#I'm not gonna tag this as Percy Jackson because the fandom would have my head for it

[eolewyn1010]

Reading Percy Jackson TLT was an ordeal for me 3 - Mythology

And here we reach the point where you can argue that this book was written for 12-year-old kids, not for me - someone who read this book for the first time in their late 20s and after studying both Classical Archaeology and History with a focus on Ancient History. And I will counter that while I don't mind reinventing old myths in new contexts, Riordan consistently leaves me with the impression that he just hasn't done his research and keeps pulling stuff out of his ass in The Lightning Thief. The whole treatment of mythology, for all he references specific myths, just winds up terribly inconsistent. And the thing is: I have read better Fantasy at 12 years old that holds up when I re-read it today. By people who made significantly less money and fame with it. Riordan's world does not hold up. Granted, the story around Pan's death making no sense because it's ripped from its lingual context may be a tad niche. But, for another tiny case example, claiming Romeo & Juliet, a couple of suicidal teenagers, are cozy Valentine's imagery does not bode well for Riordan's relationship to source material.

Goddesses whomst?

I'm not on board with his treatment of Greek goddesses in comparison with his treatment of the male gods. Once again, there's no consistency to it. Cue virgin goddesses? Artemis being a virgin goddess is a whole deal. There's an empty honorary hut for her at Camp Half-Blood, empty because she doesn't have any children of her own. Why would a goddess of the hunt and the wilderness care for a hut anyway? All of her myths play out in the forests and open landscapes. An empty hut? That doesn't gel with her mythological character at all. Neither does the only honorary hut for Hera. Why wouldn't Hera have demigod children? "She can't commit adultery; she's the goddess of marriage"? Zeus cheats on her nonstop! Is that just sexist? Possibly not, as Aphrodite gets to cheat on her husband on the regular and pops out kids on the side. But the argument of Aphrodite doing this canonically in her myths falls flat - because there are also myths out there in which Dionysos fathered the Charites on Hera. She is characterized as jealous, imperious, and vindictive. No one ever said Hera is faithful. Few gods are.

You know what god couple is notoriously faithful to each other? Hades and Persephone. I know for a fact that a later protagonist is a half-human son of Hades, so my take is that Riordan cherry-picks the parts of mythology he personally likes and just ignores the rest.

Case in point: He makes such a big point out of Hera's fidelity and Artemis' virginity... and then there's Athena. I won't mention Hestia here because Riordan didn't mention her so far, but Athena, who's mythologically even more famously a virgin goddess than Artemis (Artemis at least has the somewhat ambiguous connection with Orion and her close bonds to her huntresses that can be read as romantic, but mythological Athena is firmly on the eternal single trip). Except that doesn't fit Riordan's notion, so he conveniently ignores it without any explanation. There is zero attempt to make this fit! No "Erichthonios was actually her biological son instead of adopted, so yeah, she always had kids", nothing. She's just randomly the mother of Annabeth, and a few others. And George Washington. I almost spat out my tea.

Then again, I don't really care for the entire hut system anyway. Because it never explains what they do with the children of the lesser gods. Twelve huts. Uh-huh. Except every deity besides the Big Three is free to make children with whomever. So. Where do they put these? Eh, who cares. Only the children of the Big Three have significant powers, amirite. The rest are weaklings. Sure.

Excuse me? "A child of Aphrodite's or Demeter's is not likely to be very powerful" - ex-fucking-cuse me?? Both Aphrodite and Demeter are mythologically capable of kicking Zeus around like a puppet. The myth that is ostensibly about Hades and Persephone is actually all about the power struggle between Zeus, who gave Demeter's daughter away, and Demeter, who wants her daughter back. And Zeus is the one who has to give in. Because Demeter was about to kill the entire world! Her kids, harmless little flower children who don't even get credited with making strawberries grow? Not likely. This tastes so badly like sexism. Because I can't imagine any reason for Riordan to play down Demeter's power other than "nature stuff is flowers, flowers are girly, and girly is lame". She is literally all on earth that grows!

And Aphrodite? As a daughter of Uranos, she isn't even of Zeus' generation of gods. She is the one of the Olympians who is technically of the generation of the Titans. Zeus ain't telling her shit. She doesn't respect the marriage he arranged for her, she has gods fall in love with mortals all over the place, he was too afraid of her wrath to turn her down for the golden apple of Discord. Remember that little tidbit, that led to the Trojan War? And speaking of the Trojan War, there was that episode when Aphrodite gave Hera seductive power so as to distract Zeus. Zeus also asks her for help when he wants to seduce some unsuspecting human woman. The problem with Aphrodite is that, historically speaking, her myths are a stand-in for the power women were said to have over men, manipulating them into complying with their wishes. And somehow, this take manages to come across less sexist than Riordan's. Because it gives Aphrodite, love, and women power and agenda. Riordan? Yeah, according to him, Aphrodite and her children are useless and vain, and sit around all day looking into mirrors. As a goddess of love and beauty and passion, her domain, again, is of a culturally feminine connotation, and Riordan has interestingly not mentioned her early depictions as a Spartan goddess of war seems to look down on this domain - when most of her myths circle around how fucking dangerous it is that someone has all the power in the world to follow her petty, vengeful, fickle impulses. Her kids could be potentially very interesting - they could hold power over human emotions. But nah, they have make-up and... Gucci handbags? How can they afford those?? Does being a child of Aphrodite come with natural wealth?

You win some, you lose some

See, I don't get Riordan's version of Dionysos. He not only is inexplicably ugly, short and pudgy when neither the youth nor the adult depiction of him are shown to look like that; Riordan also throws a ton of goat imagery in there that might make a little sense with the satyrs. It makes none for Dionysos. Why would he be a goat? Because of the horns? Nah, honey, that's not how it works. Satyrs may belong to Dionysos' entourage, but the god who could have features of a goat is Pan. Dionysos is not Pan, and he's not Silenos either. Why does he make goat noises? There must have been a serious mix-up. The goat aspects, the short, pudgy build, the description of his face; all of that reads like either satyrs or sileni.

A part of the book I mostly genuinely enjoyed (at least once it got past the weirdly modernized entry area - a lobby with an elevator? Airport security? Oh, please, fuck off) was the Underworld. The vast part of it is fascinating and builds genuine tension. So I'm at a loss when both Charon and Hades suddenly whine about not having enough money these days. Just why. Would gods. Care for money?? Does Hades have to rent construction machines to expand the Underworld? Does Charon have to pay for human-made suits? Can he not just make himself look however he wants? Again, I don't get it.

