How much better would it have been if instead of saying "shut up emo nerd no one ever pushed you away, you imagined all the rejection" Will said something like "listen, those people are judgemental jerks, but there are people here who want to be your friend! *I* want to be your friend, if you'll let me! There are people here who would be happy to see you stay, myself included!"

Cause him saying that no one ever pushed Nico away is literally just not true, we see from other characters perspectives that they see Nico as weird and untrustworthy. He has no cabin to stay in before the Last Olympian and many people are disturbed by the sheer fact that a child of Hades is walking around. There's literally a scene where the seven, including Jason who later becomes one of Nico's closest friends after he begins to understand him better, debate on leaving him to suffocate to death alone in a jar. For real I don't know how it was seen as a good idea to make Will borderline gaslight Nico and have that be seen as like....tough love??? What Nico needed to hear???

Isn't a better explanation that Nico WAS rejected by some people at camp, but there were others (including Will) who tried to befriend him but Nico always thought they were just trying to mock him so he'd respond by being mean aka "pushing himself away"? That's a really common thing with kids who are bullied or feel rejected, if someone is suddenly nice to you, you don't trust it. You think they're just trying to get close to you so they can make fun of you.

It would be especially fitting since Nico along with all half-bloods have ADHD, the fact that ADHD also often comes with rejection sensitive dysphoria could've been leaned into. Nico WAS rejected, and because of that, any time someone would make a legitimate attempt at befriending him he'd push them away. That actually makes sense and validates the feelings of the most depressed and isolated character in the series instead of turning it into him just imagining the years of people acting like he has the plague.

nah bc hazel despised the gods she thought her dad was an asshole she thought cursing ppl (children especially) was a dick move she is NOT sweet and submissive the part of her life where she kept her head down and did as she was told is OVER and she sided w the gods bc she had beef w gaea not bc she cared abt the gods

i hate hate HATE HATE how Rick wrote Percy in HOO when it came to Nico. like. NO. that is not how Percy would react to Nico being in danger at all PLEASE

why do you hate him Rick Percy would drop that fucking quest in an instant to save Nico like. whatever relationship anyone sees them as whether that be romantic or platonic or familial HE WOULD GO SAVE HIM.

Part 2 of changes I would have made to Heros of Olympus.

Obligatory disclaimer: I do not think I am better than Rick Riordan and what he has created is amazing but that doesn't mean we should not criticise it and it's important to be able to step back and see the issues or missed potential of a piece of writing

There would be at least 1 year gap b/w the PJO and HOO and both Percy and Annabeth would be 17, making them significantly older than most of the cast who all (with the exception of Jason for reasons I will get into) would be 13-15. This means Percy and Annabeth would be mentoring them.

Also as a benefit of the gap I would love to see Nico and Percy's relationship be slightly better though that's just because I love them

Grover would take the place of Coach Hedge and help Percy and Annabeth with mentoring the others. Also he and Nico would talk about Bianca as he was in the quest with her and her friend. Grover would help Nico with accepting that Bianca's death was mainly the fault of Talos.

Jason would still be 16 along with Reyna and Octavian. The three would have been friends pre-HOO (I have a whole trilogy planned for them that I will Inshallah write in the summer) and Octavian would start dating Jason shortly before TLH. He would also assume that Reyna would have assassinated Jason for political reasons (credit to @percabeth4life for this entire arc idea)

Jiper would become canon shortly before Mark Of Athena in the months after The Lost Hero. Octavian would be extremely upset about this and this would probably cause issues.

Percy would be called Perseus among the Romans

Percy would help Octavian search for Jason and get all the water life and Pegasi to look for Jason which would bring the 2 close and create a point of tension between Percy and Jason as Percy would be upset on Octavian's behalf that Jason went and dated Piper without even breaking up with Octavian (BC he didn't remember their relationship at first)

Percy also wouldn't sleep for months and instead wake up at the owl house (it was supposed to be wolf house but it's funny so I'm'n keeping it) at the same time as Jason showed up on the bus and he would be Praetor for several months slowly regaining his memory

Instead of just remembering Annabeth, he would also remember Grover because of the empathy link

