- You started out as a bet/challenge to see if I could successfully wrangle the infamous Problem Child but oh whoops I got attached!

- You are my kind, bright-eyed protegé who would never do so much as rip a tag off a mattress. anyway I am going to acquaint you with Criminal Activity

- I showed you genuine kindness and it was maybe the first time you’d ever experienced it and accidentally ended up becoming more of a parent to you than your “real” blood family ever was. Uh. Do you want to play catch in the park or

- I will gladly take any punishment meant for you. I would go to the ends of the earth to protect you, even if it meant I had to die in the process. I would do it a thousand times over, and I wouldn’t regret any of it.

- I taught you how to fight, and now through some circumstance or another, I’m forced to engage you in life-or-death combat without holding back.

- I put you through training from hell to make you the person you are today, for “your own good”, and now you’ve realized that you can hit back. And you can hit hard.

- I have made you into something greater than yourself - but you are changing from how I have designed you, and this is something I cannot allow.

- I taught you everything you know, and it was the greatest mistake I’ve ever made.

INHABITANTS OF THE CROSSROADS in HADES II

at this settlement 20-30,000 years ago there lived a person who appears to have been a sort of sorcerer-grandmother-ceramics artist and her workshop was preserved very well in the sedimentary layers. her hut where she had her kilns was full of little sculptures of animals and people that seem to have been made to explode in the kiln on purpose, we're not sure why but nevermind. the relevant detail is that when you sculpt something with your hands and then fire it, your fingerprints can be preserved in the surface of the clay forever, so we have fingerprints of ancient ceramics artists that have survived for tens of thousands of years. and one of the major artifacts from Dolni Vestonice has a fingerprint on it that is so small it could only have belonged to a child

"An Eye For An Eye"

[Audio Description: The character Ethan Nakamura from Percy Jackson. He is looking to the side, head tilted far back, and holds a long arrow that punctures through his neck and out of his left eye. His eyes are vacant and blood trickles down his skin. The backdrop is a dark blood-like red.]

I let this bad boy pick up dust in my drafts for a while because it’s such a difficult question for me to properly answer without going off into a 100 separate topics, but since we’re answering questions today LETS GO.

This is going to move a bit from what you asked but: one of Rick’s biggest faults, in my opinion, was not giving Thalia her due in her relationship with Annabeth, Luke, and Annabeth & Luke. Arguably their relationships are the most significant in this series, we could even go so far as to say they’re the cause of many of the events in the books (Luke’s anger at the gods + decision to join Kronos partly strengthened and influenced, respectively, by her death; Annabeth’s attachment to Luke made deeper by the death of someone else who was such an important figure in her early life).

So in summary my issue is that Thalia is such an underused character despite having such a profound influence in the story, and her relationships are squandered. We don’t see Thalia’s reaction to the person she knew for approx. 3 years, who she was on the run with, who she died protecting, suddenly siding with the villains. We jump from her resurrection in Sea of Monsters to her suddenly being super chummy with Percy and Annabeth — despite this taking just in-universe months after that book — people who she barely knows. Because she barely knew Annabeth before she died, and that’s a point we have to make.

And not just that but you would think that Thalia’s death, part of the reason for his bitterness at the gods (along with his mom, preexisting feelings and the failed quest + the additional pity it brought him), and her subsequent resurrection would allow us to see Luke having to grapple a bit more with his actions and any guilt he might have. He poisoned her tree and then discovers that she’s back to life, come on. That was ripe for the picking.

But all we have in terms of their interactions is Luke trying to get her to join him, and Thalia kicking him off a mountain — which,,,,, legendary,,,, but come on. And that little tidbit about the Huntresses of Artemis telling Thalia that Luke would betray her because #yesallmen except for Percy Jackson? 🤢🤮🤮🤮

This jump from “Thalia and Luke were best friends who were on the run together and Luke openly gets mad when told he’s betraying her memory because he blames the gods for her death” to “Thalia hates Luke’s guts and Luke never interacts with her anymore despite their shared history being ripe for picking” and that Luke only goes after Annabeth once he wants out also bothers me because it’s part of Riordan’s big insistence that Luke was a true romantic rival when Luke spends three books not caring about Annabeth and four books openly trying to kill her and other demigods.

