PJO Athena Didn't Have To Have Kids-a Possible Alternative To This

'Reyna doesn't owe Nico anything and she is free to do what she wants with her life and join the Hunters' and 'Nico can be distraught at Reyna joining the Hunters and have flashbacks and be negatively impacted by it' are two statements that can and should co-exist.

anon because the fandom does genuinely scare me sometimes, especially within the caleo stan circles

love your posts. what are your thoughts on caleo? i personally greatly dislike it, but how do you feel about it? i think it's another percabeth situation, where people only defend the abuse that happens because of the gender (if calypso was male and leo was female, there would be a riot. same situation with the constant hitting/violence with annabeth. a genderswap would ruin these ships.) i dont think leo or calypso act happy in the relationship, whatsoever.

About Caleo.............

All right, I hate that ship, but my main problem is how Rick portrayed Calypso in PJO versus how she is portrayed in the actual mythology and the Odyssey.

Putting this under a cut because I don't want to clog your feed up.

I don't know how many PJO fans have read the Odyssey, but if you have read it before or after, doubtless you'll be surprised at how different the two Calypsos are.

How Calypso is portrayed in the Odyssey.

She is not a sad, helpless UWU teen girl like Calypso in PJO. She shouldn't have even been a teenager in PJO-she romanced two grown men!

She's not the type of person to understand and let someone go. She didn't do that with Odysseus-she kept him captive for seven years and only let him go when Hermes threatened her with the wrath of Zeus (not something you want to tempt, never ends well.)

Being a nymph and a minor goddess who was the daughter of Atlas, she supported him during the First Titanomachy which was why she lived on Ogygia in exile as punishment. She's a goddess, which means that she was leagues more powerful than Odysseus, who was exhausted, traumatised and didn't have any crew or supplies to sustain him. Going back into the ocean was also dangerous because, well, Poseidon and his rage (not something you want to have on your head either).

It's literally stated in the poem that Odysseus cried on the beach every morning, wishing to return home and missing it terribly. He literally just wanted to see the smoke that rose from his homeland and wants to die. Exact lines copied from Homey's Odyssey-

'By night indeed he would sleep by her side perforce in the hollow caves, unwilling beside the willing nymph.'

'At night-time, true, he slept with her even now in the arching caverns, but this was against his will; she was loving and he unloving'.

'But Odysseus, in his longing to see were it but the smoke leaping up from his own land, yearns to die.'

And when Hermes forces her to let him go, she makes this speech saying that gods will ravish all the women they like, but the moment goddesses start doing the same, they are furious and make them stop.

That's literally just her trying to blame the gods and not herself for something she did. She's trying to shift the blame and make herself seem likeable because others did it, so why can't she?

This is something that a lot of abusers use to make them seem better. Calypso's actions are not ok, and the narrative does not tell us that it's ok. It condemns them, and so should we.

This by @katerinaaqu is a must-read, and you should check out their blog for more info on the real Calypso.

And how she's portrayed in Percy Jackson

We should not, for example, turn this adult nymph who's a rapist into a biologically and mentally 15-16 and make her a poor little girl who's sadly living on an island and then state that she's romanced grown men while somehow being 15-16 years old and ignore it.

I'm not saying that it had to be stated that she was a rapist because this is a children's book series.

But I'm not saying that she had to be portrayed as a teenager either.

The worst part is that though Calypso is depicted as a teenager, it's said that she fought in a war, the First Titanomachy which was much more serious than the Second One, and she romanced two grown men.

All of this while being a teenager? How the hell does that work? Apollo literally says that Calypso is old enough to be his babysitter! And he's millennia old! Millennia!

There is no logic in this, honestly. I mean, there's not much logic or consistency in PJO, but this really takes the cake.

And in Heroes of Olympus, more specifically the fourth book House of Hades, she appears again.........

And, well, this is where it gets really revolting.

Leo Valdez, a fifteen or sixteen year old teenager, is thrown all the way to Ogygia. And there he meets Calypso, who, as the book series states, cannot help but fall in love with every hero that appears on her island because they're just her type.

I think we all know what happens next.