Nico and Hazel's relationship would receive more focus. In the Cupid Scene, Hazel is there instead of Jason and Cupid instead of out right outting would instead subtly hint at him to do so. He'd talk about queer ppl in the myths and how being gay is okay and how you should accept yourself and not hide it and make Nico promise to try before giving them the staff. Hazel would ask and Nico would admit his crush on Percy. While surprised (40s kid) she would accept him unconditionally because that's her brother

Frank would be 14 and they wouldn't get together until a few years after the books

Hazel and Frank would have more focus and would have interest they still took part in like Hazel still drawing (maybe doodling in the corners of pages during meetings)

Percy and Annabeth wouldn't be as interested in moving to CJ. Like yeah Annabeth would immediately use it as a reference for New Athens but Percy hates strict rules and CHB is both Percy and Annabeth's home. It's also close to where a majority of their support system (Sally, Paul, Chiron, Annabeth's siblings, Clarisse bc you pry her friendship with them out of my cold dead hands, e.t.c). Also Annabeth is v ambitious and seems like someone who would eventually want to go to a very prestigious university. Emphasis on eventually as I think both she and Percy would take a break from school to recover from their trauma and get in a better headspace for dealing with all that

Tartarus would be far worse but while Annabeth would freak out at the Akhlys thing, she certainly would understand why Percy did it and wouldn't make him promise not to use those powers again

Piper and Annabeth would not get along at first. Annabeth enjoys girlie things and was friends with Silena so Piper insulting the Aphrodite cabin and looking down on girls for being feminine would not fly with her. While I do think this would change as Piper accepts her femininity (see previous post ABT changes I would make to HOO) I think Annabeth would be closer to Hazel and be like an older sister to her

Also Hazel would have dark hair and dark eyes like a normal black girl. No exotic bs. Same with Piper.

Frank would have dyslexia too because I am living proof that Asians can have learning disabilities too.

These are all for now. Will probably add more

i gotta say and like with full offense to rr + HOO defenders as well That percabeth post TLO felt really different to me than in the original series. And in a way that.... I wouldn't say ruined it for me but made it impossible to ever engage with in the same way. I felt like it warped the characters not just within riordanverse canon and fanon but also retroactively made my original interpretation of them and PJO much harder to reach, and they occupied this place in my mind where i still loved them a lot but wasn't really interested in thinking about them anymore.... But seeing them on my screen, seeing walker and leah bring them to life, i feel like im 12 again. I feel like im 12 again

In the pjo and hoo books the main focus was about like the minor gods being over looked but I feel like Rick overlooked the opportunity to have one of the 7 as a child of a minor god. It’s weird that all of the 7 are children of the Olympians

No fr! Like what is up with that!? I'm still deciding the specific details of my own HOO AU because I really want more focus on the minor Gods, especially after all the stuff going on in PJO. Like Rick??? Did you pay any attention to all that???

The way that man forgets his own themes-

Idk if you’ve gotten this ask before, but is there anything you would have changed if you wrote pjo/hoo/toa? And how would you have written it?

never gotten this ask before! and oh man, yeah, there are some things i would change. i wouldn't call myself someone who does analysis on their favorite media (at least i don't do it very often) i just read/watch and enjoy, unless there's something that seriously strikes me as Kind of Very Weird. half the time i don't mind occasional bad writing if i enjoy the media very much, which is the case with pjo, but again, there are some things that were odd to me lol. keep in mind it's been a while since i've reread so these are just things i remember vividly as being something i very much didn't like/understand.

percy jackson and the olympians:

that whole 'entwining history' with pjo thing felt weird to me: like with harriet tubman being called a child of hermes? for one, it feels unnecessary, and two, it feels as though all the things she's done, all of her bravery, wit, courage, are being attributed to her demigod status, as hermes is the god of travelers, cunning, roads, etc. it feels insensitive and not handled very well. there's also a blurb that mentions that hitler was a child of hades, that world war II was a conflict of the big three, and that the civil war was a roman vs greek conflict - again, these all just feel so insensitive to the actual historical events that occurred, ascribing all that violence and catastrophe to a squabble between the children of the big three when the actual causes of these events were so much more complicated and deep-rooted. i believe it was an attempt at trying to see where the gods fit in the modern tapestry, but i don't think actual history needs to be bastardized in order to write smth like that. there's also the issue with the "western civilization" narrative portrayed in the story, but i don't feel like i could even adequately sum up the issue here.

