Neither The Sun Nor Its Stars

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Chapters: 20 / ? Rating: T Word Count: 28,836

Summary: Restless sleep, endless wake. How much longer until the sorrows can be put away?

Or: A rewrite of The Sun and The Star.

remembering that one idea I suggested for a Tsats rewrite being about finding Georgina’s parent and thinking about the fact that somebody has to claim her before she turns 13 and Apollo still not knowing if he’s her parent so he begs Will to investigate.

Apollo: Will PLEASE, my head will be on the line if she is my child and I don’t claim her or if she isn’t my child and I do claim her. Just go around and ask a couple gods Please I beg of you.

me when im a literal pjo blog and my mother has watched the pjo show but i have not 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️

i think one of my biggest gripes with TSATS is the sentence structure and the way that things are phrased.

Sentence structure: the book is CONSTANTLY using ", and", or "then", or "but" instead of splitting up a phrase into two separate sentences. Once I noticed it, I couldn't stop noticing it. In some places it works fine, but right out the gate, as the first line of chapter one, it 1) caught my attention in a negative way and 2) felt immediately clunky and awkward.

The way that the book demonstrates action also feels unnatural and doesn't flow as well as it could. Things are described as happening "now", such as when Kayla takes her lolipop out of her mouth and holds it at her side, the book narrates it as "now holding the lolipop at her side". We didn't SEE that action occur, we're just being described the RESULT of the action, does that make sense? As a reader, you want to SEE the action, you want to SEE her tug the lolipop out of her mouth, see her hand hang by her side as her expression pinches with anxiety over the discussion. We don't want to just be told that "now" her lolipop is out of her mouth, y'know?

There are also sentences that just feel flat out unedited, phrases that have too many words for what they want to accomplish, or with a structure that doesn't make sense - like on page 56, the sentence "They raced up the steps to the platform, Nico easily outrunning his boyfriend, though that was mostly due to Will having to get his land legs again."

First of all - why are they running up the platform? In the previous line, where we're told their cab driver got them to the station with 6 minutes to spare, the specific choice of saying "to spare" makes it sound like there is plenty of time to make it to their train. In the sentences after, we even learn that Nico and Will wound up waiting for their train anyway, so, the fact that they're running when Will feels sick reads...weird, to me. If I was car sick, and then somebody forced me to run for no reason, I would not be a happy camper.

Second of all - The addition of the final third of the sentence, after the second comma, should be it's own phrase. It should be given it's own space, like "(though that was mostly because Will didn't have his land legs back yet)." because it's not important information, just an offhanded comment Nico is making.

Third of all - "though that was mostly due to" and "having to get his" are clunky and wordy. It could've just been "Nico easily outrunning his boyfriend, who didn't have his land legs back yet." It's a smoother sentence that doesn't get bogged down by the extra words.

And that's just one instance. This book is LOADED with moments like this, where action will get lost in a sentence's wordiness. The book tries to be quick and snappy, in Riordan's style, but it fails because it can't quite nail down the phrasing.

There are also moments where the only thing the characters are interacting with is each other, only grinning, grimacing, sighing, glancing at one another, etc etc, instead of doing actions while they speak. Fidgeting with their hands, shifting from side to side, looking away at their surroundings, that kind of stuff is how you convey a MOOD. Body language is important when writing character conversations!! Is somebody relaxed, or are their shoulders tensed up, arms folded across their chest with their muscles flexed, leaning back on one leg with their body halfway tilted away, as if they were ready to flee at a moment's notice? These are the kind of details that I'm missing in TSATS, the kind of things that feel like they're missing.

I also have a lot of gripes with the dialogue itself.

People don't talk like they do in TSATS. The content of what they're saying is realistic enough, sure, yeah, but the specific way that a lot of the dialogue is phrased? It doesn't feel natural. Try reading some of the sentences out loud without editing any of the words. It doesn't sound the way a human being SPEAKS.

THAT'S what I mean when I say these characters are OOC. The way that they're speaking is uncomfortable and feels as if they're being used as a puppet, or a mouthpiece for what somebody ELSE wants them to say.

apparently the twist in tsats was bad? SAD! oh well at least meg was unaffected by this

There’s something so personal about the sneak peak of the Solangelo book keeping my old canon compliant fanfic still canon compliant 5 books later ☺️

my hubris is acting up again, and while i mostly enjoyed tsats, I would've made some suggestions to improve it. mainly by telling the authors "no" at certain parts.

SIGN UP TO REWRITE THE SUN AND THE STAR

I hope paolo, malcolm and jake all came out IMMEDIATELY after nico and will did and it was like "stick to the status quo"

I was rereading Nico parts on that document and thought about the first chapter, and then a new first paragraph came to my mind.

...

Nico couldn't help smiling besides his nervousness. It reminded him of the occasions he got to discuss mythomagic with his classmates in the few months he spent on that boarding school. The times he said he said he thought Dyonisius powers were cool or some other unpopular opinion and then the boys would laugh until they realized Nico wasn’t laughing with them. “Oh! You are being serious. I guess they are a little cool?” And he would stay mostly quiet during the rest of the conversation after those incidents. Maybe that was why he was so nervous with the silly question. His body remembered the awkwardness too well.

“Come on, Nico,” Will, who stood across from him, said. “It is an easy question: who would you choose?”

“Yeah man, you already got enough time to think!” Austin apparently had decided to help his brother into pressuring Nico for an answer. He was behind him fingering something on his sax. 

“Fine, fine. I’ll answer now.”

“Finally!” Kayla opened a smirk before continuing. “I was starting to think you were a demigod without honor.”

Austin chuckled. “Oh yeah, this task has a lot of honor involved in it.”

