Sometimes I think about why I never like putting effort into things and then I remember that I once felt inspired to make an edit to go on TikTok (was hunger games / Billy Elliot the musical) and I ended up using the full song which was over 7.5 minutes long. Spent ages putting it together then went to post only to find out that the specific song got muted if over 30 seconds used so if I wanted to post it with sound, I would’ve had to split it into 16 parts and fuck that
I never made another edit again and I still have that edit sat in my camera roll haunting me and taking up my phone storage
i am on my knees asking, BEGGING, for the PJO (tv series) fandom to not ship walker and leah.
first off, they’re both minors. second, they are actual people, they are not actually percy and annabeth.
i’ve been in far too many fandoms where the line between shipping two characters and shipping the actors that play them gets blurred, and it (more often than not) ruins their friendship irl. so PLEASE let these two CHILDREN be separate from their characters.
guys that only read self help books are so cringe. like bro all books are self help books the characters make the mistakes so you dont have to. After reading oediupus rex i knew to not do that
Taking someone's cigarette out of their mouth: Multiple meanings - used a lot in media to convey control, power play, very masculine, I'm your boss and this is mine now, get over it. Mildly flirty, look at me, all in your space and shit, seductive. You're not allowed to smoke, because I say so.
Putting the cigarette back in their mouth afterwards: Ground-breaking. Would be less erotic to just fuck honestly. Who does this?
What if the potters didn’t die and after Harry had a daughter. (For the sake of having a name to refer to her as, let’s call her Phoebe)
Looks wise she would be the reverse of Harry with lilys ginger hair and James’ deep brown eyes. And if the Potters had lived then both Harry and Phoebe would have been raised by them (with the help of Remus, Sirius and Regulus). Harry takes after James and Phoebe takes after Lily so sometimes Sirius and Remus would pretend that they had mistaken the child for the parent and start saying things like “Oh Lily I must say your skin is looking so radiant and youthful today” and the children would collapse into fits of giggles
Phoebe would especially look up to her Uncle Remus and would insist on having him read to her no matter how boring his current book was. On countless occasions, they had both fallen asleep on the sofa mid book, with Phoebe snuggled up in one of Remus’s oversized knit jumpers.
Phoebe was also not a quidditch player. She was very good at flying but she had inherited her mothers fiery temper and her Uncle Sirius’ sass which meant team sports were just not a good idea.
When she joins hogwarts, she’s the year below Harry and therefore the same year as Ginny Weasley. So for the first term of school, 75% of the other students think she is a weasley and are constantly getting the two mixed up.
Despite the fact that they’re in different houses this causes the girls to become very close friends and they start taking advantage of this confusion to get away with things because “well Fred and George are twins, so the gene must run in the family”
Phoebe was sorted into Slytherin. The hat had been deciding between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff but Phoebe had demanded she be placed in Slytherin. Before she had left for hogwarts, Sirius had told Phoebe to “give Snivellus hell from me” and in her brain, the best way of achieving this was from within his own house. She’s heard about their school days and strongly disliked this apparently incredibly greasy man. It was only after she got her parents amused owl in response to the news of her sorting that she found out that things had been civil between all of the adults for years and that Sirius’s comment was at the fact that he knew Phoebe would be brilliant in potions which, as a Potter, would still irk Snape. It was still, however, one of the most slytherin ways of being assigned slytherin: requesting it to aid your plan for revenge.
As it happened, Phoebe was very good at potions thanks to aiding her mother. She would frequently interrupt Snape’s lessons to question his methods (which sometimes would result in lost points for her cheek and sometime gain her points for her intelligence) which made the man want to dislike her but her brilliance at his subject and generally sunny personality made that impossible.
She also had an aptitude for herbology and in her newts years would often grow her own rare potions ingredients to test possible new concoctions.
Unlike her brother she refused to sign up for divination and instead picked ancient runes. Partially because she’d had a mild crush on Hermione when she had to make her choice and Hermione’s scathing review of divination had made Phoebe decide she would rather run around the castle naked than pick that class. She’d often go to Hermione for advice on her Runes and in turn Hermione would ask for potions guidance as, whilst Hermione was great at learning the contents of books she’d never fully understood the chaotic art of potion making.
These study times were great opportunity to gossip about the happenings in their respective house common rooms, specifically how much Harry and Draco would talk about the other.
Her and Malfoy aren’t friends but have a truce. Mainly because Phoebe will call Malfoy out on his shit and Malfoy is actually incredibly smart and very loyal to his house. She did dye his hair bright pink with a potion she snuck into his dinner because he made some comments about Remus when he was teaching at the school. Professor Snape had even pulled her aside after class just after this incident and all he had said was: “root of asphodel is often used in cosmetics potions to add more of a shimmer” (i.e. he basically told her how to make Malfoy’s hair glitter) and that he wouldn’t be able to mark her extra credit essay till the following evening as he had to do an inventory check of his ingredients cupboard as he was suddenly low on some ingredients.
