allegedly

and while that part is mostly speculation, him just. Not Getting Better is straight up canon. he says he wants to die again in som, and while i dont remember much of the rest of the series i do know what hes like in the later books- with how fucking lost he is. he doesnt know what hes doing for college, he has no plans at all, he only really talks to his family along with annabeth and grover- does he actually have friends aside from those two?

AND ITS NOT EVEN THAT. i dont really think him and grover were the best of friends in tlt, and id say the same goes for him and tyson in som. those relationships, to me, seemed more transactional. for percy and grover, grover had to be his friend, percys a demigod and hes a saytr its his job to watch over and protect the demigods he finds, while percy seemed to only be his friends because there wasnt anyone else that wanted to be around him, but also because he felt a need to protect grover as well, though for a different reason id say the same goes for percy and tyson too, as their relationship was very bluntly started to be something that formed because percy felt bad for him and was the only person to actually protect him basically he doesnt have friends. the only people he seems to actually solidly consider his friends are annabeth and grover (is demiplatonic a thing /hj) and even with rachel too the relationship is transactional! she wants a way into the godly world and he wants a way out, and they both give each other that! they also dont even talk that much after the war is over (though i mostly blame that on rick)

but also, percy is an extremely angry guy- it makes sense he wouldnt have too many friends. like i said, the only friends he actually seems to be full on friends with started from purely transactional relationships, then due to proximity they bonded and became actual friends, percy is hard to be friends with! the first line he says in the books is ‘im going to kill her’ while literally getting ready to stand up and punch nancy. that is a fantastic way to characterize a character because it tells us so much about him! hes easily angered, prone to violence if he feels like its necessary, and doesnt really think through the consequences of whatll happen as we see from grover pulling him back and reminding him hes on probation he gets angry at grover in tlt when he thinks he might be rich, he gets angry at annabeth pretty often in tlt, out of the three of them he is the most effected by ares when they meet him considering we dont really see annabeth or grover getting actually mad by his presence, at least not in the way/to the extent percy was

i think percys anger couldve been shown really well later on, as we really only see it at the start of tlt and then it kinda just. simmers down. and sure that couldve been because he learned to get it under control or because he was just too busy to be angry, but the potential of him not being able to control it? him lashing out at the people he cares about, him scaring the shit out of luke because he is just pure hatred when they meet, maybe it couldve been shown in his relationship with sally too. he doesnt want to hurt her, we all know this, he loves her more than anything! but i think theres something really interesting in the possibility that mayve he did hurt her, obviously not on purpose, but maybe it left a visible scar that he sees everytime he sees her. we know sally wasnt always there, she was pretty neglectful throughout his childhood just because he was always at school and she was always at work, but maybe part of that neglect is regret on her end- regret that she drove percy to anger so bad it hurt her, and a small part of her saying shes scared of him- and even more scared of how similar he is to his father neither of them want this, of course, they love each other, but them both accidentally hurting each other and seeing it everytime they see each other? thats just AOUGH. good shit i say

and like. THERES SO MUCH WE CAN DO WITH THIS. we can make percy so much like his father and he knows this and thinking about it makes him physically sick because he knows what his father is like, what he does when hes angry, and percy knows that one minor inconvience has the chance to send him over the edge and make him the same. and it can also tie back into my ‘percy and poseidon is nature vs nurture’ post, where poseidon is the version of percy where he exists without consequence or fear of himself from living in the world he does