happy disability pride month, one of my drafts right now is just disabled demigods, how do we feel about jason with hEDS and nico with narcolepsy. also i wanna give someone tics but im not sure who because im a lazy fuck that can't pick lets vote whoever wins gets a disability, probably FND.
which demigod gets functional tics
percy
annabeth
jason (fuck this guy over twice)
nico (fuck this guy over twice)
leo
reyna
frank
hazel
piper
Remaining time: 11 hours 7 minutes
the other option was spinning a wheel. which one of these guys gets FND. if im having a blast writing them ill add a doodle of them under this
Annabeth playing minecraft builds a whole entire city of her own. each building planned with precision. each block placed with intent.
Percy memorizes one (1) starter house build and spends all his time collecting puppies and kitties and other types of mobs.
Grover makes exclusively treehouses and will not cut down a tree without placing two more saplings to make up for it. he spends a lot of time making custom biomes.
Rachel makes the most cutesy cottages ever and each one has a winding creepy cave basement just barely light enough to not spawn mobs.
Clarisse does not build. she grinds for gear and gets the best stuff in the game and then goes and slaughters every village she finds.
Nico logs on the server once, gets a skeleton horse, and logs off while riding it so no one else can get it.
It is very dear to me for Percy to realize he has some messed up "mortal" family.
Listen:
Percy: ma, you really never talk about your family. Can you tell me more?
Sally: well, I have a sketch of a family tree until my grandparents, and my uncle's note explaining it so I wouldn't forget who I am.
Percy: sounds cool, we have cold tea and time. Estelle is with Paul at the pediatrician so we have plenty of time.
Sally: So, my mother first. She was from Hawaii, daughter of Pele, and a random man who she killed after giving birth. Pele is the Goddess of volcanos. She left her land for a better opportunity of studies.
Percy: Here says... She was a great mathematician. Actually impressive.
Sally: My father is from Europe, his mother was the daughter of a Mediterranean river called XĂşquer (the destructor) and his father was a Sicilian man who was over there.
Percy: ok...
Sally: My father was a specialist in jewelry. They paid him less for his accent.
Percy: and your uncle with cancer?
Sally: It wasn't actually my uncle, it was my mother's old fiancee descendant of Maui, since she knew in case of her death he won't be a bad influence for me because of his own genetics.
Percy: and that's it!! Easy!
Sally: I know, by the way. We both have 3 passports which we shouldn't use at the same time. USA, Italy and Spanish.
my favorite thing to work on when making a story is the worldbuilding so of course ive thought about the worldbuilding for rick riordans series and this is a masterpost of how i would rate his worldbuilding with each individual category and then all together at the end
part of my motivation for making this was from @aaaaaliceaaaaalice âs last post here about worldbuilding
this post is gonna be a lot more in depth compared to most other posts ive seen in general about rickâs worldbuilding, but thats just because im really autistic about this SO.
the first thing i wanna talk about is the inspiration rick had for his stories; and its the most obvious thing about the worldbuilding, that being the gods and mythologies.
when you take inspiration from a real life thing (like a culture, food, religon, anything,) and use it for your own worldbuilding, id say the number one rule is that you are respectful when doing this. if you are changing your inspiration up a bit then you have a bit more room to move, but still- do not disrespect what you are borrowing from. in ricks case, hes not changing the gods or mythologies from any pantheon to fit his story in a unique way, hes using them straight up.
but he does not follow the #1 rule i mentioned. when he writes his gods its just. bad.
its blatanly bad. he had hitler as a son of hades, he has the gods live in america, he changes things in myths for seemingly no reason, and most obvious of all: he disrespects the gods themselves. he makes them one dimensionally cruel or kind, gives them characterizations that he sees fit even if it doesnt match with the myths,
he just ignores so much of the actual lore of the mythology to create something suited specifically for his needs, and if this was a mythology he made himself thereâd be no issues but its not. these are real gods that real people worship, and he treats them like a tool or a regular character. often in the greek myths themselves youâll see the gods being treated as narrative tools and have different personalities depending on the myth, but they are always respected because they are still gods! and rick does not do this. he does not treat a mythology that he is taking all his inspiration from with respect.
not only that, but with how they interact with the real world too. why the fuck are they in america. they are greek gods, and, again, you should treat them with respect and in this case that means PUT THEM IN GREECE. if you really wanted the story set in america, you could still find workarounds. but he didnt bother to do that, again disrespecting the gods and the pantheon to fit his needs that dont work with his setting and story
this next thing is usually the thing most people focus on when the topic is worldbuilding, but it doesnt always define how good it is and thats details. most people thing that the more details a world has the better, but thats not always the case. weâll get into this more later, but ricks worldbuilding doesnt have that many details.
