#wcwsthwas question countdown

[seaweedbraens]

Fun question (Not the countdown one) that's been stuck in my mind for months.

What was going through your head when you wrote the big percabeth fight scene? You know the one. I read that and couldn't stop thinking about it for days. It literally made me sick.

I love in this au how you've written people with flaws into their character. They aren't perfect. The thing about the percabeth fight for me was that they were both write and wrong at the same time. How did you do that I'm absolutely obsessed

ANOTHER BANGERRRRR QUESTION IM THRILLED!!!

so some of the most compelling scenes in percabeth for me in canon were 1. the ending of botl where percy decodes the prophecy to a miserable annabeth ("and lose a love to worse than death") and 2. the scene after beckendorf dies and percy hears the prophecy - he and annabeth have a minor disagreement and she calls him a coward. both a+ scenes full of real TENSION, y'know? so i knew from the start that we needed more of that. up the stakes and the emotions, and i'd have a wonderful cliffhanger on my hands.

another thing is that i LOVE petty annabeth. her being jealous of rachel in canon is some of my FAVORITE parts about her arc - so i basically did petty annabethx100. the same goes for percy: he pretty much latches onto annabeth after getting to the bunkers and he feels so strongly for her that it kills him that she seemingly chooses to focus her attention and affection on someone who doesnt even remotely deserve it.

both of them are nowhere close to being mature enough to understand and deal with their emotions, so put it all together, add in a sprinkle of secrets, and BOOM - its a mess, and i love it!

like you said, i did my best to make both of them right AND wrong. i thought that it would be more realistic that way, but annabeth came off a lil worse since she did hide something hella important from percy. still, though, i tried to make her point of view as realistic as i could. as a very emotional person myself, i find myself somehow surrounded by logical people who would very much compartmentalize their feelings the way annabeth does. so she also has valid reasons for her own actions, and both of their bottled-up feelings all just bubble to the surface at once, unable to be stopped. she and percy both process emotions so differently that it felt only right to capitalize on that. and you BEST believe theyll do anything to get the last word.

+percy and annabeth had been getting too comfortable and i needed some DRAMA before the happy(?) ending.

thats kind of how i went about things! hope it answers your question, anon. thank you for such a good one!

[seaweedbraens]

11!!! vani you’re so close, only 80k words to go

what led you to choosing jason’s story? you obviously planned for him to die from the beginning but what was the process of figuring out how to make it happen and justifying it?

dont even joke abt 80k ill do it sgdjdkejehekken

re: jason - i knew i wanted to kill him because he dies in canon, and i actually dont hate that he dies in canon, i just hate that it was done in a series that wasnt his own. i actually quite like the whole idea of jason choosing to sacrifice himself over piper with her not even knowing shit about it - the books made it even more heartbreaking because theyre broken up, but i didnt want to do that, so i made him just hide it vehemently instead.

another reason he had to die was because in my fic, he is older than percy by about a month, and i really wanted to drive it home that all the children of the big three who were older than percy and died (jason, thalia, bianca) did so because they were IN THE WAY. theres no nice way to put it. percy was the child/hero of the prophecy, and them being alive just fucked shit up timeline-wise and confused everything. jason figures this out pretty quick, though. it's a slim comfort to him, knowing that even though he wont be around, percy will survive. that's why he entrusts him, out of everyone, to take care of piper.

my process in stretching this out just came from outlining this fic to hell and back. it made sense to have his nemesis be krios, since jason does kill him in canon. i knew he wouldnt make it to the final battle, and logically his death would serve has a good place to leave off ch4. that meant he had to leave by the end of ch3 and find out about his fate by ch1/2 (i chose 1). this would give him more than enough time to come up with a plan and come to terms with his fate.

i wanted to make jason's arc about the slow acceptance of death. i had an aunt who battled cancer for a long, long time, and i watched her cycle slowly through each worsening stage with a grim acceptance. in her last years, though, she told me she was choosing to live life and she was using her time to appreciate what she had. i visited her days before she passed and while she put on a brave face in front of me, she confessed to my mom that she was scared, and i wondered for a long time how long she spent hiding her pain from others just to save us from sharing hers.

jason's journey is largely inspired by my aunt. he knows death is looming over him, but he chooses to hide his own anxiety in favor of allowing his friends to be happy. the only time he shows his fear is as he dies in piper's arms, when he has nothing to lose by hiding it anymore.

piper was his greatest source of joy and he knows she has the capability to love again, but if she died, he knows he would never be able to. and yes! it's a selfish choice, as piper tells him, but one he believed was necessary.

through the course of wcwsthwas, jason learns he's lived a good life. he found his family and found love and true friendship. he wouldnt give them up for the world - so he chose to give himself up instead.

