crazy that nico and them are the pioneers of a new world with "good monsters" or mythics or whatever bs rick spewed, when percy has already found and accepted "good monsters" like tyson. like mrs. o'leary. like ella. like bessie. like briares. where he already saw "good" in polyphemus and spared him despite the fact that polyphemus was trying to kill and eat them because he was his brother. where he saw good in damesen and small bob and iapetus. THERE ARE ALREADY GOOD MONSTERS!!!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE MYTHICS??? 😭
How the fuck do people LIKE this show? Cole literally made it after getting called out, and people disregard it and mindlessly consume his content? He doesn't even know how to write a complex female character.
I must know…Would you be down for a New Rome Book/Roman Myth or are you just waiting for the Pjo series to end after the 2nd TSATS Book? Lmao. I’m kinda mixed.
at this point i just want it to end o<-<
yknow there was a day back in like 2020 where we all thought the series was over. because rick said it was. and we all cheered and celebrated cause it was a good time for it to end and we all felt it was right and it was beautiful. and then rick announced four more fucking books for PR and advertising reasons and ever since i've wanted to slam my head into a wall. he better not get any more ideas i swear to god.
I have this absolute obsession with the idea that Percy is almost capricious in a way and incredibly unpredictable - like at most you could guess some options of what he’d do but not which he’d choose but even then he’s usually doing something completely different
and that in a way that makes Annabeth really sad because in her head she’ll never know him as well as he knows her - cause they both have people skills but his are almost more about manipulation while hers are more focused on her being so likeable
and it’s probably exacerbated by the tarterous thing because there were so many things he could do that she’d never enven considered
(Complexity sepperate but could they bith ever be seen in an au or future as representing different aspects of icarus his rise and fall (you might have to make his fall represent something different other than falling into expected hierarchy and way if things but idk)
that's exactly who percy is and why he always comes out on top 🙂↕️
like listening to epic the musical, i get to "thunder bringer" where zeus forces odysseus to chose to either sacrifice himself to save his men or sacrifice his men to save himself. and i try imagining percy in that position and choosing between himself or camp and its like. percy wouldn't do either. he'd lift his sword and fight zeus himself or do something like odysseus did in "ruthlessness" with the bag of winds to escape or would look for some other side quest to complete to appease zeus's wrath (even if it was helios's wrath but fuck it we ball). that's what made it click for me that percy comes out on top not necessarily because he's the strongest or bc he's the main character, but because the godly system works by giving the Hero option a or option b and they have always chosen one of the two. but then it comes to percy and he doesn't play by the rules and choses option k instead and no one ever expects it so they're always blindsided by it.
i do think canon percabeth struggle after tartarus bc annabeth truly was surprised and almost horrified by how percy behaved down in tartarus and i can very easily see her rethinking everything she ever knew about him and trying to see him through this new lens and trying to know this new him and he lowk hates it bc she's treating him differently and looking at him like she doesn't know him and i could see a lot of conflict there. i mean in moa they had their little date and annabeth says something to soothe percy and he's like "how do you do that? you always know what i'm thinking" and annabeth just grins and is like "because i know you" and percy thinks to himself "and you like me anyway?" but he doesn't say it.
then come the pit and percy does things that annabeth never expected of him and she, on multiple occasions down there, is unsettled by his behavior and is unable to glean what's going on in his head and it freaks her out because now she's learning that she only knew half of percy and there is this whole other side to him that she never expected and percy is having to deal with the fact that she's seeing all of his for the first time and she's struggling to stomach it and it's playing into his fears of "and you like me anyway?" that if she truly knew all of him, she wouldn't love him.
