One of things that really turned me off of the pjo world among lots of other things was that all the titans and primordials were portrayed as purely evil with no nuance or variety in morality. In the books, even Iapetus, who is labelled a "good" titan, was pretty much brainwashed into being benevolent.

Nyx was such a loving and devoted mother in mythology that she scared off Zeus when he tried to harm her son Hypnos. Prometheus went through excruciating pain on a daily basis just for humanity to have light and heat. Leto was described as kind and gentle and was the titan goddess of motherhood. Phoebe gave Apollo, her grandson, the oracle of Delphi as a gift. Oceanus, in some myths, helped Zeus overthrow Kronos by giving him a potion that would induce vomiting and release his siblings and he and Tethys pretty much raised Hera during the titanomachy. Helios was a loving father to Circe and all his kids and even saved her when a giant attacked her island. Etc, etc.

how the fuck did rick riordan manage to diminish ww2 into a little spat between the kids of zeus, hades, and poseidon

I Dislike Nico’s Coming Out Scene. Hate It Even. It’s So.. Uncomfortable And Low Key Disgusting?? Like You Literally Outed Your FIRST Gay Character For Why?? Like Out Of All The Ways To Say He Is Gay.. But You Do It Like That.. Like Why ??

(Also Not That Matters?? But I’m A Gay Man.)

There's a lot wrong with c*leo but one thing that just doesn't make any sense and that I haven't seen addressed before is the way that Leo believed that being with Calypso was his destiny.

So, the way Calypso's immortality is portrayed after HoO is inconsistent at best. There was never any indication in the text that her life force was tied to Ogygia, but then she's suddenly mortal in ToA. She's lost the ability to do magic, but then starts to get it back somehow. She's supposedly no longer a titan but unlike Lester, who has also lost his immortality, she retains all her memories of her thousands of years. As I've seen some people discuss before, making her mortal is just an attempt to put her and Leo on more equal footing.

It's like how Emmie was an immortal, from Apollo's power, before she joined the Hunters of Artemis, but then when she left, she had to give up her immortality? Now, she did this so she could grow old with Jo, but if that wasn't the case, it read like she would still have been turned mortal either way. Like her immortality was payment to Artemis for her patronage. From what I remember that isn't the case, but it played out like this.

At the end of Blood of Olympus, Leo is the one that brings up that Calypso might not be an immortal anymore when she leaves Ogygia, but he had no reason to think this based on what is in the text. It feels especially strange considering that Leo, out of all the seven, has always been the least versed at matters like magic and immortality and how they operate. They are not things that make sense to him, as he says multiple times, like when he's trying to understand how the Athena Parthenos works. There is no basis for this change in her immortality, no foreshadowing, no anything. In ToA, we are given scenes where Calypso reminisces about her life before she was imprisoned on Ogygia, where she was an immortal. Her curse is that heroes come to her island and then they always leave. It is not that she and the island are intrinsically linked in any way that means she fades or changes without it. Again, this feels like RR's way to mitigate the fact that Calypso is literally thousands of years old.

The text of the books actually does the opposite of set up this shift, especially in Leo's mind. Throughout HoH and BoO, Leo refers to her as an immortal: "Leo wished he could sound as confident as Calypso. Then he remembered that this annoying fifteen-year-old girl was actually the immortal daughter of a Titan"; "Even among the Hephaestus campers, Leo had never worked with anyone as intuitive as this immortal gardener girl". "That didn't just happen, he told himself. I can't be in love with an immortal girl. She definitely can't be in love with me. Not possible."; "Just Leo's luck. A super- hot immortal girl was waiting for him on Ogygia, but he couldn't figure out how to wire a stupid chunk of rock into the three-thousand-year-old navigation device."

And no point until the final scene of BoO does Leo think that she will no longer be an immortal after she leaves Ogygia.

RR also includes the word 'girl' with each of these uses of the word 'immortal', as if to cancel out the fact that she is, again, millennia older than Leo.

(Leo even refers to her as a woman at one point, which she is.)

Despite where you stand on the whole, 'oh, she's mentally a teenager' thing (I think I've made my own stance on this clear but that's not the point of this post), it's so ingrained in the text of the entire last two books (the only ones where she's relevant) and only referenced at the very end that it might change, that Calypso is an immortal.

