ya girls be like

Leo looked like a Latino Santa’s elf, with curly black hair, pointy ears, a cheerful, babyish face, and a mischievous smile that told you right away this guy should not be trusted around matches or sharp objects. His long, nimble fingers wouldn’t stop moving—drumming on the seat, sweeping his hair behind his ears, fiddling with the buttons of his army fatigue jacket. Either the kid was naturally hyper or he was hopped up on enough sugar and caffeine to give a heart attack to a water buffalo.

leo is a main character, so yeah, it's good we have a picture of him. the problem with this is that its the ONLY description of him. we see jason's muscles described a million times, as well as annabeth's princess curls, or piper's and hazel's unfortunate colored eyes- but leo? that's it. the only description of his features. at some point after leo comes back in hoh, hazel says this:

His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. The biggest difference was his eyes. They constantly drifted, as if Leo was trying to spot something over the horizon.

another keebler elf comparison for some reason, but the point is that leo's hardly ever described in the books- yet alone with different adjectives. this is weird!!! why would you only described your main character a handful of times compared to your other characters? especially leo, who we were supposed to care more about since he is the one who fulfills the prophecy!!! it's not adding up

leo never ever gets the same flowly, artistic descriptions that most of the other characters get. i know rick was going for ‘oh leo’s a son of hephaestus he’s not much to look at-’ shut up piss boy ill kill you. you think all kinds of people aren’t deserving of praise? that because leo isn’t as good-looking (which is so dumb they’re like 16 we’re all kinda funky looking) as his other (white) male companions that he doesn’t deserve to be described in detail? rick you eejit im going to commit homicide. 

leo is constantly referred to as annoying, hyperactive and dirty. he’s compared to a non-human thing (another hit for rick’s diversity bingo-board) and that really sets up how rick views characters that are meant to be ‘ugly’ (which is dumb. ugliness is 1) highly subjective and 2) not real fuck you). both frank and leo are meant to be seen as ‘not as good looking as the other guys’ which...hmm...hmm...rick...rick...you really wanna do that? to your two new male characters of color? they’re not as good looking as two white characters? pissboy. 

going back to @bunkernine​‘s original point, leo’s lack of actual description leads to people legit not knowing how leo looks. is his hair brown? black? what shade of brown are his eyes? angular jaw? hooked nose? elf-like is not good enough piss baby. leo deserves a goddamn description! just because you wanna make him ‘not good-looking’ doesn’t mean his face dissolved! he has features! things unique to him and his character! something simple! does he bite his lip when working? does he have scars? does his curls fall into his face? give us anything!

my problem isn’t that all of the hunters are not lesbian (or bi, wlw, whatever). if some of them are aroace, if some of them are straight it’s fine. my problem is that, looking at greek mythology, artemis’ handmaidens are pretty explicitly a womens’ space, and excluding wlw from womens’ spaces is... bad! greek culture was super sexist and awful and so artemis exists as a protector of women to like, keep them from getting sold off as children to terrible abusive marriages and stuff, not to protect them from the horrors of romance. the reason artemis forswears men & requires that her handmaidens do the same isn’t because she hates dating—it’s to protect women from misogyny. (plus there’s a decent mythological basis for artemis & her handmaidens being sapphic themselves but that’s a whole other thing.)

asserting that wlw don’t belong in womens’ spaces because of their sexuality (or at least, forcing them never to act on it) misunderstands the motivation behind artemis’ mythology in the first place, and considering that homophobic people have actively campaigned against letting wlw into women’s spaces, that writing decision has very homophobic implications, intentional or not.

Thalia became a tree when she was 12, while Riordan try to pass the whole thing as “her body grew up” and “she looks like 15” it wouldn’t really fully since her brain didn’t mature: hence why she is acting like an immature 13 years old that she is. Thalia went back to being 12 years old mentally and become an inmortal 6 months later, her brain couldn’t have developed that much in those 6 months.

At the end of TLO when Percy turns down inmortality he says he doesn’t want to be stuck at 16 forever, it’s heavily implied he would never mature or change. So Thalia, who is now an immortal, is stuck in the same way 15 year old body with an inmature brain: proved by the way most hunters (that are canonically 10-14 in TTC with the oldest being Zoe) act in the first series

And you can see it the way they act, they are inmature girls, some of them barely teenagers, most of them not even being teens and they have been stuck like that for centuries. They don’t grow, they don’t mature, they don’t anything. So there is no way Thalia is the mature punk ass young adult every want her to be.

Then we have my next issue: The vibe of the Hunters feels so different in Heroes of Olympus and The Trials of Apollo (please have in mind I have not read the latest book of TOA and I’m writing from what I have seen online):

The hunters don’t longer feel the group of little girls they are (avarenge age is 12-13 since that how Artemis look like) instead it feels like a bunch of group of 16-20 years old. I have seen posts sexualizing the Hunters when it feels so wrong because canonically they are 10-14 years old.

Everybody (Riordan included) seems to forget about the inmature girls we met in TTC. These girls don’t grew up, these girls don’t mature. This girls are no older than 14 (15 with Thalia but really she is 13) and why Reyna joining them is...weird.

fake youtube screenshots for the soul

LEO VALDEZ BEING CUTE IN A SCRAWNY WAY — and yes, his goggles are prada sorry I make the rules

percy | annabeth

top ten iconic lines i think about every day before bed

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