities.”  

Now let’s move on, kids.

Let’s talk about Piper, Grover, and Jason for a moment.

I had forgotten how amazing Piper McLean was, specifically, how caring and sweet she is? She comforted Meg a lot of times thorough the book, and she was such a badass too? I love her? She’s the best? How could anyone hate her?

I also like how well she clicked with Apollo. It was cute.

Piper gave me a wry smile. “That’s nice. I like that. You’re sure you’re not the god of wisdom?”

“I applied for the job,” I said, “but they gave it to someone else. Something about inventing olives.” I rolled my eyes.

She burst out laughing, which made me feel as if a good strong wind had finally blown all the wildlife smoke out of California. I grinned in response. When was the last time I’d had such a positive exchange with an equal, a friend, a kindred soul? I could not recall.

I liked this too:

Piper arched her eyebrows. “Are you sensing a disturbance in the Force?”

“Please,” I muttered. “I’m sensing my usual bad luck.” Because RELATABLE.

Grover is still a sweet, dorky child. I like that we had more information about him as the book proceeded, specifically that he is yet to see Percy again (when will we have that reunion? I don’t know, but I need that to happen asap) and that he has never been to Camp Jupiter. All those months he had been in Palm Springs dealing with the natural disasters happening all around and with the disappearing dryads. It warmed my heart how he was so happy to go back to Camp Half-Blood, to his home.

I wasn’t expecting the news of Piper and Jason’s breakup, but I like that at least we got an explanation and that it was rational.

“You’re wondering who you are without all the pressure.”

Piper loves him, but their relationship had a wrong start.

Hera messed with their memories, made them start dating for a reason that did not exist. Her mother, the goddess of love, made her believe that she needed to have a boyfriend to be a proper daughter of Aphrodite. It’s only reasonable that after everything ended and they tried to settle down she’d realize that she doesn’t know where that leaves her. She needs time to decide who she is- not the daughter of Aphrodite, not as one of the Seven of the prophecy- as her own person.

And even when they’re not a couple anymore, they’re still partners.

It struck me how easily they talked together, even about difficult things, and how well they seemed to understand each other.

Jason Grace. This part is certainly harder to write.

Let’s start with nice things:

“I tried to talk sense into Zeus. I told him it was wrong to punish you. He wouldn’t listen.”

I stared at him blankly, whatever remained of my natural eloquence clogged in my throat. Jason Grace had done what?

Zeus had many children, which meant I had many half-brothers and half-sisters. Except for my twin, Artemis, I’d never felt close to any of them. Certainly, I’d never had a brother defend me in front of Father. My Olympian brethren were more likely to deflect Zeus’ fury by yelling Apollo did it!

This young demigod had stood up for me. He’d had no reason to do so. He barely knew me. Yet he’d risked his own life and faced the wrath of Zeus.

My first thought was to scream ARE YOU INSANE?

Then more appropriate words came to me: “Thank you.”

Jason took me by the shoulders- not out of anger, or in a clinging way, but as a brother. “Promise me one thing. Whatever happens, when you get back to Olympus, when you’re a god again, remember. Remember what it’s like to be human.”

A few weeks ago, I would’ve scoffed. Why would I want to remember this?

Now, however, I had some inkling of what Jason meant. I had learned a lot about human frailty and human strength. I felt…different towards mortals, having been one of them.

“I promise,” I told Jason.

I really loved that part. I think it defines exactly the kind of person that Jason Grace was.

All right, let’s move on.

His death. Jason Grace’s death.

I won’t describe the scene, out of respect, but I honestly think that (while he didn’t deserve to die) he died as a hero, and that it is the only thing that matters. He died to protect his friends- his brother and his ex-girlfriend- and he knew what would happen, he was ready for it. He made his choice. It hurts, of course it does, but he had a hero’s death.

Other parts I liked about the story:

How were heroes with accessibility needs supposed to enjoy this death trap?

 Grover summoned the cry of Pan again.

You humans. You’re why we gods can’t have nice things. Are you sure, Apollo? Because I’m pretty sure that Percy Jackson could do a flawless PowerPoint presentation on how wrong you are.

That could be my life motto, I thought. He takes a lot of damage. Same, Apollo, same.

Imagine this scene, please, because it honestly gave me life:

Behind me, Grover wrestled with Coach Hedge, who was desperately trying to claw open a family fun pack of grenades while cursing the tamper-proof package.  Apollo is trying to be diplomatic and remain calm while they’re being threatened to life, and behind him are two satyrs wrestling over opening or not a big pack of grenades.

The Ares-so-lame video that went viral in mount Olympus that Apollo was definitely not responsible for uploading.

