pjo/hoo fans, listen to me. *shakes you* listen to me. read the kane chronicles. read it. have you read it? read it again. i mean it. there's other reasons, but the main one is that i'm out here making genious posts about tkc, and there's so few people to appreciate my massive brain.
reasons you might want to read tkc:
narrated by two different characters. the framing device is that it's being audio recorded, and you can often see snippets of them being like "don't look at me like that sadie" or "carter just kicked me for saying that"
the god tier character that is sadie kane. she's so in touch with her emotions and unafraid to express them, it's refreshing. she's only 13 in the beginning of the trilogy, and she's so ready to tell people off for being pricks. she chews bubblegum and dyes her hair and she's even british. makes fun of her brother. consistently the funniest character in the series, all while not losing impact as a dramatic figure
the gods are seen really differently than in rr's other books. in pjo, the gods are these all-powerful beings and we mustn't anger them. in tkc, they're your buds. your parents have probably had a fistfight in an applebees parking lot with at least two gods. you see a god for drinks every thursday.
gods literally inhabit the human character's bodies, it's like a venom situation. it makes up for some very funny moments.
where pjo/toa is about acknowledging your family has problems and at times, you're fully right to distance yourself from them, because they're horrible people, tkc is about reconnecting with your family again. it's about finding stability in your family, and how they're, in the end, always the ones that are left there for you
incredibly interesting magic system. they have infrastructure built all over the world. not just two wands (rather a wand and a staff) but also a whole magician's kit.
cast is near-entirely made up of people of colour. two main characters that are both mixed, and the series focuses on how their different appearances affect how people treat them. the magicians are mostly descendants of egyptian rulers
ₚₐᵢᵣᵢₙG: Perseus Jackson x f!reader
ₜW: Mentions of suicidal thoughts, child abuse, scars, self-hatred, depression, domestic abuse.
ₐ/ₙ: HIIII I'm a retired ff writer, but I've decided to come back js because I'm bored, my writing not be as good as it used to be, but hope you guys like this one.
Percy never liked his scars. Every little white line on his tanned skin was a painful reminder of the pain he’d endured. Most of them were due to quests and monsters, sure. But some were due to all the people he’d ever lost—those weren’t visible, but he could see them anyway, feel them when the nights grew too quiet, when he'd wanted to stop existing.
And gods, he hated the scars left by his stepfather the most.
They were thinner. Meaner. The kind that didn’t come from claws or fangs, but from hands that were supposed to protect him. Percy could still remember the way he’d learned to go still, to breathe shallow, to count the seconds until it was over. Those scars never burned like monster wounds did. They just sat there, cold and accusing, whispering that he’d deserved it somehow. No matter how many times his mother would soothe them, tell him that he was safe now, even with a black eye herself, he just wanted to stop breathing, and Gods, he had tried...Once. When he thought Tyson died, he had tried to drown himself, but no matter how many times he had tried to, he was a son of Poseidon, he couldn't.
Some days, he tugged his shirt down without thinking. Other days, he stared at them too long, jaw clenched, knuckles white, those thoughts overbearing his mind again.
Tonight was one of those days.
The campfire crackled behind him, laughter echoing from the pavilion, but Percy had slipped away to the edge of the beach. The ocean was calmer than he felt. He sat in the sand, knees pulled to his chest, shirt abandoned beside him like a bad habit he couldn’t quit. Moonlight traced every scar with brutal honesty.
You found him there.
You hadn’t meant to intrude. You’d just noticed he was gone, noticed the way he’d smiled a little too tightly all evening. When you approached, you slowed, unsure—until Percy felt your presence and flinched, shoulders tensing on instinct alone.
“Hey,” you said softly. “I’m sorry. I can go if you want.”
He didn’t look at you right away. “You don’t have to.”
The words came out rough, like they’d scraped his throat on the way up.
You sat beside him anyway, close enough that your arms brushed, far enough that he didn’t feel trapped. You didn’t stare. You didn’t ask. You just stayed, and somehow that hurt more than being alone.
Percy finally exhaled. “They’re ugly,” he muttered, nodding toward his torso. “I try not to think about them. But sometimes… it’s like they’re louder than everything else.”
You turned to him then, eyes gentle but unflinching. “They’re not ugly,” you said. “They’re proof you’re still here.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Still here doesn’t always feel like a good thing.”
The admission slipped out before he could stop it. His fingers dug into the sand. For a moment, you wondered if he’d shut down completely—but then you reached out, slow and deliberate, giving him time to pull away.
He didn’t.
Your hand rested over his, warm, grounding. “I know that feeling,” you said quietly. “The one where existing feels heavier than disappearing.”
Percy swallowed. His eyes burned, and he hated that too—hated how close he always felt to breaking, like one wrong thought could send him spiraling back into the dark places he worked so hard to outrun.
“I used to think,” he admitted, voice barely above the waves, “that if I was strong enough, fast enough, brave enough… none of it would’ve happened. That I could’ve stopped it.”
You shook your head. “You were a kid, Percy. None of that was your fault. Not then. Not ever.”
Something in his chest cracked at the certainty in your tone.
Carefully, you traced a finger just beside one of the scars—not touching, but close enough that he felt seen without feeling exposed. “These don’t define you,” you continued. “They don’t make you broken. And they don’t cancel out the good—the way you protect people, the way you care, the way you keep choosing to live even when it hurts.”
He finally looked at you. Really looked.
“You don’t see me the way I see myself,” he said.
You met his gaze without hesitation. “No. I see you the way you actually are.”
The ocean sighed behind you both. Percy leaned into you then, forehead resting against your shoulder, the weight of him heavy and achingly human. You wrapped your arms around him without thinking, holding him like you understood that sometimes survival wasn’t loud or heroic—it was quiet, trembling, and desperately in need of warmth.
For the first time that night, the scars were silent, still.
And for once, Percy didn’t feel like he had to face them alone.
I recently read @tealvneu 's fic Stranded which is so so good and I cannot recommend enough. This is from that scene at the end of the second chapter when Zeus finally gets to hold Jason (even if he did use somewhat... duplicitous methods, although that's far from the worse thing Hermes' has used his caduceus for)
Headcanon. Thalia didn't know what to feed Jason, because Beryl didn't care about either of them, and there was only alcohol and very little food in the fridge. Thalia had to run to the store to get food
(I didn't notice that I had only posted one piece of art at first.)
Only me needs a rrverse book where the characters are actually just chilling and doing their normal stuff, without fear of having to die, complete a mission or protect the world.
A whole book (or just a small book! like, I would be happy with 20 pages) about them living their lives; Percy teaching things to his younger sister, Jason and Nico spending time together like he said in BOO, Leo with his foster mothers, Piper and Shell, Jason drawing, etc