I also don't get the part where Chiron goes: "Kronos only cared about your kind as appetizers or sources of easy pleasure." Yeah... as opposed to Zeus and Poseidon, who'd never abuse humans for their pleasure, right? The cherry-picking. It hurts. And the straw that breaks the camel's back is Riordan's Medusa.

Misuse of Medusa Myths

The part about Medusa actually managed to send me into a rage. Riordan failed to choose a version of the myth when making a choice would have been really good. Using both versions of the myth which have developed independently from each other has a result with a really bitter aftertaste. Medusa as Poseidon's ex-girlfriend? The episode in Athena's temple is infamously a story of rape. The whole point of that relatively late myth (it was written by Ovid, an early-empire Roman) was a cruel injustice of gods against mortals. It would have been better if Riordan had left her out entirely. She was supremely unimportant to the plot; it would have helped Poseidon's image not to mention her. Especially since the myth doesn't make sense the way Riordan throws it together with the earlier Medusa that actually has some agenda: He mentions that she has two sisters. So. The three Gorgon sisters were a thing? Then why is the version which ended with Medusa turned into a Gorgon over the whole raped-in-the-temple shenanigans also a thing?

Syncretism does not work that way

Riordan's treatment of Greek-to-Roman deity relationships was pretty much my first red flag in the book. Because he basically explains it as: Poseidon is Neptune, Zeus is Jupiter, Athena is Minerva, and so on. Which, y'know. Is now how syncretism works. The Romans inherited a ton of Etruscan gods way before they went and conquered Greece and assimilated all of their myths, mashing them together with their vaguely corresponding deities and smoothing over anything that didn't fit. Which was a lot. According to Riordan, it seems it was always the same Pantheon. He never mentions the shifts in characterizations and domains syncretism would have brought with itself.

Powers of Poseidon's Progeny

I have zero idea what to do with the powers the demigods inherit from their parents. They are so incredibly plot-convenient. One time, Percy has to get drenched in water to activate his self-healing; another time, he doesn't get wet at all when he dives into a river. He randomly knows the date and time when coming up from the underworld via the sea - what, does Poseidon's DNA come with an ingrained clock? Would have been nice to have at the Lotus-eater Casino. One time, they say he takes naturally to the water; another, he just... makes fire under the surface. Whatever?

He also breaks the laws of physics, by the way. There's this: "I'd have broken my spine if I hadn't hit the soft sand of a dune" - I challenge Riordan to throw himself down on a pile of sand with a lot of momentum and then tell me how soft it was. Sand isn't fluffy or elastic. It's a ton of tiny rocks. And it behaves like rocks. There is zero give. But it's not like Percy is the only one; the laws of physics only apply to mere mortals, I guess. Annabeth during the boat stunt cannot only do highly complicated calculations regarding physics in her head in nano-seconds, she can apparently also watch the world around her in slow motion while the boat she's sitting in is hurled in high-speed against a gate. Her maths only make sense if she has hyper-perception. Then again, so does Percy, apparently, because he calmly observes that Annabeth was right with her calculations - while the two of them are flying through the air. Neat. More exposition on those absurdly heightened senses?

Where does that even come from?

For as much as I liked the part in the Underworld, it still has a ton of "huh?" moments for me. Like Percy randomly mentioning that he imagined Cerberos as a very specific, modern dog breed? But nah, he's actually a different, highly specific, also modern breed. Why would he.

Annabeth thinks Hades is "treacherous, heartless, and greedy" - how did she get that impression? Nothing in his myths points that way. He's more of the stern, dutiful variety, if you ask the Ancient Greeks. Heartless, that may be a valid interpretion. Treacherous? Sounds more like the Disney version. Or highly Christianized Satan imagery. Greedy? For what, exactly?

"Hades was the only god down here [in the Underworld] that mattered." Uh. Yeah, so. For someone who knows his mythology, Percy has apparently never heard of other chthonic deities. He even mentions Persephone! He even meets Charon! He's met the Erinyes, several times! But they don't matter? Does Thanatos matter, Gaia, Melinoë, Hecate? Zagreus? Dionysos in his Orphic cult? This is just dumb. The Underworld was always a collective effort project.

Persephone, "appeasing her husband's temper"? He hardly even has a temper to speak of in the myths! The only things that mythologically pissed him off was some idiot trying to abduct his wife, and some other idiot mistreating his co-deity Thanatos. Persephone has zero precedence for appeasing Hades. And making her out as that gentle, placating influence tastes like sexism again. Has Riordan never even read far enough to get to "the Mistress"? To "dread Persephone"? She's the Queen of the Dead, my dude; the euphemisms were not genuine titles of a lil' softie, she was called the friendlier names because people were frightened to invoke her.

And for stuff outside the Underworld: Annabeth explaining her arachnophobia with Athena's conflict with Arachne?? What? How does that work? Athena doesn't fear Arachne; she's far above her. But Athena's children are... apparently vulnerable to every spider on earth. Every. Single. Species. Is dangerous to them. Not matter how small and non-venomous. No, it doesn't make sense. Camp Half-Blood is mostly nature and huts among forest and fields; are you telling me there is not a single spider there? I also just don't like the attempt to rationalize a phobia with "there's bad blood between my family and that of [insert object of phobia here]". It has a smack of "at least she has a valid reason for her phobia!" Which, y'know. Is just shitty to people with phobias IRL. Nevermind that making up a story of that "we have ancestral beef" kind is historically an excuse for racism.

[pianapplez]

Hello there 👋👀,

So I just found your blog and had a lot of fun scrolling through all the pjo show crit😂 I couldn't help but notice that one tag you left on a post where you said you had some beef with Annabeth's portrayal in the books 👀 Would you mind elaborating on that if you're comfortable with it🙈? Because I absolutely share that sentiment, but it's sooo veeeery rare that I see other people express anything like it... I've found that trying to be a part of the fandom can be pretty alienating most of the time, if you're not exactly the biggest most devoted Percabeth shipper...😅 And often any criticism leveled at Annabeth just gets you a smack with the "internalized-misogyny" hammer... it's even worse in the tv show now due to... obvious reasons...

Again just if you're comfortable with answering of course🙈 There is a reason I stayed on anon after all...😅😂

Really glad you asked because i finally get to ramble about this heheheh (going forward, know that i skimmed over The Last Olympian to have a clearer sense of what I meant because that's the book where Rick fumbles her character more than the others)

i'm gonna try to make as much sense as possible but short answer would be, she's underdeveloped. Long answer:

She really got on my nerves in the last two books, with the whole Rachel debacle and then the Battle of New York. I can't really remember a single moment in those books where she and Percy aren't bickering or having heated discussions, which really made me question their friendship status. Of course, it's not like friends can't fight and it obviously builds up the (romantic) tension between them, but it got unbearable at one point.