I enjoy running people over in a chariot as much as the next deity, but I did not like the idea of being the guy run over. Honey, now you know how demigods feel.

Apparently, Hephaestus throws great pool parties.

 If a goat wears a goatee, is it a man-tee?

 Apollo’s bitterness towards his family: “The Olympians allowed Zeus to strip me of my powers and toss me to earth. They’ve done half Caligula’s job for him. They won’t interfere. As usual, they’ll expect heroes to set things right.” Tune down the salt, Apollo, not a month before that moment you were one of the gods that expected heroes to fix everything.

This quote: “It’s been my observation that you humans are more than the sum of your history. You can choose how much of your ancestry to embrace. You can overcome the expectations of your family and your society. What you cannot, and should never do, is try to be someone other than yourself.” 

Mount Olympus Mega-God lottery.

The oracle’s riddles; the little game they had to solve to get to her. 

 The multiple mentions of Apollo’s love handles.

Imagine this, please: I still have nightmares about Hermes skating through Olympus with his big hair and gym shorts and high striped socks, listening to Donna Summer on his Walkman.  

Carry him away! I prayed, knowing that no god would listen. Please, just let Tempest get him to safety. This part wrecked me. How pained everyone was to Jason’s death, how a former god knows that his kind never listen to those kinds of prayers because they don’t care.

The maze giving Apollo the middle finger.

Apollo’s imminent rage and heartbreak when the maze used Hyacinthus against him.

Apparently Camp Half-Blood has a satyr school for young satyrs that want to be protectors?

Very few people look as good in tights as Spider-Man. 100% agreed.

Who cared about Apollo? I DO, BITCH, I DO.

How Apollo thought of his family when he was under Medea’s spell. Of his parents, of his twin sister.

The heartbreak that came with Crest’s death. How much it affected Apollo. The poor thing was just a child, and he died to protect them.

REYNA AVILA RAMIREZ ARELLANO IS GOING TO APPEAR ON THE NEXT BOOK. YES. MY QUEEN.

How Jason wanted to fulfill the promise he made to the sea goddess he met with Percy all those months before.

Leo’s arrival broke my heart. He couldn’t say goodbye to Jason. I pictured Piper and Leo’s reunion a million times, but I never imagines that.

I found myself crying. It was ridiculous, gods don’t cry. But as I looked at Jason’s diorama in the seat next to me, all I could think about was that he would never get to see his carefully labeled plans finished. As I held my ukulele, I could only picture Crest playing his last chord with broken fingers.

This line: “I would not allow those who had sacrificed themselves to do so for nothing.”

And the ending: But from now on, I would be more than Lester. I would be more than an observer. I would be Apollo. And I would remember.  

Everything that happened on this book has shaped Apollo, has made him more human. I think on the next book his promise of being more than an observer (or remembering) will come true- I think he will be stronger than before, because he wants to honor the memory of those that died for his cause.  

I want to see Reyna interact with Meg and Apollo, but most of all, I’m kind of worried for Thalia Grace. She deserves to know what happened to Jason, but I know that it would break my heart. She could react in so many ways…It’s only going to be painful.

But I’m so ready for it! (NOT)

As a whole, I loved the book. I’m really looking forwards to “The Tyrant’s Tomb.”

[takaraphoenix]

Can I just say something, Hazel is not v. realistic. Like I'm 13 and i can't say the same for all 13yolds but neither me nor my friends dream of growing old w/ a husband and like rick makes her and sammy to be soulmates and that's not how a 13yo's mind functions. Also, she shouldn't be completely dependant on her. And as someone who has experienced racism its v wierd that she only experiences in her schooling rather than also w/ her mum and even in new rome. 1/2

2/2 : And Rick just randomly makes the chracters diverse but then he forgets that race is a part of character. I mean Hazel was living in the 40s as an African American and now when she’s resurrected we hardly hear anything about her experiences w/ racism. It’s not realistic. I’d expect her to maybe have some centering as a character on that. I just think that Rick cannot display characters out of his perspecitve at all and im just very annoyed. idk what do u think on this all

When I was thirteen, we all didn’t quite think past the point of high school graduation - our life was in the now. We definitely did not think about growing old and picket fences.

But yeah, I said it in a post before - many posts by now - but Riordan writes only what he himself experiences. And that is the life of a fifty year old white CIS het man. And while I can’t attest for the CIS part because I’m not reading that one series that features the genderfluid character, you can feel every other aspect of that list very strongly.

You can feel the “fifty year old” when you read about literally every single teenager dreaming about the white picket fence.

You fan feel the “white” when you read Hazel, Reyna, Piper and Leo.

