Posts by a Book Nerd

My dad sent me this…

ttc opens with percy’s mom driving them to the battle at westover hall — and percy is noticeably embarrassed by her. he’s embarrassed that she has to drive them to the school, he’s embarrassed by her telling baby stories about him, and he’s embarrassed by her concern for his well-being. and sure, on one level this is fairly standard 13-year-old boy behavior. but it’s also a powerful way to open the book, because as ttc progresses, almost every mortal parent we encounter gets fleshed out in one way or another.

ttc is the book where sally meets paul — and for percy, this means he has to face the fact that his mother has an independent life and romantic world outside of him. this is something he never really had to grapple with when gabe was around, because he knew she didn’t actually like gabe. but it’s clear from the start that she does genuinely like paul, and percy feels that he’s interrupted something by messaging her when paul is around. thus, the introduction of paul introduces a new layer, not only to their relationship as mother and son, but also to sally as a character in her own right.

also, early in the book, we also get percy’s observation that thalia might be anxious about driving because of the circumstances of her mortal mother’s death. this is a really astute observation on percy’s part, and despite the fact that it’s later implied to be a result of her fear of heights, i think percy’s comment here is likely not entirely untrue. taking this perspective, we can see in thalia how the actions and life of your mortal parent shape your behavior and decisions just as much as that of your godly half. her anxiety about driving the sun chariot is not necessarily about one or the other. she is informed fully as a character by both sides of her parentage.

and of course, this is the book where we finally meet annabeth’s father and her stepmother. percy comments several times in the scene where they meet that he expects them to become “raving lunatics” at basically any mention of annabeth, and he’s surprised to find them being… fairly normal. (or, in annabeth’s father’s case, normal if a bit kooky and professorially devoted to to his research.) it is ultimately annabeth’s mortal father who saves the day at the end of ttc, using his combined knowledge of the world of the gods and his research — shown by his melting down celestial bronze to create bullets and firing them from a mortal-built airplane. as with so much of pjo, it is the intersection of the godly and mortal worlds at which the danger can be defeated, and annabeth’s father personified that theme in this scene. he seems to understand this on a level that perhaps even annabeth herself has not yet acknowledged. here, again, we see a mortal parent becoming more three dimensional and complex.

(it’s also worth mentioning that the exploration of parental relationships in ttc doesn’t end with the mortal parents. the prophecy contains the line “one shall perish by a parent’s hand,” which is revealed to be atlas and his poisoning of zoe. here, we see the parental relationship of a titan presented as a contrast, not only to the parental relationship of the gods, but also to the parental relationships of mortal parents, as it is just after atlas poisons his daughter that mr. chase arrives to save the life of his.)

it is thus no surprise that the final pages of ttc have percy revising his earlier embarrassment and saying: “i thought to myself that thalia had been right, so many days ago at westover hall: my mom really was pretty cool.” it’s a realization he and annabeth both go through in the book, albeit in drastically different ways. and this theme makes ttc a fantastic entry into the world of pjo. we see parental relationships explored in many different ways throughout the series, and it follows that as our characters age and grow in their complexities, their parents do too. and not just their godly parents, but their mortal parents as well. in ttc, we’re reminded that sally is more than just percy’s mom — she’s a whole, dynamic, complicated character. in other words, she’s human.

This podcast demonstrates that ability really well because sex scandals tend to be used as propaganda, so it's difficult to tell if they are true or not. The host will ask the historian guest, "Did he have sex with men?" and the guest will say something like, "Well four sources say so, but three were written after his death and the one from his lifetime was from a dude who REALLY hated him, so I'm going to conclude no."

That is what an expert can do, that we've perhaps forgotten about because we have so much information at our fingertips, an expert can tell which information is good & valid vs. bad & unreliable. An expert can sort much faster than a layman because they've been doing it for years.