Calypso, a millennia-old goddess who fought in a war and romanced grown men, gets into a relationship.........with a traumatized, mentally unstable teenage boy who's not even a legal adult. After only, what, a few weeks?

This entire situation feels like some bizzarre nightmarish distorted version of terribly-written, unfunny comedy.

THE ATROCITY OF ROMANTICISED SUICIDE

Ok, so Caleo is abusive, but I'll get to that later.

What I want to talk about-first and foremost about Caleo-is that Leo commits suicide to find Calypso's island again-and this isn't good.

...............Sorry, did I say that that wasn't good?

No, that's a fucking understatement and underestimation.

IT'S ROMANTICISED SUICIDE.

Sink that in your head people. He killed himself to find her island again and take her off of it!

And no, that's not romantic. It's not. Fucking. ROMANTIC.

it's disgusting, unacceptable, unpleasant, nasty, disagreeable, horrid, unwholesome, atrocious, awful, deficient, revolting, lacking, unwelcome, unfortunate, inferior, inadequate, lousy, flawed, pathetic, disastrous, ill, useless, worthless, gross, damnable, vile, absymal, horrendous, shoddy, abominable, crappy, faulty, trashy, substandard, nasty, terrible, dreadful, unfavourable, grim, distressing, regrettable, adverse to morality and humanity, entirely unnecessary and not up to scratch (THAT WAS THE ITCHIEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN).

How, just how am I supposed to explain how horrible this is? Especially in a children's book series?

Killing yourself just to find a loved one is never a good concept in any form of media. It's a self-destructive fantasy and suicide itself is a horrible, horrible thing-not to blame the suicidal person, but to both them and their loved ones.

And suicide should never be romanticised, never ever, period. To do so, especially in a children's book series, is absolutely atrocious writing on the author's part, no matter who they are.

He never even called it out. If he had said that it was horrible and treated it as such, it would be a little better-but no. It's cheered on and encouraged, which is a level of hell that's deeper than the Earth's core.

I don't think I've emphasized how awful this is. It's just.......let's not romanticise suicide and suicidal tendencies. Not for anything. Never.

LEO'S ARC IS RUINED

The entire point of Leo Valdez's arc was to show that being the third wheel (seventh one in this case) wasn't bad. Being single, not finding romantic love, was fine. Acceptance without romance was possible, and pure platonic love was also possible. And Calypso pretty much ruined this because in the end, heteronormativity forces romance above everything.

And he literally prioritises this random girl whom he spent a few weeks with over his friends whom he spent months with and knows them way better than Calypso.

The forced amatonormativity here is as transparent as clean air. You'' be able to see lichen growing on the trees if you look close enough.

Abuse in Caleo

Calypso is also abusive to Leo.

1) She looks into Leo's past and sees his memories. Without his permission. Which is pretty creepy and moves past boundaries in a bad way.

Now we come to the Dark Prophecy, where they star as a couple (more like a star explosion).

2) In TDP, Calypso jabs her fingers into Leo's ribs.

Why?

It's because she asked what was hiding Festus from the mortals, so he tells her what the Mist is and she says that already knows-even though she literally asked the question that provoked in the first place.

Even if she thinks he's insulting her or talking down, when he's not, she shouldn't jab her fingers into his ribs.

And that wasn't playful-Leo expressed physical pain through an exclamation. And even if Calypso thought it was playful, she didn't apologize afterwards when she saw that she caused Leo physical pain.

3) She also calls him by a name that he told her never to call him by-Leonidas.

He clearly doesn't like it, and knowing that, she still uses it, that too in front of someone they don't know very well, almost a stranger.

In the Riordanverse, names have power.

Leo chooses not to call himself that. He tells Calypso never to call him that. And she calls him that.

In this moment, she's taking his power and autonomy away from him by calling him something he doesn't like. It's probably minor to a lot of you, but honestly, it's pretty bothersome to those of us who have actually experienced this.

4) Leo often uses mechanical-related analogies, but Calypso hates them and makes him stop using them, so he doesn't even use them when she's not around.

What's wrong with him using his analogies? He uses them to help him and she makes him stop. She effectively stops him from using something that helps him. That is bad.

It's a fundamental part of him. If Calypso doesn't like it, then why is she dating him at all?