MY percabeth is very different from whatever AI SLOP rr wrote bc i'm sorry but annabeth "abandonment issues" chase thoroughly enjoyed percy's behavior down there i don't care i don't care i don't care. hoo is so severely ooc and mischaracterized i only take it as rr's published fanfiction. it's not actually canon just an interesting fanon continuation of the original five pjo books. i do not care.
and i mean this other side of percy that she, apparently, didn't know existed is just a lot more calculating and capable. not that percy isn't always calculating and capable but the tartarus flavor of calculating and capable was very clinical and almost emotionless. but i'm so sorry chat annabeth chase watched percy jackson at age 12 manipulate procrustes before tying him down and taunting him for the sake of taunting him before cutting off his head while he was begging for his life. she's always known what he was capable of. i don't CARE was that old man has to say.
this is gonna be a long ask so im sorry but i have to ask since youve prob read the pjo books more times than years ive been alive. anyway, the ending of the pjo series has been on my mind since i can't decide if it was sufficient enough. tbh this leads into the overarching conflict of pjo in that was it right to try amend the old system instead of creating a new one? ik kronos would install an older, more corrupt system but let's say hypothetically there could be revolution without a tyrannical grandpa at the head of it. would the ending still suffice? bc the ending wasn't like "olympus sucks but kronos is gone so this is better ig" it was that the gods did bad but there is still hope for change as they also have good. (i dont entirely disagree w this). but isn't the olympian system rotten to the core & fundamentally oppressive? how can we compromise & move forward without bastardising & minimising the damage done? should we even compromise with them? idk how to explain this coherently enough but I hope u get the gist lol
its okay. this is going to be a long response LMAO
i think. there was no perfect outcome. the system would always be corrupt and harmful, but backing the olympians was harm reduction as kronos would've been far worse. i did see someone present an interesting spin on kronos by making his plan not simply destruction of civilization but taking humanity back to his "golden age" where everyone is perfect and sinless but that takes people's free will so the conflict is between the gods where people have the free will to chose their own path versus kronos's world which would be a time of peace and "perfection" but that perfection would be due to the lack of autonomy and higher conscious thought?
idk it was an interesting idea that i think could've been a lot cooler to explore in pjo and could've been wayyyy more divisive within the fandom of like who would side with kronos or the gods based on whether they'd sacrifice autonomy and individuality for conformity and peace. or whether they'd value free will and autonomy with the cost of pain and suffering. i think that's a far more interesting conflict that could've tied all the way back to sally's quote in the lightning thief that "if my life is going to mean anything, it means i have to live it myself. i can't let a god or my son take care of me" and percy's consistent behavior regarding everyone within the godly world of respecting their choices and their power and how they chose to operate and behave instead of forcing them to comply to his ideas and plans and ideals unless it is explicitly harmful and he's protecting the harmed and targeted group
anyway
i remain firm in my stance that percy wasn't necessarily fighting for the gods. i think he was fighting kronos to protect his friends and family from the utter destruction he would bring, and that just happened to align with the gods' interests so it appeared that percy was fighting for them and to protect them. but percy wasn't fighting to preserve this "perfect system" under the gods. his options were limited and he knew he couldn't optimize kronos's takeover to create a better system for him and his people, but the olympians were malleable and could be shaped into something different. he sees it with ares in tlt where ares was manipulated and swayed to turn against olympus or with zeus and poseidon at the end of tlt where they both are like 50 feet tall and they're intimidating and imposing and untouchable and percy is just an ant to them but then...they both soften with him and show him this humanity. this humanity that kronos appears to lack.
that said. i feel like if there were a third party in the mix and there was someone who wasn't kronos or the gods and they genuinely promised to build a better world, percy would've sided with them instead. hell, probably a majority of the demigods would've sided with them. arguably luke but i feel like he would've been too entrenched in his own pain and fury to recognize the better third party option but that's just my opinion.
i think if we leave canon at tlo, the ending was sufficient enough given the circumstances (not a perfect happy ending but happy enough as in the best outcome, for the situation at hand, came to be). but then we continue into hoo and toa and its like. okay. nothing changed. so what was the point. all that death, destruction, carnage, bloodshed...all of it was for nothing. it was pointless. in which case, no. the ending of tlo is not sufficient or satisfactory. the end of tlo was to show the gods changing and the system being reworked but come tlh and nothing has changed. come moa and percy is forced to fight in that arena for dionysus/bacchus's entertainment and he feels that same fury and rage that luke felt. because the system that luke was a victim of has not changed and now percy is in the exact same spot that luke was and that's when i'd say that percy genuinely understood and commiserated with luke. i think people say that a lot more than they should in regard to pjo!percy and luke.
