PJO Fatal Flaws as Memes

Percy and Annabeth

I know there’s a lot to love about Percy Jackson but I really think his fatal flaw is what gets us all. I think the super-protective, loyal-to-a-fault, ride-or-die, shortsighted tunnel-visioned simplicity of him is what we like so much. Other heroes, like Luke Skywalker or Zuko or Superman, hear about who their fathers are or what their heritage is and it just riddles them with angst and melodrama. And we love them too.

But Percy spends much less time going “who am I and what is the deep metaphysical purpose of my being?” and much more time going, “I don’t care if I just learned Minotaurs are real and I’ve lost fights with middle-schoolers before: it has my mom, so one of us is going to die on this hill.”

There’s just this simplicity to him. He just goes with his gut. He can learn a devastating secret or world-bending truth, and then two seconds later, be like, “cool, what’s next?” because his gut so consistently responds to every situation with “I’m either going to protect the people I love or die making fun of the bad guys.”

i was just thinking, when alecto says that annabeth was the pride of Athena's offspring and perhaps the most formidable demigod child alive... she was playing into Annabeth's fatal flaw.

Pride. Hubris.

if Annabeth had taken that in, and gotten a big head about it, it could've been her downfall.

We all know about Percy's loyalty but he's been at this camp for less than two days and he can't even comprehend the thought of betraying them. Saw someone say that 'He is loyalty in its purest form' and that could not be more accurate.

it better not take anyone, much less annabeth, until season 3 and athena literally telling them to realise percy's fatal flaw is loyalty cause bro is putting it on FULL display

Percy Jackson:

i’ve been thinking a lot about what is so unique and appealing about 80s robin jay’s moral standing that got completely lost in plot later on. and i think a huge part of it is that in a genre so focused on crime-fighting, his motivations and approach don’t focus on the category of crime at all. in fact, he doesn’t seem to believe in any moral dogma; and it’s not motivated by nihilism, but rather his open-heartedness and relational ethical outlook.

we first meet (post-crisis) jay when he is stealing. when confronted about his actions by bruce he’s confident that he didn’t do anything wrong – he’s not apologetic, he doesn’t seem to think that he has morally failed on any account. later on, when confronted by batman again, jay says that he’s no “crook.” at this point, the reader might assume that jay has no concept of wrong-doing, or that stealing is just not one of the deeds that he considers wrong-doing. yet, later on we see jay so intent on stopping ma gunn and her students, refusing to be implicit in their actions. there are, of course, lots of reasons for which we can assume he was against stealing in this specific instance (an authority figure being involved, the target, the motivations, the school itself being an abusive environment etc.), but what we gather is that jay has an extremely strong sense of justice and is committed to moral duty. that's all typical for characters in superhero comics, isn't it? however, what remains distinctive is that this moral duty is not dictated by any dogma – he trusts his moral instincts. this attitude – his distrust toward power structures, confidence in his moral compass, and situational approach, is something that is maintained throughout his robin run. it is also evident in how he evaluates other people – we never see him condemning his parents, for example, and that includes willis, who was a petty criminal. i think from there arises the potential for a rift between bruce and jay that could be, have jay lived, far more utilised in batman comics than it was within his short robin run.

after all, while bruce’s approach is often called a ‘philosophy of love and care,’ he doesn’t ascribe to the ethics of care [eoc] (as defined in modern scholarship btw) in the same way that jay does. ethics of care ‘deny that morality consists in obedience to a universal law’ and focus on the ideals of caring for other people and non-institutionalized justice. bruce, while obviously caring, is still bound by his belief in the legal system and deontological norms. he is benevolent, but he is also ultimately morally committed to the idea of a legal system and thus frames criminals as failing to meet these moral (legal-adjacent) standards (even when he recognizes it is a result of their circumstances). in other words, he might think that a criminal is a good person despite leading a life of crime. meanwhile, for jay there is no despite; jay doesn't think that engaging in crime says anything about a person's moral personality at all. morality, for him, is more of an emotional practice, grounded in empathy and the question of what he can do for people ‘here and now.’ he doesn’t ascribe to maxims nor utilitarian calculations. for jay, in morality, there’s no place for impartiality that bruce believes in; moral decisions are embedded within a net of interpersonal relationships and social structures that cannot be generalised like the law or even a “moral code” does it. it’s all about responsiveness. 