the way ive started explaining his worldbuilding is he takes some mythologies, and he remixes them with the real world. there is nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as you treat it with respect (going back to my pevious point).
ricks worldbuilding is, objectivley, very simple. he takes the real world and he changes thing up about it to make the greek, and other, gods fit into it. the most details he has for the worldbuilding, thats somewhat unique, is the camps, the monsters and the mist. id argue neither of the camps are really detailed, it feels like he took basic inspiration from military camps and summer camps and made it fit into the real world, while with the monsters he created live among humans in desguises they cant see through, both being hidden by the mist. its very simple worldbuilding with a basic explanation, and nothing too original.
now with the actual story being told, thats the most important part of this. aside from the blatan disrespect.
but the way i like to decide if worldbuilding is good or not, is how well it fits with the actual story thats being told, and rick does this pretty well! things make sense, theres explanations for a lot of stuff, and we can understand how things work. so even though the worldbuilding isnt that unique or detailed, it still works really well. theres very few things that are underdeveloped or he gets overwhelmed by, but most of those are overshadowded by the simplicity of the general world, which again, works well.
rick is usually able to know how much he can bite off and chew and he knows how to work with that, but there is still some stuff thats left underdeveloped and ignored, and its things like this that usually spring up conversations about the worldbuilding. stuff such as âhow do gods of the same domain from different pantheons work togetherâ or âare there other pantheons that exist- how many?â âare there places for those demigods to go?â these questions are, for the most part, unanswered.
rick used greek mythology in his first series and if he left it off at that then most of these questions wouldnt exist, but with the uinclusion of more mythologies it only makes sense that people would wonder how far this could actually go.
but that is, id argue, the main thing rick slacks off on in how well his worldbuilding works and makes sense, and in general id say its pretty good for the story hes trying to tell
but there is still one more thing i wanna talk about, and thats execution, similar to how well it works in the story, but also relating to all the other topics as well. how well do all of these work together?
overall, id say they work together pretty well, but when you start doing your own research on the mythologies rick is writing you start to notice a lot of things are extremely different and blatanly incorrect, and that can start to make the story feel half-assed and not well researched. rick doesnt care about the gods or the actual pantheons he writes about, so he does the most bare bones research and even with that he still gets information wrong, and then when you take into consideration with how well it works with the story it all starts to fall apart because why are the gods, who regularly help their children out, ignoring them so much it causes a war? why is there a military camp with adults living in the connected city, thats being run by a bunch of teenagers? the more you actually look into the story and start asking questions the more it falls apart and doesnt make sense.
i said that more detail doesnt automatically make it better or worse, but sometimes simplicity doesnt work either, and even though rick doesnt need much else, theres still more details he could and shouldve added to make the world feel more put together and cohesive.
so for the ratings of each individual topic im giving them this:
inspiration: 4/10
detail: 2/10
story: 6/10
execution: 4/10
but for the worldbuilding as a whole, im giving it: 4/10.
the main thing that pushes this rating down a lot is that theres not enough detail to fill in the plot holes rick left, and just because of how much blatant disrespect there is to the greek gods and all other pantheons he added.
there are ways to make all of these work, like with the camps and how theyre run (along with their locations) specifically, but thats just another one of those things, not really lacking in detail as much, but definitely lacking in having any actual thought being put into it
my favorite thing to work on when making a story is the worldbuilding so of course ive thought about the worldbuilding for rick riordans series and this is a masterpost of how i would rate his worldbuilding with each individual category and then all together at the end
part of my motivation for making this was from @aaaaaliceaaaaalice âs last post here about worldbuilding
this post is gonna be a lot more in depth compared to most other posts ive seen in general about rickâs worldbuilding, but thats just because im really autistic about this SO.
the first thing i wanna talk about is the inspiration rick had for his stories; and its the most obvious thing about the worldbuilding, that being the gods and mythologies.
when you take inspiration from a real life thing (like a culture, food, religon, anything,) and use it for your own worldbuilding, id say the number one rule is that you are respectful when doing this. if you are changing your inspiration up a bit then you have a bit more room to move, but still- do not disrespect what you are borrowing from. in ricks case, hes not changing the gods or mythologies from any pantheon to fit his story in a unique way, hes using them straight up.
