How Rick Could Have Portrayed Calypso

I just searched up why Rick Riordan added Annabeth's judo flip, and oh my god, it's just so bad-

No, I'm serious. Just look at this sentence-

Rick Riordan added the judo flip as a way to depict Annabeth's practical and strategic nature.

Practical? STRATEGIC? It was literally the opposite of that! Annabeth put her mission in danger! I know she was emotional, but that just doesn't make her actions any less stupid, and it's a blatant lie to paint her judo flip as practical and strategic.

'It's a moment of action and control, showcasing her quick thinking and ability to get out of dangerous situations.'

I just-who wrote this paragraph? How are they able to twist is so badly?

Annabeth literally made it worse-she put them in a dangerous situation by judo flipping Percy! If Percy and Reyna hadn't acted diplomatically, the whole mission would have gone to pieces.

'While it might seem unusual for a character, the judo flip highlights Annabeth's strength and resourcefulness, particularly in a world where demigods often face danger.'

I'm wheezing. Get out of danger? Honey, she just put them in more danger. Show her strength? If that's the best example you have, then your ability to write female characters and relationships is just terrible. There are other ways to show her strength, like having her beat a monster of fight another demigod (Which, by the way, she could have done if Rick hadn't decided to put another Percabeth moment in there. Sigh.)

The judo flip is a memorable and unexpected action that adds to Annabeth's unique personality. It shows she's not just intelligent and resourceful but also capable of physical strength and quick reactions.

Terrible writing. Horrible writing. Egregious writing. Dreadful, awful, appalling, horrific writing.

Resourceful and intelligent-we've already gone over this multiple times, the judo flip was the opposite of that.

Capable of physical strength and quick reactions-except there was no reason for a judo flip of all things. She could have done this when fighting a monster or an enemy demigod or even during sparring practice.

The judo flip can be seen as a symbol of Annabeth's ability to control situations and take charge. It reflects her leadership qualities and her willingness to defend herself and others.

Annabeth wasn't defending anyone, she was actively making the situation worse. She would have defended her team better if she hadn't judo flipped Percy.

Also, if she needs to take charge by physical violence, then she's not a good leader.

In essence, the judo flip is a character-driven moment that enhances Annabeth's personality and adds a layer of realism to the story.

I do agree with this sentence-it's definitely realistic and apropos to Annabeth's personality, but it's a flaw. And if flaws aren't developed and overcome, then it's just bad writing.

The thing about creativity is that I think it's good that I barely have any because if I had creativity I'd use it to form a painless suicide plan and that would be the end of me.

Percabeth needs communication

You know, one thing that makes me unhappy about Percabeth in WOTTG is that Percy feels like he has to be the perfect boyfriend for Annabeth and feels pressured around her.

Because you shouldn't feel like you have to please your partner all the time. You should be able to relax and be yourself with them. If they're really your partner, they'll accept you, flaws and all. If you're with strangers at a party, uncomfortable, and they walk in, you should be able to light up and relax with them.

The way Percabeth is written, Percy would freak out and stress out even MORE about Annabeth being there because he'd want to impress her too much.

But I'm not blaming Annabeth for this-because I don't know if she knows what Percy's thinking.

Has Percy ever told her that he feels like he has to be the perfect boyfriend for her and always please her? Because if he has, and if she hasn't shot down that ridiculous notion, then it's bad writing on Rick's part-

But if Percy HASN'T told her that, then how can we blame her?

In the end, I blame Rick Riordan and his terrible writing.

But can someone please tell me if Percy ever told Annabeth about wanting to be the perfect boyfriend for her? Has he ever told her about ANY of his insecurities?

Carter and Sadie should've been older

Istg Carter and Zia should've been 17 and Sadie should've been 15 years old.

Why? WELL, a little more MATURITY on our protagonists' part would have been nice. Also, Rick, you're telling me the king of the Egyptian gods, Horus, would inhabit a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD BOY? Carter should have been 17 to have more maturity and been taken more seriously. And then he could've had anxiety about turning 18 and no longer being a kid and having to face the world now? Just my personal opinion.

And Sadie, well, let's make Sadie a little older to NOT have the queen goddess in the Egyptian Pantheon inhabiting a preteen, which is really weird. And if she really had to date Anubis and Walt (an odd choice by the way, platonic Sadie x Walt would've been way better IMHO) she could've been 15 to match Walt's 16? A 13 year old and 16 year old are horrible together, and it's canon that Walt is sixteen, not fourteen, and to make it worse, this is one of the only 3 biracial couples (Zia x Carter, Sadie x Walt, Frank x Hazel) which does NOT have a fully white person dating a POC.

(Yes, I know Sadie looks like a white girl, but it's important to remember that she's biracial white passing, so this isn't a fully White x POC biracial couple)

GODLY PARENTS AND DEMIGOD INTERACTIONS ARE SORELY OVERLOOKED

PJO fandom, can we have more of godly parents and demigod children interacting with each other?

Like, give me Ares and Sherman and Clarisse and Ellis interacting with each other (The REAL Ares, not the PJO version, thank you very much).

And Aphrodite and Drew and Piper. IMAGINE THE COMEDY.