Now morality pet isn’t really the word I’m looking for here, mostly because Annabeth doesn’t work as Luke’s morality pet either in canon. Luke is, like I’ve said, very much willing to manipulate and kill Annabeth if it means achieving his goals of overthrowing the gods, but he also cares for her because of the things they went through. So it’s complex, but she doesn’t have as much pull on his morality and behavior as “morality pet” implies. So no one’s a morality pet here, but if there was anyone who should have had some sort of influence of Luke’s attitude and be the one he tries to (unsuccessfully) manipulate both out of his own selfish need but also because of shared history, it’s Thalia.

and that tragic tone to their relationship couldve worked out so well if thalia wasn’t shelved away to be cannon fodder to beef up the Olympian side’s numbers in tlo, if she wasn’t conveniently cropped out of luke’s dying scene. thalia appears in the throne room scene right after luke’s death, and not a single word about it comes out of her mouth and it is just. so upsetting to me :”)

Like think about it:

Thalia grew up with an unstable, alcoholic TV star mother who was obsessed with her father, a guy who was already hardly in the picture, to the point said mother couldn't take care of her or her little baby brother.

She would go on to lose her brother at the age of seven (the age Annabeth was when Thalia first found her, just think about it), because her mom decided to give him away with absolutely no context; and, as a result, had to call the police on her as an act of self-preservation and vengeance on Jason's behalf, before running away.

Thalia then had to fend for herself alone against monsters for a couple of, if not few, years until she ran into Luke, and then Annabeth.

On her journey as a demigod, she bore witness to the cruelty of the gods through Halcyon Green's and May Castellan's curse.

She was chased down by Hades's army of hellhounds, some cyclops, PLUS THE THREE FUCKING FURIES for symbolizing her father's broken promise despite the fact her birth was never a choice for her to make.

She perished in a battle at the age of TWELVE to protect her family, only to be stuck in limbo because her father "pitied" her, when he could have done something beforehand to help her (for reference: Hades ensured the safety of his children in the Lotus Casino.)

She wakes up disoriented years later, not quite fully aged, and has to grapple with 1) the fact the little girl she protected has grown up, and 2) that her best friend is on the Titans' side for reasons she knows more personally than anyone else but kind of has to overlook because EVERYONE at camp is saying he's the enemy and she just woke up.

Oh and said best friend poisoned her tree, which is something she doesn't know how to feel about, because she was dead but also not really.

Finally, she learns there is a prophecy about a child of the Big Three (just her luck, right?) who could bring about the fall of Olympus and then proceeds to get nearly blasted by lightning in the ONE, SINGULAR quest she takes to save Annabeth (which she rightfully, if not correctly, assumes is coming from a paranoid Zeus, who is known for maintaining his rule under any cost, including any cost to himself).

Now, we can give Rick the benefit of the doubt regarding Beryl and Jason Grace, since they don't come until the Heroes of Olympus series. Kind of squinting here because technically Halcyon tells Thalia about Jason being alive, but whatever, I'll still give some leeway.

But Thalia still goes through enough shit to tip her over to the Titan's side (in fact, five of the nine previous bullet points are things Percy likely knows about her), which is why her refusal to join them, without mentioning any prominent reason, makes her badass scene with Luke at the cliffside fall flat.

On one hand, in Riordan's defense, we could assume that Percy is an unreliable narrator and didn't want to entertain any thought of Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth having fulfilling familial ties anymore. We know he was deathly scared of Annabeth leaving him for the Hunters, so it can be similar in that he was scared about Thalia leaving him for Luke. So in his retelling of the events, Thalia stopped knowing Luke as soon as she died all those years ago. When she was revived, she no longer had any connection to the son of Hermes.

But personally, I think the easiest way Rick could have enhanced the scene, and therefore story, would have been to change the following dialogue:

"You aren't Luke. I don't know you anymore."

to

"It stopped being like old times the moment you hurt Annabeth."

