#waking up in Percy Jackson

[sevsalio]

Gimme more solangelo pweasee

[luvingsolace]

“Nico reached into his own pocket. He touched the bronze coin he always kept there — a keepsake Will had given him as a token of his dedication. He wondered if Will’s commitment would always be that durable.”

He wondered if Will’s commitment would always be that durable.

CUNT HES LITERALLY IN HELL FOR YOU

[supine-ly]

three peas in a pod

[losersolace]

nico di angelo can sleep ANYWHERE. he’s like the kid at weddings who puts 2 chairs together and curls up under the speakers with his shoes on and all and sleeps like its nothing. in contrast, will solace (being a son of apollo) has amplified hearing and has to spend like 3 hours tossing and turning bc a dog barking a mile away is keeping him awake + once the sun is up there’s no way he’s falling back asleep.

this also reflects on their appearance the morning after. will has the worst bedhead ever, he tries everything to fix it but it kinda stays there the whole day. nico wakes up with weird hair on the side he slept on but he shakes it out and it immediately falls perfectly like he’s a disney princess. BUT he does get puffy eyes + dark circles while will looks well rested even though he got 4hrs of sleep.

[sleepyvib-es]

thinking of how fun it would've been if percy had started getting dream visions of jason like he did with thalia before they got swapped

[honeysmoonn]

luke castellan who has a big fat crush on you. luke castellan who knows about your big fat crush on him. knowingly, he’ll always make sure to stare at you across the room. luke castellan who says stuff like “starry-eyes can’t get enough, can she?” causing you to go red hearing the nickname. luke castellan who is a huge flirt, constantly making jokes a little too mature for the younger kids to understand, always tracing his hands along your thighs or neck just to see you squirm. luke castellan who can stop looking at you, who always makes sure to have his hands somewhere on you; either that be you thighs, shoulders, anywhere. luke castellan who never confessed, just built up enough courage to finally kiss you. luke castellan who says, “girl, you got me starry-eyed” whenever you kiss.

[demigods-posts]

say what you want but annabeth is 100% the big spoon. and it definitely stems from the fact that everything she loves seems to leave her in some way. at least it feels like that for a long time. but cradling percy reassures her that's he's here and here to stay.

[tending-the-hearth]

annabeth not kissing percy before the last olympian battle not because she was fondly exasperated, but because the last time she kissed him before a battle she thought he died, he was gone from her life, and it was the scariest time she'd experienced, the thought that percy was gone forever. she couldn't give him a kiss before the battle because what if it happened again? what if this time, he didn't come back to her?

[frogs-in-my-tea]

Guys did you know I really like solangelo?

[bluerazberrysoda]

do u think leo would get like wet dreams or whatever about jason and when he woke up he'd feel really weird looking at him and would like avoid talking to him for a while cuz he got that weird Internalized Homophobia Guilt.

adn then when jason died he kept getting dreams but this time they weren't sex dreams it was just dreams of them like holding each other and being tender and everything they could've had if leo had learned to accept himself and his feelings sooner.

now leo doesn't even feel weird about dreaming about jason anymore he just wakes up and he's all alone and beyond that initial haze of lust is the desperation to just be seen and held and loved. and now he can't even have that because jason's gone. and he's crying curled up in himself until morning. every night. imagine that. imagine them apples

[aterfish]

I'm not ever careful and I can be rude, yeah

[ukelele-boy]

Zeus just yeeting chunks of Apollo the god of prophecy's memory to prevent him from realizing somethings up.

man's wiping Apollo's brain faster than a car windshield wiper.

[nicodisigma]

We often say that tsats 2 was not foreshadowed in tsats 1 as if solangelo didn’t literally agree to visit Hades after their tartarus quest since Nico saw Apollo and Will hasn’t seen Hades yet 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃……………

[twinsarekeepers]

This fandom does such a disservice to percabeth and Percy as a character when y’all make him out to be some clueless simpleton that doesn’t know she has feelings for him.

HE KNOWS!

He just doesn’t want to do anything about it, especially after Titan’s Curse, because if he does, he’ll start imagining a future for himself.

Percy forced himself to be the child of the prophecy so that Nico wouldn’t be, because he was trying to save Nico. Which means he had to get real comfortable with the idea of dying at the ripe old age of sixteen. And acting on his feelings for his best friend was not the way to do that.

That boy was hardcore yearning for her because he wanted to be with her so badly but he also couldn’t.

