Court of the Dead: My (Bitchy) Real-Time Thoughts
- Mark Oshiro’s writing continues to feel very stilted and lacking in the art of subtlety. Really wish Rick had just used them as a sensitivity reader.
- A child of Hestia will never sit right with me. What makes Mark think that Hestia would ever desire motherhood/children? Hestia—the maiden goddess?
- Rick, Yoruba Nigerians are not the only kind of Nigerians that exist, and ‘Olu’ is not the only name prefix that Yorubas use for their kids. After Olujime and Oludare, I’m going to need you to start getting creative. Google is free.
- I know for a fact that the lame attempt at AAVE came from Mark Oshiro, and I need them to stop that nonsense immediately. Unless you’re Black, AAVE is not for you to use, even if you’re from the LGBTQ+ community. You’re going to butcher it every time.
- Nico and Will’s chemistry is so……….
- Snow White reference….Disney, you’re not slick.
- ….hasn’t Will already been to Camp Jupiter? Or maybe my memory’s fuzzy, I don’t know. I could’ve sworn his first major interaction with Nico in BoO was near New Rome. Will have to double check.
- This ain’t the real Mr. D. This is Mr. D from Wish. Mr. D from Aliexpress. Discount Aisle Mr. D. Mr. D on clearance. Liquidation Sale Mr. D. “Everything must go” Mr. D. The Mr. D that your mom says you have at home.
- “Ray of Light.” “Lord of Darkness”. I love nicknames and epithets as much as the next guy, but can we get a little more creativity here?
- Watch out, Jasico shippers! It’s y’all’s turn to have Rick/Mark not-so-subtly remind you of how much they doesn’t care for your fanon ships!
- I really need Mark to learn the art of subtlety and implicit story telling. There’s no need for Will and Nico to verbalize the full extent of their relationship dynamic and Nico’s lingering traumas. Imply it in the storytelling instead of just blurbing it out loud. Same goes for the exposition. You don’t need to identify what every detail in the narrative means at the exact moment they’re mentioned. Goodness gracious.
- For the love of the gods, please kill the therapy speak. Teenagers do NOT talk like this. Ugh!
- Surely there are other gay artists besides Lil’ Nas X that we can do fun references to, no? Is he the only queer male musician that Mark knows? He’s not even a cool artist anymore; he’s literally in the middle of a major falloff.
- I have a lot of mixed feelings about the ‘redeemable’ monsters theme, and to start off my explanation: The Minotaur’s backstory makes no fucking sense. If he didn’t like the taste of humans and wanted a choice in how he was perceived, then why the fuck did he continue to eat them for years and years? Why not help them find their way out of the labyrinth to freedom if it was truly his heart’s desire to be an agent of good? Why not just say no and fuck off into the woods or something? It’s not like Minos was holding an axe to his head and gave him no choice but to consume human flesh. He did have a chance for autonomy, autonomy that he used to keep eating children until Theseus took him out. Like what the fuck?
- I am so over the “Percy was so insensitive to people” movement that these Nico adventure stories keep endorsing. The kid was fucking 12 and was under the impression that you had just killed his mother. Please shut up.
- I don’t know how I feel about the parallels being drawn between the monsters and marginalized groups in real life, particularly immigrants and refugees. Most immigrants and refugees don’t have a history of manipulating, traumatizing, attacking, murdering, and eating innocent children who often come from bad home lives, so drawing a comparison between them and these monsters…it feels callous at best and irresponsible at worst. I feel like they took a really serious and nuanced issue and dumbed it down. If they really wanted to do this message, they should have considered the theme of Camp Half Blood discovering Demi-Titan kids for the first time and having to accept them despite many of them having fought for Kronos.
- Here we go again with the “wow, Percy’s so mean for fucking all these monsters over” campaign. I would once again like to remind you all that he was a teenager (a child, by the fucking way!) fighting for his life. It would be fine if they mentioned it once and then never again, but the fact that this has become a running theme in these Nico POVs is really fucking starting to piss me off. I’m all for calling out Percy on his flaws, but him fighting for survival is not one of them. Oh my goodness!
