the lack of developed sapphic romantic characters and relationships in pjo is a little bit disappointing tbh. i mean, we're fed with yaoi with nico and will, which is a relationship that began from boo, growing throughout the toa series and even more so in tsats and tcotd. meanwhile all we have for the yuri are fanon ships and headcanons and very late additions of piper being queer and lavinia being a lesbian
nico and will are such a developed, focused-on couple that they're seen as one of the 'main couples' in the pjo universe. percabeth, frazel and solangelo. when it comes to lavinia asimov, an explicitly lesbian character in toa, we're told that she's very down bad for poison ivy but i dont think they were ever even in the same room in the books. im p sure poison ivy was only mentioned once in tcotd as 'lavinia's girlfriend'.
as for piper, the 'kissing a girl on a rooftop' bomb was dropped on us at the very end of the toa series, with a little screentime for shel a bit at the end of tsats, when nico iris-messaged to catch up.
also i just remembered after searching it up- jo and emmie felt a little bit like they were just sprinkled into toa just so it could be said that there was lesbian representation in the pjo universe. yes they had a backstory, yea they were cute, but after that couple of chapters they were in, they like. disappeared. a little visit from lester/apollo at the end of tower of nero but that's it. and their backstory was that they were huntresses of artemis who fell in love and had to be kicked out of the hunt so like . i dont exactly have a big issue with this part of their story but something about it just feels a bit iffy to me, but i cant really think rn atm as to why.
IN CONCLUSION it kind of feels like the sapphics are an afterthought. and with the way new additions to the books are now, i don't think there's a chance a well-written, well-developed sapphic couple will come soon or at all. even if rick were to come out at some point with a book on a wlw couple in the pjo universe, again, emphasis on well-written.
sorry for the rant but i was in a very "i gotta talk about this" mood. a lot of this stuff might be inaccurate in terms of textual evidence and stuff because i admittedly havent read the books in a while and there are also other stuff i have issues with (ex. lack of proper poc representation that's also not stereotypical) but uh yeah, i guess bad representation is better than no representation at all ..