IDK IF I ANSWERED YOUR QUESTION I JUST RAMBLED AYSGSICYSIVYAGIV SORRY BUT TY FOR ANOTHER GOOD ONE!!!

[seaweedbraens]

14!!! what was the thought process behind percy’s backstory and the murder of sally jackson?

TWO WEEKS TO GO!!!

essentially - i killed sally because i needed to give percy a reason to run. i needed to have him untethered because 1. he would be presumed dead until found, but because he was on the run he 2. wouldn't be found. and he needed to stay hidden until the right moment.

sally dying is also percy's rude awakening to the world of the gods. he'd lived a happy life thus far, but sally dying for him would 1. cement in him that kronos/the monsters were a real threat capable of killing him, 2. cement in his brain who the enemy was, 3. cripple him mentally and emotionally enough that he'd carry the grudge against the minotaur (and later luke) with a vengeance for the rest of his life.

losing sally so young is also a big reason why he latched onto annabeth (& bunker 9) as hard as he did (and this is not entirely healthy - something i have briefly addressed in the final chapters). but to me it makes sense because this is a dude who hasn't had a home for close to a decade. he found a home briefly in nico and bianca, but then she died and nico fled, hating him. he spent the five years after the first war blaming himself for bianca's death and basically being a nomad until grover & co found him.

let me put it like this. sally is/was/would've been one of percy's mortal tethers, and although she wouldve tried to keep him safe, the monsters would have come for him eventually. she had to die for percy to really be hit - and hit hard - with the reality of his world. he needed the rage and pain to keep him going, because for a longass time he just wanted to become someone who wouldnt fail anyone the way he had failed his mother.

being in the bunker gave him a purpose again and gave him something to fight for. and being around annabeth felt like he had someone to live for again. she's the first one he truly opened his heart to, and the first one he felt truly got him.

percy losing her essentially paved the way for the rest of his life. if he hadn't lost sally, he wouldve never been found by lupa, never been trained by her, never known the reality of the world he lives in until it was too late. if the monsters had found him in that world, sally still would've died - but so would he.

longass answer for a VERY good question. if you really have fourteen more of these - damn, anon. kudos to you, and i'm very flattered <3

i'm also gonna give these their own tag and link it to my masterpost, because these are really thoughtful questions. thank you, anon!

[seaweedbraens]

six!!!

so glad you brought up silena because i was going to ask why you ended ip expanding her powers and what your thought process was for her arc

ok i have no choice but to write all night i see i see i SEE

(help)

anyway!! YES!! so. my thought process with silena was that i wanted to make her definitely still the traitor, but also caught between a rock and a hard place much worse than in the books and hence much more of a grey character. the books make her a hero, but i've always thought that she really didn't fully repent until beckendorf died, so i played up that angle here. i made her sympathetic in the sense that she was definitely manipulated in the start, but she got way too caught up in the web of lies she was telling both sides, and it all combusted in the end.

her powers i FULLY stole from x-men origins lmfaoooooo. the plot twist in that movie had me gagged at age 13 and it was very fun to write. i wanted to play up just how MUCH she was hiding from the demigods, like right down to the fundamentals of what they thought they knew about her. like - everyone thought that she was the only one who could 'control' clarisse. perhaps clarisse also found comfort in silena's touch, for reasons she thought was friendship. but nope, turns out silena was just using her powers on her all along. that does tons to shatter your faith in someone, yes? i love that kinda shit

in the end, i do feel some sympathy for her. her playing both sides reminds me of how, in school, i would try to hang out with two seperate friend groups, and i'd have to lie to one to make time for the other. this is a HORRENDOUS example but to some extent, i found myself relating a little bit to silena, y'know? she just wanted to make it out of the war in one piece with beckendorf, but she just got too tangled in her own tales.

[seaweedbraens]

eight!!!

what scene did you have the most fun writing? and don’t say the percabeth fight

wdym eight i am still writing this shit omg

also hahahhaa you know me too well! other than the percabeth fight, i really liked writing jason's death, annabeth and luke finally talking on othrys, and percy vs the minotaur. also any scenes with piper and leo, because they come so naturally to me. i've realized that my writing is just basically me dumping every thought i have about a certain situation and it's so fun to write piper becaus in my head i think of her as being very in touch with her own emotions and i think i'm the same way.

ty for the lovely question as usual, countdown anon! you're killing it <3

[seaweedbraens]

nine days until you kill us all

you maintained grover and percy’s relationship in wcwsthwas, and even expanded it a little. what was your thought process for that?