It's the same for my field. Some things I am absolutely sure are wrong, like if someone says "We only use 10% of our brains." No, we use all of it and I can even tell you what every part does. But other claims, if I see a news article claiming something that sounds fishy, I can read the research article behind it and judge the validity of the source. I can sort. I know which parameters to sort on. That was the entire point of my education and it was pounded into my head.

LISTEN! Disney needs to be marketing Percy Jackson as hard as Universal markets fucking Harry Potter. They are sitting on a goldmine!

Build a Camp Half-Blood section in Hollywood Studios and people will flood in! You can have the strawberry fields, the cabins, the Long Island sound with like a statue of a sea monster rising out of it! You can eat at the dining pavilion, get a makeover at the Aphrodite cabin, make a little mechanical dragon at Hephestaus cabin, buy windowsill plant starters at Demeter cabin!

Rides could be a rollercoaster where you pretend you're driving Apollo's sun chariot. A motion ride called Blackjack's Chariot Race. A shooting gallery ride where you're "firing arrows" at monsters or maybe you're on opposing teams with other visitors for capture the flag. Percy's Hippocampus Water Ride!

A tie in Percy Jackson hotel themed like the Lotus Casino with an arcade. You can add in a Circe's Spa, Dionysus's Bar, Hestia's Hearth Restaurant for adult interest.

And merchandise? Oh baby do you have merchandise! You already have the orange Half-Blood tshirts made! You can also do Camp Jupiter tees! Merchandise for each of the cabins so you can get one saying you're from Hermes cabin or something. Hunters of Artemis merch! Hecate tarot cards. A little crystal prism that makes rainbows to send Iris messages. Customizable camp bead necklaces! PJO themed mickey ears! Monster stuffed animals. Toy weapons. Annabeth notebooks. Grover's pan pipes. BLUE FOOD EVERYWHERE!

One thing which is really interesting to me regarding the dynamic between Percy and Mars/ Ares, is that every single time Mars describes the kind of person he respects, or the attributes he appreciates in mortals, he just describes Percy to a T without realizing it.

He says he values bravery, loyalty, brains and a sense of duty, and then has beef with a character who has

shown absolutely incredible acts of bravery (fighting the minotaur, visiting the underworld, fighting atlas, fighting Kampe, the entirety of the battle of Manhatten, falling into Tartarus, etc.)

whose loyalty is one of his most defining features

who has been shown to be incredibly intelligent and strategic (defeating Procrustes, defeating the Nemean lion, tricking Nereus, again Manhattan, etc.)

and who has on many instances been willing to sacrifice either his own life or even risk the lives of the people close to him for the sake of the greater good (leaving his mom behind in the underworld, asking about the whereabouts of the monster Artemis was hunting instead of Annabeth's, fighting in Manhattan, despite believing the prophecy meant that he would die, etc.)

I'm currently writing some more on my analysis of Percy's and Ares'/ Mars' relationship during Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, and I just reread some scenes in House of Hades for that.

Particularily, this scene:

And, I'm sorry. This is absolutely hilarious for the argument I'm trying to present.

Because, in the opinion of both Mars and Ares, Horatius is one of the greatest heroes of all time, because he singlehandedly (or together with two other officers, according to most versions of the Horatius story) held off an army of enemies at a bridge to protect a city, and then destroyed that bridge to make sure the enemy army can't cross.

So, to put it differently, Mars thinks Horatius is one of the greatest heroes of all time, because he did the exact same thing that Percy did at the battle of the Williamsburg bridge during the last Olympian.

Like, the exact same thing.

To a T.

And, Percy didn't fight an army of only etruscans. He fought singlehandedly against an army of 200 monsters (with the help of some archers from the apollo cabin), including the minotaur, and, later, fought against Kronos himself to protect Ares'/ Mars' own home.

Like, if we go by logic, canonically, Mars and Ares both think that Percy is one of the greatest heroes of all time. Even if they don't acknowledge that.

I don't even think that this was intentional on part of Rick Riordan, but it's gold. It's amazing. It's beautiful.

You know that feeling when the love of your life is about to fall down into hell and then you grab them and then you both fall into hell?