I understand she's a teenager in an incredibly stressful situation that didn't even get to have a normal upbringing- she grew up way too fast (run away at 7, head counselor at 12) while also not really maturing, which is not a problem for a character, if it is handled properly. Given the fact that I am writing this, Riordan did not.

On the surface, my biggest beef is that Annabeth is not exactly held accountable for her actions (ie. treating Rachel a bit like shit and going off on Percy for a bunch of stuff.) I know Percy is to blame a bit here: as far as we know, in TLO he basically cuts the greek world out of his life as much as he can as a coping mechanism. And while yes, he never apologizes either, he doesn't give her nearly half the hard time she gives him: always either giving him the cold shoulder (there must be at least one example of this in the entire series but i cant be bothered to look it up sorry) or starting an argument only to then storm off (see the "you're a coward, Percy Jackson!" scene, which is not the fairest example since she was confronting Percy about ignoring camp but also was a bit too harsh about it) (especially after finally reading the prophecy and being under the impression that he was absolutely going to die when he turned 16 lmao) or just straight up storming off (see, Annabeth reacting when Rachel shows up for the first time during the battle of new york). While most of these feel, at least to some degree, fairly justified given how the entire situation does an absolute number on her emotions, she comes off a bit brattish and like she's trying to rile Percy up, especially when it comes to Rachel, which in the context of a battle that could mean the destruction of the world.... Well, it reads as a bit childish to me, and i wouldn't exactly have that much of a problem with it if it was dealt with in some way (a two-way apology would be nice).

After that first impression, i realized that Annabeth is barely ever anything else other than a plot device (when relating to Luke) or a love interest (when relating to Percy). This might be because the books are on Percy's POV. Hell, on the third book he's even conflicted when Annabeth is considering joining the Hunters of Artemis, aka, when making a choice for herself would mean he loses her (which is fine and dandy but it feels like Percy is more upset about her choosing her own path rather than being sad about not seeing her as often); we really only get a few glimpses of her, as in, actually her when she's on her own.

Obviously it's impossible to talk about Annabeth without touching on percabeth, which also is, in my opinion, what hinders Annabeth's character the most. On paper they sound great. The guy whose fatal flaw is loyalty falls in love with a girl whose been let down by people over and over, and she decides to never give up on the boy whose always had people give up on him (can't find one of the million posts that talks about this right now but it always goes something like that) And yeah, the bickering is really well written! But that's literally as far as it ever goes: they don't ever seem to have fun together, because 8 times out of 10 the bickering ends up being passive aggressive, and mostly done by Annabeth. My biggest gripe about percabeth is that their friendship seems to be based off... shared trauma. Literally. Other than going on quests together we are given no examples of them hanging out, nor a reason why they would want to spend time together in the first place, not even a shared hobby. Yes, in the fourth book they had a movie "date" planned but of course they didn't even get to it, and surprise surprise, they had a minor discussion, and surprise surprise, Annabeth was passive aggressive again. It's hard to picture them having fun together when even the author doesn't write in any scenes in which they get along smoothly (and before you say anything, a scene in which they get along where neither of them is about to die, and they're not talking about previous adventures. Gets a bit hard then, doesn't it?) It's even harder to picture them as a couple when the moment she gets upset about something, she starts coming off as emotionally manipulative (see, again, literally any conversation with Rachel or about Rachel)

To be fair, the books are relatively short and don't allow many "filler" chapters, if you will; there's always something happening to keep the main plot or a minor plot point moving forward, but it's not like there is no room to develop the characters' relationships, especially when we're talking about the main char and what is essentially his endgame. As an example we have Percy and Clarisse, or Percy and Beckendorf. Their interactions are brief but still hold so much weight.

Worst of all, Annabeth could be one hell of a character; what's most interesting of all is how being a daughter of Athena she is still incredibly emotionally driven, which is displayed very clearly with her fatal flaw being pride: her telling the Sphynx that her questions were too easy was not smart nor strategic: it was completely impulsive. I seriously think she wasn't far from being the best character in the series had she been given more time.

I guess i have as much beef with Annabeth as i have with Rick for doing her dirty. I really could sum this up with: while her emotions are justified, she acts upon them quite poorly. And this is what i mean when i say she's underdeveloped, because it would've been nice to see her come to her senses a bit.

Would love to read anyone's opinions on her character though, feel free to comment, even (or especially) if you don't agree with me!

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

AO3 Tag Game!

Tagged by @mvshortcut :) I'm gonna stick with just this fandom/this account for this one to make it less confusing

How many works do you have on AO3?

44. (Including snippet collections.) For this fandom/account. Far more if you count bi-demon-ium or my old account or my older account or

What’s your total AO3 word count?

Okay this one it won't let me separate by pseud or fandom so you're just gonna have to live with being lumped in with all my MBS and a few other misc fics at "653,461". Didn't get the other accounts though. Man, I'm a mess

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Okay, well, this one by nature is also not solely for this fandom,

(number in parentheses is number of ao3 works posted)

Ted Lasso (obviously) (44) (including snippet collections)

The Mysterious Benedict Society (116) (also including snippet collections)

Instinct (2) (one is a small snippet collection--)

House MD (1)

Death by Dying (1)

Gravity Falls, technically, but it was one crossover (1)

ditto with The Legend of Zelda (1)

King Falls AM (1)

The House in the Cerulean Sea (6)

Shadowhunters (??? at least 36) (some now hidden/lost)

Professor Layton (1)

The Librarians (2)

The Sandman (1)

The Mentalist (2)

Star Trek (AOS) (1)

Sanders Sides (at least 1)

Miraculous Ladybug (1)

Rosewell: New Mexico (2)

The Dresden Files (1)

That's stuff posted to ao3/finished. There's also, technically,

for stuff I published when I was twelve and I now refuse to acknowledge (not all bc of the fandom but bc the fic was Bad):

Doctor Who

Supernatural

Sherlock

Psych

Castle

Welcome to Night Vale

Avengers

A Series of Unfortunate Events

And then stuff I've written for but never finished:

Warehouse 13

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016)

Dirk Gently (2010)

SurrealEstate

Zoo (podcast)

Once Upon a Time

Scooby Doo

Person of Interest

The Goes Wrong Show

Spy Kids (???)

Ace Attorney

The Adventure Zone

Criminal Minds

Star Trek (TOS, TNG, and DS9)

Haven

MacGyver

Trollhunters

exactly one (1) joke The Magnus Archives fic

Percy Jackson and the Olympians + The Kane Chronicles + Tales of Apollo

Leverage

Pushing Daisies

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Megamind

Bones

Avatar: the Last Airbender

Lucifer

Some of these are deeply questionable and/or only have like two (2) wips or even posted works at most, but I'm thorough. Also, I will write about almost anything bc my brain loves to process things like this. I may have even missed something

Top five fics by kudos:

Ted Lasso Kisses Trent Crimm On The Mouth (1125)

semaphore (977)

off the handle (719)

linger (699) (nice)

a preacher, a bikini, and a kiss or two (641)

Do you respond to comments?

