#cotd neg

Heck in Sea of Monsters, the book that already addresses the entire theme CotD was going for but handles it with about a hundred times more grace, Tyson is called the r-slur. Uncensored, because it was 2006 and it wasn't considered a slur back then. And we get an exact run-down of how this is hurtful to Tyson and bad in general and the ableism he faces and the parallels of real-world discrimination against their mythological setting. And it's handled really well. Without having to make up fictional slurs really badly. and say that shit to like the only explicitly Black protagonist in the main series when she is already regularly called a racial slur in the text. In the universe that already addresses the use of real slurs both well and poorly various times throughout the franchise.

Literally my same thoughts anon lol I wonder if they’ll even address that at all.

Expecting demigods to just be cool with monsters that have killed their friends/siblings before or attempted to eat them, turning the word monster into a slur, all of it just sounds… like it could get really messy. What really concerns me rn is that the few demigods who likely wont be immediately as trusting or as forgiving as the protagonists most likely will be judged for it.

In my own opinion (as someone who's also aroace), it feels like a missed point. The aphobia surrounding Hestia was the infantilisation of aroace people (and aspec people in general) and how her and Artemis presenting as children played into that. It feels weird that he's now going "No, Hestia can have kids!" when that never really mattered. I don't know how exactly he'll play it but given the fact that Hestia was really our only certain aro rep (Athena is all but explicitly alloace, as is Reyna via word of god and Artemis has always had speculation over whether she was actually aroace or not) it feels a little icky to me that the one certain aromantic character is now one we're being told has kids. Obviously aromantic people can (and do) do that but it feels to me like it's trying to show that she isn't "abnormal".

I'd like to hear your thoughts, though (and have a good day!)

they heard everybody complaining too much about the lack of Hestia ever since TLO and the monkey's paw curled /j

To be serious though, I don't think it was related to the aspec characters thing (though i wouldn't put it past that either). I do legitimately suspect it's more an attempt to address the complaints of Hestia basically completely disappearing from the series after TLO. If so, it was a terrible choice. I really can't fathom why they'd do it that way.

On the other hand though, like you said, it is really aggravating that out of the even potentially aspec characters (since there ARE no canon aspec characters) (closest is that Athena is specified to not be romantically attracted to her mortal partners), they're all children or Artemis - who is depicted as a child. And the only ones depicted as adults (and only sometimes, in Hestia's case) explicitly have children (which IS actually a point I made in my open letter, but i know Rick didn't read that even though he replied to it). Even Reyna becoming a Huntress in the scene where she (doesn't) come out as aspec, she's doing so just narrowly under the wire of turning 18. Because Rick is allergic to adult aspec characters, i guess.