5) Leo is also bad to Calypso. He calls her Mamacita multiple times after she tells him not to. Reyna literally has to tell him to stop calling her that and intimidate him into doing it, and it's all passed off has lighthearted playfulness.

As someone who has been through this before, it's pretty damn frustrating. It's not funny or cute to do it. It's plain annoying and the person on the receiving end is completely right to want it to stop.

6) The age gap. I've mentioned this before.

But some people are saying that Calypso has the maturity of a teenager in PJO, so why shouldn't she date Leo?

All right, using that logic, let's make Apollo and Reyna date!

NO.

Calypso has lived for millennia on her island. She says that it's been three thousand five hundred and sixty eight years.

This isn't like Nico, who was in the Lotus Casino for decades but only aged a month. He was the same level of mature when he went into it and came out. Calypso was not.

Apollo has also lived for millennia. And he has a teenager's maturity. Does that mean it's ok for him to date Reyna.

No. It does not. And the same logic applies to Calypso and Leo.

I've also heard someone saying that Calypso is cursed to fall in love with whoever washes up on her island, which isn't true.

She says that the gods send her the type of person whom she can't help herself from falling in love with. Not that she's cursed to love them.

7) In TDP, Leo is working on something to try and find Georgina, a missing child.

And then when he says as much, Calypso sharply asks him if he can imagine losing his child.

He can, in fact, do that. He lost his mom, which was just as horrible if not more than Jo and Emmie losing their child, since there was a chance of Georgina coming back, but Esperanza could never come back.

He also has a little brother-Harley. He says that he would be furious if someone did something bad to Harley! So yes, he can in fact imagine what losing a child is like!

After this, Calypso for some reason gets frustrated and tells him that he can't reduce everything to a program.

He's not doing that. He's not reducing this problem to a program-he's working on a program to reduce this problem.

She tells him that Jo and Emmie don't need gadgets or jokes. They need someone who will listen.

And how is that going to help exactly? Leo is actually doing something. He's working on something to find Georgina.

A good listener is something nice to have, but a person who actually does something helpful is even better. And if Calypso thinks Jo and Emmie need a good listener, then she can listen. What else is she doing anyway?

Calypso willfully misunderstands this and wrongfully accuses him of not listening and trying to reduce everything to a machine when he's not. This is what a toxic partner does. They twist the narrative to make you think that your actions are wrong when they're not.

TO CONCLUDE

Neither Leo nor Calypso is happy in their relationship. It was built on naive dreams and false passions-the moment they became a real couple, they didn't know what to do. They thought that they loved each other, but it was only the idea of love and having a partner that was compelling to them. The moment they actually got what they wanted, which was to be in a real relationship, they didn't know how to actually be a couple. Then the problems of a real relationship began to hit both of them.

The logical solution would be to talk it out, apologise on both ends, realise that they wouldn't work out together and finally break up while remaining good friends or just stop contacting each other entirely-either one is fine.

They're taking a break now, so hopefully Rick Riordan will make them break up, but I think that he'll just never mention them again, which wouldn't be as great, but would be fine, honestly, regarding the current state of Rick Riordan.

Magnus Chase and The Kane Chronicles were also screwed up

You know, I'm happy about the fact that many people can acknowledge and accept that Rick fucked up the Greek myths and his portrayal of the gods-

But I also feel like the same thing can be said for MCGA and TKC. They represent Norse and Egyptian mythology and I've seen some posts on how Rick effed up THERE-but only a few. Not many others. And yes, TKC is a beautiful series, but it also has some terrible problems.

It's on the tip of my tongue. It's just slipping out of my grasp. But someone needs to talk about Rick screwing up Norse and Egyptian mythology too.

You did NOT just compare Annabeth and Gabe to each other.

I swear to god you anti Percabeths are the dumbest, most incomprehent people I've ever met. I seriously think you should just kys honestly the world would be a better place off without you.

No I don't think it's wrong you're anti Percabeth so yeah

I did, in fact, compare Annabeth to Gabe!

I don't think that Annabeth is as bad as Gabe (nope nope nope) but I do think that she's very toxic and that she hurts Percy. I think that they need to break up and heal alone. Her lack of character growth is very frustrating.