I really try to, but then I get all in my head about it and/or am really really tired and put it off so long it then feels like it would be weird to respond because it's been forever. However, if there's a direct question or something I want to address/respond to, as in, I have something particularly unique to say or a question to answer, then I'll usually respond really fast

What’s the fic with the angstiest ending you’ve ever written?

Honestly, I'm not a huge unhappy ending person, a lot of the time I'll have a first chapter I was initially going to end really angsty (see ink sunset and make a mess of you) and then added more to fix it at least somewhat. As is... maybe the somewhat unresolved emotional tension (for Ted and Trent, at least, Roy's doing great) in something to get off my chest, the +1 for betrayal's sting / absolution's balm? I have some worse ones in an old fandom on an old account but. meh.

Do you write crossovers?

Not often, but I rotate them in my brain. Honestly, though, I'm more inclined to write a fusion than a crossover proper. And even so, I tend to just be thinking about it rather than actually writing it. I've only written one crossover in recent memory (recently, that is) and it was mostly a joke about a shared actress made into actual angst.

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

Yeah lmao

Do you write smut?

😏 sure do

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

👁️👁️ not in this fandom

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!! also not in this fandom

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

In this fandom? Trent/Ted. overall? no idea, because recency bias, my all-time favorite is whatever I'm into right now, which isn't really objective but hyperfixationitis.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

:( so many. AND there are a lot of posted fics I want to write a sequel/companion piece for and idk if I'll ever get the energy...

I guess off the top of my head, for this fandom, I'd go with lost sight of (who you are) (motivation died because it's old enough no one knows it exists anymore lkfgjh) and ink sunset (I WANNA FINISH IT I DO I DO I DO)

What are your writing strengths?

I think I can write a really funny string of dialogue, and I'm also fond of fun metaphors, both in the elegant poetic way and in the more Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett way (which is to say, still potentially elegant but also comedic as hell)

What are your writing weaknesses?

Motivating myself to write anything; being overly self-indulgent

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I'm extremely bad at linguistics in general, so if I must include someone talking in another language in my fic, I think I'd tend to cheat and do italics or some other indication that this is 'in another language' (ie "Where are you going?" she asked in Russian), but that's admittedly a lazy approach. But I also think it's probably better than butchering it with an auto-translator? Also, when people just include the translation in the end notes, even with a link (although that makes it marginally better) it breaks the flow of the story and makes it hard to read. Making an effort to at least match grammar is good (which I would do if it was for longer than a single scene, probably) but I think the best solution is when people know what they're doing and like, have an actual translation with a little html code so you can click on it and it reveals what it means? Or if you're clever, revealing what it means using context around it, but that has its own limitations. So that both like, uses the actual language and doesn't break up the flow. It balances accessibility, flow, and respect for the other language in question well. But you've got to both know what you're doing with the language (either asking someone/hiring someone/knowing the language yourself) and the html (although there are guides for that you'd have to spend time figuring it out + know it exists in the first place to look). And this is fanfiction, something we ultimately do for free in our spare time, so the lazy approach, I think, can be understandable. Maybe not in every context, but it's not worth stressing a lot over in a few random lines or anything, you know? It is really cool when people do know a language well enough to include it properly in a fic, though, it can say a lot about a character or dynamic; and their background(s) and like. it's neat :)

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Ever? Doctor Who. In a shitty little notebook in middle school. Then there was some Star Trek (both TNG and TOS) and Avatar: the Last Airbender and Marvel and such, and then Supernatural (my first smut? extremely terrible Destiel smut. rip) and I think the first thing I ever posted was Welcome to Night Vale? Not sure.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

Oh, man. I have no idea. Here's a few favorites from this fandom:

matters of the heart

trick & treat

vita nova

melt like this

"second impressions"

"reveal"

probably those time travel snippets, just in general

tagging:

PLEASE, if you want to do this, I'm begging you, tag me in it and do it. i'm too tired to come up with names im so sorry

[chickwiththepurpleguitar]

Writer Asks!

Tagged by @stellarspecter! thanks for the tag!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

153! 142 of those are JatP, and I'm working on one that would be a really cool number 150... so maybe I gotta write 7 short ones first...

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

651,798. Since 2021. Yes I have a problem.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Julie and the Phantoms and The Bright Sessions almost exclusively at this point, but I also have Percy Jackson and Supernatural fics on Ao3. Back in the day, I wrote a ton of PJO on fanfiction.net and then a handful of fics in like 8 other fandoms.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

far from hurt is where healing occurs -- JatP, Rayvor Reconciliation, 276 kudos

a crack in the ceiling (trace it back to my heart) -- JatP, juke sickfic, 237 kudos

i was fine until it was time to feel -- JatP, alex sickfic, 230 kudos

as long as i am here (no one can hurt you) -- JatP, reggie sickfic (anyone seeing a trend here?), cowrite with someone iii no longer speak toooo, 203 kudos

say what you want (but it's hard when you're young)-- JatP, other alex sickfic, 187 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! Often several months after I received them, but I always catch up eventually!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

My latest! In which I give Mark Bryant a Better Life and Different Trauma!

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

My JatP Big Bang fic from last year! A lot of shit happens before we get to the happy part but it actually does end really nicely for everyone :)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I feel like I did... once... I do not remember what it was for or about and i'm pretty sure I deleted the comment. which is probably good in the long run that it happens rarely enough that i forget the details.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I occasionally write smut. I do not consider myself good at it. So I often don't post any. Closest I've got is the above linked mark bryant's different trauma fic and its like. five paragraphs in one scene.

10. Do you write crossovers?

I do! Haven't posted a ton, I don't think I have any on ao3, and a lot of what I call a crossover in my head and google docs is just a fandom crossed with ocs @joyandthephantoms and I made up and like to put places.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No, and thank god, I think that would destroy me.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but that would be really cool if anyone ever wants to!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! Quite a few. Gonna shout out time travel with @a-tomb-with-a-view and toxic besties with @weneedglitter

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

this is an impossible question to answer. Whichever one i'm currently thinking about at any given moment :)

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

this is a trick question. there are WIPs i want to finish and i probably will because i'm stubborn, and there are WIPs i doubt i will finish but mostly because i don't want to.