You can feel the “hetero” when you read the clumsy coming out of Nico at the end of Heroes of Olympus. And actually also in Will’s flippant attitude when talking to Nico about it, because in my experience as a fledgling lesbian, older and more experienced gays and lesbians were being very gentle and welcoming and not like “LOL that’s why I was trying to talk to you for so long because I’m gay too!”. That was just to retcon in that Will was also gay; had Riordan actually cared about the gay sub-plot before, then we would have had interactions between Will and Nico in PJatO.

You can feel the “man” at every female POV in the Heroes of Olympus series. Every. Single. One.

Gotta admit, as a white girl from Germany, I do not know how things are for black people in the US (you know, beyond the generic news coverage online and the police propaganda in cop shows), but nowadays with things like Black Panther, Black Lightning, Dear White People, Timeless (seriously, the part that I adore most about that show is how it dives into the female and black history, the kind that’s brushed under the rug), also gotta mention One Day at a Time here for the Latinx representation, I realized just how very… white-author the Heroes of Olympus characters feel.

Especially with Hazel it infuriates me because she comes from a different time and to include how her experience is, how things have changed - and worse yet, how things haven’t changed - would be so incredibly interesting. How she experiences everything.

I mean, seriously, Percy got shunned for being a son of Neptune because Neptune was feared - but so was Pluto. Just how awful must it have been for the black daughter of Pluto in New Rome…?

But oh no, worry not, the black girl from the 40s with no knowledge of the modern world perfectly integrated into New Rome in 2010. No issues here at all.

We live in a time and age where not everyone can be straight and white.

We live in a time and age where representation isn’t just asked for, we demand it, because the world isn’t straight and white.

So the author of the book series where every single major character was white started sweating. (Beckendorf and Ethan were the only non-white characters and oh look, both got killed off.)

So he… he literally just looked around what there is to represent and just slapped a label on each of his characters, like a check-list.

We need A Black Character - Hazel, check.

We need An Asian Character - Frank, check.

We need A Gay Character - Nico, check.

We need A Native American Character - Piper, check.

We need A Latinx Character - oh, let’s be generous on that one; Leo and Reyna, double check.

I didn’t notice that back then, when I first read the books. But by now…?

I’m not saying I could do better - heck, unlike Riordan I also have the disadvantage of living in Europe and thus not even second-hand witnessing what the American Experience might be like for people of color - but if you decide to write a major book series and represent something you are not familiar with - may it be being gay, or from a different cultural background, or being a woman - then you should at the very least put the research into it to back it up.

Or, the easier cop-out, stick to what you did before.

And I don’t mean that as “just write whites”.

It really would be less of an issue if Heroes of Olympus had still been only from Percy’s perspective. Because we would have only gotten to meet the characters through Percy’s eyes - and not their own.

Because then we wouldn’t have had those flashbacks to Hazel’s past, we wouldn’t have to question how it came that those characters didn’t think about certain things or complain how they all seemed to think about other things collectively. And literally no one would have complained about a lack of POV changes, because PJatO didn’t have those - it was all Percy, so no one would have questioned if the sequel had also all been Percy.

It’s one thing writing about characters, but it’s different writing as characters. And in my personal opinion, Riordan shot himself in the foot by making HoO a POV split between this very diverse cast of characters, without having the actual background knowledge to flesh them fully out.

Not to mention the part where I generally think that going from one POV up to three and then to seven and nine different POVs had already been too much of a jump, but if you do that with so many different characters, who should also all have a different feeling to them, that only makes a difficult task that much more difficult.

Now, obviously, having the Seven all be white males would have been a disaster and also the wrong choice.

There are different things that could have been done though.

Like I mentioned, keeping it Percy’s POV, which we all would have been used to and no one would have questioned (heck, even if he had just done it a Jason and Percy POV due to Lost Hero).

Doing actual research for the things you write about. Also an option.

Or dialing down on the unknown. Let’s not forget, he wasn’t just juggling seven characters who represented something he wasn’t personally familiar with (also including Annabeth, because girl), out of the total of nine main characters all but three were completely new and had to be introduced.

In my personal opinion, he should have carried more characters than just Percy and Annabeth (and then later on also Nico, but not important enough to be one of the Seven) over into this book-series.

Clarisse, for example - she is over twenty, she is an experienced fighter and hero. That’d be a female character to be fully explored, but who has already been introduced (and would have made more sense than Frank, Hazel, Leo and Piper on terms of them literally having been introduced to the demigod world barely months prior with a total of one quest of experience before going to war).

