I find it deeply unsettling when Percabeth fans say that it was ok for Annabeth to judo flip Percy because he's practically invincible.
It's not ok to physically and violently take out your emotions on someone just because they're physically immune to it. This pretty much reeks of sexism because 'the girl is too weak to actually hurt the boy, so it's ok for her to hit him.'
It's not about whether he's strong enough or not. It's about the fact that she has no problem with violently, physically taking her emotions out on him and having no problem with it.
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.
I've been thinking about two lines-
One from the Demigod Files, where Annabeth says that Percy is smart but acts pretty dumb sometimes, and the second from the Mark of Athena where Piper notes that Annabeth wasn't around to 'rein Percy in' when he was taunting Bacchus.
Does this mean that Annabeth often has to stop Percy from pissing off the gods and that it exhausts her? There's reasonable evidence for this.
He pissed off Ares in TLT, Hera in BOTL and Bacchus in MOA. We know that Percy has a history of pissing off gods, which is why it's such a trademark characteristic of his in the fandom. Piper notes that Annabeth isn't around to rein him in, which means that Annabeth would have stopped Percy from pissing off Bacchus if she had been there. Given how Percy acted towards Bacchus, he wouldn't have been to easy to stop. And keep in mind that that's a god. It doesn't matter if it's Percy Jackson talking to him-there's a very real chance of them killing him, because if Zeus can give Percy 3 quests after Percy saved the world twice, then any god can kill Percy and not suffer divine consequence.
If that's the case, then I feel sorry for Annabeth because she has to calm him down and stop him from pissing off the gods. It must be exhausting for her.
Hold on a moment.
Isn't there canonical pedophilia in Percy Jackson.
Since Calypso is stated to have stopped aging at 16 years old physically and mentally and she was young......
And she romanced grown men like Odysseus and Francis Drake (second is a weird choice by a weird author.)
What is Rick's explanation for THAT.
How the hell did Rick not see this?
WHY would you portray Calypso like that. He did Calypso dirty, and she was already so awful in the original Odyssey, but he ruined her even further. Jesus Rick
Why do people dislike Piper for calling Percy unimpressive?
There's nothing wrong with it. She didn't say that she hated Percy and she didn't slander him. She simply found him unimpressive. That's it.
Characters are allowed to not like Percy. They're allowed to not care about him. They're allowed to not find him handsome.
Stop hating Piper for that.
You know, in Percabeth, Annabeth is usually the one harming Percy, but there are two interesting moments where the tables are turned.
Let me explain
When Percy tells Annabeth that her mortal parents aren't so bad in TTC on the flight home and that she should stay in touch with them.
Percy.........what? Rick...........WHAT?
I..........I can't say how horribly written this was.
Annabeth was a child. Her stepmother signed up to raise her when she married Frederick. She literally had night terrors which isn't uncommon in children-
And what did her stepmother do? Did she stay and try to comfort her? Did she take Annabeth to her room so that Annabeth wouldn't be alone? Did she check the room for spiders?
No. No, she did none of this. She just told Annabeth that it was a figment of her imagination and told her to stop scaring her baby brothers.
That's not what you do to a scared child. Her stepmother fucked up with that one. Her stepmother was bad for that.
Mrs Chase also called Annabeth a big girl when she was seven.
SEVEN years old is NOT a big girl. Mrs Chase knowingly did what I listed above and that makes her a terrible person. She's not entirely bad, but she's pretty morally black when it comes to Annabeth.
And Frederick is also horrible. He neglected Annabeth and let Mrs Chase not call him home for his daughter when she needed him. Granted, he was working, but he couldn't have called Annabeth and tried to comfort her?
Percy shouldn't have said that and Rick shouldn't have written that. End of discussion, period.
2. Now, here, Percy isn't even there in the scene and he's not trying to actively harm Annabeth, but I still wanted to include it because I do think that it was still harmful in a way.
'Annabeth shook her head. Percy would hate her getting so philosophical.'
I don't remember which book this is from-I think it's from the Mark of Athena.
Annabeth doesn't want to get philosophical because Percy hates it?
All right, there are certain habits that you might have to change because your partner doesn't like it. Smoking, drinking, watching porn, all harmful activities.
But getting philosophical? There's nothing wrong that. And if Percy doesn't like it, well, that's just too bad. There's nothing wrong with a little compromise there.
Annabeth is allowed to have her own thoughts without her thinking about how Percy would like them. Annabeth doesn't always have to get philosophical with Percy-she can do it on her own or with her other friends. This applies to relationships in general.