16. What are your writing strengths?

dialogue, character, Concepts and Images

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

description, exposition, action, setting. basically all the things you don't need in good fanfic which is why i like writing fanfic :)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

fine if the translation is really obvious from context, fine if in small doses where it wouldn't be suuuper annoying to google the translation. whole conversations i will inevitably skip, although i did read a really cool Captain America fic once where there was some German dialogue and on ao3 the paragraphs were hyperlinked so that you hovered over them and saw the translation.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Percy Jackson! my fanfiction.net accounts are still up, but don't look at them, they're not good /lh.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

not sure there's an easy answer to this! sometimes i write things just to write them and post them just to get them out of my google docs, and sometimes i write things cause the idea won't let me go, and i post them cause i'm really proud and want some validation from strangers (and friends!) on the internet. my favorite one is whichever one I'm most proud of in the moment, which is usually the one I just finished, but even the ones I feel don't hold up as well or that i could've written better, i'm still really proud of, cause i made a hat! This was fun! i haven't been active on this account for a while, but i liked getting back into the swing of things, so if anyone still looks at this blog and actually read this, feel free to send me an ask with more questions/comments about my fics! i always like talking about them :)

no-pressure tagging: @joyandthephantoms

[bi-demon-ium]

AO3 Tag Game!

Tagged by @mvshortcut :) I did it here as well but now I'm doing it for this fandom/account bc I CAN (a lot of this will be directly copy/pasted if applicable im sowwy)

How many works do you have on AO3?

116. (Including snippet collections.) For this fandom/account. Far more if you count others,

What’s your total AO3 word count?

Okay this one it won't let me separate by pseud or fandom so you're just gonna have to live with being lumped in with all my MBS and a few other misc fics at "653,461". Didn't get the other accounts though. Man, I'm a mess

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Okay, well, this one by nature is also not solely for this fandom,

(number in parentheses is number of ao3 works posted)

The Mysterious Benedict Society (116) (including snippet collections)

Ted Lasso (44) (also including snippet collections)

Instinct (2) (one is a small snippet collection--)

House MD (1)

Death by Dying (1)

Gravity Falls, technically, but it was one crossover (1)

ditto with The Legend of Zelda (1)

King Falls AM (1)

The House in the Cerulean Sea (6)

Shadowhunters (??? at least 36) (some now hidden/lost)

Professor Layton (1)

The Librarians (2)

The Sandman (1)

The Mentalist (2)

Star Trek (AOS) (1)

Sanders Sides (at least 1)

Miraculous Ladybug (1)

Rosewell: New Mexico (2)

The Dresden Files (1)

That's stuff posted to ao3/finished. There's also, technically,

for stuff I published when I was twelve and I now refuse to acknowledge (not all bc of the fandom but bc the fic was Bad):

Doctor Who

Supernatural

Sherlock

Psych

Castle

Welcome to Night Vale

Avengers

A Series of Unfortunate Events

And then stuff I've written for but never finished:

Warehouse 13

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016)

Dirk Gently (2010)

SurrealEstate

Zoo (podcast)

Once Upon a Time

Scooby Doo

Person of Interest

The Goes Wrong Show

Spy Kids (???)

Ace Attorney

The Adventure Zone

Criminal Minds

Star Trek (TOS, TNG, and DS9)

Haven

MacGyver

Trollhunters

exactly one (1) joke The Magnus Archives fic

Percy Jackson and the Olympians + The Kane Chronicles + Tales of Apollo

Leverage

Pushing Daisies

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Megamind

Bones

Avatar: the Last Airbender

Lucifer

Some of these are deeply questionable and/or only have like two (2) wips or even posted works at most, but I'm thorough. Also, I will write about almost anything bc my brain loves to process things like this. I may have even missed something

Top five fics by kudos:

I was gonna have the snippets collections not count but I've got so many exact ties it doesn't matter.

gemini schmemini (136)

kate and her bucket sitting in a tree, S-P-Y-I-N-G (98)

caught (81)

[insert poetic title here] (81)

affectionate gestures<3 (81)

of rube goldbergs and weather machines (74)

tumblr snippets: mbs edition (74)

keeping out the cold (70)

birdsong (70)

Number Two Regrets Her Life Choices™ (68)

timeline? i don't know her (68)

That's actually 6 bc I made a mistake but I've already color coded them so whatever

Do you respond to comments?

I really try to, but then I get all in my head about it and/or am really really tired and put it off so long it then feels like it would be weird to respond because it's been forever. However, if there's a direct question or something I want to address/respond to, as in, I have something particularly unique to say or a question to answer, then I'll usually respond really fast.

And this fandom's smaller so if I'm slightly more likely to respond 😭

Also when I know who's commenting personally which is al ot more likely

What’s the fic with the angstiest ending you’ve ever written?

Honestly, I'm not a huge unhappy ending person, but. uhhh

solo

bring me home (in a blinding dream)

hollowed

seasalt

checkmate

dark side of the moon

wretched clarity

cruel kindness

green-eyed monster

the naming of cats

curled & crushed

oops

I didn't even look at the snippet collections lkgfhjh

Do you write crossovers?

Not often, but I rotate them in my brain. Honestly, though, I'm more inclined to write a fusion than a crossover proper. And even so, I tend to just be thinking about it rather than actually writing it. I've only written one crossover in recent memory (recently, that is) and it was mostly a joke about a shared actress made into actual angst. :)

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

Yeah lmao

Do you write smut?

😏 ......not for this fandom. That I'd post anyway

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

👁️👁️ not. Directly in this fandom

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!! also not in this fandom

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

In this fandom? Nicholas/Milligan. Overall, ever? Recency bias/hyperfixationitis says whatever I'm into the most at the moment. But generally for MBS I prefer gen (although I've written a lot of Nicholas/Milligan, that's partially because it's blissfully easier to find gen already)

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

:(

SO many

Particularly minotaur, the dearly departed, and the "paralyzed" series. Oh and the hanahaki AU

What are your writing strengths?

I think I can write a really funny string of dialogue, and I'm also fond of fun metaphors, both in the elegant poetic way and in the more Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett way (which is to say, still potentially elegant but also comedic as hell)

What are your writing weaknesses?