[simransky]

This is toxic of me to say but I think I wanna write waking up in pjo (I will probably not follow through)

[aroaceleovaldez]

I HAVE BEEN REMINDED OF SOMETHING i think i've made a post about it before but maybe it's just sitting in my drafts. idk, whatever, I will ramble again. Said thing that reminded me was a tiktok by madison_murrah about how the PJO TV show doesn't get the balance between mundanity and magical correct for pjo and I want to expand on that cause while a.) it totally is a problem in the show and i take issue with it, b.) it is also a problem in later books and i ALSO take issue with that too and i would like to elaborate on it

this got long so ramble of the day below the cut:

so the thing is that PJO is actually pretty unique in it's approach to hidden world modern fantasy. like, hidden world modern fantasy is a decently established genre with a ton of examples, but there's a reason why PJO stands out so much, and that's because technically it's NOT "hidden world." There is very intentionally no distinction between the mundane world and the mythological, at least in first series. They 100% overlap. And you do not necessarily need to be "special" to see the "mythological world-" some mortals are totally naturally clear-sighted, a lot of kids are clear-sighted, and it's like 50/50 for if mortals can become clear-sighted. In fact, most demigods aren't immune to the effects of the Mist, all that really matters is if you're actually thinking about being able to see through it. And there's a reason for that!

In general, this format of the "hidden world" modern fantasy serves two purposes: One, as the series is meant to introduce people to Greek mythology and explain why it is relevant and how it can be relatable in modern contexts, it intentionally juxtaposes myths against modern concepts: Medusa runs an apparently average garden statue store. Procrustes runs a mattress store. The entrance to the Underworld is in LA at a record store. Circe lives on an island paradise that's secretly dangerous. Hydras are like chain donut stores that seem to pop up on every corner. Perseus and his mother struggle in Perseus' childhood but get a happy ending. Calypso has an island paradise where the challenge for the hero of our story is being tempted to leave behind his goals. The plot of Sea of Monsters is blatantly the Odyssey, and it's about Percy trying to get to his best friend (who he shares a literal psychic link to) who is in danger of getting married to someone awful (a literal monster) to help you understand Odysseus trying to get back to Penelope and how important to each other and in sync they are. Battle of the Labyrinth is Theseus and the Labyrinth and it's Percy/Theseus trying to protect his home and his people and fellow kids (like Nico) from the dangers in the maze. These are all supposed to help us understand what is actually going on in those stories.

We also still see how Greek mythology influence shapes and influences western culture in general in their world (which is supposed to be our own and so uses real-world examples) - in government, in architecture, in pop culture - Mythomagic is clearly supposed to be your standard TCG like Magic The Gathering. And in general there is no distinction between where the mythological ends and mundane begins - Camp Half-Blood is both a magical training space for demigods and your run of the mill underfunded summer camp, complete with cheesy camp songs and t-shirts and crafts. Olympus is located on top of the Empire State Building which is operating completely as normal except for when a demigod asks to go to a non-existent floor. Your best friend with a muscular disease in his legs is secretly a satyr. Your brother with down syndrome is a cyclops. Your teacher in a wheelchair is secretly an immortal centaur. Your crappy algebra substitute is a literal fury. But also they're still your teachers. The satyr is still your best friend, the cyclops is still your brother. And that brings me to the second aspect of all of this (which i have talked about before [here] and [here]) - the other purpose it serves is that it is an extension of the overarching disability themes that form the core of the series.

The entire reason that meshing of mundanity and magical is so intertwined is entirely because it's part of the disability metaphor, specifically inspired by early 2000s parenting/teaching concepts for children with disabilities, particularly learning disabilities, as trying to reframe disabilities as "superpowers" to empower kids (and still exists in some more modern forms - like referring to disabilities as "being differently-abled") (I talk about it in my previous post on the subject but this generally fell out of favor due to many kids/students finding it belittling of their struggles) - this is why we get the description of ADHD and Dyslexia being framed as "demigod superpowers." In the series this structure is intentionally made to encourage kids to reframe how they view disabilities in general as not something negative but something interesting and fantastical that they may be more open to engage with - and PJO does this in a really nice way where a lot of the disability struggles are still acknowledged and treated sympathetically. Kids still get bullied, Percy and Annabeth struggle in school or with reading/spelling, they grapple with both internal and external ableism. The entire reason for the titan war in the first series, at least from the demigod perspective, is criticizing flawed systems meant to support disabled people that don't do their job effectively or let too many people fall through the cracks. The Mist "hiding" the "mythological world" from mortals (and even some demigods) is about how most abled people (and some undiagnosed people) don't recognize disability struggles until it affects them personally. None of these things are glossed over! It's handled with nuance and care! The series says "you can be disabled and you can be like these fantastical heroes - not in spite of your disability, but alongside it. Neither negates the other." The series was explicitly made so Rick's disabled son could see himself in a hero and learn about mythology for school. Those are the two pillars of the entire franchise: Disability and learning about mythology.