- Pasiphae’s portrayal in this IP continues to evoke mixed feelings. Why do Riordan/Oshiro like victim-blaming so much, and why the fuck won’t this IP ever fully acknowledge the role Poseidon plays in screwing all these people over? Like, you can keep ranting about how Percy sucks for killing these monsters in an effort to save his own life, but you can’t address the fact that the only reason Pasiphae mated with the bull in the first place was because Poseidon punished her for her husband’s mistakes; not even her own mistakes? What are we doing here???? I swear, if it matters so much to Rick to have an LGBTQ co-author so that he gets the queer stuff right (which Mark is not even doing particularly well to the weird depiction of Will that leans into common bi stereotypes/misconceptions), then why can’t it matter to him to get a female co-author (NOT BECKY! Preferably a woman of color who’s at least 30 or younger) so that his female characters can receive some justice? Geez.
- “Bisexual chaos”. Mark, please stop lifting dialogue from Tumblr posts and Twitter threads. It’s going to make this story sound so dated in a few years.
- ….isn’t Semele supposed to be in Olympus right now, living as a goddess under the new name of Thyone? Like, Dionysus specifically went out of his way to bring her out of the Underworld and up to Olympus thousands of years ago. Why the fuck is she just wandering around in New Rome? How the fuck was Mr. D/Bacchus not aware of her presence this whole time???? Did Mr. D’s trip into the Underworld just not happen then?
- Yeah. Something about this theme is making my spidey senses tingle. It just doesn’t sit well with me. Like oh no, the children who have been getting eaten and murdered by these monsters for years upon years are nervous to be around them. How shocking!
- A black girl from the 20th century south needs the help of two white boys on the topic of making outcasts feel welcome. A girl that had died, lived as a ghost, and came back to life in a new century. Sure. Okay. Why not.
- The more they develop the main theme of this story, the less I like it. Bringing a piece of fucking Tartarus with you to a demigod camp??? And sure, the monsters will be able to regenerate as much as they wish, but will dead demigods who were murdered by monsters get to regenerate? Obviously not. I cannot emphasize how much I hate that they’re making the demigods seem like the privileged ones here. Camp Jupiter is a *SAFE HAVEN*, designed to protect them, the one place where they can relax, be themselves, and be in community with the few others who are like them. You brought their would-be killers into the camp and are now acting fussy that the campers feel uneasy around them; are you fucking joking? That’s like a Klan member having a “change of heart” and walking into an HBCU with his Klan hoodie still on asking “Gee, why don’t the black students seem to like me?” Like bro, come on.
- Oh? The story finally acknowledging the smallest ounce of trauma that demigods have experienced too? Color me shocked!
- Also, I’m not really feeling this “we were forced to kill demigods against our will” angle. It reeks a lot of the “we were just following orders” sentiment from WWII, and doesn’t take into account the agency and intentional choices that many of these monsters made in prior books. Rick and Mark can’t redeem these guys if they’re not willing to acknowledge the fact that many of these monsters were willing participants in the trauma they caused.
- Assigning the real life sentiment of women’s feelings on child-rearing to a male gryphon….okay. Sure. Why not.
- I’m actually really glad that they included this panic attack scene. Finally, some nuance for this theme!
- Mr. D, loving Nico’s sarcasm and saying that out loud, publicly…….okay. Sure. Why not.
- I do enjoy the tease of not mentioning Semele to Dionysus right away.
- Mark Oshiro continues to lack the art of subtlety and implicit storytelling in their writing. Ugh!
- This book should be titled “Baby learns their first therapy concept!“
- So I get this whole thing about this IP taking place in the “now” or whatever, but idk, man. I feel like Moo Deng is where I need to draw a line, because huh?
- A child of Minerva……okay. Sure. Why not. We already had a child of Hestia, so let’s toss Minerva in here too. And while we’re at it, we might as well get Vesta, Hera, and Juno some demigod kids and legacies too. That will make perfect sense.