but he does not follow the #1 rule i mentioned. when he writes his gods its just. bad.
its blatanly bad. he had hitler as a son of hades, he has the gods live in america, he changes things in myths for seemingly no reason, and most obvious of all: he disrespects the gods themselves. he makes them one dimensionally cruel or kind, gives them characterizations that he sees fit even if it doesnt match with the myths,
he just ignores so much of the actual lore of the mythology to create something suited specifically for his needs, and if this was a mythology he made himself thereâd be no issues but its not. these are real gods that real people worship, and he treats them like a tool or a regular character. often in the greek myths themselves youâll see the gods being treated as narrative tools and have different personalities depending on the myth, but they are always respected because they are still gods! and rick does not do this. he does not treat a mythology that he is taking all his inspiration from with respect.
not only that, but with how they interact with the real world too. why the fuck are they in america. they are greek gods, and, again, you should treat them with respect and in this case that means PUT THEM IN GREECE. if you really wanted the story set in america, you could still find workarounds. but he didnt bother to do that, again disrespecting the gods and the pantheon to fit his needs that dont work with his setting and story
this next thing is usually the thing most people focus on when the topic is worldbuilding, but it doesnt always define how good it is and thats details. most people thing that the more details a world has the better, but thats not always the case. weâll get into this more later, but ricks worldbuilding doesnt have that many details.
the way ive started explaining his worldbuilding is he takes some mythologies, and he remixes them with the real world. there is nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as you treat it with respect (going back to my pevious point).
ricks worldbuilding is, objectivley, very simple. he takes the real world and he changes thing up about it to make the greek, and other, gods fit into it. the most details he has for the worldbuilding, thats somewhat unique, is the camps, the monsters and the mist. id argue neither of the camps are really detailed, it feels like he took basic inspiration from military camps and summer camps and made it fit into the real world, while with the monsters he created live among humans in desguises they cant see through, both being hidden by the mist. its very simple worldbuilding with a basic explanation, and nothing too original.
now with the actual story being told, thats the most important part of this. aside from the blatan disrespect.
but the way i like to decide if worldbuilding is good or not, is how well it fits with the actual story thats being told, and rick does this pretty well! things make sense, theres explanations for a lot of stuff, and we can understand how things work. so even though the worldbuilding isnt that unique or detailed, it still works really well. theres very few things that are underdeveloped or he gets overwhelmed by, but most of those are overshadowded by the simplicity of the general world, which again, works well.
rick is usually able to know how much he can bite off and chew and he knows how to work with that, but there is still some stuff thats left underdeveloped and ignored, and its things like this that usually spring up conversations about the worldbuilding. stuff such as âhow do gods of the same domain from different pantheons work togetherâ or âare there other pantheons that exist- how many?â âare there places for those demigods to go?â these questions are, for the most part, unanswered.
rick used greek mythology in his first series and if he left it off at that then most of these questions wouldnt exist, but with the uinclusion of more mythologies it only makes sense that people would wonder how far this could actually go.
but that is, id argue, the main thing rick slacks off on in how well his worldbuilding works and makes sense, and in general id say its pretty good for the story hes trying to tell
but there is still one more thing i wanna talk about, and thats execution, similar to how well it works in the story, but also relating to all the other topics as well. how well do all of these work together?
overall, id say they work together pretty well, but when you start doing your own research on the mythologies rick is writing you start to notice a lot of things are extremely different and blatanly incorrect, and that can start to make the story feel half-assed and not well researched. rick doesnt care about the gods or the actual pantheons he writes about, so he does the most bare bones research and even with that he still gets information wrong, and then when you take into consideration with how well it works with the story it all starts to fall apart because why are the gods, who regularly help their children out, ignoring them so much it causes a war? why is there a military camp with adults living in the connected city, thats being run by a bunch of teenagers? the more you actually look into the story and start asking questions the more it falls apart and doesnt make sense.
i said that more detail doesnt automatically make it better or worse, but sometimes simplicity doesnt work either, and even though rick doesnt need much else, theres still more details he could and shouldve added to make the world feel more put together and cohesive.
so for the ratings of each individual topic im giving them this:
inspiration: 4/10
detail: 2/10
story: 6/10
execution: 4/10
but for the worldbuilding as a whole, im giving it: 4/10.
the main thing that pushes this rating down a lot is that theres not enough detail to fill in the plot holes rick left, and just because of how much blatant disrespect there is to the greek gods and all other pantheons he added.