Chris Rodriguez, who while never explicitely stated to be Latino as far as I remember, the name does imply and Riordan could have doubled down on that and included him. Hermes is a very diverse god, considering how much Riordan played with the powers of not overly powerful gods like Bellona or Aphrodite or Hephaestus, he could have done the same with Chris. It’d also have been fascinating to see the former traitor work hard to earn back his place at camp and to explore the mental strain put on him in the Labyrinth.

You would not have to start from scratch if you take characters you already have established. It makes everything easier, both for you as the writer and also for the readers, who don’t have to familiarize themselves with half a dozen completely new main characters.

And it takes away that edge of it being utterly ridiculous that, despite both camps having veteran heroes who fought in the Titan War and are around 20 years of age, they decided to send four kids who are essentially total newbies and of whom one is 13 and two are 15.

But yeah, those are just… personal picks on how he could have handled it better. Me, I simply wouldn’t have written about a prophecy of seven because this is a damn war. Seriously, the quest for Atlas, a minor stepping-stone on the way to the Titan War, already featured five main players with Percy, Thalia, Grover, Bianca and Zoe, only two less than this entire freaking war needed according to the prophecy.

Have it be the Giant War. Feature all of those new characters, but also your already established ones. Keep it first person Percy POV and show them fighting together, instead of singling only seven demigods out in something that is supposed to be an all out war against Mother Earth.

Neither of those are be all end all kind of answers to the problem, but suggestions on how it could have been handled differently.

The important thing would be growth and as someone for whom HoO was just too much, I can not judge that. Because everyone makes mistakes and everyone grows as a writer. So if Riordan saw what he did and learned from it - I know one of the Magnus Chase mains is a Muslima, another is mute, I think, and one is genderfluid, so if all of those are handled with more respect, research and dedication and it shows that he learned from the past, then that’s good and okay, because nobody is perfect and it’s all a learning curve, but if those are also just cardboard cut-outs put in place to be Representation, then that’d be… sad, I guess. And disappointing.

But, well, due to not having read that - and not planning on reading that - I can’t attest to it. I can just hope for the best for the readers who seek representation and got giddy about the prospect. I hope they didn’t get disappointed in that.

And I hope he will continue to learn from mistakes and grow as a writer, because yeah I generally don’t wish anyone anything bad and I truly, truly loved Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He hurt himself by trying too many new things in the sequels and if he learns to handle that and return the writing to the quality of PJatO, that’d be pretty amazing.

[estler]

Thoughts

- I've missed books with fun chapter names

- I love the just complete lack of the fourth wall

- I always hated enchilada day in the cafeteria. Whole wheat tortillas and 1% "cheese" is not the way to go.

- "Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there." (Riordan 3-4) holy shit calm down dude you're like 12

- Percy "devil spawn" Jackson

- "...and tossed the pen through the air." (Riordan 13) not a pen, the pen

- I like the dynamic of Grover protecting Percy from the Greek threats and Percy protecting Grover from the New York ones

- Ugliano? That's unfortunate

- I forgot how genuinely he loves his mom. Reading it, its like you truly feel the tone and colors shift as soon as she is mentioned.

- also, I kind of picture Percy with just a slight new york accent. Like something that you don't really hear too much until he says something like "lay off"

- "...meaty toddler hands..." (Riordan 40) ???

- the minotaur is wearing fucking Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs what the hell

- "...shaking his meaty fists." (Riordan 54) oh so theres a trend with this awful descriptor okay

- so Percy killed a minotaur, had to watch his mom supposedly "die" and then feels guilty for not sharing his drink with his best friend. He's just a good kid trying his best

- Annabeth is "a couple inches taller" than Percy. I have literally only ever seen her drawn shorter or the same hight as Percy

- yeah, dionysus used to be a god of chaos before he became the god of wine and such didn't he? I've seen that overly sarcastic productions dionysus video

- god I barely survived 6th grade. I can't imagine having to do that 6 fucking times absolutely not

- I know that it's a kids book, but they really should have let Percy curse

- oh so the "field trip" is how that one dude took the lightning bolt

- Percy "devil spawn Peter Johnson" Jackson

- after a few days at the camp he's started to use their lingo, like "gods forbid"

- sharkbait hoohaha

- Perseus "Percy, devil spawn, Peter Johnson, Son of the Sea God" Jackson

- Grover stress eats trash

- EYYYY first seaweed brain!!! Page 147

- Perseus "Percy, devil spawn, Peter Johnson, Son of the Sea God, seaweed brain" Jackson

- headcannon: Grover knows classical music because that's how he was taught how to play music. Grover knows Hillary Duff because he unitonically listens to Hillary Duff

- Annabeth's crush on Luke would be even cuter if I didn't know that he ends up being a huge dick

- headcannon: Annabeth just has a library of themed insults in her head to use on the other kids and probably has a bunch ocean themed insults but never had the chance to use them until Percy showed up. This is also partially why she wants to go on the quest so bad.