The lack of specificity in your death threat is annoying. If you do want me to kill myself, you're going to have to be more particular-the necessary tools, how long it'll take, how painful it'll be, etc. I take painless methods only.

I do think that not much would be changed in the world if I killed myself, but it would probably be a somewhat worse off place without me because I have people who love and care for me and I'm not doing anything bad to the world, so there's that.

When I came into this fandom, people told me that Percabeth stans would be rabid and hateful, and I don't think that's the case for the majority of them, seeing as that period already passed and they seem more mature now (or maybe it's just Tumblr) but you seem to be an exception. I wonder if you're the same anon as last time? I'll never know.

In any case, I'd like to thank you for your use of better grammar than the last one, though your not adding a period at the end of the last sentence irks me. I'd also prefer it if you didn't use the abbreviation of kys and said kill yourself. I dislike it when people use bad grammar, though that's just a personal preference.

Your morality is interesting-I forget the exact term for it, but you think it's bad to tell your side to kill themselves but have no problem telling the opposite side to kill themselves just because..............they're your enemies. Which is a terrible reason. Not surprising from a hardcore Percabeth stan, though.

I don't tend to think of people whom I disagree with as automatically bad people-that is a very harmful mentality to have. I have fought with some people, but they're not bad people-we just disagree on certain things and I know that they produce great content and have good morals just like me. Please adopt this mentality and the world will be slightly better, because every change is a change, no matter how big or small.

Anyway, I will be the bigger person and I hope that you sleep well tonight! Au revoir!

Misogyny against PJO Calypso

I have to say that PJO as a fanbase can be surprisingly biased against Calypso and sometimes their misogyny shows. You have a right to dislike Calypso and how she was written and retconned, but some of the posts I've seen about her are just plain misogynistic.

Calypso doesn't owe her life to Leo just because he rescued her from her island. She doesn't have to cater to him and his desires. She's entitled to live her own life on her own terms.

If she wants to stay back at her school instead of spending time with Leo, if she wants to travel the world with or without him, if she wants to make new friends and hang out with them, she is entitled to all of that and she's not morally bad for it.

Not to disappoint Caleo shippers or anything, but I honestly think that the best arc for Caleo would be for them to break up. Calypso wants to travel the world and make new friends; Leo wants to stay at the Waystation, teach kids and help them. The natural solution? A breakup. It doesn't even have to be messy and sad either-just a simple, amicable breakup, an acknowledgment that they like each other as friends, but that they can't stay together because they just don't work out.

I also think that this breakup arc would be healthy for young children and teenagers who read this because it shows them that not all breakups have to be messy and sad. That you can breakup with someone politely and remain on good terms with them, which makes the readers less apprehensive about breakups.

Just my thoughts, feel free to add on.

One of the worst things that Jude and Vivienne did

Ok, so this is something that's never been talked about-at least I haven't seen anyone talk about it-and I really want to talk about it.

So........during TCP, Jude tells Vivienne that she wants her (Vivienne) to take Oak to the mortal world and raise him with Heather.

And Vivienne and Heather are 19 during this, they're just teenagers who are barely adults, and Vivienne agrees. Heather isn't happy about it, but she agrees in the end, and Oak isn't too bad to raise? (Not sure about the last part)

But.......moving this aside, can we talk about the fact that Jude and Vivienne put Heather and her family's life in danger?

You're probably really confused right now. Just keep reading.

We the readers and most faeries in TFOTA KNOW that Oak is the heir to the Greenbriar throne, which puts him in an incredibly dangerous position, because many people will come after him and try to kill him or use him.

Now just to be clear, this apartment isn't Vivienne's apartment. Yes, Vivi lives there, but this is Heather's apartment, it's under her name, she owns it, Heather's parents bought it for her. It's canon that Heather could kick Vivienne out if she wants to.

Jude has guards watching the apartment because it's dangerous and people could try to come after Oak in the mortal world too. And they could also come after Vivienne and Heather, and by extension, everyone and anyone that Heather cares about.

Do you see where I'm going with this now?

If Jude had guards watching the apartment, it's very likely that enemy faeries would be watching it too, and they would notice a certain pink haired mortal girl living with the important heir of Elfhame, and they'd take note and observe her and her movements, and her parents and friends and everyone she cares about.