I might continue this if I come up with anymore ideas, possibly including Regulus as an Uncle of sorts as well as Marlene, Mary and Dorcas. It is quite fun to think about what could have been.
The constant struggle of wanting to read fanfic but knowing that it is time I could be spending reading actual books and getting closer to my Goodreads reading challenge target.
I know some people put fanfics onto their Goodreads but I know my poor mother would have a heart-attack if she looked any of it up and I can guarantee she would snoop.
So with the disney series on the way and one of my friends currently in a production of the lightning theif musical I've been getting back into pjo, and I've been listening to the newest olympian podcast (guy named mike who's never read pjo reads pjo and talks about it chapter by chapter with longtime fans), and in episode 8 he talks about how the cosmic threat (gods) is really different from the malicious threat in other books (eg voldemort) and it makes the stakes have a really different energy because it's not someone evil intentionally hurting people for personal reasons, it's larger powers at play who don't really care if they hurt people because to them it's just collateral damage.
Now of course mike is still early enough in book one that the cosmic threat is the only threat and we all know that changes as the series goes on, but it made me think about the difference between the godly antagonists and the human antagonists in pjo and how they're portrayed, and I sort of realized for the first time that, in the case of the fate of humanity, pjo doesn't have "bad guys".
There are two types of antagonist in pjo. The first are the gods/titans/other mythological beings who don't care about humans beyond what they can do for them and are mostly just fighting amongst themselves. Yeah, big bad villain Kronos isn't really a fan of humanity, but destroying humans isn't his main objective in the war. His objective is destroying the gods and taking back control. Destroying humans is a happy bonus for him, but even if he knew he wouldn't be capable of that he would still be fighting the gods.
The second type are the half blood traitors, and this is what I really care about, because Luke is an antagonist but he is NOT a villain. He's a victim. And that distinction is the entire point.
Throughout the entire series Percy shows he understands this concept. Our first minor human antagonist is Clarisse. Percy doesn't like Clarisse, but he understands she's a product of her situation and he treats her with genuine compassion even when he's not being very nice to her. He knows how important her quest is to her, that her anger stems from insecurity, and he makes sure she gets to take the fleece back even though he won't get any credit.
As the books go on we see more significant demigod antagonists who don't just bully Percy but actually betray him. It would be easy for Percy to hate them, to write them off. But he doesn't.
Nico turns on Percy several times throughout the series, always for the same reason (seeking information on his family/bianca). Someone else might see that repeated betrayal and be furious, and yes Percy is a little pissed, but his first conscious reaction is guilt that he wasn't there for Nico and his first instinct is to try and help him. He continues to trust Nico despite everything. And Nico fights alongside Percy in the very end when it counts.
Silena doesn't just betray Percy, but all of camp and by proxy all of humanity. And instead of seeing a traitor Percy sees that, just like Clarisse, just like Nico, Silena is a victim of this life they've all been forced into by their godly parents. Percy understands that the human threat has been created by the cosmic threat, and Percy turns around and says "no." He has Clarisse's back. He forgives Nico. He makes sure Silena is honored as a hero. He gives the knife to Luke.
And this is what sets pjo apart. This is why the story is so important. Luke is the ultimate traitor. He was Percy's first friend at camp after Grover, and at the end of book one he tries to kill Percy and nearly succeeds. He turns his back on the gods, offers himself to Kronos, and forsakes all of humanity. And instead of building up that animosity throughout the series and culminating with Percy killing Luke, Percy spends years trying to help him. He learns Luke's backstory. He meets his parents, the godly and the mortal. He sees Luke's experiences as what they are: trauma. He finds him and asks him to come back. He offers him his trust. Luke declines, multiple times. But Percy doesn't stop trying. And at the very end, when killing Luke is the only way to stop Kronos and Percy has the opportunity to do so, he doesn't. He is not the hero, and he knows it. Instead, he forgives Luke. He gives him the knife. He offers his trust. And Luke finally accepts.
So Luke dies, Kronos is defeated, and Percy is not victorious. He sees it as a failure that they all let it get far enough that saving Luke wasn't an option. The gods offer to grant Percy one wish as a reward for his heroism, with immortality as the implied correct choice. And Percy shocks them all and says "no. This isn't about me. It was never about me. I don't want to be a god. I want you to make sure that what happened to Luke never happens to anyone ever again."