- so it's the titan that wants the bolt (I can't remember his name)

- okay I know it says that Ares has a crew cut, but with the whole bicker aesthetic, I can really only imagine him with a thick, greased pompadour

- dude really tried to bargain his life with water bed deals and intrest rates

- Cerberus is a Rottweiler

- sounds like hades needs a vacation with his wife

- so Luke took Annabeth's cap, stole the bolt on the winter solstice, gave it to Ares, gave the shoes to Percy, then Ares gave the bolt to Percy with the magic bag, with the intention that once they got into hades, the shoes would bring him to the titan (I still cant rememberhis name), and consequently, the bolt

- Kronos

- Percy really went "Oh, he hit you? Welp, time for him to die" and honestly, I don't think he's in the wrong here

- YES SHE'S GONNA KILL THIS DUDE GOOD FOR HER

- aww I'm gonna miss Grover

- George Washington???

- he judges the gods for being overzealous enough to not feel the need to keep their stuff more secure and then says that the reason he lost the bolt to Ares was because he was overzealous and got his weapons knocked out of his hand. He speaks as if humans don't make the same mistakes as the gods do. Where do you think humans got it from? And where do you think the gods got it from? The titans. Overthrow the gods and what? Replace them with half-god humans who make the same mistakes as the gods? Or the ancient beings who made the mistakes before the gods? Yeah, yeah. Good plan Luke

Thoughts while reading Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief

I read the Lightning Theif, like, five years ago and I think I saw the first movie at some point but I don't really remember it.

Things I know about Percy Jackson

- Percy has dyslexia and sass

- Annabeth is smart and has sass

- Grover is a goat and has sass

- there's this whole thing about how "the big three" can't have kids because they'd be "too powerful" or something

- some dude is actually a horse-dude in a wheelchair for some reason

- and eventually nico and will show up, but I know that that's later in the series

[penbeatssword]

Review, from Book to Film: The Mountain Between Us

[**Serious spoilers ahead**]

So, last week I read Charles Martin’s The Mountain Between Us and on Saturday went with my mum to see the film. We both agreed afterwards that the credits should’ve said “loosely based on the novel” as the similarities were akin to a preliminary rough sketch that captures the general details and goes on to fudge the rest.

They changed a lot, both in terms of stripping away layers from the original story and adding things to create something new and awkward. This goes beyond the inherent need to cut down on content when adapting a book into a film. Here’s some of the changes:

The Names

So many names were changed, which I half understand because this is clearly not the same story as Charles Martin wrote so why pretend they’re the same characters, and half confuses me because why bother? Ashley Knox became Alex Martin, Ben Payne became Ben Bass (even though I only recall hearing his surname mentioned once near the end of the film), Grover the pilot became Walter, Rachel (Ben’s wife) became Sarah, Vince (Ashley’s fiancé) became Mark, and the dog named Tank – whose name they couldn’t remember so they called him Napoleon – was stripped of a name entirely (not to mention transformed from a Jack Russel to a Labrador).

The Occupations

Ashley Knox is a writer and Ben Payne is an orthopaedic surgeon, whereas Alex Martin is a journalist photographer and Ben Bass is a neurosurgeon. See Heart/Mind below for the significance on Ben’s occupational shift. Alex’s career alteration seems to be so the characters can use her camera to see further, so she can send photos of Ben to him near the end of the film and for the inclusion of a story I wasn’t sure what to make of where Alex explains befriending a young female guerrilla fighter and lending her lipstick, and later seeing the girl die and taking her photograph.

The Set-up

The book gives Ben and Ashley some time in the airport at the start to get to know each other and establish the characters and their motivations to get out of Salt Lake that night. It makes it believable that when Ben sees a charter plane and organises a flight, he thinks of Ashley who needs to get home for her wedding and is stuck in Salt Lake waiting to get to a hotel, and offers her a ride. The film gives us a glimpse of a busy airport, a frustrated Alex overhearing Ben talking about a surgery he has booked for the following morning, and approaching this stranger and proposing a charter flight. It’s rushed and feels contrived, and worst of all shifts the blame for the ill-fated flight to Alex.

Walter the pilot is given a miniscule amount of screen time, explaining that he met the love of his life a long time ago but she was already married so he’s alone. He suffers a stroke while flying and his passengers try to stabilise the plane as they crash. Grover the pilot, however, is a happily married man who explains that he is more in love with his wife now than when they married, who has been recently having chest pain which Ben makes him promise to have checked out as soon as possible. He experiences a heart attack while flying and somehow manages to crash land the plane as safely as possible (“off-screen” so to speak, the crash isn’t written), saving the lives of his passengers. Walter’s death is unfortunate but impersonal, and his burial by Ben is brisk to say the least. Grover’s burial, however, is treated with reverence by Ben as he finds a suitable place overlooking the mountain landscape, and gathers Grover’s possessions to later return to Grover’s wife.

