#Fatal Flaw

[bubbipond]

PJO Fatal Flaws as Memes

Percy and Annabeth

[artist-issues]

I know there’s a lot to love about Percy Jackson but I really think his fatal flaw is what gets us all. I think the super-protective, loyal-to-a-fault, ride-or-die, shortsighted tunnel-visioned simplicity of him is what we like so much. Other heroes, like Luke Skywalker or Zuko or Superman, hear about who their fathers are or what their heritage is and it just riddles them with angst and melodrama. And we love them too.

But Percy spends much less time going “who am I and what is the deep metaphysical purpose of my being?” and much more time going, “I don’t care if I just learned Minotaurs are real and I’ve lost fights with middle-schoolers before: it has my mom, so one of us is going to die on this hill.”

There’s just this simplicity to him. He just goes with his gut. He can learn a devastating secret or world-bending truth, and then two seconds later, be like, “cool, what’s next?” because his gut so consistently responds to every situation with “I’m either going to protect the people I love or die making fun of the bad guys.”

[profoundwebhead]

i was just thinking, when alecto says that annabeth was the pride of Athena's offspring and perhaps the most formidable demigod child alive... she was playing into Annabeth's fatal flaw.

Pride. Hubris.

if Annabeth had taken that in, and gotten a big head about it, it could've been her downfall.

[echo16reads]

We all know about Percy's loyalty but he's been at this camp for less than two days and he can't even comprehend the thought of betraying them. Saw someone say that 'He is loyalty in its purest form' and that could not be more accurate.

[lizzyaka]

Btw quoting the fatal flaw line (im not typing the whole thing out), "i am nothing in my soul if not obsessive", anything from that one class (beauty is terror yadda yadda) or any corny ass line like those completely invalidates anything you have to say about the book in my eyes cause im just gonna assume u didnt understand shit and are just trying to be like the characters. The same can be said about people who say the book or certain parts were sad or profound like if you stop romantizing it youll realize how purposely shallow and absurd it actually is. Ive seen many people say its a modern greek tragedy which is sooo funny bc the book is entirely satirical😭

Tsh fandom is exactly like the patrick bateman fanboys but dark academia

[1800-lemon-boy]

Friendly reminder that Thalia choosing the hunters was the best choice because if she was the child of the prophecy her fatal flaw (ambition/need for power) would have led her to betraying the camp.

<33

[butyoucouldberadiant]

Percy Jackson:

[3-frogs-in-a-trenchcoat]

it better not take anyone, much less annabeth, until season 3 and athena literally telling them to realise percy's fatal flaw is loyalty cause bro is putting it on FULL display

[howifeltabouthim]

All boys need a father's love, and they'll do anything to get it, and Arthur had tried being good, and it hadn't worked, so that left only greatness. Perfection.

Lev Grossman, from The Bright Sword

[boyfridged]

i’ve been thinking a lot about what is so unique and appealing about 80s robin jay’s moral standing that got completely lost in plot later on. and i think a huge part of it is that in a genre so focused on crime-fighting, his motivations and approach don’t focus on the category of crime at all. in fact, he doesn’t seem to believe in any moral dogma; and it’s not motivated by nihilism, but rather his open-heartedness and relational ethical outlook.

we first meet (post-crisis) jay when he is stealing. when confronted about his actions by bruce he’s confident that he didn’t do anything wrong – he’s not apologetic, he doesn’t seem to think that he has morally failed on any account. later on, when confronted by batman again, jay says that he’s no “crook.” at this point, the reader might assume that jay has no concept of wrong-doing, or that stealing is just not one of the deeds that he considers wrong-doing. yet, later on we see jay so intent on stopping ma gunn and her students, refusing to be implicit in their actions. there are, of course, lots of reasons for which we can assume he was against stealing in this specific instance (an authority figure being involved, the target, the motivations, the school itself being an abusive environment etc.), but what we gather is that jay has an extremely strong sense of justice and is committed to moral duty. that's all typical for characters in superhero comics, isn't it? however, what remains distinctive is that this moral duty is not dictated by any dogma – he trusts his moral instincts. this attitude – his distrust toward power structures, confidence in his moral compass, and situational approach, is something that is maintained throughout his robin run. it is also evident in how he evaluates other people – we never see him condemning his parents, for example, and that includes willis, who was a petty criminal. i think from there arises the potential for a rift between bruce and jay that could be, have jay lived, far more utilised in batman comics than it was within his short robin run.

after all, while bruce’s approach is often called a ‘philosophy of love and care,’ he doesn’t ascribe to the ethics of care [eoc] (as defined in modern scholarship btw) in the same way that jay does. ethics of care ‘deny that morality consists in obedience to a universal law’ and focus on the ideals of caring for other people and non-institutionalized justice. bruce, while obviously caring, is still bound by his belief in the legal system and deontological norms. he is benevolent, but he is also ultimately morally committed to the idea of a legal system and thus frames criminals as failing to meet these moral (legal-adjacent) standards (even when he recognizes it is a result of their circumstances). in other words, he might think that a criminal is a good person despite leading a life of crime. meanwhile, for jay there is no despite; jay doesn't think that engaging in crime says anything about a person's moral personality at all. morality, for him, is more of an emotional practice, grounded in empathy and the question of what he can do for people ‘here and now.’ he doesn’t ascribe to maxims nor utilitarian calculations. for jay, in morality, there’s no place for impartiality that bruce believes in; moral decisions are embedded within a net of interpersonal relationships and social structures that cannot be generalised like the law or even a “moral code” does it. it’s all about responsiveness. 

to sum up, jay's moral compass is relative and passionate in a way that doesn't fit batman's philosophy. this is mostly because bruce wants to avoid the sort of arbitrariness that seems to guide eoc. also, both for vigilantism, and jay, eoc poses a challenge in the sense that it doesn't create a certain 'intellectualised' distance from both the victims and the perpetrators; there's no proximity in the judgment; it's emotional.

all of this is of course hardly relevant post-2004. there might be minimal space for accommodating some of it within the canon progression (for example, the fact that eoc typically emphasises the responsibility that comes with pre-existing familial relationships and allows for prioritizing them, as well as the flexibility regarding moral deliberations), but the utilitarian framework and the question of stopping the crime vs controlling the underworld is not something that can be easily reconciled with jay’s previous lack of interest in labeling crime. 

[cheebdraws]

Just a silly lil animatic comic that's been rotating in the back of my mind.

[golden-letters]

it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / signifying nothing.

[vampir3-jack]

One of my (many) fatal flaws: I cannot help but overdress. And oh man do I go all out

[bookhorder16]

Ok so you know the thing that talks about how Percy and Annabeth’s fatal flaws are the reason they both ended up in Tartarus. Annabeth because of her pride and Percy for his loyalty for her. But the thing is that wasn’t fatal they both survived. Soooo either they were able to overcome it with the power of love they have for each other or because after they finally got out that everything they had to go through made them dead inside. 

[tunnel-of-love-percabeth]

I cannot get enough of Fatal Flaw Percy Jackson

[jonaswpoetry]

Seeking fresh earth

This wavering voice

carries not: either veils

or elegant cascades to

—

shield well my grim

cavern of soul-forged

secrets seeking fresh

—

earth,  and honestly, it

will likely get me killed

if I don’t shut up first

@nosebleedclub March Prompts 7. hamartia