And the entire premise of this series is based on the fact that immortals do not stay with mortals.

Leo is a demigod. He grew up with his single, human mother who only ever mentioned his father in his capacity as Leo's father. When he finally meets Hephaestus, Leo insults him, calls him out for not claiming him when he was supposed to, for never caring, and for letting Esperanza die. For not being present. For letting Leo's entire life take the route it did.

The only wisdom he gets from Hephaestus is that nothing lasts.

Leo's hope of an entire future with Calypso can be seen as him desperately wanting to rebel against this idea, or to embrace the idea of reusing what doesn't last for something else. He does both of these things with rebuilding Festus at the cost of the Argo II. If you want to get metaphorical about this, then it's him trading his home and his crew for a way back to Ogygia. He wants a place to belong and someone to love him fully. Leo has struggled with loneliness and feeling out of place his entire life; it makes sense that he wants this.

But he's also seen first-hand the way that immortals are fickle and move on easily, how they can't get involved with mortal affairs. There's a whole camp full of other children to attest to that fact. The way gossip is portrayed in the series makes it clear that he must know about all the drama from the original series. He must know at least some part, if not everything, of what Piper and Jason's mortal parents went through because their immortal partners did not stay. His own life was so deeply influenced by this fact.

It could be argued that he's letting go of the past, or that he's taking a leap of faith, but the thought that things might not work out with Calypso never even crosses his mind. This isn't a recognition and acceptance of a risk that Leo knows because it has shaped the course of his life. This is an entire erasure of a major conflict in both the books as a whole, Leo's life and the lives of his loved ones. It just feels like setting Leo up to be devastated when Calypso inevitably behaves the way an immortal behaves.

TLDR: Leo knows full well that immortals don't stay in romantic relationships with mortals, but for some reason he's written to plan his entire future around a romantic relationship with an immortal.

The Greek Afterlife:

Elysium: A Gated Community for "morally righteous" people.

Isles of the Blessed: The gated community within the gated community. I bet it's snobby there.

Fields of Asphodel: Wheat Fields like Kansas or Saskatchewan. The wild fields of the prairies.

Fields of Punishment: Pretty much just Hell.

You know of all these options, I actually like Asphodel the most. I'd still prefer my own interpretation of the afterlife, but Asphodel is better than Elysium (Which is clearly just a snobby gated community) or the Fields of Punishment (which is inhumane and should be abolished). This is my exact problem with the Greek Afterlife. And I give props to Rick Riordan for presenting it faithfully, but it also sucks so much I wish he had changed it. I really do.

Percy Jackson episode 8 ain't good either

Recently I got shouted at because I gave episode 8 of PJOTV a 4.5/10 when it’s the “best episode”. Well the entire show was a 5/10 tbh but I’ll explain why it’s not good, not as a response thread.

Mainly the climactic battle between Ares and Percy isn’t good. The choreography is mid, the cinematography too. You don’t feel how much danger Percy is in (like the books), how he doesn’t even have a millisecond to lose focus, just how much power Ares; swings have, how much he has to rely on the sea. The show has it more like Ares throws Percy around for a bit then stands completely still for a minute as Walker says his cringy dialogue then gets splashed by a bad cgi wave that does not feel powerful. It doesn’t help that all the other fights and monsters in the show lacked tension so Percy rising up to his biggest challenge after previous difficulties is lost.

Lance Reddick as Zeus is fine, he has the ability to make a bad script sound good and is the only god to exude power. But the deadline already passed and nothing happened even when we were promised the most destructive war in history.

The deeply nuanced relationship that Percy and Poseidon had is gone. Poseidon makes a dramatic appearance to save Percy and gives up his pride to surrender. The gods are petty, blue and orange moralled freaks with a nuclear bomb yet all of that is gone. Poseidon is unambiguously a great guy. That Medusa victimhood stuff feels laughable now as the gods are whitewashed to an absurd degree. The show even has Percy tell Luke “the gods are trying their best”.