The Expertise

Ben Payne loves hiking, and is a skilled outdoorsman. His supplies and skills are what keep himself and Ashley alive, including a Jetboil stove, sleeping bags, his use of Grover’s crossbow and Ben’s handcrafted bow drill. For some reason, in the film Alex has a large pack containing some camping gear with no explanation provided (we can assume this is somehow linked to her work), but neither Ben nor Alex talk particularly about any camping or survival skills. The only food they “hunt” is the cougar Alex and the nameless dog kill in self-defence, so most of the time the topic of food is just ignored. While Ben’s improvised snowshoes (followed later by finding real snowshoes) help them immensely in the book, they somehow make it across the landscape fine without them and with Alex hobbling in the film, and show Ben try briefly and fail to make snowshoes. The survival of Alex and Ben in the film is pure luck.

Ben is stripped not only of his camping and practical abilities, but as a neurosurgeon instead of an orthopaedic surgeon his medical skills are diminished as well. For the majority of the film, his medical care consists of pressing ice against one of Alex’s wounds once, wrapping and splinting her leg and primarily dabbing her face with a cloth. He does give the dog stitches, but does not for Alex or himself. The only glimmer of his original ingenuity and medical skill is when he constructs an improvised IV to save Alex after she falls through ice, and it feels weirdly out of place after the rest of the film works so hard to show that Ben isn’t much of a practical person and is kind of doing everything begrudgingly.

Importantly, his role of carer is removed almost entirely, helping Alex pull down her pants once to urinate and then disposing of the urine, and having Alex lean on him during their trek across the snowy landscape. This is because her injuries are reduced to superficial scratches and a break in her lower leg instead of femur. She operates on crutches, able to walk independently of Ben, and only for a brief time near the end of their journey is she dragged on a sled. This is a huge difference to the book. Ashley is entirely dependent on Ben’s care, which he carries the guilt for as he was the one who chartered the flight and encouraged her to come along.

Rachel and the Recorder

Very late in the book (later than necessary in my opinion), Ben reveals to Ashley that his wife Rachel passed away years ago. While pregnant with twins, Ben and Rachel are told that due to a medical complication she is likely to die if she attempts to carry the babies to term. On the slight chance that she and her children will survive, Rachel chooses not to have surgery. Ben doesn’t agree with her decision, they argue, and soon after Rachel and the twins die. Ben is revealed to have constructed a “house” (mausoleum) for her and their children.

Rachel is embedded throughout the book – Ben can’t go a single chapter without thinking of her, sometimes talking to Ashley about her, and regularly talking to Rachel and reminiscing on their shared past via voice recordings on a recorder she gave him. The recorder is a centrepiece of the book. Ben is continually making new, lengthy recordings which are also used as gateways into Ben’s past for the reader.

The film ditches all of this completely. The recorder is just a device for Alex to invade Ben’s privacy, listening to a message his wife Sarah left him to find out more about Ben. When Ben catches her, we hear the full message and Ben reveals that Sarah died of a brain tumour, and (as a neurosurgeon and her primary doctor) he couldn’t save her. Sarah is barely ever mentioned before or after this, and this avoidance of the subject with Alex, and Ben’s inability to save her, plays directly into the film’s focus: the dichotomy of heart versus mind.

Heart/Mind

Instead of taking the characters from the pages of Charles Martin’s book and putting them on the screen, the filmmakers created two new characters – or perhaps vacant shells is more accurate – and used them to illustrate a poorly executed display of Heart versus Mind. It goes like this:

One character represents Heart. They are emotional, impulsive, and often female (Alex). They follow their gut.

One character represents Mind. They are logical, rational and distant, and often male (Ben). They repress their emotions.

The film is really heavy-handed on this one. Ben is literally a neurosurgeon. He makes a stilted comment near the start about playing Candy Crush to occupy his amygdala just to make it clear to the audience that he’s intelligent, sees things scientifically and maybe doesn’t relate to other people very well. As always, the filmmakers are on the side of Heart, showing that even though Alex’s impulsive decision to take the charter flight and invite Ben along went badly, her gut instincts are right and Ben should be more emotional like her. Case in point: Alex insists on leaving the crash site as the best chance of survival, while Ben insists that in the event of a crash you should stay there to be found. Alex is later proven right when the plane’s beacon is shown to be destroyed. (See also the above Expertise: in the book, Ben explains to Ashley that they will need to leave as he knows that the usual advice is to stay at a crash site, but realises that the beacon wouldn’t have survived the speed of their crash).