The faeries could've killed Heather and her family. Having Oak there may have taken him out danger (he was relatively safe) but it put Heather and by extension everyone she cared about in a whole lot MORE danger.

THIS in my opinion was the most horrible thing that Jude and Vivienne did in the series.

I'm not sure if Holly Black thought about this while writing TFOTA-I don't think she did, but I did, so I'm sharing it with you.

I’m gonna say it - practically everything Nico ever did getting retconned as “because he had a crush on Percy” is some of the most amatonormative shit I’ve seen in my entire life.

True words. True words.

It's extremely annoying that many people think that a person would move mountains and do impossible things only for someone whom they love romantically. This is just not true.

There are people who would do this for their friends. Menelaus said that he would drive out the people of an entire kingdom just so that Odysseus could come and rule there with his people, and he didn't like Odysseus romantically.

It seems that Rick Riordan cannot for the life of him put platonic relationships before romance-or rather, he can't do this without involving a virginity oath. His heteronormativity is crystal clear when you take a critical look at his books and Nico and Leo's unnecessary romantic relationships.

Nico and Bianca's backstory makes no sense.

All right, so they were born in the 1930s, but after WWII they're placed into the Lotus Casino. 60 years later, still children, they're taken out and placed into a military school. And we all know what happens next.

But there were a truckload of changes from 1945 to the early 2000s.

And sure, you could argue that they were slowly exposed to it, as seen with the flatscreen TV in the Lotus Casino in their room, but how the hell do you expose all the changes that happened between NINETEEN FORTY FIVE AND THE EARLY TWO THOUSANDS IN A MONTH?!?!?!?!?!.

HOW. HOW DO YOU DO THAT.

Because they were in the Lotus Casino for a MONTH, and that's a very short time to be exposed to all these new inventions.

So in Nico and Bianca's POV, they're just getting all these presents so fast.

'Oh, look, we have coloured TVs now! Oh look, women can wear revealing dresses and pants now! They don't have to dress in skirts and conservative clothing anymore! Oh look, there's something called a computer now! Oh look, we have digital clocks and watches now! Oh look, we have freaking DIGITAL CAMERAS AND PHONES NOW! WE HAVE VIDEO GAMES! WE HAVE VIDEO TAPE RECORDERS! WE HAVE CALCULATORS! DIGITAL CALCULATORS! WANT TO USE GOOGLE? LOOK AT THE INTERNET!'

All this in just a month. Imagine how bewildered they must have been. Clothing changes, fashion changes, the entire damn society changed. Technology had changed. Everything was different. And it was just shoved onto Nico and Bianca. Poor children-I actually feel a little bad for them now.

This post is both critical and comical. Do what you will with this information.

website

Jude doesn't always think of Cardan

I saw a comment saying that everything and everyone that Jude thought about would tie back to Cardan every single time.

That's.......not true.

I'm not going to deny that Jude thinks about Cardan a lot and that their relationship is definitely a core part of the books. There's a reason why it's the number one thing the fandom talks about.

But she doesn't think about him all the time and she's certainly not obsessed with him as some people make her out be.

She has thoughts about Vivienne and her relationship with her, Taryn and her betrayal, Madoc and their complicated relationship, Oriana and Oak and even Dain and the Court of Shadows. She reflects on her past, present and future and her life in Elfhame, not all of which includes Cardan.

Even in the second book where their relationship picks up, she has thoughts about her family, her bio parents, her adoptive parents, her siblings, the Court of Shadows, Grimsen, her failed relationship with Locke, Vivienne's friendship with Cardan and she even thinks about Heather and also. There are plenty of moments without Cardan where she doesn't think of him.

And in the third book when she reunites with him and their relationship is official, she does think about him a lot, but not all the time. She thinks about her mother, her father, Madoc (her second father), Vivienne, Grima Mog, Heather, Taryn and Locke, etc. She even has moments with the Roach, the Ghost and the Bomb.

None of this ties back to Cardan. And it's true that their relationship is definitely present in each book, this just seems like another attempt to put romance above platonic relationships, which is exasperating. Seriously, let Jude have her platonic relationships without bringing Cardan into them!