A short list of things I would have changed in HoO
It takes place ten ish years after the end of PJO. Percy and Annabeth aren’t a part of the seven but instead appear as cool older mentors to help out the Lost Hero trio. They both have careers and live in New York and go to Sally’s house for dinner every weekend.
Caleo isn’t a thing. In fact, let’s not even mention Calypso. At most we mention she was freed after the last war as idk proof demigods have some power or something.
More than 1 Asian character. Give this one ADHD and dyslexia bc shocker Asian kids can be disabled as well.
For that matter a properly disabled character. I have a deaf OC I would use if I rewrote the series.
Leo is aroace. His arc is about learning that his self worth doesn’t have to be tied to the people around him and his friends love and care about him and he doesn’t need romance to be complete. His flirting is overcompensation bc he doesn’t feel romantic or sexual attraction and is afraid he’ll be alone forever.
Drew and Piper become friends. Drew’s mean girl bullshit is outdated and boring and it would have been a lot cooler to see her icy exterior thaw and her help Piper with her charmspeck (explaining how Piper learned how to use it to begin with) and take on an older sister role
Neither Leo nor Piper become head councilors to their cabins because that’s dumb
Keep the chapter title style from PJO. It was so fun and one of the highlights of the series for me. The relatable nature of PJO in general was kinda lost in HoO and it’s a shame bc there was such a variety of characters for people to identify with there.
Give Reyna a girlfriend or at least a homoerotic friendship that can become an actual relationship in the next series or something
Frank is 14 and he and Hazel aren’t dating, they just have mutual baby crushes on one another.
For that matter what the fuck was ‘Frank is magically not fat due to Mars’s blessing’ bullshit? Frank is a fat character who stays fat but learns to be confident in himself and his body type.
Stop The Adultification of Hazel 2k23. Hazel is 13, she’s the youngest member of the seven and despite her trauma I think that should be obvious. I think emphasizing her relationship with Nico could be fun here - he’s in his 20s so him taking a more ‘that older sibling who toes the line between parent and sibling’ role here could be fun.
Also, I don’t want Hazel to have Hecate’s blessing or whatever. Between her being a magical horsegirl and the daughter of Pluto there’s already a lot of room to expand on her powers that was never used - I think doing more with her cursed jewels and metals powers and her learning the other aspects of her powers, like Shadow Travel, would be fun.
Instead I think having a daughter of Hecate as a part of the Seven would be cool, because we could still have a witchy character with mist manipulation and magic powers.
Give Jason an actual personality, please. Bro’s been a child solider practically since age 2 and has spent his whole life with the weight of other teenagers’ lives on his shoulders as praetor - give him perfectionism issues and anxiety. We’re told that he’s spent his whole life helping others compromise instead of being his own person - show that. Let his arc end with him deciding to try and live a mortal life and find out who he is beyond being a war general.
Show us that Octavian’s a piece of shit, don’t just tell us.
Leo and Piper are the ones who fall into Tartarus. Nothing romantic ever happens but we get heavy emphasis on their friendship and we get to see their grief over Leo’s mom and Piper’s grandfather respectively
Piper’s grandfather has died a few months ago and she cut her hair herself when her dad didn’t want to let her due to that (correct me if I’m wrong but it’s a tradition in Cherokee culture to cut your hair when a loved one dies, correct?), which is why it’s all uneven. A lot of her insecurities stem from going from growing up in rural Oklaholma (not in a reservation bc there aren’t any there) without much money to suddenly being catapulted into a millionaire Hollywood lifestyle and having everyone criticize everything about her and be really racist, all while her Dad drew farther away from both her and her grandfather. Her arc would be reconnecting with both her culture and Dad and learning to find who she is and her self worth again.
They defeat Gaea in a way that isn’t so anticlimactic and fucking stupid