Motivating myself to write anything; being overly self-indulgent

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I'm extremely bad at linguistics in general, so if I must include someone talking in another language in my fic, I think I'd tend to cheat and do italics or some other indication that this is 'in another language' (ie "Where are you going?" she asked in Russian), but that's admittedly a lazy approach. But I also think it's probably better than butchering it with an auto-translator? Also, when people just include the translation in the end notes, even with a link (although that makes it marginally better) it breaks the flow of the story and makes it hard to read. Making an effort to at least match grammar is good (which I would do if it was for longer than a single scene, probably) but I think the best solution is when people know what they're doing and like, have an actual translation with a little html code so you can click on it and it reveals what it means? Or if you're clever, revealing what it means using context around it, but that has its own limitations. So that both like, uses the actual language and doesn't break up the flow. It balances accessibility, flow, and respect for the other language in question well. But you've got to both know what you're doing with the language (either asking someone/hiring someone/knowing the language yourself) and the html (although there are guides for that you'd have to spend time figuring it out + know it exists in the first place to look). And this is fanfiction, something we ultimately do for free in our spare time, so the lazy approach, I think, can be understandable. Maybe not in every context, but it's not worth stressing a lot over in a few random lines or anything, you know? It is really cool when people do know a language well enough to include it properly in a fic, though, it can say a lot about a character or dynamic; and their background(s) and like. it's neat :)

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Ever? Doctor Who. In a shitty little notebook in middle school. Then there was some Star Trek (both TNG and TOS) and Avatar: the Last Airbender and Marvel and such, and then Supernatural (my first smut? extremely terrible Destiel smut. rip) and I think the first thing I ever posted was Welcome to Night Vale? Not sure.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

Oh, man. I have no idea. Here's a few favorites from this fandom:

cain's lament

minotaur

shades of green

a hope in hell

Number Two Regrets Her Life Choices™

tagging:

PLEASE, if you want to do this, I'm begging you, tag me in it and do it. i'm too tired to come up with names im so sorry

[celestialtitania]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

thank you @kasienda for the tag!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

The current number is 51 and honestly? it still blows my mind.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

151,239, made up almost entirely of one shots lol.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

There's a lot of them but in recent years, it's mainly been miraculous ladybug, my hero academia, and the occasional percy jackson.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I'M HIS BEST FRIEND (no, it's me!) (MHA)

A Preposterous Predicament (ML)

Mind Outta Body (FT)

Ma Douce Souffrance (ML)

my colours on you (ML)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I'm really good at responding right after I publish a fic. It's afterwards that I sometimes forget to respond, or simply don't have enough time to respond. I always appreciate every comment I get though!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Angstiest ending huh? A bunch of my fics are angsty but the one that I think ends in the most angst would have to be dance with the devil, drink with the demons, without it being outright whump lol.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Happy? Happy. Um....I'm gonna say party like it's your heroes' birthday just because there's a party and it's sweet and yeah lmao. It also has the wholesome family/friend vibes that keep me from forever being confused about the correct fluff to angst ratio.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've been extremely lucky and have been able to avoid it for the most part. That's not to say I've gotten no hate ever, but it was minimal enough that I pretend it doesn't exist. Fervently hoping it stays that way!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No. Maybe. No. The idea has crossed my mind but I haven't been able to write it as of yet. Maybe I never will. Who's to say really?

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Kind of? I did it exactly once. But not in the traditional way, it was more of a, "take the world-building idea of percy jackson and put it into a fairy tail quest" so I'm not sure if it actually counts.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so. Or at least I hope I haven't!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I was asked once, many moons ago, but then they never got back to me, so I assume they dropped the idea.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No? Unless we're counting those fic fights/telephone things where one person starts and another takes over. There was also this one time, I was writing a fic with a few others but we never managed to finish, so I don't really count that one.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

All time? And I'm only supposed to pick one?? Next time, give me a tough question, will ya? Wow uh, I don't know if it's my favourite ship, perse, but it is the ship I've shipped the longest + one I've actually written for, so I'm gonna go with lovesquare. *shrugs* probably typical of me, but it was the only ship to get inside my head so badly that I've written over a dozen fics for them, instead of more gen stuff, which is my usual go-to otherwise.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Well, if we look at my gigantic list of unpublished fics, there's probably plenty of WIPs to choose from there. As for published, well I don't want to say I never will but yeah Forsake the Divine (If You Can) seems to be a pretty solid choice, if only because there are only 1 chapter and a half left to go and it's all outlined too, but I've kind of fallen out of the fandom (it's very dead) so idk if I'll ever manage to put it together.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Characterization is definitely a strong suit. And judging purely from my comment section, I feel okay assuming that I'm pretty good at making the emotional beats land too.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Description definitely. It's been pointed out to me more than once that I'm so focused inside the characters' heads that I forget to interact more with the world around them. Nature wants to be incorporated and I'm working on that.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I hate it. It feels so strange to me to have a few words in a different language and then abruptly switch back to English. The only thing that I feel I have to do in another language though, is honorifics. Whether it be -san, -kun, or Madame, I think I get super extra about it. I once delved into such a rabbit hole trying to figure out what honorific even a side character uses, just for a throwaway dialogue!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Ooh, officially? Fairy Tail. Unofficially, hidden in the depths of my laptop? Yeah, it was Percy Jackson. My childhood favourite that still haunts my thoughts to this day.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Ironically? This is the second time I've been asked that today and the choice is still just as difficult. Or maybe it's that my actual favourites are still unfinished and hence unpublished. For now, I'm going to say Enduring, it's the fic that was most different genre-wise from what I usually write, and I'm very proud of how it turned out. If I ever manage to finish it though, my favourite will probably be a life unlived or maybe I'm just doomed to never have a favourite, because there will always be something new I'm looking forward to reading (meaning I have to write it to be able to see it). Tagging (no pressure!) @shortmexicangirl @rosiesared @ck2k18 @heartfulselkie @coffeebanana @mdelpin @kiliinstinct @lady-charinette

[annaskareninas]

Thank you for the tag @chairofchaos! Anyone who wants to do this, consider yourself tagged ;)

1. How many works do you have on AO3? Currently, 17.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 490,093. Which is a lot more than I thought it would be!

3. What fandoms do you write for? Only ACOTAR at the moment. May very well change in future if something else takes my fancy though, but I like this community.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? In order: Phoenix Rising, Lonely Together (this one surprised me a lot I won't lie!), A Rake By Any Other Name, whatever a sun will always sing is you, and All Roads Lead To You.

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes, though not as much as I should! Rest assured I read every comment as soon as I see the email...but have an unfortunate habit of responding in my head (especially if out in public) and forgetting to actually reply.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I actually don't think I've ever written anything with an angsty ending. I'm such a believer in happy-ever-afters and at the very least ending a depressing fic on a positive note (e.g., Phoenix Rising).

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I'm gonna say All Roads Lead To You. Though once A Study In Starlight is finished it will give it a run for its money!

8. Do you write smut? YES. My favourite thing to write! And you guys love to read it, which works well.

9. Do you write crossovers? I have like 2000 words of an ACOTARxTOG crossover written and dumped somewhere in the drafts. In general no, I'm not a massive fan.

10. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope.

11. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Nope.