there are ways to make all of these work, like with the camps and how theyre run (along with their locations) specifically, but thats just another one of those things, not really lacking in detail as much, but definitely lacking in having any actual thought being put into it
people theorizing that ethan and alabaster were a couple is so funny to me cuz like. imagine being ethan nakamura and u just got recruited to be part of kronos' special squad to infiltrate the empire state building, and so obviously before leaving you tell ur beloved situationship alabaster "well if i die it'll be worth it 𼺠it'll be for you and everything we've worked for". you proceed to switch sides at the last minute and die for a guy you've never had a one-on-one conversation, who promptly (accidentally, to be fair) gets alabaster banished for life. 10/10 failed yaoi & misery all around, great work everyone
percy and poseidon couldve been the best nuture vs nature example in all of literature, and im barely joking
as a god, and as a god with his specific upbringing, he wasnt really raised. there was no one to tell him how he was supposed to act or what he was supposed to be, aside from the sea herself
and from the myths we can see that he embodies the ocean- obviously- and that shows with his anger, agression and rage
the first few scenes we get with percy is him trying to attack someone, and then going through with it. theres a line, a few words before he pushed nancy, where percy says something like: âi remembered what my guidance counsler told me, count to 10â as a way to control his anger- and it doesnt work. percy has anger issues, and even though they arent shown much (which i think is lost potentional) they are still there, even in hoo there are times where people compare him to the ocean (im pretty sure its been a bit since ive done a full reread).
but through the entire series we see, even without being told, that percy matches the ocean! with the storm in the first book it clearly puts him on edge more than other students, he gets mad and lashes out similarly to poseidon in the myths, he generally acts as aggressive and violent as the seas and as his father-
but the difference is that he grew up in the mortal world.
poseidon is a god, he is the god of the ocean- arguably the most powerful and dangerous thing on earth- and anyone with two braincells would be smart enough to avoid pissing him off as he knows for his wrath, and no ones gonna stop him. he faces (almost) no consequences for any violence he does, because hes a god.
but percy doesnt have that. we know he gets expelled constantly, even for things that arent his fault, and we know and see that people- gods included- are scared of him. and we also know that he hates that.
so while poseidon can be as dangerous and violent and angry as he wants to be without any consequences, percy has to conform to the mortal world where looking at someone wrong can get him in trouble. poseidon is percy if he was never looked down on by everyone else, never feared for things he couldnt control, never outcasted just because of who he was
sallys read the myths, she understands and knows what poseidon is like, and shes scared of that
in my mind her fatal flaw is control, its why she tried to keep percy close and why she pushed poseidon away, and i feel like because of all of that, she subconsiously tried to âfixâ poseidon, by teaching percy how to be calm
thats obviously not the full reason, she taught him how to be gentle and caring because shes sally and thats how she is and thats the kind of kid she wants to raise, but a part of it is also because she does wish for poseidon to be in her life but he cant, and so she nutures percy to be a calmer, more gentle version of his father
the jokes about rick forgetting things about his own books and characters, along with the lack of research hes done with the mythologies he writes about, and the most well-known one being the gateway arch feels like the fandom is giving rick a perfect introduction to weaponized incompetence, where he sees that his fans dont care much if he stays true to the mythologies or what hes actually written, and uses that as a chance to not actually worry about any consistancy or mythological accuracy and write whatever he wants no matter what he wrote before or how much actual greek mythology disagrees with him,
and id dare say this could also make fans themselves have much lower standards when finding new books and series to read.
so many people in this fandom excuse rick of every single thing he does, which not only lets him get away with more, but also make those fans not actually care about well-written stories that care about whats being written
this also could go hand-in-hand with how many books nowadays are promoted by only using tropes and eye-catching things that are usually only talked about in the fandom and fanfiction, instead of giving us anything about the actual plot, again, letting creators get away with more because a lot of fans only focus on the âfandom worthyâ parts of the books and what they can make fanfiction out of, instead of focusing on what any of the book is talking about- if theres anything in the book even to talk about looking at the way a lot of these authors write.
im not saying rr fans are the sole reason for this, but it does feel like theres a bit of a connection with how fans treat authors and the books they read that makes it feel like they only care about what the fandom can do and what fanfiction can get them
From 1 to 10, how would you rate Riordan's worldbuilding?
That's pretty hard to rate since so much of the Riordanverse comes from ancient mythology, not Riordan himself. What Riordan did was combine the modern world with the mythological one. And there are... issues there.
- Why is a summer camp the best the gods can do for their kids? Even if they're disallowed direct intervention they should still want their kids to have more safety and experience than a few months out of the year!