the fix-it: just. don't have the historical stuff? the insertion of demigods in wwII is supposed to show the destruction of these big three children in battle, and the later prophecy would supposedly give more reasoning as to why the big three can't have children. but why not just have the prophecy recited before wwII and cut out the 'oh demigods partook in wwII" nonsense? [before the war, after the diangelos are born] the gods have already witnessed wars that actual demigods took part in, such as the trojan war, and saw how terrible those effects were. and there were hardly any big three kids in that battle that were main players. if demigods who weren't of big three ancestry caused that much destruction, wouldn't that be apt enough reason, along with the ominous prophecy, not to give birth to any kids? especially because greek mythology is rife with sons trying to overturn their fathers, and said fathers trying to overturn that future. that itself gives perfect context for why this child-making ban would be introduced, and why zeus especially would enforce it (ex. attempted murder of the diangelos) because. he's literally the "son who overturned his father" (kronos.)

luke having romantic feelings for annabeth: why. why. when i was reading the series i always assumed he had spared annabeth because of their familial ties, but in staff of hermes percy describes their relationship as "luke later gaining feelings for her" which...why? lmao

the fix-it: luke does love annabeth, but as a younger sister, and it is that sibling love that makes him spare her all the times he did, and inevitably helps him break from kronos' hold. i think it's much more meaningful, makes more sense [ties into the threeway "family" conflict between thalia, luke, and annabeth], and obviously isn't weird to think about it like the aforementioned canon dynamic.

heroes of olympus:

portrayal of poc characters: now, i'm going to be honest, when i first read hazel's description, i never thought there was anything wrong with it. my rationale for this was "oh, golden eyes because she controls minerals" however many people have brought up how this feeds into the exotic poc caricature. while many characters have oddly colored eyes, i haven't done enough in depth research on the history of written poc characters and their applied descriptors, i don't want to minimize what could be a genuine issue. on another note, while i don't claim to be an expert on native american culture and tradition, i am aware of the numerous claims that native american pjo fans have made about piper, especially her wearing feathers in her hair. i think in her case it's very much cut and dry; rick didn't do his research regarding her heritage, at least in the earlier books.

the fix-it: research.

portrayal of medea (and other mythological characters): in the lost hero, medea is portrayed as a "blood-thirsty psycho," all while ignoring the terrible way jason (from the mythos, not Grace) treated her and the hardships that she went through. and that is my point - pjo does subvert some tropes, like hades being the villain [although given the fact that it is also canon his children were on the axis side, well.] but many times it falls into the same overused narratives, like medusa being characterized as the killer when in reality she was born a gorgon and often visited by heroes who wanted to kill her for glory [the version where she was a priestess was written by ovid, and ovid seems to have a passionate hatred for athena and women in general, as can be seen in his retellings.] i can understand this in pjo, but i think heroes of olympus truly would have benefited from more nuanced characterizations.

the fix it: research!

di angelo's Otherness + the ooc behavior of characters: one detail i always remember is how leo and piper behaved around nico, and the apparent...teasing? bullying? that went on behind his back - at least, it's alluded to that they both make some not-so-nice remarks about him. and it doesn't make sense to me, especially when leo and piper are both victims of bullying, have been judged for their appearance, etc. leo's literal first scene is him making fun of a bully [dylan] to jason, and in the mark of athena, when he and hazel see the vision of sammy making fun of one of hazel's bullies, leo mentions that he used to do that all the time. i think having leo and piper behave this way was supposed to emphasize nico's "not-belonging" within the argo II environment, but why at the sake of their characters? additionally, the scene were he does make those comments seems another way to frame jason as nico's "ally" [which the fandom loves to do while ignoring jason's actions towards nico in general, but that's a whole other thing lmao.]

the fix-it: don't include that post-cupid jason + leo + piper scene. there was already a layer of distrust between that group and nico, which is enough to emphasize a divide.

the detriment of caleo on leo's character arc: romance is everywhere it doesn't need to be in this second series. everyone is with someone, for better or for worse. however, while relationships like jasper and frazel are either unnecessary or badly developed, there is no relationship, i think, that is as detrimental to a character's arc as caleo is to leo. i won't be doing a deep-dive, as there are other posts on this site that delve into the issue better than i could, but i wanted to list it as one of my biggest gripes - it basically takes all his struggles with self and decides to give him a girlfriend as a shoddy fix-all.