So, when you mess with that "hidden world" structure, the entire thing falls apart and it immediately doesn't feel right, because it's no longer serving either of those two purposes when it needs to be fulfilling both. Late-series Riordanverse has a tendency to compartmentalize the mythological and keep it entirely sectioned off from the mundane. Think about first series and even TKC versus later series - how many mortal characters are there? what do they do? are they just in the background or do they interact with the main cast frequently? are they more than just family or an extension to the main cast? First series we see Percy's classmates frequently, Percy talks about his mundane experiences at school, multiple mortal parent characters (and other mortal characters like Rachel) are active participants in and vital to the plot. We even see a lot of background mortal characters. In TKC, not only are all the magicians technically mortal, but also Sadie's completely mundane best friends help her out. Now think about HoO, or ToA, or even MCGA. Think about the mortal characters in those series. How important are they? Out of the important ones, how much are they in mundane situations versus being almost entirely involved in something mythological? How many aren't related to any of the main cast? How many aren't actively working for a god? The answer is basically zero! Why is that? Because Rick stopped letting the mundane exist. The entire draw of the main series is that Percy does continue to live this mundane life and that adds to his mythological life and makes the balance and meshing between them interesting, but basically all mundanity ceases to exist by HoO. Camp Jupiter is an isolated entirely magic town. Percy and Jason's schools are full of mythological beings as basically the only people they interact with. The Tri's headquarters is an entire giant building in New York City that they completely control that just so happens to ALSO be directly across the street from the local Oracle's house, because even where Rachel lives isn't allowed to be mundane anymore. Why is Olympus just at the top of the Empire State Building versus the Tri having an ENTIRE building? That feels weird and unbalanced, particularly given the difference in importance between those two! Because one is playing into that balance of the meshing of mundane and magical and the other isn't! The show continues this trend. It doesn't allow any of the mythological to exist within mundanity like it functions in the books, which creates a completely different atmosphere and doesn't allow those spaces or scenes or characters to serve their actual narrative purposes, either making it easier to understand mythology contextually or what disability metaphor or representation is occurring there.

It's part of the problem with show!Percy being too mythologically-savvy - Percy is supposed to be the mundane lens unfamiliar with mythology that the audience is learning by proxy through. That's the entire point of the series! If you have Percy already know everything because he's already too ingrained into this mythological environment from the start, and he just exists in this entirely magical world where he understands everything immediately then the literal target audience of the entire franchise (students being introduced to mythology) is left behind! That's part of why the pacing of the show feels so bad! It's rushing through every scene that's more or less the same as the books, particularly anything mythological, because the show is assuming you've already read the books and already know enough mythology to know what it is and what happens and that you don't want to see it again, so it rushes through. The show doesn't explain things that it presumes you already know - worldbuilding, character decisions, basically any mythology, etc, so it doesn't even bother with it.

Later books in the franchise do this too - as long as it's tangentially Greco-Roman mythology, or if it's anything to do with the main series like a reference in TKC or MCGA or etc, it's not going to elaborate much if at all. HoO speeds through Jason's introduction to CHB, and the only reason we get much introduction to Camp Jupiter is because it's actually new. We're no longer trying to contextualize or learn about mythology, it just all becomes set-dressing and references thrown at you rapid-fire as filler. By late HoO and into TOA and TSATS and such, we're not longer even within the realm of pretending like we're adhering to mythology at all. Why is Iris a vegan? Why is Rhea a hippie? Dunno, don't care! Literally doesn't matter! Why are the pandai panda/elephant-monsters and the troglodytes frog-monsters when that's not part of their actual history at all? Well a.) literally just word associations and b.) possibly a little bit of racism (they're supposed to be humans from India and northern Africa, and you made them monsters. cool. okay. and their plotlines totally aren't horrible within those contexts. awesome. please try thinking literally at all next time, thanks). We're not even bothering to look at mythological instances anymore for a basis, a lot of it's written like we're just going based on the first results on google (hi Menoetes and the cacodaemons - the latter of which is not even spelt correctly once in the entire book - which is weird because they do say "daemon" so they know the word. Not that the cacodaemons are mythologically accurate at all because then they would be humanoid. Instead they seem to just be inspired by the things from Doom). None of it serves the purpose of the narrative at all; we're literally just making random choices, some of them quite distasteful! In large part due to refusing to acknowledge the actual contexts of the myths and how that might translate into something similar or equivalent a modern setting to help conceptualize it - something the first series did inherently by design. And we need this! A.) So that you're less likely to make bad decisions because you are inherently thinking about the historical and cultural contexts of these things and how to compare/explain it, and b.) because the audience for later books/the other series and the show is going to be the same as the first series! Those nonsensical references may be at best cameos to people who are already familiar with them, but if your intended audience is new to mythology then making references like that is just going to leave people out of the loop! You don't shift your target audience in the middle of a franchise!

Later books in the series and the show are failing to understand what the first series was actually doing narratively and how it was approaching these subjects and its audience. When you fail to do that, it completely messes up the general worldbuilding and the core themes and intentions of the franchise as a whole. Once you lose touch with that you might as well just be writing a completely different franchise. You need to approach it from the same lens or else it will feel completely off, because otherwise you've lost all base touchstones that make the series what it is.