“Do you guys want to hear my answer or not?”

“Of course, it is just that the world might end.” Nico rolled his eyes hearing Kayla’s silliness. “Like actually end, you should take this more seriously.”

“I choose to go on a date with Darth Vader.”

Immediately Austin started playing the Imperial March. 

“That  is the worst answer!” said Kayla. “Why would you choose Vader when Kylo Ren is right there?”

“I was hoping for a deep cut,” Will mused. “‘Maybe someone like General Grievous or Dryden Vos.”

“Hold on,” said Nico. “I just finished watching all those movies yesterday. I can barely remember what happened in the prequels at this point.” He paused. “Were those all actual characters in Star Wars, or are you joking?”

“Don’t distract from your truth, Nico,” said Kayla. “Darth Vader? You’d go on a date with Darth Vader?” She crunched on her lollipop. “I’ve lost all joy, Nico. All of it.”

“This is a safe space,” said Austin. “No judgment allowed for our answers, remember?”

“I take it back,” said Kayla. “It’s an all-judgment space.”

Chalice of the Gods, Wrath of the Triple Goddess…

Nico and Will I’m sorry you two go stuck with the title that you ended up with

Well. Finished TSATS. Hum. I didn't like it at all- This is actually the only Percy Jackson book I REALLY didn't like as a whole ? I could make a whole analysis but I know I'm reading it late (since it came out in my language pretty late and all) so I don't want to re open the debate (I think I understood I wasn't the only one to not like it and some people got mad about other people pointing the bad writing ?)

In short... It's just. There were a few things I genuinely liked, but most of it... Well, a lot of ideas in it had potential, but then it was just. A kinda "mediocre shipping fanfiction" ? (And I'm saying that as someone who write fanfics AND also original stories, and who has storytelling as his main special interest – there's just a point where fanon and fanfic tropes shouldn't interfere with canon, yk)- But even after I realized that, all along I was still like "okay I don't like it, the universe is disrespected, the characters are out of character, the storytelling is bad and it's like a poorly written fanon interpretation, but maybe I'm still gonna like the ending, or that the message I'm seeing here is gonna make me forget the bad writing" but then at some point they just. Kept insisting again and again to call Nico the "father" of the cocoa puffs in a way that was so weird and. It just weirded me out so bad, especially considering I was waiting for the cocoa puffs bc I got them spoiled and I loved the concept, just for this weird asf thing to happen... it was my breaking point, I just wanted to finish reading this book ASAP, I couldn't defend it anymore-

Are you telling me I literally re read the whole serie for this book ;-; Hum. I think I'm just gonna ignore it ever existed- I could point out exactly what I liked (there was still things I really loved so it breaks me even more that I hated the book as a whole) and what I hated by posting a long, essay-like constructive criticism but I don't think anyone would really care atp, so I'm just quickly updating my reading here so you know why I'll probably never talk about this book again, and keep my essay about it for myself

if there is a fanfic rewrite of the sun and the star…. or if anyone wants to try their hand in it….. hit a girl up….

Thanks for the advice hopefully i can find some

Prompts that work

As for what i wanna write

I wanna write nico centric fics

I wanna write long fics but it usually takes me a while to add new chapters so oneshot is probably best

As for ships, im neutral on ships, (like if i see a good prompt for a solangeo fic, ill write it, same with any fic

As for aus i prefer canon or well slight canon divergence

hm okay...now i wanna try to give you a prompt based on your answers, but it may not be my strong suit lol

so neutral on ships--nico-centric with maybe no ship or a small mention of something? canon/slight canon divergence...

maybe a fic on nico attempting to train another hellhound like mrs oleary ? or one where--ooh, maybe one where nico finds a secret hidden hades cabin 1.0 in the woods, like leo did with bunker nine? maybe exploring the secrets in there could be fun...

(i'm having a hard time because i love aus so my brain is just going "what if nico was a son of demeter!" or smth and i just have to reel it back in lmao)

maybe you could explore nico's friendships with characters, like a timeline of canon but if nico had a developing friendship with--say--piper or leo or jason. i've said this many times, but for as long as hoo is, the friendships aren't really explored, so that could be something interesting to write about

every day i think oh maybe i’ll stop being a hater but then i remember how bitter and mad i am

it's interesting that the only pro-tsats posts i'm seeing are people defending Nico and Will's right to be cringe. Which, yes, they're two fucked up 15 year olds who are dating someone for the first time! They're allowed to be Fucked Up and Weird About It!

The thing is - I haven't seen a single negative TSATS post that mentions that specifically. All the negative posts I've seen are about how OOC Nico is, how his actions/speech don't align with what we've seen in previous books, and how a lot of the behavior from both Nico AND Will is WILDLY out of left field or in some other way unexpected.

I've also seen a lot of people who aren't disappointed that they act like teenagers, but are disappointed that even in a book meant to be exploring trauma and healing, it seems like so much of the trauma was in some way glossed over or handled poorly. Like Nico coming out to the entire camp goes ENTIRELY against everything we've seen and heard from him in HoO. Nico getting to see his mom and sister again completely rewrites all the deep, meaningful healing that he did in the previous series. People are upset that a lot of Will's trauma specifically was glossed over, and that as the story went on he seemed to fade more and more into a husk of a character rather than an actual developed person himself.

I've also seen a lot of posts commenting on the whole "Nico's internal demons which are personified and given Actual Life are described as being the offspring of this LITERAL CHILD and a primordial being" situation. which is a WEIRD situation. like why the fuck would rick and mark decide to go with that? of all the options?

so, anyway, TLDR: it's interesting to me that the people who are "defending" TSATS are defending parts that nobody actually seems to have a problem with, and are ignoring the parts that are Off.