the fix-it: there are a lot of ways you could go about rewriting this, but i'd have calypso be freed after the second titanomachy, join the hunters as her sister did - that way she could retain her immortality - and travel the world with them. khione would blast leo off the ship - maybe he gets injured and has to find his way back, thinking all the while that his friends have probably moved on, but he finds that they're all still there, desperately searching. he tells them they should have moved on, and they'd say that they aren't leaving him behind, that he's important to them more than to the mission, etc. although i think for this to work other dynamics would need to be tweaked - [no jasper after the first book; focus is instead on strengthening the lost trio's friendship throughout the rest of the book.]

the ending + gaea: i think it's a general fandom consensus that the ending for blood of olympus left much to be desired. the final battle felt so rushed and...didn't make much sense to me? how do you lift a being who is the earth...out of the earth...? and that's the main issue with me, honestly. how do you defeat the earth? there was that whole "scatter her essence" blurb at the end of the book, but that also didn't make much sense to me. gaea as a villain seemed like a bad choice because a.) her rising up to destory the olympians because of their treatment of her children is a repeat of the gigantomachy, just as pjo is a second titanomachy. it feels like the same narrative is being recycled, and b.) because she is the earth. a primordial being. i don't know how to re-hash this, but it's simply unrealistic to have a band of teenagers defeat an entity as old and powerful in a handful of chapters.

the fix-it: different villain entirely! at least, that's what i would do, because i can't think of a way to destroy the earth that doesn't involve actively poisoning it/j. there are a plethora of interesting mythological figures who would make for good antagonists, and also shed light on issues besides the ones pjo already touched on.

trials of apollo: i have not reread this series in a long while, and unlike the others can't remember as vividly the details, but the thing i remember bothering me the most occured in the dark prophecy, in which two lesbian hunters of artemis describe how they had to leave the hunters on account of their relationship. @solisaureus has an in-depth post about this which effectively sums up the issues and goes into other problems with the hunters, and i think they break it down better than i do, so go check that out!

the sun and the star:

pacing: i enjoyed the book but did feel like it was paced weirdly - for a book all about a couple journeying into tartarus, they only entered tartarus during the last hundred pages. i think this contributes to the bad fight at the ending, too, as it felt very rushed. i think having the couple spend a lot of time in the underworld was supposed to establish will's discomfort and the later conflict, but three hundred pages is a bit much. i also find it difficult to believe that nyx, the literal definition of night, was defeated so quickly, or defeated at all. i did enjoy her as a villain more than i did gaea, but i had the same problem of being dissatisfied with the ending battle.

the fix-it: i feel like having the villain be akhlys would make sense. as the goddess of misery, she might want to convince nico that grief is eternal, inescapable, and that he may as well succumb to a life of tragedy. buuut that would also mean no cocoa puffs. and i like the cocoa puffs - so this one is a bit up in the air for me!

plague will: this is personal to me because i love this headcanon and when it became canon i was all "oh, woah" but then it was. never brought up again lmao.

the fix-it: have him use it earlier in the book [perhaps discover it when he goes out by himself] and try to suppress it, but eventually learn that his negative emotions + memories - "darkness" - shouldn't be suppressed, but rather released; that those aren't things to fear. or at least have him talk about it later with nico and try to sort out what their existence means for him. [there are other problems with tsats that people did bring up, but i don't actually have issues with them - i.e. "the first kiss," "coming-out scene," continuity errors, etc. the coming out scene is especially controversial, but my only issue with that is that nico asked out will without considering will's closeted status. the continuity errors aren't really something to dedicate a whole bullet point to, seeing as rick's timeline is eternally convoluted and just not worth getting irritated over at this point.]

if you want me to elaborate on any of these in a second post i can! thanks for the ask!

rick hate comment of the day:

frank being promoted to prator should’ve been like… so much bigger. his whole journey during hoo should’ve been a bigger plot point. give me my canadian-chinese boy solo book.

thinking about how we were ROBBED of more annabeth and the seven friendships!! we know annabeth was in good terms with all of them, as she was the leader and they all liked her. but we never actually saw them bonding, which is just SO upsetting!! like, i wanna see annabeth treating hazel like a little sister and protecting her, and hazel looking up to annabeth, jason being annabeth’s little brother, leo and annabeth being the ✨ chaotic gifted kid duo ✨, frank and annabeth being besties who bond over his shape-shifting because annabeth thinks it’s super cool!!  and of course, pipabeth being chaotic girlfriends <3