IM BEHIND ON ANSWERING THESE!! speedrunning rn

grover bugs me because i still couldve done MORE. like i LIKE grover but i'm not very invested in him as a character and i do this that shows, so i think i accidentally made him like a supporting cast member. which ig is FINE because i did wanna focus on the 7 but i still do feel a lil guilty. sorry, grover

i kind of put grover in more of a mentor-esque role in wcwsthwas because he's pretty much a veteran in his own right, and he kind of takes percy under his wing right away. in turn, percy trusts him quicker than anyone at the bunkers, even annabeth, and their empathy link is proof of that.

that being said i tried to do more with him and annabeth, because theyve known each other for years before percy came into the picture, even in canon. i think their relationship is very interesting and i enjoyed writing about that <3

[seaweedbraens]

five days left!!

what was your thought process for luke’s arc/motivations and how you modified then from pjo

you're killing it with these questions!! <3

i knew from the start i wanted to make him wayyy more unapologetic than in canon. because hes got a POINT is the thing! he is right about all of it - the gods being deadbeats and ignoring their kids, but his mistake is trusting kronos, who is also deceiving him. i think of luke's ultimate loyalty being towards his demigod recruits in kronos' army more than kronos himself, because these are kids just like him, who felt neglected and unloved all their lives. i essentially took canon and magnified it.

i think, in that sense, i also made him unforgivable in the eyes of other characters. in the name of what he believes is right and 'just', he commits some really terrible crimes and stabs his own friends in the back. in that sense, he is very selfish, but in his head he's doing it to make sure no demigod ends up as angry and bitter as him. he's too far gone, but he hopes for a better world, too. it's just vastly different from the one everyone else sees.

i was rereading tlo the other day while writing and i got like. confused. like why did luke turn against kronos again? it felt like he just got cold feet, not at all like he was convinced by what percy and annabeth were yelling at him but idkkk maybe i need to read it again. anyway i dont wanna spoil too much but. unapologetic luke >>>

also i made his and annabeth's relationship familial from the start because that's how it's SUPPOSED to be - annabeth is just a lil idiotic about her definitions of love and that's why it freaks percy out. i actually LOVED writing luke's scenes with annabeth because he truly thought of her as his family and genuinely regrets having to turn against her for what he thinks is the greater good. it brings out some very interesting and meaningful interactions between the two. just delicious <3

another great q, sorry i got to it so late. ily <3

[seaweedbraens]

13!! tswift’s lucky number!!

what was the thought process for hazel and nico’s storyline?

13!!! save me

i knew i wanted to kill them right from the start - but i wanted them both to kind of accept that they werent living in the right time. for nico, it was fairly easy, since he'd already basically doomed himself the moment he summoned hazel back from the dead. but i wanted him to die with no regrets - and he does this by forgiving percy and confessing his sexuality to jason (and later percy) on his own terms. he dies with his sister and gets to join their other sister in elysium. that's a win for him tbh

for hazel, it was a little bit more than that. i wanted to make her slowly come to terms with dying and that while she never got to make that choice in her first time, she'd be more empowered the second time around. i wanted her to grow confident in herself and be able to state her feelings out loud, something she'd never been able to do before. i wanted her to let go of her fear of death and finally have peace.

that being said, MY ASS FUCKED UPPPPPP and i couldve done SO MUCH MORE with hazel (and nico too, but mostly hazel since she's a main character). i think i built her relationships with frank and leo well, but i think i couldve fleshed her arc out better. idk idk i have many regrets w hazel and frank but im too lazy to go back and fix thingssss

[seaweedbraens]

First of all, wcwsthwas is probably my favorite pjo au ever.

Second!

Not the countdown anon, but here's a fun question:

Are there any deleted scenes/outtakes (If any) that you cut from wcwsthwas that you wish you had kept? Which ones are your favorites? Why did you cut them?

Any that are interesting that you'd like to share? I'm just super interested in the process of such a big project!

hello anon!! and thank you, im very honored <3

ANOTHER good question, keep 'em coming! i do have a bunch of deleted scenes, some of which i want to add to a google drive and make public in case anyone wants to read 'em. most of them didn't make the final cut because it just didnt fit in with the story, or they were in the wrong pov. my favorite has to be an annabeth-rachel scene that I JUST CANT FIND but i posted on tumblr, and i've had a couple of people ask about it lmfaooo. the lost tale of wcwsthwas indeed

like i said, i'll put a bunch of them up on drive just in case you all want to read!