And the minor gods with their children? Like, can we have some Hypnos and Clovis moments, or Tyche and Chiara?

What about Demeter with her demigod children? Can someone please give me Demeter being a loving mother not only to Persephone but her demigod children? (Still mad that we didn't get that much info about her in ToA despite Meg being A LITERAL DAUGHTER OF DEMETER).

HERMES? TRAVIS? CONNOR?

Athena and Malcolm need to have more spotlight.

Add more in the comments please.

Idk how to say this, i agree with you and other that percabeth isn't the healthiest couple at all (to put it lightly i think) idk if the fandom made it up or something but isn't it said a lot that percabeth inspired was by rick own relationship like he's percy and his wife is annabeth, does this mean he's also in a toxic relationship, idk just a random thought that crossed me and had to share cause idk sorry if this is random!!!

This isn't random, don't worry.

I also thought like that, but I don't want to be to disrespectful to Rick Riordan and his family. There's a bit of a line, and I don't really want to cross it.

Rick did base Percabeth on his relationship, yes. But Thing A that's based on thing B isn't always exactly like Thing B. And honestly, I don't know anything about Rick's relationship with his family, so I'm not assuming anything at the moment.

Sorry if I felt rude to you-I didn't mean to be rude. I just don't want to cross this line honestly.

Hi, it’s “Rick really shot himself in the foot when he tried to differentiate Greek and Roman mythology and failed” anon again, and I just learned that apparently Rick is not only misrepresenting the gods and Greek culture, but actual Ancient Greek philosophers, and that really pisses me off as someone with a degree in philosophy.

I haven’t been a part of this fandom in a long time. I never finished HoO (I dropped it before the series was even finished), but I saw something upsetting the other day. I’ve seen a few posts talking about this one passage from HoO (Or, at least, I think it was from HoO. If I read that part, I don’t remember because It was a long time ago.) talking about “a story by Plato about how male and female were created because they used to be the same being that was split in half, and now they’re two halves of a whole looking for their soulmate or whatever” and this was supposed to create angst or something because then Nico didn’t know how he was supposed to fit into that equation.

Again, I don’t exactly know the context (I tried Googling it, but I couldn’t find anything), but I do know that it’s referencing The Symposium. The Symposium just so happens to be one of my favorite pieces of philosophical writing, and once had to write over 20 pages on this bad boy for an academic paper, so believe me when I tell you - that story is a load of BS, and I will not tolerate Plato slander.

First of all, that wasn’t even Plato that said that. It was Aristophanes. Yes, The Symposium was written by Plato, but he was essentially just documenting stuff that was said at a dinner where a bunch of dudes got together and decided to philosophize about what love is (there are 6 speakers in total, that all lead up to Socrates, and Aristophanes is just one of them). People debate about whether all the people and situations Plato wrote about were even real, or if they’re just a device to bounce ideas off of each other, and there’s even this whole theory that Socrates wasn’t a real person - but I’m not going to get into all of that. What’s important is that we DO know that Aristophanes was a real person, and it’s important to note that Aristophanes was NOT a philosopher. He was a playwright and basically the Ancient Greek equivalent of a comedian. I have seen a lot of people act like it was some profound theory of how humans came to be, but it was never meant to be taken seriously.

Now, I have seen that story be taken out of context many times, and it always annoys me, but this might be the most egregious one yet. The Symposium is not heteronormative in the slightest. In fact, it is VERY queer, which is what drew me to it in the first place.

The ACTUAL story that this is trying to reference is when Aristophanes tells a story where originally humans had 2 heads, 4 arms, and 4 legs, and there were 3 genders - male, female, and androgynous (which represented the sun, earth, and moon, respectively). The gods were intimidated by the humans, so they split them in half. The ones that were originally male became men who were attracted to men, the ones that were female became women attracted to women, and the ones that were androgynous became men and women attracted to the opposite sex. That is the very short version, but needless to say, very inclusive of homosexuality.

I see how what Rick was trying to do could’ve worked for asexuality or aromanticism, however, this is only just one small part of The Symposium, and there is actually a lot of stuff in The Symposium that I would argue are very ace and aro coded, but I’m not going to get into all of that, though, because this would be very long and that’s beside the point.

(Just one thing, though, because I can't resist. It’s not relevant to this, but it’s cool, and it relates to my previous ask. At one point, one of the speakers, Pausanias, tries to define love as a complex being and says that Aphrodite is the personification of love. He acknowledges that there are two different versions of Aphrodite that the Ancient Greeks believed in, from different parts of Greece (again, this is pre-Roman), and instead of trying to determine which is the “true” Aphrodite, he embraces both of them and says they are the personifications of two different kinds of love, which eventually results in him basically figuring out the split attraction model 2000+ years before it was called that, and I love it so much.) Anyway, everyone should read The Symposium, it’s public domain.

All that to say, this means one of two things. Either Rick knew this story and intentionally changed it to be heteronormative to create angst, or he read some other version of the story, that was not a primary resource, where someone else had already changed to be heteronormative - and that really freaking bothers me, because it could not be farther from the truth.