Unpopular opinion but i hate how overpowered Percy is because it comes at the expense of literally everyone else. For example despite training for only 4-5 SUMMERS he is somehow better than Jason at swordfighting? Not to mention his powers??? He has water manipulation, talking to horses, poison bending, earthquakes, storms, coordinates, ship control and that's just at the top of my head. Meanwhile the rest of the big 3 kids have one or two powers max. I get it he's the main character blah blah but he is too op imo. For example, him destroying camp jupiter at the games? Hell no. I hated that because that also leads to the greeks>romans thing which logically should not happen. Anyway if percy gets to have dozens of powers give lots of shit to other demigods(esp big 3 kids) too! It's just not fun when Percy solos everything and everyone.

(Is this my "Jason should absolutely be stronger than Percy" agenda? Absolutely.)

we do not have five entire books full of percy's philosophical thoughts for rick to pull this shit. if annabeth was in character, she would be looking at this architecture and consider what she'd do different (and since she's redesigning olympus, she'd maybe also consider if she'd use any designs there). her fatal flaw is hubris and it should be a staple characteristic of hers.

you see, the reason why it's hard to make out what Hazel Levesque is actually like as a character is not because of bad writing on Riordan's part, but simply because defining personality traits simply hadn't been invented before 1940 when she died and shes not familiar with the concept

In continuation of this post ABT what I would change ABT Heroes of Olympus, I would make Percy absolutely hate Heracles on behalf of Zoe. Like absolutely despise. He wants to go meet him just so he can yell at him, and maybe throw his sword at him.

Heracles: You think you're better than me?

Percy: Zoe seemed to think so, so yeah. I am better than you. Not that it's a high bar.

what's worse than rick making god × demigod ships is the way he tried justifying it by putting the immortal being in a teenagers body. 'anubis rarely leaves underworld so by human standarts he's 13.' , 'calypso was stuck on ogygia, she didn't mature in her 15 year old body.' ...... no. trying to put a godly being in a teenage body doesn't change the fact that they're still a godly being functioning with their godly consciousness, as we pretty much saw with apollo/lester. even in a teenage body they're still who they are, anubis is still the god anubis even if he seems like a thirteen year old, calypso is still the calypso, regardless of her appereance. they mature as a godly being even if they're locked up or never leave their home. which is why rick felt the need to downgrade their powers, take away from their godly side to even out the ships power dynamics. anubis merging with walt and living in his body, calypso losing her powers and immortality as soon as she left ogygia are both actions made for the sake of their power dynamics evening out with their mortal 'lover'. which clearly isn't enough to make up for their weird maturity gap because even without powers or immortality they still have their consciousness from thousands of years ago, when they were first created, and there is not enough actions you could take to line up a mortals lifeline with a being that could live up to forever. it's also very sad because he missed out on making more good gods that are on demigods side, actually caring about them and wanting to help them instead of seeing them as weapons to fight their wars to create immoral ships that don't work out.

HOO has forever ruined an entire generation perception of Roman gods and might have even done irreparable damage to them forever 😭 the AMOUNT of people I see everywhere claiming the Roman gods are just the Greek gods with more militaristic personalities and different names is atrocious

No fr- like that was sorta a view before but it's gotten so so much more prevalent since HOO came out.

...Okay yeah, this isn't helping the issues with Percy Jackson books sometimes entering creepy terrorites with its underage characters. Heroes Of Olympus already got the issue with a thirteen year old being in a romance with a sixteen year old, but guess Mark Of Athena wanted to add in more creepiness, not even chapters apart I should add, with Achelous, the river god, wanting to make Piper his bride, and then when Chrysaor takes over the ship briefly....the book describing him as...(gag), regarding the bound Hazel and Piper as christmas presents, which makes Percy grit his teeth. (And also actually have Chrysaor want to sell Hazel and Piper, the two WOC in the Seven, as trainees or...slaves, to Circe...Rick what the fuck...) And then of course, he's creepy with Annabeth and its just...look, I know gods and crap could be creepy with women in mythology, but just because its in mythology, don't mean you need to write shit like that in Percy Jackson (which has a cast of underage characters...)