#thaliaposting

[indig0bluee]

annabeths face when she finally hugged thalia she just melted in her arms you could just feel how tired she was of being strong of pretending everything was okay. but now it really is because thalias here

[bayetea]

I feel like "thalia did not have a choice to join the hunters regardless of whether or not she ended up liking it because it can only be considered a real choice if she had other viable options" is a pretty uncomplicated understanding of her role in the prophecy and yet the worst pjo fans in the world will pull up with takes like "thalia is so fucked up for leaving percy behind to deal with the prophecy like imagine if percy had done the same thing to nico!"

so if your options are A. become the prophecy child and turn 16 and inevitably fail and see all your friends die and watch the world end / B. join the hunters to avoid your 16th birthday so that the person who is most likely to succeed can be the prophecy child . and you choose B. would you feel that you actually had a choice in the matter or would you feel that you were coerced by the fates to be a harm reduction voter

if percy didn't want to be the prophecy child maybe he shouldn't have been so good at it 🙄

[bayetea]

sick of thalia being portrayed as some extremely confident dominant type in relationships just because she's bossy/has a punk look. why on earth would she be like that. she half-died when she was twelve and got all flustered around apollo and has no relationship experience and signed her life away to the hunters. we need to wake up to the fact that she would be complete dogshit at dating

[bayetea]

now imagine if you will the horror of spending an hour trying to decide on how you draw thalia's "spiky" hair only to realize that the one you liked best is just the sasuke cut

[bayetea]

this isn't all of the examples of course but percy being salty about thalia is one of my favorite things that happens in the series because it's everywhereeeee it's littered all over the page, it's there in som before he even meets her; his envy stains his perception of and reactions to her. he's jealous of her history with annabeth that he doesn't have, he's jealous of how knowledgeable and experienced she is, he's jealous of her capabilities, he's jealous of the respect she's given by others, he's jealous of everything he thinks she has that he doesn't and it never quite peaks into resentment territory but god does it irk him so bad and it's so funny but it's also meaningful for their roles in the great prophecy

something important about percy's character through which we can frame this jealousy is that he can't stand being made to feel inferior to others because he's been dealing with that for his entire life already from his adversaries (i.e. gabe, bullies at school, teachers that look down on him, etc); that he hates being made to feel inferior is a reason why he always stands up for others, because he doesn't like seeing anyone else get treated like they're inferior either. but with thalia this sense of inferiority inside of him is particularly difficult and uncomfortable to address because she's not gabe, she's not nancy bobofit, she's an ally - which means he can't hate her or retaliate against her in the same way that he's retaliated against his past foes. I think some part of him was probably even glad when thalia attacked him first after the capture the flag game in ttc because it gave him a "good" reason to push back against her in front of everyone, to challenge this sense of inferiority with any kind of proof that he's just as good as her, even through violent means

but over the course of ttc thalia is humanized in percy's eyes, almost falling down from the pedestal that he and everyone else around her has put her on. he learns about her flaws, her fears, her vulnerabilities - that she's scared of heights, she's torn up about what happened to her mom, she feels immense pain over everything with luke, etc. the rivalry wanes, the jealousy lessens, and a deeper friendship is gained between the only (known) big three kids. although the title of the prophecy child was an enormous burden for thalia to lay on percy's shoulders and he doesn't exactly appreciate this in-text (I mean who would.... it feels like a death sentence), I think it meant a lot to gain approval from her in particular. at the end of ttc his rival deems him a friend, a hero, and a person she has confidence in to succeed where she'd fail. that feeling of inferiority in percy can finally melt because thalia hugs him and looks him in the eye and assures him at last that they're allies and equals

[bayetea]

I would like 2 be insane about thalia on main again because I love her. notice thalia being more uncomfortable with sharing power than giving up all the power to someone else in this brief scene with percy. percy is uncomfortable with it too, but unlike thalia he hardly attempts to control anyone else's behavior so much as he resists any attempts to have his own behavior controlled

after this agreement thalia proceeds to take control over the capture the flag game anyway because she just can't help herself. she criticizes percy for not following her orders and gets so angry with him that she accidentally shocks him with electricity twice. thalia has serious problems with self-restraint. if we read into all of this just a little bit too much then we can see the early indicators of how and why thalia wasn't right to be the prophecy child and needed to become a hunter instead

thalia argues that annabeth was kidnapped in ttc in part because percy, in all his impulsive glory, went off on his own instead of sticking with the group - and the campers lost capture the flag against the hunters in part for a very similar reason: percy tried to be the hero and went off on his own to get the flag. when percy opts out of the final ttc fight and takes up the weight of the sky in order to free artemis, he trusts that someone else is more fit to be the hero than himself. this was character development for percy, proof of his fitness to be the prophecy child, and foreshadowing for the final showdown against kronos all in one book. it distinguishes him from his rival thalia in a very important way. she would have never in a million years listened to rachel's warning as percy did

[bayetea]

luke knew what the fleece could do by the way. it was very heavily implied that the titan army's plan was to use the fleece to revive kronos first and then get thalia revived next to expedite the speed at which the great prophecy occurred. luke says that percy is an "unreliable weapon" that needs to be "replaced". the replacement was supposed to be thalia

and there's definitely some ambiguity as to what exactly they wanted thalia for (did they just want a super powerful demigod on their side to fight with them and nothing more? did they only care about having the prophecy child under their control? did they only want her to kill the ophiotaurus for them? was she meant to be kronos' new host instead of luke? would luke have known if that was kronos' true intention for her body? heck would kronos have even needed a host at all if he'd gotten the fleece?). but luke is clearly expressing in these excerpts that he had some kind of deal/understanding with kronos in which he is obligated to get thalia to join their side, or else kronos will use his body as a host. luke is genuinely afraid of this happening to him and clearly doesn't want to lose his body to kronos; this was a very risky gamble for him to make. but as thalia says in tlo luke made his choices - and furthermore, the stringent nature of fate and prophecy predetermined that the war was always going to end with thalia immortal and luke dead by his own hand

[bayetea]

I think about the few months thalia got to live her own life even a little bit at the boarding school with annabeth between som and ttc so much. she really didn't know how much time she had left to be in annabeth's life. "You're old enough now to drive with a learner's permit!" "Uh--" "I know what you're going to say. You don't deserve an honor like driving the sun chariot." "That's not what I was going to say". I'm sure she was primarily nervous about flying the chariot because she's terrified of heights but you could also read her anxiety in this scene as her shock to just now finding out that she's the prophecy child and that the world might end in <a week as a result. because she genuinely did not know how old she was until apollo told her. Crazy