Because here's the thing: Luke had never changed. Thalia and him both used to talk shit about the gods, because they lived their horrors. If Annabeth wasn't in the picture; if it had been only Luke Thalia fought for, she would have joined him in an instant, no matter how much Percy or Grover was kind to her. They didn't know the gods like she and Luke did.

It was Annabeth, however, who threw a wrench into things. She shifted their focus away, even if just for a moment. Rather than fester with personal enmity against the gods, they fought alongside each other to watch over their little girl who symbolized the innocence they lost. They loved her so much and they wanted to create a world that was safe for her.

And Annabeth is also someone who we can tie back into Percy's perspective; she is the common ground that everyone of interest stands on.

Another source of dissatisfaction I'd like to point out is the fact that, canonically, this shared love for Annabeth blinds both Thalia and Luke. They fight to make a better world in their own ways -- Luke builds an army to take down what he sees as the oppressive Olympians and Thalia joins the Hunters of Artemis to strike down monsters that could endanger demigods. But they don't realize that all Annabeth wanted from them was to be a family: a family with the two of them and a family with Percy and Grover (and her mom, no matter how unlikely that would have been).

Alex what's it like to be so RIGHT because YEAH!!!!! I think Luke's redemption is more for Annabeth's sake than his own and like the more I think about it, the more it makes me tear up. Thalia saw Luke as an equal and Percy kind of looked up to him but they both draw such distinct boundaries (like Dez also said) and I feel like the general argument to be made here is that they see the world in black and white while Annabeth sees it through rose tinted glasses- Percy (and Thalia) is a cynical protagonist to Annabeth's idealism and it's kind of amazing that she's not played off as a silly girl with idiotic dreams because that's such a common theme in books where 'realists' are the ones to survive and people- specifically girls- with unrealistic expectations from life aren't rewarded for it and are usually played off as a punchline to a joke!!

nico di angelo was born in the 1930s, yes, calypso was born way before then, yes, they're both old souls, yes!

BUT

nico being put in the casino means he only aged chronologically years went by but mentally and physically he was a ten year old boy, he didn't age at all in the casino meaning he's no more developed than will would be mentally

calypso may not have aged physically and looks like a 15 year old girl but mentally she aged with the island, her mental development is that much older than any of the demigods you'll ever see in this series, she knows this, she uses this to her advantage, she uses her "maturity" against everyone talking down on them because of it

leo is 16 inside and out, mentally and physically he's sixteen.

caleos age gap may not be physically wrong but mentally they are millenia apart, solangelo is mentally and physically the same, sure nico may still be accustomed to things from the 30s but he's still 14, wills still 15, Leo's 16, calypso is older than anyone can imagine.

Anw what I’m trying to say is that. Assuming Calypso is isolated, and she has had next to no contact/ experience with the civilization from the day she was imprisoned, does that negate her age-related maturity?

like yes, calypso is, for the most part, alone on her island, with hardly any means of socialization. whatever she knows (before the heroes she encounters) dates back to the first titan war, but unless a measure of time was invented and popularized back then, her concept of time is a little warped. i mean we as humans already know it to be relative! so for a divine being like her, thirty minutes could feel like eternity to her while an eon could be a few seconds. she even says it herself, that time "works" differently on ogygia when percy asks. and sure, her island experiences days and nights, so she might have a basic understanding of the passing of days, but again, she still likely does not understand how long a month, year, decade, or century is. it's all the same to her, a prisoner on this island.

but not to the heroes.

keep in mind, she had odysseus on her island for what people rumor to be three to seven years. she already knew her curse of falling in love with people like him by then, and she was persistent in trying to bypass it, doing whatever she could to allure him.

where am i going with this? well, she looks around 15 to percy and leo when they landed in her island the first time, though it should be noted percy calls her "timeless". but to men like odysseus, she could have very well looked as old as mid 30s, early 40s, since that was the age he (and his wife penelope, who probably did occupy some part of his mind) was around during his voyage.