Essentially this dichotomy also sets up Ben and Alex for the typical Hollywood romance formula of the couple stranded together who initially dislike each other, eventually bonding through their shared struggle. Cue unwanted sex scene interspersed with random shots of the two of them walking through the snowy wilderness together. This is followed by the two of them agreeing that he should leave Alex there and continue on his own to get help, and him literally turning around and going back insisting to bring her too as some sign that he’s come to care for her and is maybe shifting away from pure Mind towards Heart.

For those who haven’t read the book, Ben and Ashley get along quite well from the very beginning, their shared humour helps keep both of their spirits up and he repeatedly refuses to leave Ashley. Their bond is realistic, underpinned by genuine friendship and compassion. Additionally, a few times Ben’s impulsive decisions are shown to end badly, such as near the end of their journey when he attempts to take a shortcut down the mountain resulting in re-breaking Ashley’s leg and nearly suffocating himself.

The Ending

Oh man the ending. The filmmakers could’ve/should’ve cut out three-quarters of the ending and used that time back at the start for a better paced set-up. Instead, the audience is subjected to a lengthy period after the main characters have been rescued, showing the difficulties of readjusting to their old lives and struggling to communicate with each other. We get to watch Alex being uncomfortable around her fiancé, and Ben being sad about Alex seemingly returning to her old life (and fiancé) with no acknowledgement of their sexy times in the mountains. After Ben finally contacts Alex after ignoring her calls, they have an awkward lunch (well, they sit in a restaurant and don’t eat) where they ultimately walk away before both executing a dramatic turn-around, running back to each other and embracing – cut to black. That was a lot of build-up for not very much, but then this whole film is guilty of making changes to ramp up the drama and conflict at the expense of substance.

 Bonus: here are some other things I didn’t mention:

Ben is no longer from Jacksonville, he’s from London (to fit in Idris Elba, I assume)

All backstories surgically removed

Most of the details of the journey completely changed, including the addition of going around a river and Ashley falling through ice into the lake

Jump-scare in the form of Ben stepping into a bear trap

No pilot’s wife means Ben just keeps the nameless dog

The huge shift from Ben being the focal character and lens through which we see the entire story, to Alex being the main character

Offshoot of that, Alex is given more agency than Ashley in the book, but as a result she ends up less likeable (more argumentative, less friendly, more nosy, less reasonable)

 TL;DR: The film characters are caricatures, their survival is a fluke and I need someone who hasn’t read the book to tell me if the film is at all worthwhile on its own.

[pelagaios-a]

do not reblog;;

so as some of you may or may not know ( depending on how long you’ve been following me here ) in May I went on closing night to see the Lightning Thief: the Percy Jackson Musical with @wisdomwalked !!! it was absolutely amazing and totally worth the trip into NYC for the day and I have a post [ here ] about some of the stuff that went on. with the release of the soundtrack ( which I literally got in the mail Saturday --- thank you preorder ) I wanted to talk about the songs and their parallels / etc to the content in the Lightning Thief ( book 1 ). below I am going to have a lot of links ( I have put together the lyrics for the album ) and quotes and stuff so I guess bare with me here and I hope I make sense lmao.

to start off I’m going to skip a lot of the other songs since I wanted to address the song [ Good Kid ] and the following related songs [ Their Sign ] / [ Son of Poseidon ] and [ The Last Day of Summer ]. which you may be like, kat ??? what do they share ??? well, let me tell you.

to start off in the song Good Kid ( x ) we get the lyrics

six schools in six years, been kicked out of every place everything I ever do is wrong never find where I belong everybody on my case

the same old story, the same old song don’t act up, don’t act out, be strong

I keep my head down I keep my chin up but it ends up all the same with pack your bags Percy, you’re always to blame

and I say this because in the song Their Sign ( x ) we get

he show'd no sign that he ever existed no sign he might actually care my mom raised me all on her lonesome when I would reach out, no one else would be there !