It's frustrating to see how Percy and Annabeth always cater to each other first and never even think about their own selves or relationships outside of each other.
I ultimately blame Rick Riordan for making them obsessed with each other.
You know how Athena disapproves of and threatened Percy? Well………….DO THAT WITH POSEIDON AND ANNABETH! Let them meet. Let Annabeth squirm. Let Poseidon smile, but let it not quite reach his suddenly cold green eyes.
Let him size her up, and let her be found wanting. LET HIM SILENTLY THREATEN HER NOT TO HIT PERCY AGAIN!
Let him disapprove of Annabeth's nickname for him! Let Percy defend it, defend Annabeth from Poseidon!
Let Poseidon tell Percy that if things don't work out (in a way that he implies that he hopes it doesn't work out) that he can hook up with a sea nymph or naiad or something! This was SUCH a missed opportunity to show that Poseidon loves Percy and thinks that he can do better than a plain daughter of Athena! (Or at least Poseidon thinks so).
Can someone write this, please? I would, but I already have something else going on.
Hold up hold up hold up
I was just reading The Hidden Oracle and Apollo says that Calypso is very beguiling, and that Odysseus stayed with her for seven years before returning home.
I-WHAT?
Odysseus didn't stay WILLINGLY. Calypso FORCED him to stay there and literally sexually assaulted him for years before she was forced to let him go by the gods.
This makes it sound like he WILLINGLY stayed with her. Rick didn't need to write that. This is a children's book, yes, but he didn't need to include that sentence at all. Not. At. ALL.
Guys I swear-please never take Percy Jackson as an accurate source of mythology. If you're unsure about something, search it up on Wikipedia or Theoi.com or ask actual Greek people who know.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, in this post, I'm trying to examine how we as a society, even the ones who are progressive, automatically expect the older sibling, more importantly the older sister, to take on the burden of their siblings when their parents can't.
I'm going to use the example of Bianca di Angelo from Percy Jackson.
For context, I'll tell you-Bianca and her younger brother Nico were from pre WWII before the big 3 took the oath, and once her mother was killed by Zeus, her father put her and her brother in the Lotus Casino, which makes time pass slowly while the outside world time goes faster.
Bianca and her brother Nico were in there for about a month according to them but actually 70 years in real time. Keep in mind that during this time, there were no parental figures for them, even if they got everything they materially needed-food, clothes, etc.
Nico also mentions that Bianca was strict with what she let him watch, so this means that she watched over him in the Casino. Not fully, maybe, but she watched over him and felt parentified nonetheless.
Bianca felt that she had to take care of Nico.
And when they come out, they remember that their parents are dead and they go to a military school of all schools. Now Bianca feels like she has to take care of Nico because their parents are dead and because of the general expectations piled onto older sisters and they probably cling to each other a lot, seeing as how Nico didn't mention any friends from his boarding school time.
And when Bianca gets the chance to join the Hunters of Artemis, well, she takes it-and how do people react to this?
Well......they don't like it. They think she's abandoning Nico, they call her selfish, even though she's only 12-a literal child, not even a teenager. And she only wants to not be just a big sister, to have a life for herself. And she's groomed and mislead by two much older women who are also in the guise of being children (Artemis and Zoe) and she's told that she can meet Nico from time to time, but that she won't have to take care of him anymore and that he'll be taken care of. And so she takes the chance. She doesn't know that they're going to camp-she thinks that if she declines, she won't get this again. And she doesn't even think about the possible consequences of this, because again, she's just a scared twelve year old who barely had time to make a decision with a lot of pressure and 3 people there who tried to pressure her into the opposite directions.
No one really thinks about this, do they? They only think about how her joining the Hunters and her death affected Nico, and they judge their reactions to her based on him.
Because the way Bianca was written, she was always the Earth to Nico's Sun. And ultimately, she died and was only ever remembered as Nico's older sister, which is so sadly ironic because she always wanted to be more, but Bianca was doomed from the start.
And now we come to Vivienne Duarte, who can also be a slightly selfish sister, only people love her more because we actually see her helping Jude, and Jude doesn't seem to be that affected by Vivienne's distance from her and Taryn-in fact, Jude has said that Vivienne has come through for her plenty of times, and Vivienne does help Jude a lot over the course of TFOTA, so Vivienne would of course not be hated that much, right?
But, as always with case of older sisters not being there for their younger siblings, there's Vivienne hate for this.