12. What is your all-time favorite ship? I can't choose overall, but in ACOTAR fandom it would be Elucien.

13. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Ohhh so many. I really loved writing an Azris fic where they go to Hybern but gave up at around the 10k mark because it was just not working. It had a lot of original characters which is one of my favourite things to do though :,)

14. What are your writing strengths? I've been complemented on my original characters before which was extremely flattering. I like to think my descriptions can be rather nice too. But overall it would have to be my spelling and grammar since I pride myself on being perfect ;)

15. What are your writing weaknesses? PACING. Also keeping dialogue in-character sounding.

16. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? You guys know I love it. I won't be satisfied until Eris has spoken every language under the sun in my fics.

17. First fandom you wrote for? Percy Jackson, way back in the day! Those stories have long been wiped from this earth though (and thank God...)

18. Favorite fic you’ve written? I can't choose a favourite child! I'll have to do three... I think my best is May The Best Man Win. Phoenix Rising because it's the longest work I've done and connected me with so many lovely people. But honestly, I love Dreamers the most, even though it has about 12 hits (who'd have thought...)

my ao3 link

[demons-i-get]

Hello, hello, my darlings!

You can call me Spencer or Dean! Pronouns are They/He please!

I am a writer and would LOVE to take requests!

First things first tho, some Dos and Don'ts:

Look, I'm not gonna bite your head off if you're into wincest bc let's be real there's just no escaping it in this fandom and I actually don't care bc they're fictional characters. However, I personally prefer to avoid it so please don't send any requests for it pls and thx ❤️

Anything else I think should be okay, and I will amend this post if I find anything else that's a hard no <3

Gore and violence and blood are perfectly fine <3 however Dean is my blorbo and specialist little guy and comfort character and I tend to prefer to whump on him so while other characters are of course welcome and I will gladly whump or h/c or fluff or whatever them for you, I can't promise that I'll get them in character or that I won't accidentally end up making it all about Dean 😅

PLEASE DO NOT request anything ✨️spicey ✨️ I am sex-repulsed asexual and would really rather not read or write anything explicit. Occasionally, I might imply/reference off-screen sex but mostly I avoid it.

I am not a big fan of reading or writing x reader or 2nd person narration, so please don't request that because I will not do it and I will feel very bad about telling you no even though my boundaries are listed here 😅

Be as specific or as vague as you like! Ramble and rant and word vomit at me or just send in a short prompt and a character, I don't care! I just want us all to have fun here ❤️

If you're ever not sure about something you want to request, you can always send in an ask (on or off anon) or message me and I'll be happy to let you know further details/specifics of about what I'd be willing to write for you! ❤️

Other Things to Know!

I'm a Dean simp first and a human being second 😘

I have seen every episode of Supernatural 💪

Destiel shipper!!!

I am not afraid of the block button and I will not answer hate, it will be deleted. If I can't tell if you're being rude or mean, I will answer merely expressing my confusion (privately if you're off anon for asks) and I will do my best not to jump to conclusions!

I like to think I'm a pretty chill person, so please don't be afraid to talk to me! I would love to interact with y'all ^-^

I do have a nasty potty mouth, but I'm pretty sure most of us in this fandom are the same way lmao

THIS IS A SIDE BLOG!!!!! My main is @invalid-author and you can check that out for non-spn related stuff! I also have Percy Jackson (@water-you-doing-bro) and Criminal Minds (@pretty-boy-baby-girl) specific side-blogs as well so feel free to check them out!

All my writing (including hcs) can be found under the tag #dean writes

All asks with be tagged #dean answers

Any requests made off anon with be @ -ed in the post once I've written it up and requests made on anon will include a link back to the ask once posted!

Any writing done for a request will be tagged #fulfilling a request alongside #dean writes

Can't think of anything else at the moment, but if I do I'll update this post!

All the tags mentioned above will be added in the tags of this post so you can find them easily!

[eolewyn1010]

Reading Percy Jackson TLT was an ordeal for me 2 - Characters

While I can repeat my disclaimer here that I only ever read The Lightning Thief (a translated version, no less) and won't try with the rest of the series, that's still about all of the slack I'm willing to cut Rick Riordan. I don't feel this is a good book, so get it off my chest I shall. Let's get down to business, and when I say business, I mean character work.

Is anyone here not a plump stereotype?

I have real difficulties to find a character here that has more depth than a cardboard cutout. I mean, let's forget about the main trio for now, but is there anything to Chiron beyond Wise Mentor? Oh, yes. The gaslighting. He wants Percy to go to Camp Half-Blood anyway. What is the point of telling him that he hallucinated shit for months?? That's an inexplicable dick move for someone we're supposed to see as a positive, caring mentor figure, but it's not the same as giving him depth. Nevermind that he was introduced via "sometimes he had an expression in his eyes like he was hundreds of years old", which... I said I hate this sort of oh, but it couldn't POSSIBLY be THAT foreshadowing. It's lousy. It's about as subtle as "this guy is EVIL, you see? He took money from an orphan charity fund to buy himself a bigass house with golden toilet seats!" It sounds like something from a cartoon.

There are a couple characters who have a little more groundwork to them than that - I appreciate Percy's mom and the subversion built up with Hades. I do not appreciate pretty much everyone else. People who are evil are obviously and obnoxiously evil (and in case of Medusa and Echidna, so obviously that they make Percy and Annabeth look dumb as fuck). They are also so stupid that you wonder how they function in their jobs (animal smugglers who feed lions with vegetables and herbivores with meat? Come on; they want to sell these animals alive). And Riordan's evil = ugly shorthand gets old really fast. Honestly, it already got old with his bully back at his human school. It also brings up a serious moment of confusion when Percy describes recognizing Ares because Ares looks similar to his daughters at the camp - except... Percy says Ares is "sort of handsome". He went out of his way to tell me how ugly Clarisse and the other bully girls are. So. Looks good on a guy, but not on the girls? Is that sexism or what? I wouldn't put it beyond Riordan for reasons I will go into when talking about mythology. Then there is every character we're supposed to hate using the same slur: "Freak." Can't you think of anything more creative? Especially coming from Ares, it sounds weird: Why would he think of demigod kids, of which he has a few of his own, on the same terms their shitty human step-parents do?

Annabeth, the know-nothing know-it-all

And then there's Annabeth, the deuteragonist. Also, the one where the set-up stereotype falls completely flat. See, we're supposed to think she's that smartass girl who knows everything better to the point of being annoying, kind of Hermione but with a terrible attitude. She's often described to look like her mind is going a mile a minute, she's Little Miss Exposition when Chiron is not around, she knows the world of the Half-Bloods and Immortals since she was seven; she has it all down. Well. Except several situations don't make her appear very smart at all. She ignores Grover's warnings when he says he can smell a monster, just as Percy does. She looks down on Grover for no reason (except maybe Fantasy Racism, which is a really bad trait for someone who has lived around satyrs and the likes since she was seven). She doesn't pick up on Medusa knowing Percy's name without being told. She prioritizes her being hungry over caution with strangers, just as Percy does. She leaves him alone with strangers when their instincts tell them both it's a bad idea. For someone who's oh-so-bright and level-headed, she fails the most basic logic.