Speaking of Luke, the show has barely established him as a friend. His training of Percy is relegated to a poorly placed flashback in this episode. Despite Percy knowing all the tropes and plot of TLT, he still confronts Luke alone in a forest when Luke can easily kill him with no witnesses. Luke for some reason duels him when that is out of character for him being a son of Hemes. The book has Luke explicitly state that he’s not Ares. I’m not sure why they tried to have Luke recruit Percy when he tried to have him thrown into Tarturus just a while ago. Annabeth is there too and I mean, her entire relationship with Luke has been nothing. Just Luke simping about her to Percy and I mean, we know Luke is a canonical hebephile and groomer but even the books had the grace to reveal that when Annabeth had at least gotten her menses. It’s just telling us that all of Annabeth’s vulnerability in the future about Luke will be gone because they hate black girls.

We also get a fake out reunion between Percy and Sally despite the show fleshing out their relationship more. Like it’s the entire reason we’re even on this quest and they just don’t do it.

Despite lambasting the movies for 14 years, Rick Riordan rips off Gabe’s death from there. Brava!

I don’t get what people are saying, this episode has all the problems of the previous episodes, it is not a blueprint for going forward.

Genuine question, why do you dislike Alex Fierro so much? I can only find one post of yours about her that only says you don't like her or how his gender-queerness was portrayed, so I'm curious as to why?

Because there was a whole-ass sentence about how Magnus was such a perfect empathetic pureboi that he could instantly tell that Alex had switched pronouns every other fucking page in books 2 and 3. I'm not even joking reread them it's fucking awful. Rick Riordan cannot fucking write. She was also just a generally unpleasant character in a very "so this is how you write your only trans character, eh, Rick?" way. Sort of like Beckendorf, Nico, Nakamura, Hazel, Zhang, Valdez, ect but, but especially fucking annoying.

why are people so obsessed with creating a timeline in hard-and-fast years for the riordanverse (i.e. saying that Percy was born in 1992 or that the whole HoO series takes place in, like, 2011 or something) when there are actual, genuine plot holes that upset the world-building and watsonian logic of the story?

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.

Alright I'm gonna say it

Annabeth being POC is a stupid STUPID idea unless you change Alot of her characterization

Look, Rick's representation is stereotypeical at best and offensive at worst but I'm not here to talk about piper Hazel or Leo no there are other posts for that but you might say, hey Annabeth's race isn't important to her character like them!!!

Here's the thing. Annabeth was never meant to be a POC character. Rick specifically wrote her as not being one. If she was a POC character well... It would be the same as making Hermione granger black without realizing how messed up the implications are. Hermione a POC girl making an organization to help free house elves who are slaves but being told again and again that she's being stupid. Those slaves want to be slaves!!!

Now you're telling me that Annabeth chase a supposed poc would think that she has to work harder than other people and that she's opreseed because she's BLONDE???

oh wait speaking of that, yet another poc character with white features. Same as Hazel and Piper with their gold and kaleidoscope eyes to show how special they are!!!

Also Annabeth who's often short tempered and at times physically violent is supposed to be POC now? We just LOVE some angry black woman stereotype don't we Rick?

Look I'm happy for the fans but Annabeth being poc just shows how empty Rick's representation is and would just hammer in bad stereotypes unless there are some major changes to her character

can you clarify what you mean by rick trying to handle too many characters at once, and the character development in hoo being not great? i personally think he did good

Fair warning, analyzing writing is a special interest of mine, so my autism is about to show a little bit.

To me, I do think he could have written seven main characters at once, especially when there were a couple already established characters, in an already established world. That being said, I think if you are going to do this, there needs to be at least a little bit of planning. How does each character fit into the overall story? Why does each character need to be a POV character? What is the internal conflict of each character, and what is the resolution going to be?

The issue is, that I really don’t think Rick had a plan from the beginning. I don’t think he even knew how the overarching external conflict was going to be solved.

But it is very obvious when you break down each character, and their importance to the story. Hazel and Frank were introduced, and barely utilized from there, which was kind of disappointing. Jason’s character probably had the best character development, but because his arc started with the amnesia plot, people had already lost interest by the time his character started to get interesting. Percy & Annabeth we’re thrown into Tartarus, and we never got to see the effect it had on them, because we haven’t heard their POV since. Leo started out as a very complex and interesting character, but I feel like Rick took the easy way out of his character and failed to actually explore parts of his character people actually liked. Then you add Nico and Reyna in at the last minute, and it didn’t help. Overall, the series and the characters were a mess.