- I love that they’re finally giving this monster redemption thing more layers; felt like I was being gaslit for the first half of the book. HOWEVER, I do think it’s very convenient that we’re only meeting demigods who haven’t been directly harmed by this specific group of monsters, and not the ones who have. What are Nico, Frank, Hazel, Will, and Asterion going to say when they do come across a demigod whose friends/siblings/parents *were* killed by Asterion, Arielle, and Johan before their change of heart? Arielle got lucky that Savannah wasn’t a demigod she’d harmed personally, but what’s she going to do when she comes across a demigod who she does remember traumatizing? Are these arguments and defenses going to hold up then?
- Yay for finally acknowledging that Bianca’s death wasn’t Percy’s fault. If anything, it was Zoe’s fault. Argue with your mom.
- Bob is not a good comparison to make here. Bob is only who he is because Percy gave him a bath in the Lethe. Had Percy not done that, what are the chances that Iapetus would have experienced this magic change of heart on his own?
- Along that same vein, does this whole redemption business apply to Titans as well?
- I see we’re continuing this pattern of girlfriends punching their boyfriends….at least Mark and/or Rick went out of their way to mention that it was “in the most loving way”.
- Nico, my brother, you call yourself an Underworld child, but when you hear the word ‘judge’ in this situation, the Underworld judges don’t cross your mind? Like….at all?
- I’m actually kind of annoyed that Semele’s story hasn’t come up yet. No one has asked her about her past…like, at all? Her name hasn’t struck a bell for anyone? Not even Johan, who’s well-read? None of the Bacchus kids have their spidey senses tingling when she’s around?
- Mary Tudor….an extreme Catholic….sitting in communion with Greek mythological monsters…instead of going to the Hell *she* believes in….and now serving as a Judge of—you know what? Sure. Why not.
- Finally! The story gets interesting!
- …….Erebos is not Hades’s kingdom. The Underworld is. 😐
- MARK OSHIRO! WHY MUST YOU EXPLAIN THE EXACT THOUGHT AND FEELING BEHIND EVERY SINGLE ACTION? CAN YOU NOT LET THE READERS PIECE THINGS TOGETHER THEMSELVES? OH MY GOODNESS!!!!
- Along that same vein, the themes in this book are so fucking heavy-handed. Give your audience a chance to arrive at the conclusion on their own; my goodness!
- Something about Hades doesn’t feel right. I can’t put my thumb on it, but he feels too…….dull? Placid, maybe? Idk. I think the switch from god with both positive and negative traits to super caring dad is too sharp; Hades feels too bland and feels too mortal. He’s more like PJOTV Hades than godly Hades.
- “Demigods like her had been hunting and killing their kind for millennia…” I’m sorry; don’t you mean the monsters have been hunting and killing demigods for millennia? When have any of the demigods ever gone out of their way to hunt down and kill a monster who wasn’t bothering them? The entire fucking purpose of your camps is to keep monsters out because they keep trying to fucking kill you. What the fuck is this retcon??????
- Here these two come expositing the themes and messages of the story once again. Do authors not trust their readers anymore?
- Comparing Hazel’s background to the Minotaur’s background is……a choice.
- This writing style is killing me!!!!!!
- Yo, this climax is really dragging. We’ve spent the last 3-4 chapters reiterating the same points and stakes over and over again. We get that Hazel and the mythics are in danger and are running out of supplies. How many times do we need to read it?
- Wow. So these two are really not going to let their audience connect any of the dots themselves, huh? Every connection within the narrative is going to be explained to us very carefully, huh?
- This final battle is seriously dragging. I’m bored of the conflict already.
- Mr. D bursting into tears……..okay. Sure. Why not ?
- How and why would Semele fade away? Wild frenzied parties are still definitely a thing. They also didn’t really do a good of demonstrating how it wasn’t her scene. What would the prideful Semele not like about wild parties?
- In addition to Chiron’s mother, we really need to know more about what happened to his wife, Chariclo.
Wow. It’s finally over. I felt like the plot was a lot more cohesive than TSATS, but a lot of characters and character motivations didn’t really make sense or dig as deep into the nuance as I would have liked. The themes and emotional beats weren’t handled very well either; the lack of implicit storytelling really pissed me off. What happened to letting kids do some thinking for themselves?
I can’t remember what rating I gave to TSATS; I think I would rate CoTD 1-point higher, if only for for the fact that the stakes in this story could actually be felt instead of the absolute joke they were in TSATS.
