what's ur opinions on how they handled the zeus thalia complexity with that fraud of a plot twist
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in the books, thalia was being chased and hunted by the furies- and they almost killed her, which led to zeus turning her into a tree to 1. make a barrier to protect camp and 2. keep his daughter from death. the reason she was being chased by the furies, was because zeus broke the pact. and hades didnt like that, obviously, so he did what he felt best and took it upon himself to kill thalia. or to get her killed. she was about to die, and zeus prevented that by turning her into a tree. was it the best solution? no. did it cause a lot of issues for thalia? hell yea. did it save her life? …in a way. was it was of the only things zeus could do at the time to protect his daughter? yes. because thats what was important. zeus did not turn thalia into a tree because she talked back to him, he turned her into a tree to protect her and to keep her alive- partly because he also didnt want hades to have her. that last part is mostly speculation, but knowing what we do about the gods, it would make sense and be in character.
now in the show, the furies chased thalia so they could. talk. they wanted to talk. and zeus shot them down- fair, i guess. but. why. why would they want to talk to her. one of them tried to kill percy, why wouldnt they try to kill thalia too? not only is it i consistent but it also just straight up doesnt make sense. and zeus- this may come as a shock to some people (/sarcastic)- but hes not a completely shitty dad. now before anyone says anything- he is undeniably abusive, its basically screamed by apollo at the top of his lungs in toa, i barely remember what happened in the books but i do remember that zeus was abusive, and im not downplaying that. what im saying here, is that in the show, they made him only abusive. theyve done this with a lot of other characters and gods, but they got rid of the nuance. zeus turned thalia into a tree in the books because he cared about her, and when thalia woke up she introduced herself as his daughter because she wanted to make him proud.
making zeus turn her into a tree and making thalia despise him with nothing else gets rid of so much nuance, and thats such a big problem in the show.
basically my point is, the show is scared of having morally confusing characters. yes, zeus is abusive, yes he cares about his children. yes, thalia dislikes her father, yes shes proud to be his daughter. two things can be true, even if theyre contradictory, and the show seems to have forgotten that and its strange because the books did such a good job.
it also annoys me when people say they love the changes to this and that this makes it so much egger- NO IT DOESNT. NO IT DOES NOT. the changes hollow and flatten out the characters, getting rid of their depth and complexity that made them so interesting in the show. it also will most likely change a scene in ttc, where thalia prays to zeus for help and he listens! and he helps them! i can imagine book zeus doing that because i can imagine him helping his children, but i cant imagine show zeus doing that because it looks like he only cares about himself and the power he holds. saying ‘oh this change makes so much sense!’ because zeus is a bad father is stupid, because it also ignores what real life abusers can look like- and that pushes more representation, which is what the books were about in the first fucking place!
the change is stupid and anyone who likes it needs to realize that characters are supposed to be complex and not have a single trait. thank you for coming to my TED talk