to sum up, jay's moral compass is relative and passionate in a way that doesn't fit batman's philosophy. this is mostly because bruce wants to avoid the sort of arbitrariness that seems to guide eoc. also, both for vigilantism, and jay, eoc poses a challenge in the sense that it doesn't create a certain 'intellectualised' distance from both the victims and the perpetrators; there's no proximity in the judgment; it's emotional.

all of this is of course hardly relevant post-2004. there might be minimal space for accommodating some of it within the canon progression (for example, the fact that eoc typically emphasises the responsibility that comes with pre-existing familial relationships and allows for prioritizing them, as well as the flexibility regarding moral deliberations), but the utilitarian framework and the question of stopping the crime vs controlling the underworld is not something that can be easily reconciled with jay’s previous lack of interest in labeling crime. 

it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / signifying nothing.

Ok so you know the thing that talks about how Percy and Annabeth’s fatal flaws are the reason they both ended up in Tartarus. Annabeth because of her pride and Percy for his loyalty for her. But the thing is that wasn’t fatal they both survived. Soooo either they were able to overcome it with the power of love they have for each other or because after they finally got out that everything they had to go through made them dead inside. 

I cannot get enough of Fatal Flaw Percy Jackson

Ulan has a rather dramatic way of letting Jupiter know he's back in town.

If Donna Tartt and Taylor Swift collabed on Evermore

I wish to know the fatal flaw, that showy, dark crack running down the middle of a life, that makes you long to be magnificently cursed

He’s in the room, your morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs is all I wish to see

🌿🪶🫖🍂🦌☘️🖋️

Seeking fresh earth

This wavering voice

carries not: either veils

or elegant cascades to

—

shield well my grim

cavern of soul-forged

secrets seeking fresh

—

earth,  and honestly, it

will likely get me killed

if I don’t shut up first

@nosebleedclub March Prompts 7. hamartia

A morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

Richard Papen

The trouble with you is you want everybody to love you.

Iris Murdoch, from The Philosopher’s Pupil

in the lightning thief percy tries to control his anger but can’t and this results in him unconsciously using his powers to lash out and dunk nancy bobofit in a fountain. he does this in order to protect his friend.

in the last olympian, rachel tells percy “you are not the hero”, and chiron interrupts before he can respond; “i wanted to yell at him to go away, but of course i couldn’t. i tried to get my emotions under control. i felt like i had another personal hurricane swirling around me.” he then successfully gets his emotions under control, and utilizes that calm to get rachel the help she needs from chiron.

both of these circumstances are like, wow, personal loyalty goes HARD. and it’s so cool and i just. i love comparing these scenes because it’s like, the first scene demonstrates percy’s inability to control his anger, specifically when HIS FRIENDS get hurt. and then, this later scene in TLO demonstrates how he will go AGAINST his own personal anger in order to help a friend.

like it’s just so cool to see percy’s fatal flaw in every interaction he has in the series. he will get HIMSELF into trouble to protect his friends (pushing nancy bobofit). he will IGNORE his own emotional pain to protect his friends (rachel tells him he’s “not the hero”, and he feels like shit garbage, but he puts aside his questions and confusion and annoyance so that chiron can help rachel, because percy knows rachel has Sight and chiron can help her).

like idk if i’m making complete sense with this or if i’m getting at my point specifically enough but just. AUGH. PERSONAL LOYALTY. I LOVE PERCY JACKSON SO SO SO MUCH. AAAAAAAAA.