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Some glazers will really say Percy had it so much harder for having to fight his way through to get to Camp Jupiter. The same glazers will then forget the fact that throughout Jason's childhood, he never had a Sally Jackson, he never had a Grover Underwood, he never had the amount of emotional support Percy had. Sure, he might have had some friends but they were also expecting him to be a leader of Camp Jupiter and so on. Jason's childhood is so much harder because he didn't have a place to rest back on. His only safe space was a camp that wanted him for his abilities and forced him, knowingly or unknowingly, into the mold of a leader. And that says a lot about how relaxed he could be as a kid. Sure, Percy and Jason had equal feats but Jason still had it harder because he had next to NOTHING TO FALL BACK ON.

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Chapter 5 of The Long Way Home is up and ready to read!!

In this chapter our heroes continue making their way west towards Camp Jupiter, but their quest derails in the Nevada desert when Nessus, the savage centaur of old myths, ambushes Jason, Ren, and Nico on a slowing train near Reno. As the wreckage smolders, Jason shoulders the weight of mortal deaths he couldn’t prevent, Nico fights to stay standing through poisoned blood, and Ren’s illusions buy them precious seconds to strike back.

I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I look forward to your feedback and comments ❤️

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Evangeline Gallagher

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I agree with the core of this post, especially the need to critique Rick’s writing rather than blaming Annabeth for the flaws in how she's portrayed. But I think it’s important to point out that the issues with Annabeth’s characterization don’t begin in Heroes of Olympus. They’re already present in Percy Jackson and the Olympians, just less obvious because of the limited first-person structure.

Annabeth works in PJO because she functions well within Percy’s narrative. She’s his foil, the clever and rational counterweight to his impulsiveness, and that dynamic is effective. But if you look closer, almost everything we know about her is filtered through Percy’s admiration. She’s described as the best strategist, the bravest, the most capable, but largely because Percy tells us so. Her role is defined in relation to him.

Outside of that, there’s very little built into her character. Her friendships are underdeveloped, her inner life is barely explored, and her interest in architecture often feels like a shallow attempt to give her a “quirky” but respectable passion, rather than something organically tied to her arc. It’s surface-level depth, not something the narrative ever truly invests in.

When the series shifts to multiple POVs in HoO and Annabeth is expected to carry scenes on her own, the gaps become obvious. It’s not that her character becomes inconsistent. It’s that the structure that made her feel complete in PJO is no longer doing the heavy lifting, and the lack of independent development becomes clear.

All of this is frustrating because I do like Annabeth. The concept of a normal girl surviving in this world through intelligence and strategy alone is compelling. But I’ve never been a fan of Percabeth, and I’ve come to actively dislike Percy, especially in HoO. Without the tight focus of his own POV to frame him sympathetically, his flaws are more grating and harder to ignore.

So yes, absolutely call out the misogynistic patterns in Rick’s writing. But let's not pretend that Annabeth’s writing only went downhill later. The real problem is that she was never given the depth to stand alone from the start.

extremely telling when people are capable of assessing how ooc percy is/isn't in post-pjo book depictions of percy but annabeth/percabeth haters (usually the same people) wholeheartedly believe that 1. post-pjo annabeth is infallibly accurate annabeth writing 2. post-pjo percabeth is an infallibly accurate depiction (or a good continuation) of their original dynamic. you can hate any character or ship for pretty much any reason but many people who attempt to articulate and justify their hatred in logical reasoning end up making it clear that their grasp on those characters/ships is too flimsy and biased to be making those assertions and criticisms in the first place, nor do they understand that many of the actual problems with the way annabeth (and percabeth) are written are rooted in rick's misogynistic writing - and instead of calling out rick, they blame the fictional woman for it

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“I’ve never seen brown eyes look so blue”

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Scene from chap 7 of Azucar, Sudor (RIP)

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— A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day... this day we fight.

prints

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Suicide Kings.

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Yeah, I completely agree. It’s frustrating how Rick's writing after PJO keeps recycling the same relationship formula without thinking about whether it actually fits the characters or even makes sense. Percabeth was compelling in the original series because it came from years of tension, loyalty, and shared trauma. But instead of letting that relationship evolve, it just got flattened into this quirky, snarky dynamic where Percy’s feelings are kind of taken for granted and Annabeth turns into this perfect, emotionally stable figure. There’s no room for either of them to actually grow anymore.

Solangelo is probably the worst case. Nico should not be in a relationship that constantly downplays his trauma just to make Will seem like the sunshiney boyfriend. The Sun and the Star basically turned Nico into a plot device for Will’s character arc. The whole thing focuses on Will being the “good” to Nico’s “dark,” which feels reductive and kind of tired. Nico deserves space to be complex and to actually heal, not just to feel lucky someone loves him.