As a queer person who found a lot of comfort in The Symposium, I find it disgusting that it was twisted for the sake of making a queer character feel bad about themself for extra angst (and don’t even get me started on how Nico’s character was handled, that is a whole other thing I can go off about, but I won’t because this is about Plato). Shame on you, Richard.

Again, I haven’t touched HoO since I was in high school and it was still being released, and I honestly don’t remember reading that part. So, if I am taking this out of context and later in the book they say “Wait, but that’s not actually how the story goes!” then I will be pleasantly surprised for once, and you can disregard all of this.

You are wonderful, anon, and I love you and this message that you've sent so much. I will definitely check out Plato's Symposium sometime soon.

Don't worry-you're not taking this out of context. What you're talking about is, unfortunately, written in either HOH or BOO-I clearly remember that.

Rick Riordan does tend to misrepresent cultures in his stories-especially Greek culture, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was true. His views on Hellenistic Paganism and Greek Gods when he was writing PJO and HOO were unfortunately very derogatory and it's clearly reflected in his writing.

The fact that he changed a story to fit his version does not surprise me at all, though it's painful to learn that he has committed yet another infraction regarding Greek Mythology.

It's terribly discouraging to me when I see how many people think that what Rick Riordan writes is true and urge them to read up on real sources regarding Greek Mythology. This twisted version of Plato's Symposium is only one of many examples in Percy Jackson.

Knowing Rick Riordan, he either read the full version and twisted it to form his own terrible version, which he has done before (Hephaestus' attempted rape of Athena) and is quite good at or he read a version that wasn't the primary resource and just took it to be the real thing (like he did when researching for Piper Mclean).

Nico's moment there was pretty poignant, very relatable for many LGBTQ readers wondering how they would fit in to heteronormative society...........

But unfortunately, a lot of nice moments in PJO come at the cost of incorrectly interpreting Ancient Greek Gods and culture. It's pretty sad, honestly. Rick really likes to slander Greece in his works. First with the flame of the West, then with slandering all the gods and all those mythological inaccuracies, now with this twisted Symposium version of his.

Rick Riordan doesn't even do his research properly, so of course he said that Plato said it and not that Plato wrote down what Aristophanes said out loud. I wonder if it would actually kill him to do some more research. Is he really that bad at it?

Anyway, I will read the Symposium to gain more insight onto how Rick could have handled it better. I really like aro-ace coded stuff, too, so I'll love this one.

Percy Jackson's fridge horror

What gets to me about Percy Jackson and the sequel series is that there's so much fridge horror in it.

For those of you who don't know, fridge horror is something that seemingly innocent but has very disturbing undertones.

Like the climbing walls in CHB. What do you MEAN that they clash together, hurting the campers who haven't reached the top, and that there's also fucking lava which BURNS THE CAMPERS, NO LESS. And that Chiron allows it?

AND THAT HE FUCKING INSTALLED IT?

And there's lava below? Do you know how serious fucking lava burns are? They're horrible. Campers might have even died before.

And there's a full lava and earthquake mode too, and boulders roll down on the campers, which is pretty serious and can make for some fatal injuries. Jesus, Rick, what the hell were you thinking?

I wonder if Luke saw the horror of this and if this was a small part that motivated him to join Kronos. I really do wonder.

And in ToA, the Three Legged Death Race?

Chiron wants to reward who come back..........alive. Because it's so dangerous that it has fucking exploding Chainsaw Frisbees and iron orbs falling from the ceiling. And apparently it's so dangerous that you can find fucking Python in there too. Oh hey Python, wazzup old mate-AAAAAAHHHHHHH-gets swallowed and painfully digested.

And this is all because a MILLENIA OLD TUTOR WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER AND A FUCKING GOD WHO'S SUPPOSED TO PROTECT THESE CHILDREN couldn't say no to a fucking eight year old who came up with the terribly dangerous and impractical idea for this race. An eight year old, folks.

Chiron is........a terrible person for this. No, fucking seriously. He sent those kids in knowing that they might die and have serious trauma if not. How anyone can like Chiron after this is beyond me. No wonder Luke joined Kronos. Such a shame he lost, though.

And Paolo Montes' limbs just casually being ripped off and then reattached? What the fuck was this, Rick? A child's limbs, that too, sawed off! Dismemberment is so comedic, especially when it happens to an unprepared child!

FUCKING NEWS FLASH, RICK, THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENS! DISMEMBERMENT IS SERIOUS AND PERMANENT TRAUMA! IT'S NOT JUST REATTACHING LIMBS AND OH EVERYTHING IS SUNSHINE AGAIN.

Feel free to add your own fridge horror that you've noticed.

My partners friend went missing if you all could signal boost this!

I really don't understand why Thalia had to fight the monsters and sacrifice herself for Luke and Annabeth RIGHT ON THE BORDER OF CAMP HALF BLOOD.

Literally WHERE were Chiron and Dionysus? They knew that getting Thalia to camp was very important-hell, why didn't Chiron himself search for her instead of letting an inexperienced satyr guide her?

Just another one of Rick's terrible writing choices that make no sense. This has been bothering me for a long time..........