lesbians for percy jackson

Just so we’re clear, I absolutely hate this arc.

Prior to the show’s premiere, I believe there was a quote from Rick discussing new-ish things that we’d see in the show, and one of those things was Percy helping Annabeth “tap into her humanity”. I can’t find the exact quote, but it should be on the series update Twitter account if you search it.

When I first read this quote, I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but I thought maybe we’d get an expansion of the theme of forgiveness that we got in the original books, or maybe we’d get an arc about Annabeth’s pride and how that gets in the way of her relationships with others. Or maybe they’d try and break down the ways in which Annabeth helps to uphold the gods’ ways of doing things, and align her more with the mortal point of view (which they essentially did, but not the overall point).

What I certainly wasn’t expecting was for them to strip Annabeth of most, if not, all of her smaller/softer traits, and give her this unusually stoic and stiff personality, where she suddenly has no familiarity with casual aspects of the mortal world (movies, Disney world, common idioms), and needs Percy to introduce these concepts to her in an effort to “unlock” her humanity.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Words cannot emphasize enough how much I despise this arc. Not only is it entirely nonsensical for Annabeth not to be familiar with these things (she was with her dad at least until the age of 7 and she goes to a camp full of other children who are regularly in contact with the mortal world; do you seriously expect me to believe that at no point in her 12 years of life, she never saw a single film, heard of Disneyworld, or heard common idioms and slang terms from her camp-mates? Seriously???)

But ALSO!

Book!Annabeth had PLENTY of humanity to go around! Even with her pride and initial coldness towards Percy, she plays hackeysack with him and Grover on the first day of their quest! She has a cute silly crush/admiration/infatuation on Luke. She nerds out big time over the St. Louis Arch! She’s the first to steal clothing from Waterland! She screams and cries when she encounters the mechanical spiders! She has an expression of sadness when she shares her backstory about Thalia and Luke! She gets lost in her little construction game at the Lotus, so much so that Percy has to use her phobia to pull her out of the trance! She grabs Percy’s hand when they first enter the Underworld because she’s scared! She tears up when it’s time to leave Cerberus!

And you stripped her of all these things, because you’re so desperate to overemphasize the Percabeth romance, and you felt that it was absolutely necessary to have Percy educate Annabeth on “unlocking humanity”??? Why!!!!

Not only did Book!Percy help Annabeth discuss things about bad parents and approaching forgiveness, but Book!Percy already had something important to offer Annabeth: loyalty, trustworthiness, and reliability. You didn’t need to take away her already-present traits and wits to convince us that Percy was the type of person she needed in her life, because we can already see what he offers her in the books. So why oh why did you feel the need to give us the silly “tap into your humanity” arc? Why did you turn her personality into something that it wasn’t? Why did you take away her depth just so her character could better serve Percabeth?

I don’t even necessarily agree with the criticism that this version of Annabeth feels like it prioritizes Percabeth more, but I can see why people made that complaint. Y’all took away so much of what made this character endearing, because you felt like it was a much bigger priority to have Percy help her unlock humanity than to let her be human prior to meeting him and outside of him. Not only does her personality get shafted, but her relationships with other people get shafted too! Her interactions with Luke are affection-less, she sent Grover off on his own in the Lotus so she could go off with Percy, and I don’t even think that she and Chiron interacted once this season; I don’t even think she mentioned the part about her calling him to come pick her up after she attempted living at home again!

the way percy is down so bad the kiss is the first thing he thinks about when there’s literally a god war about to happen

he really said

Percy: "Once I sat on my father's throne, it was dangerous but it was an urgent situation"

What if Hades sucks at letting people go the way Nico does?

As in, his family now consists of Persephone, Nico, and probably Malinoe and Makaria. Mel spends her time in her caves. Makaria stays in Elysium. Persephone leaves for half a year. His employees, who come closest to his family, have their duties to attend to, as well.

It has always been like that. Hades had grown used to the loneliness before. But then Nico came.

Nico might not realize it, but he's not that different from that clingy, love-craving child he once was in Hades' memories. Always have something to ask, something to demand, something to pull Hades out of his own lamentation with.

And that is okay. They're everything they have left. Two means not alone. Two means companionship. Hades is contented to have Nico for the Underworld's winters (it's winter whenever Persephone is not by his side, no matter how vibrant the spring is upstairs). Venice was warm when they were together with Maria and Bianca, and Hades welcomes the remnants of that warmth into the cold palace he has locked himself in.

When the loneliness comes like a blizzard hitting at the creaking windows, Nico's presence is the hearth to his vacant castle heart. Oh, Hestia is right, as she always is.

The warmth numbs the coldness, and for a while, Hades forgets how it feels to be cold.

How is he going to deal with losing him?

Dreadful, it is.

Holding grudges is children of Hades' fatal flaw. It should make sense that their father has trouble letting go. It took Nico years to give up on Bianca. Hades has millennia to spare, to learn again. He couldn't have Maria. He failed to keep Bianca. It only hit Hades now, that he is losing the hearth's last ember. So this is how getting your heart plucked out of your chest feels like.

Maybe someday he would let Nico go, would watch him dip himself into the Lethe once again knowing clearly that, unlike last time, his son would be gone forever, soul washed clean of Hades' blood. But he doesn't want it to be today, nor does he know when it will come, so he keeps holding.