What sucks is that all of this just flattens everyone’s personalities. These relationships don’t challenge the characters or help them grow. They’re just there to give readers something familiar and safe, but it comes at the cost of real, believable development.

hate how practically every rrverse relationship is just bastardized percabeth (even percabeth). solangelo, jiper, percabeth post-pjo all are the exact same dynamic -- one of them is madly in love with the other (and usually """dumber""") while the other is "charmingly" rude to the other. it's soooo boring because it just results in this flanderization of all their characters. percabeth has just morphed into this weird, uncomfortable dynamic, where percy just feels the need to be with annabeth, despite his crippling mental state and her lack of his well-being. and annabeth has just turned into this perfect saint who has no issues with her own adhd and dyslexia. jiper was always just a copy of percabeth dynamic and that (obviously) didn't work out (considering the kinda retcon of their relationship -- piper being a lesbian and jason being dead). with solangelo, all nico talks about (especially within the sun and the star) is how lucky he is that will likes him -- while i'll admit solangelo is more corny, rather than developing terrible seemingly harmful relationship

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Joy Sullivan, from “Culpable”, Instructions for Traveling West

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"heart of darkness" by Justin O'Neal

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A digital drawing of Nico and Jason from a scene in my fanfic The Long Way Home.

I wanted to take a more classical approach; something between an underdrawing and a finished sketch. So I leaned into expressive linework and idealized proportions.

This piece captures a quieter moment between them, and I’m thinking of illustrating more scenes in this style. Let me know what you think, or if there’s a particular scene you’d want to see visualized.

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I think what's more devastating is what the bath in the Lethe did. It removed his memories but the emotions remained. So when he sees Percy or feels attraction to a boy he recoils in shame and disgust. But he doesn't know why. He's missing the 1940's catholic, fascist, authoritarian environment that shaped his reaction.

So that shame and disgust is just as natural (to him) as the attraction. They're so tangled up and impossible to separate.

Which is kind of why I'm not a huge fan of how Rick approaches Nico's orientation by pushing for solangelo. I feel Nico needs an internal journey first before all that.

Okay, we all like the idea of Percy being the one who made Nico realize he's gay, right? What if Nico met boys before, maybe in Italy or at boarding school, and had something with them (like a kiss or something) that gives rise to intense internalized homophobia, to the point where he feels such repulsion that he feels consumed by sin. I was just thinking about this after reading The Summer Hikaru Died

I imagine Nico thinking "yeah, maybe I'll become a priest, it's less suffering than liking boys" then Percy Jackson appears for the first time saving him and his sister, then suddenly Nico becomes an atheist again, in fact, he converts to Hellenism just to worship Percy as a god because that's what he sees

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I know the Clone Wars more than demonstrated that Anakin and Padme had the sublety of a Bantha on a starship, but I will die on the hill that the biggest tell is Anakin's perfectly styled curly hair. That boy spent 9 years with pin straight hair and then 10 years with a mandatory close cut and rat tail, yet he can suddenly maintain perfectly styled, notoriously difficult, curls in the middle of a war???

No way. That has Padme running-through-a-battlefield-in-full-couture Amidala all over it. There is no way she would let her man have bad hair, war or not.

Obi-Wan raised that boy. He has seen every questionable choice that Anakin has made through his awkward teen stages. He has also seen Padme go through a planet wide, life and death disaster as a teenager and still maintained multiple costume changes with full hair and makeup for her and her friends.

There is no way Obi-Wan did not see Anakin suddenly have a perfect knowledge of how to maintain the long hair he has never had before and not immidiately know that Anakin has spent an inappropriately large amount of time in a bathroom with Padme. No he took one look at Anakin and knew immidiately.

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need rick to write more about the duos that are not couples. give me more piper and leo. give me more hazel and jason. give me more thalia and percy. give me more annabeth and piper. give me more frank and leo. give me more thalia and jason. give me more reyna and nico.

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This is such a good idea

I can't wait to see how it turns out

I want to write a five-fanfic series (That are roughly the same length of the Percy Jackson books) about Jason Grace and Camp Jupiter/New Rome in general, from before the Second Giant War, starting from around the day Jason got abandoned (With a prologue from Thalia's perspective in the first book).

It'll be called: Jason Grace and the People of Rome

And then I want to rewrite Heroes of Olympus, but more fleshed out for each character, lots of major changes, and some more in-character themes for all of them...

Anyone wanna help?

(P.S. if @starlightshadowsworld, @sodamnbored, @puriteenism, @freezer-bride-your-sweet-divine, @somewhereincairparavel @rowanintheriver or any of the other Jason Grace fans have any HC's or ideas for this that they want incorporated into Jason's Backstory, please let me know so I can get it in while I'm writing the outlines)