I feel like a big part of Heroes of Olympus was influenced by audience reaction.Â
I donât think Iâm grasping at straws here. I genuinely just donât get why some decisions were made if this wasnât the case.
The plot of the books themselves has always felt very muddled to me and thatâs why it always feels like itâs supposed to be a story about characters and relationships, but it just kind of isnât. Sure, on a surface level, yes, and we get some very lovely character dynamics, but it also feels slightly artificial in a way? The plot was built first and the characters thrown into it, but there wasnât much thought given too how the characters should be with each other. Even the romantic ones.
Though I feel that I could tie this idea into pretty much every part of the books, there are two things that I personally think of the most while discussing this idea.
For one, thereâs Octavianâs entire character.
I have always been confused as to what exactly Riordan wanted from Octavian. He really feels like a plot device most times, made solely for the purpose of stirring conflict between the Greeks and Romans. He as an individual never really mattered. Now, there are some very cool people on this website that have managed to squeeze a decent character out of the scenes we got, but with the way he was written, that in itself is a challenge, as post SoN, it feels like the only intent behind his character was to make him as unlikable as possible. He really was a real character in SoN, despite weird decisions here and there (The killing Gwen scene for example was purely to establish that the doors of death werenât working, and to make Octavian unlikable, but Octavian himself really didnât have any motive for the killing. It benefitted him in no way.)
In SoN, Octavian is manipulative and well spoken, but after that, he is portrayed as some sort of dim witted idiot, clouded by his desire for personal glory.
The only way I can rationalize this shift in character is in the truly visceral reaction the then fanbase had to his character. They loathed him, taking not a second to rationalize his actions, but simply hate. It also made it so Octavian became the but of a lot of jokes. Those jokes characterizing him as his idiot and megalomaniac that it he shown as in Mark of Athena, House of Hades and Blood of Olympus.
I always suspected Octavian was supposed to serve some sort of grander purpose, or his role in HoO was supposed to be at least a little more dignified or dare I say sympathetic, but there really was no turning back with how hated he was, making Riordan embrace it rather than giving him actual human qualities.
Then on the other hand, thereâs also Leo and his relationship with romance in general.
Iâve touched upon it in my Caleo essay (That I kind of wanna redo with more points and evidence to back up my claims, because I am unhappy with certain aspects but I still stand by all I said) that Leo is a character that was written in such a way that getting a romantic partner before resolving certain things would actively detriment the development of his character, including healing from his trauma. The way he was written was just not meant for romance and I will take this to my grave. Iâm not saying there was no room for romance, but the way they went about it was⊠very bad. (A girlfriend will fix my problems. That is his mindset. But he doesnât grow out of it. Instead he gets a girlfriend. A girlfriend that he treats as a fix to his problems when she is not. A girlfriend that is bad to and for him in so many ways.)
But it is very interesting to note, that especially after Mark of Athena, the speculations and demands for Leoâs future girlfriend went absolutely crazy. I canât speak from experience but from the tweets from Riordan and fanarts from that time that Iâve seen it was at least to the point that he took active notice of it.Â
Besides Nico and Reyna, there werenât really any other characters just lying around to pair Leo monogamously up with (I doubt Riordan be willing to make any characters besides Nico explicitly queer at the time and then in the next book he decided to pick up one of the background characters and said, you will do, when pairing Nico up with someone. )
There are many more examples I could go into. The universe suffered in many ways from this. Sure, itâs not the only problem that were detrimental. I believe Riordan had a plan from the beginning with all the main plot points of the series, but I feel he didnât exactly know where he was going with the characters besides the basics. Donât get me wrong, I love all the HoO characters. That is why I spend so much time talking and thinking about them, but the issues with the series and characters are so many that itâs borderline ridiculous.
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