Piper was probably the best written character from start to finish, but I wouldn’t even necessarily describe the writing of her character as great.

And here’s the thing, I do think Rick is a decent writer, and thoroughly enjoy these characters, but is no secret that his weakness is consistency- this is something even he has admitted himself. So I think trying to write a series with 10 main characters was not the greatest idea.

me, a mythology nerd, to Rick Riordan:

after viewing everyone fawn over rick riordan since the pjo teaser dropped, i feel like people need to be reminded that rick riordan does not care about representation.

at. all.

in the first series, there were only two minority characters who were killed off violently.

in the second series, all of his "rep" is riddled with stereotypes and blatantly racist things. (he literally called frank a "chinese canadian baby man")

they either all have eurocentric features (piper and hazel), or are annoying (leo), or are rude to others (reyna and frank and samirah).

it's absolutely incredible that there is representation of different skin colours in the series and i think it's so important for kids to be able to see themselves in their heroes, but do not erase rick riordan's extremely racist and problematic past and label him as someone who always gave proper rep.

i'm saying this right off the bat but frank is a badly written character, from the fatphobia to the way that rick doesn't understand how to make him relatable to other chinese children. frank could've and would've been as great as he was if he was just kept fat. yes i know that it's shown to be an insecurity of his but you do realize that a character can be fat and not insecure? it's not that hard to understand. frank is fully capable of being fat and powerful, he didn't need to slim down when he got that blessing of mars, he could've stayed fat and became stronger and more powerful. there's athletes that have fat on their ABOVE the muscle and that's what could've happened with frank, there was no need to make him not fat. no going into other issues with frank, the name calling. there was absolutely no need to call him a canadian baby man or whatever it is that rick wrote, there was no need to make him the butt of the joke numerous times, there was no need to make him the butt of LEO'S jokes all the time, there was no need to make him looked down upon and insecure. yes rick has also made leo the butt of the joke but this is about frank. in frank's mind he has the legacy of his mother to live up to, his grandmother to make proud and to prove to his father that he didn't make the wrong decision in giving him the gift that he did. frank places expectations that aren't inherently there on himself time and time again, he doesn't exactly have that many people to lean except maybe hazel and we don't really see him doing that (not that i recall) so in a way he's isolated himself from everyone even when there's people there ready to help if he asked

frank is dealing with a lot of things and doesn't seem to have much self-confidence and when he comes across leo, someone that he perceives as having too much self-confidence he's in a way threatened by him, especially when he sees the uncanny resemblance to sammy, leo's great great grandfather. he has the charm and the suave that frank has and manages to make people laugh, he brightens the mood and brings what frank can't to the table and because of that frank is jealous. i won't say whether or not this jealousy is justified especially when frank sees that leo may or may not have a crush on his girlfriend but what i can say is that frank has the right not to feel secure on his place on the argo II, he's a shapeshifter yes, a power that any demigod may want but that doesn't mean immediately that he's the most valuable demigod on the ship, yes he can transform into something that can carry them around but jason can lift them all up on his winds with no problem, he can transform into a aquatic animal but percy can breathe and swim underwater without even thinking about it, annabeth and leo are the brains, piper can sway people with her voice and hazel can shift the earth and bring precious metals from beneath it as well as mastering the mist. he doesn't have a role that needs to be filled and thus he's insecure. not just because of how he perceives himself but also because there is no vacancy for him to fill.

People Making Excuses

Fans of the Percy Jackson series think that Rick casting a POC for Annabeth Chase is such a great idea. No, it's Rick using a POC to hide the fact that he's done so many harmful things. Oh, it's okay to force Nico to be outed but it's wrong in the real world. Give me a break. Nico being forcefully outed wasn't cute or sweet. It was wrong!

i didn't know about thanksgiving day's history (since i don't celebrate), but i got curious after read some rick riordan critic posts about piper using cornucopia

dude.

riordan was absolutely disgusting and despicable in making his only indigenous protagonist use this shit as a weapon