like okay this is a little off topic lmao but pjo!percy and luke both knew the system was corrupt. luke wanted to tear it down but pjo!percy believed it could be reworked and restructured. the extent of them understanding one another in pjo, i think, is just that. they both know the system is corrupt. but it's not until moa that i think percy actually begins to properly understand and agree with luke in his stance of tearing it down which is fair bc at that point, with rr continuing to write this world in this way, by hoo luke was right in the way that the system couldn't be fixed and needed to be torn down. but if we ignore hoo+beyond, tlo shows that percy was right in that the system could change, the gods could change. hermes and percy have that exchange on olympus after the meeting with the council where he was offered godhood and hermes says something about how the gods never change and percy affirms that he believes they can and hermes is astounded for a moment before remarking that percy may just teach them a thing or two.
tlo wraps up with the conclusion that percy is right and the system and gods can change. hoo+ goes to prove that percy was wrong and luke was right.
the end of tlo is satisfactory in the way that the end of encanto was satisfactory. i know you're more interested and appreciative of the disability metaphor of pjo but honestly i'm more invested in the familial aspect of the story so that's where i'm pulling from in regard to family versus what i think you may be getting at with like systemic issues and oppression. like systemically, i don't think the end of pjo would be sufficient in any manner but it is arguably the best possible outcome for the options they had. the system is corrupt down to it's core - which tying in to the familial aspect of it all is simply generational trauma starting all the way back with khaos and trickling down to gaia and ouranos and kronos and rhea and zeus and hera and now the gods and demigods. with the rot being at the center of the tree, there is no just putting a bandaid over the wound. you have to uproot it to truly solve the issue. but backing kronos wouldn't solve it as he's just closer to the rot than the gods are.
to truly solve the problem i do think complete removal and rebuilding would be the best course of action, but creating a vacuum where the gods were, would only pull in older deities like kronos or gaia to fill the space and they're closer to the rot so their ruling would be far worse and more unhealthy than the gods'. you could say okay then put the demigods in charge but even the demigods have their issues within camp with their prejudices - evident by clarisse's refusal to fight in tlo. they're too much like their parents and that generational trauma has trickled down to them to pass onto the next generation, the next ring in the tree. like we see especially with luke where he was a victim but in his effort to remake the world, he was just following the cycle and becoming a perpetrator of abuse.
you'd need a complete outsider which, with the fabric of the world being based on the godly family, there is no outsider. they're all a part of this cycle of abuse and oppression and harm. percy is their best bet as the narrative breaker of cycles which is why by the end of tlo...that is their best, most sufficient ending. but capitalism dictates rr milks the franchise and then we completely undo what percy did in pjo and now luke was right and there really is no solving the issue and there is no escape or healing possible in this world and it is simply a never ending tragedy.
unless you want to have fun and make khaos come back to heal the generational trauma from the source and actually properly heal the rot within the family tree. but that's a fic i'm planning to write so ITS COPYRIGHTED BACK OFF (/hj)
anyway with percy being the narrative breaker of cycles - perseus "destroyer" - i think tlo could've led to a proper happy ending of percy working alongside the gods to rebuild their behavior and how they rule over everyone else (breaking cycles of abuse from the inside) while annabeth rebuilds the eternal city of olympus itself by his side. percabeth working together to rebuild olympus (the city & the gods simultaneously) could've implied the true ending being that they actually rework and rebuild the system to be a proper, healthy one. but like i've said a million times already lmao - rr continuing to write the franchise the way he did completely undoes that and makes it impossible as by tlh he shows that the gods cannot and will not change. you get apollo "changing" by the end of toa but with how rr has written the gods "changing" already, its only a matter of time before apollo reverts back to his previous behavior like the rest of the gods and nothing will actually change
there is no perfect, happy, satisfactory ending and rr has written a continuous tragedy and cycle of abuse that they cannot escape. imo lol
anyway!! i ignore post tlo for i do not see and canon is what i make it and percy is the gods' favorite little therapist and problem solver and he is Miserable (silly)