- I'm not even gonna get into the problems with the "Heart of the West" thing.
- Hitler being a son of Hades and the US Civil War being Greeks vs Romans isn't just stupid from a historical perspective (and it conflicts with the above-mentioned Heart of the West thing) but it also seems pretty disrespectful to overwrite the real causes of those wars, especially considering how many people irl try to claim the US Civil War wasn't about slavery.
- There's a lot of unanswered questions about how the 12th Legion went from a lost Roman military unit to having a city in California with its own senate.
- Rick makes up a lot of stuff about Rome for the sake of plot convenience, specifically their hatred of Greeks, hatred of Minerva, and hatred of the sea. Greek was the lingua franca in a lot of the empire, Minerva was highly respected, and while it was never their specialty, Romans were more than capable of building and using boats.
But, I don't want to be a total downer all the time, so some things I did appreciate:
- The Land of the Lotus Eaters being a casino in Vegas. Considering how casinos are designed to get you to stay and lose your money, it's a perfect fit.
- The Sea of Monsters being the Bermuda Triangle is cool explanation for it imo.
...is that really all I've got for positive world building? Everything else is mostly just ancient stuff Rick put in a place or combos I don't think we're particularly interesting. Like, Medusa selling statues is such an obvious choice, you know?
So yeah, overall I'd say that the best parts of the world building in PJO by far come from the myths, not Rick. If you want a number... probably around a 3? Lol sorry Rick, maybe make better lore if you want a better number.
"hazel levesque is such a mom friend!!" Shes 13-14 for majority of hoo do you hear yourself. She is not the "mom friend" for a bunch of 15-17 year olds stop being racist
personally LOVE how percy states that calypso would forever be his biggest "what if". Like, he never truly gets over his idea that maybe the world would be better if he hadnt came back. maybe he would have been better.
itâs no question that Percy looks like Poseidon but can you imagine being Thalia Grace spending years and years remembering your brother as the teeny tiny toddler he was when he died only to have him find you a decade and a half later and when you look at him you donât see your brother you see your father. stern and cold and severe. and you see your mother. beautiful and proud and burdened.
you look at your brother and instead of seeing the rosy, chubby cheeks of a kid who adored you, you see remnants of the parents who disappointed you.
can you imagine being Thalia Grace and spending years on the run clutching to the memory of the brother you failed to protect.
can you imagine finally allowing yourself to heal from that. finally picturing your younger sibling and she has blonde curly hair and grey eyes and follows Thalia like a duckling.
can you imagine the guilt you feel when the little brother you gave up on comes back to you alive and doesnât look like your little sibling.
can you imagine being Jason Grace and spending months on a quest with Annabeth Chase and youâve saved each otherâs lives and you trust her to do the right thing and youâve become great friends. only to realize, after the war, that your older sibling has replaced you with her.
did Jason ever truly know envy before? had he ever ever felt quite so betrayed? because his mother gave him away. juno took his memories from him, and in doing so, a part of himself. his father never cared in the first place. but he remembers his sister promising sheâll always be there for him. that sheâll always find him when heâs lost. that sheâll always take care of him.
and yeah, maybe she tried to find him. but he doesnât know that. what he knows is that his sister replaced him with someone else. someone he still thinks of as a friend. how badly would that hurt?
Just saw someone say that Rick Riordan writes where he thinks the money is and I couldnât agree more.
The entirety of HoO was just him trying to figure out what would sell. He made Nico gay with a crush on Percy because it was one of the most popular Nico ships then. When he realized people didnât like Jason, he killed him off in ToA hoping it would please his fans. When people pointed out his racist and misogynistic stereotypes he went out of his way to try and explain that he in fact was not racist or misogynistic by making Piper date a girl and writing an entire book about monster oppression. But when those failed horribly, he decided to go back to what was the most popular and thatâs PJO. But he canât just go back to PJO, so instead heâs making an entire side series about background characters that never existed and trying to have LGBTQ+ as the target audience because he knows theyâll buy anything even if the writing is shit.
Itâs time to wake up and realize that Rick Riordan is not the âsupportive woke uncleâ so many PJO fans claim him to be. Heâs just opportunistic and greedy. Iâm not even going to get into how this applies even more so when it comes to his god awful show.
annabeth not realizing that percy can talk to sea creatures in like a back and forth conversation and vents her frustrations about her crush to the fish who SNITCH on her to percy
andulkaphoto
areudirty
titsay
prguitarman
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
amandla
dailybridgerton