And I mean, I can understand where you're coming from, because maybe it looks like Vivienne should have been there for Jude and Taryn-
But let me tell you, have we ever considered Vivienne as a person, and her desires and wants?
Let me tell you something very frankly-I wholeheartedly believe that if TFOTA was from Vivienne's POV, then a lot of people would be hating Jude and Taryn. We'd all be wondering why they choose to stay with the people who don't care for them and treat them like toys or pets. We'd be cheering Vivienne on, and maybe some of us would take some time to think about Jude or Taryn and maybe even defend them, but ultimately, we would say that they chose to stay in Faerie, so they weather the consequences.
And that's what I'm talking about. Have we ever considered the fact that Vivienne wanted to go back to the human realm, but Jude and Taryn wanted to stay in Faerie?
And then Jude and Taryn grew to love Madoc. Madoc, the man who killed Vivienne's parents, and kidnapped her and her sisters to a foreign land which they knew nothing of, and then her sisters started to love him.
It must have been awful for Vivienne. How many times did she turn away, her heart being pierced, when she saw Jude smile at or hug Madoc? How many times did she blink away tears when she saw Taryn with Madoc?
And she vowed to hate Madoc, but she was forced to live with him because of her sisters, even when she found a way out, because they wanted to go back to his stronghold, and VIVIENNE stayed for JUDE AND TARYN, even though she could have gone and lived in the Mortal Realm using her magic and she could have come and visited them when she wanted to.
Can you imagine a man murdering your parents, then he kidnaps you and your sister and is your biological father? And then your sisters, who aren't his real daughters, grow to love him even though you hate him, and you can't fathom how they can love him, because HE MURDERED YOUR PARENTS IN FRONT OF ALL THREE OF YOU.
I love the fact that she hates him. I love that she tried to kill him and betrayed him for her sisters. I love her for that.
And Vivienne did try to protect Jude and Taryn, but their relationshop fractured as Jude and Taryn grew to love Elfhame and Madoc, and that's realistic, because which person in Vivienne's place, with all her trauma and vows, would not hate her sisters a little for doing what they did?
And now we come to Vivienne's desires.
I mean, I already told you that she wanted to go and live in the mortal world away from Faerie, but she stayed for her sisters. Was she planning to stay forever if she had met Heather? Probably not, but she would have stayed longer.
But I think that when she met Heather and Heather wanted Vivienne to move in with her, Vivienne realised that it was either her or her sisters' desires-
And she chose herself over them.
And I think that that was wonderful, because she couldn't stay behind forever. She couldn't sacrifice forever.
And let me tell you, she offered so many times to Jude and Taryn, she said, hey, let's go back, stop being the the crazy psychos, and they kept saying no, we want to live here.
And Vivienne ultimately accepted that she couldn't always just try to help her younger sisters, that she and they would have to go their own separate ways, that ultimately she couldn't help them anymore. That Jude would have to fend for herself, that Taryn would have to find a husband.
And so she chose to leave for herself, and I think that that's so bittersweet, because she was leaving them behind for a new life, and she must have been hurt too, but she stopped sacrificing for her sisters. And she knew that she was immortal, so she could come back and visit them when they were settled.
And she tried, one last time, and she was even prepared to give up Heather for her sisters, but then they refused, and she gave it up entirely.
But I think that if Jude ever came to her, then Vivienne would help her, always.
Yes, Vivienne did play with Cardan, but that was most likely before he started bullying Jude and Taryn. Jude literally said that Vivienne stopped attending classes and also that she and Taryn hid their trauma in Faerie from Vivienne, so Vivienne didn't know that Jude and Taryn were bullied. And being the big sister that she is, she would never tolerate Cardan if she knew that he was bullying Jude and Taryn.
Bianca died, and Vivienne lived, and when people think of Vivienne Duarte, they're not always going to remember her as Jude's older sister, because she's so much more.
Vivienne stopped taking care of Jude and Taryn when she felt that she didn't need to and realized that they needed to fend for themselves and she couldn't always help them.
I feel like Bianca and Vivienne could have such a talk.........
@madockisser not sure if you've read Percy Jackson but what do you think about this? I'm trying to understand Vivienne's POV and I feel like I made some good points here, but I want your opinion too
Romance is not ABOVE friendship and platonic relationships. It exists on the same level, just in a different color/shape/flavor. People need to stop saying, 'Let's take our relationship to the next level' when talking about romance. Seriously, let's not act like friendship and other relationships outside of romance aren't important.