#the end of that book was so jarring and tragic which sucks bc i don't think that's how it was meant to be read

[starstruck-shadowsight]

Finally waving goodbye to the dotc crew úwù

[rynnaaurelius]

Goddammit im so hapoy to have found you, a Luke apologist. I jaut got sucked back into the whole fandom bc of the upcoming series and... i read the original books when i was really young, right, 11,12,13. And yea, Luke was the bad guy!!

But now im actually Luke age. And i know how young everyone actually is. If you put me in charge of a bunch of 12-15 year olds and made me watch them die one after the other; i'd probably side with the side that's AGAINST those making this happen too???

Idk his stance is just so so so understandable. I'm studying to become a teacher rn and being responsible for big groups of young kids - it feels a certain way. It's like... motherly instincts, but not really, but kinda, but definetly extreme protectiveness.

Now did he make some bad choices along the way blablabla, sure yea. But holy hell his position is understandable.

ESPECIALLY! Knowing about New Rome and that alternatives are a possibility, actually, the greeks just aren't getting them??? Nah i'd definetly try and murder all the gods. Viciously.

I don't really know where i'm going with this except that i was scrolling through the Luke tag and one of your posts was like a breath of fresh air in between all the, mostly pretty young, fans that hate on him and everything he every did. So thanks, i guess?

Goddamn, I somehow never got an email for this, so I had no idea this was collecting dust in my inbox. Sorry about that.

Also, you left me rambling, so. . .sorry about that.

And yes. I am more or less the same age Luke was during the series, and I can't imagine the number it would do on you to be responsible for prepping a bunch of preteens and teenagers to face their violent deaths, especially after what he went through with his mother and Thalia.

I left it in the tags of the post that went viral against my will, but Luke's living out a different genre from Percy and company, and I—I would lose my shit, too, if in his position. That's torturous, dystopian shit.

They're kids, damn it.

(And I have. . .many headcanons about Luke Castellan and Camp Jupiter and Greek demigod life expectancies. Most of them not good, all of them trying to square the worldbuilding)

And I find it so difficult to believe that it's a bad person—and not simply a very angry and hurt person—who sets out to do really questionable things to try and keep another kids from suffering and dying, to prevent anyone else from becoming himself.

There's a certain despair through it and Luke's choices; I really, really have my doubts over whether Luke genuinely believed that he would survive the war, either way.

Raging against the dying of the light and all that. He knows he will likely fail, he knows he's propping up a monster, and he's doing it anyway in this desperate attempt to create something different.

This makes Percy so important because he still thinks that as family and as people, the gods can change—just look at his conversation with Hermes at the end of TLO.

There's a faith he very understandably keeps (Poseidon is, by godly standards, a good dad who tries and that's important), a faith that Luke, in turn, has understandably lost and we see Hermes's grief and regret over that loss.

Luke's last change in heart, his choice to believe in Percy, in how to break this cycle of violence and abuse that's been eating demigods alive, is beautiful and kills me every time.

(Requisite note that this final choice takes on a different timbre considering the events of HoO)

He's lost everything—his mother, Thalia, Annabeth, any semblance of a home he ever had. Which is how I think he justifies Kronos, ultimately, I think. He's lost any hope he has, for himself or otherwise, and is intent on making the gods pay for what they've done.

Like every other tragic hero, he penned his own tragedy, knowing what was going to happen the whole time, which kills me.

He walks into his own end and, at the end, finds that last thing at the bottom of Pandora's jar—Hope.