which we get compounded with this set from Son of Poseidon ( x )

seems my good intentions always crash and burn everything I try to do will fail never once will I prevail going wrong at every turn

then as I have said [ before ] Luke hijaks the tune to good kid in the Last Day of Summer ( x ) and tells Percy

it doesn't pay to be a good kid a good kid a good son

Good Kid is literally the first song that comes to mind for me from this album --- possibly because it was the only release before the musical --- but it touches on a lot of aspects people forget about Percy within canon and brings to light a lot of his own thoughts and insecurities. I know I’ve said it before but he really does not have the best self image even at the most opportune of times let alone the fact his life is a trainwreck more often then not. Percy spent his life growing up alone ( Grover is literally his first friend --- think on that ) and was commonly the target of bullies. not only this, but he’s referenced being called stupid / problematic / not worth someones time by adults in his life ( I imagine teachers alongside the verbal abuse Gabe subject him to ). in his mind ??? the only person who cares about him is his mother and even then he’s rather worthless due to the fact he makes life so, so much harder for her then she deserves. all these lyrics ESPECIALLY the lyrics throughout Good Kid reference a child who is looking for someone --- anyone --- to accept him. I mean the damn song ends with

I swear I never stole anything I never meant to hurt anyone I swear, I swear that I’m a good kid a good kid, who’s had a bad run

and all I need is one last chance to prove I’m good enough for someone

he literally just wants a place to feel accepted and Camp Half Blood offered that but then they told him to leave --- remember that Percy did not have a choice in this quest or he would have been killed outright by Zeus. he’s twelve and sent on a quest everyone thought he would fail. explain to me how that helps ??? answer: it doesn’t ( “ no one ever tells me that they’re proud no one asks me, Percy, how'd you’d like to come around and stay” ). so I say again: these four songs alone touch on a lot of how he thinks of himself that gets breezed over since, as Percy is the narrator and plays off his own problems, fanon / the fandom / most people tend to brush over or ignore. he literally is looking for acceptance but does not expect any. Percy says he reached out but ??? it’s referenced in the past. it’s not something he does anymore. how literally fucked up is this.

and then there’s the [ Prologue / the Day I Got Expelled ] which follows the first chapter or so of the book. some of the stuff said just ??? really upsets me due to the connotations ( x ) which like, I am not getting into the big breakdown of this song right now since there is a LOT to talk about but I will bring up some lyrics:

look! I didn't want to be a halfblood I didn't ask to be a hero seeking grace being a halfblood, it's scary it mostly gets you killed in very nasty ways

now as most of us know, Percy has the Iconic™ line “look, I didn’t want to be a halfblood” at the start of book 1. to start the show off, though, they played a little deeper into it. that line up there I think very well plays off my [ hero headcanon ]. Percy never once has reference liking the idea of being a hero and right here he states at the beginning this is nothing he wants, nothing he wanted, and he really wishes this was not his life. the song then goes on to bring up other stuff but man this part to start it off. which ??? sets the mood for the rest of the musical in a way, I think. like, sure it had lighthearted and funny moments, but there’s always this thought in the back of your head that Percy never starts to like it or enjoy it or anything. every moment is something he wishes weren’t his, in a way. not to mention they don’t downplay his character in the slightest --- we get a good look into his mind from a perspective that starts to show it more outward then inward ( because let’s be honest, Percy brushing it off let’s us brush it off and the musical didn’t allow much room for “brushing off” ).

this all is one of the huge reasons I find the song [ Strong ] so important. not only is it a song entirely dedicated to Sally and Percy but it’s a song about how you’re strong because of your differences which ??? I think for a lot of people even outside the pjo universe would find important. like ( x )

normal is a myth everyone has issues they're dealing with and there's a place you'll need to go where you belong where the things that make you different are the things that make you special special like your father yes Percy, you are special

like food the color blue all the things that make you, you are the things that will make you strong so be strong

like, I don’t know whether I say it or just think it anymore ( ignoring the people who get my Percy feeling dumps ) but so much is out there coming at him from every side and this song puts a lot of focus on 1. the fact he needs another voice to remind him he’s more then what other people say ( “what was he a screw up to? sorry mom, if I was only normal... “ / “ mom if you're weird, you're weak” ) because he’s so hard on himself 2. just how important ??? Percy’s mother is, most especially to him --- she is one of his major reasons to keep going --- and 3. it again shows more of his self image. Sally Jackson is literally the sweetest most important character in this whole series and this song does a good job of summing that up. Percy at his point has one friend he thinks is ditching him and no prospects and he just failed again. in his mind whats the point? the song here is just.... god I don’t even know how to word how important this song is across the board.

anyway, I know I didn’t include every song on the soundtrack ( there are 19 total --- while all include Percy some are just about other characters which I don’t think ??? I’m going to discuss here. like [ Another Terrible Day ] / [ Put you in Your Place ] / [ My Grand Plan ] / [ The Tree on the Hill ] or [ D.O.A. ] which, while play into Percy’s journey and whatnot, are not about him or his growth in a way. I may touch on them slightly later ??? but definitely not right now.

tada tho here’s my brief pjo musical Percy synopsis I guess...