Let's also mention Annabeth's big passion, architecture. It doesn't look very good when I know after the first vague description of Camp Half-Blood that Rick Riordan doesn't know shit about Ancient Greek architecture beyond having watched a few toga movies in his time. Because he repeats this lack of knowledge in a character who he claims knows better. Granted, the reason why I know better is because I'm minoring in Classical Archaeology, and most of the readers probably don't. But here's the thing: If you wanna write an expert in a field, you should really read up on the field. Ideally, let an expert edit the relevant parts of the text. "Write what you know" doesn't mean "hands off of non-you experiences!", it means "do your research"; it's a point of respect towards your reader not to assume they know nothing anyway. I don't know why he insisted on this being Annabeth's major interest - I mean, I do know; he did because it's a basic trait of Athena's and Riordan isn't very creative in character-building. The St. Louis Gateway Arch as an example of impressive architecture for a CLASSICALLY educated architect?? You've gotta be kidding me.

The other thing about Annabeth is that I just. Don't. Like her. She keeps being rude to Grover. She never explains anything to Percy and then complains about his ignorance. Her bitchiness is persistent and unprovoked. The reason she gives him for why they shouldn't get along doesn't even make much sense - because their parents dislike each other? The respective parents in question are barely even involved in their lives! What kind of a lame justification is that? You aren't your mother and Percy isn't his father, and parentage is not a personality (except when it kind of is, but I'll get back to that). And it takes so long for her to do anything likable... yet her constant insults don't count as bullying because, you see, she is pretty. Honestly, for at least half of the book, this seems to be the only justification why she isn't put on the same level as Clarisse. She tells Percy it's his fault the bus got blown up because he fought against the furies who made the bus blow up? Make it make sense. And then she bitches at him again because if he dies, she won't get to fulfill her mission successfully. Yeah. She just made her alleged friend's possible death about herself. Awesome.

This ship is sailing without me

I know a few things about the Percy Jackson series as a whole, for example that Percy and Annabeth are going to be an official couple sooner or later. There is the ship-teasing in this book already, and I assume it'll develop onward from here. Hm. I'm so not on board of this ship. I know a bickering romance when I see one, and this doesn't look like one. Because 1) the admiration and positive feelings seem largely one-sided for Percy, and 2) the insults and sarcastic retorts seem largely one-sided for Annabeth. This is not a balanced dynamic. It feels like Annabeth has made it her hobby to shit on her supposed love interest and be as unhelpful as humanly possible, but he compliments her at every turn, and she expects him to bow to her bossy attitude. And Percy outright says at one point that she talks to him and Grover the same way she talks to a dog. Bad news: The Cerberos scene was the only moment when I sympathized with Annabeth, and that statement severely undermined my sympathy.

But, say it with me now, she is pretty. So of course she's nothing like those nasty bullies, the daughters of Ares. And also, she blushed and was embarrassed when she was supposed to walk into that love tunnel with Percy to retrieve a MacGuffin, for fuck's sake; he didn't ask her for smoochies! "What if anyone sees us?" my ASS; you are 12-year-olds alone in a closed-down theme park; if anyone sees you there, they'll ask you what the hell you think you're doing on other people's property, you stupid bint!, so there! Yeah. No. I really hope for the future books (blindly; I will not read them) that they'll get to something that feels more mutual, because whatever they have in this book is far from cute. It's tiresome.

Consistency whomst? Don't know her

I have real difficulties to get a grasp on the main trio. Even Grover, whom I do like best among them, has a few moments that just make me go, "huh? How does that fit with what we have been told?" For example, at some point in the camp Percy and Grover are whining something about weaving baskets. It makes sense that Percy, the action-oriented 12-year-old from the human world, would think weaving baskets is the lamest shit ever - it makes zero sense for Grover to look down on it. He's lived in this world his entire life; what does he think how everything works if no one is taking care of the everyday jobs? What does he think how the camp is running if no one does the necessities?

Also. Does Grover have a good instinct for monsters, or does he not? He is the first to warn of Medusa, but with Echidna, it's suddenly Percy who gets a bad feeling. Percy also tells us that Grover is his best and only friend, then treats him as an idiot to make fun of half of the time. They cast a POC to play Grover in the series, and I swear to God, if they have a boy of color running around there eating garbage and mainly being present to be mocked by the other two protagonists...

Then there's Percy's attitude about people. Which also makes sudden switches from one adventure to another. The bus stunt with the furies? Fuck the other passengers, amirite? They can have all the trauma they can get; who cares if they get hurt. Afterwards, Percy talks about them in a supremely eye-rolling manner when the bus has crashed and everyone is panicking and there's probably injuries. But during his little touristic trip in St. Louis? He's suddenly all hero and wants to rescue people. Then he lets wild animals, including a fucking lion, on the loose in the middle of a city full of people, and snarks at Cerberos squishing dead people even deader. Does he care about humans, or does he not?

Even Annabeth, as consistently dislikable as I find her, had me go, "what?" Throughout half of the book, I was suddenly told that she's, like Percy, dyslexic. And narrator Percy says it in a manner of, "I had forgotten that she was also...", so I was like, "did I forget it as well?" and went back to look it up. I hadn't forgotten. It wasn't established before that point. Don't gaslight me, Riordan.

Where's my protagonist at?

While I liked Percy in the beginning, I found it increasingly difficult to emotionally connect with him. That started with the death of his mother. Besides Percy mentioning her on a few occasions, it didn't seem like he was grieving. His distress about her loss was very brief, and yeah, I get his whole angry-12-year-old spiel, but he's still a kid who just lost his mother? The only parent he loved? Eh. On the other hand, his ties to Camp Half-Blood are vastly oversold. He says it feels like a new home after a couple days; leaving it pains him deeply... after all of. Two. Weeks. How am I supposed to believe that? In what way was it more of a home to him than his human school? Where he also had a friend and some bullies, and his mom was not there? Even after the mission, the time he spends at the camp is just skipped. Zero connection for me as the reader. On the more amusing side of this, Charon in the Underworld singing a Barry Manilow sing confuses me less than Percy, a 12-year-old millennial, recognizing a Barry Manilow song.

And sometimes I'm just wondering what the hell is going on in Percy's head. He describes the situation at Medusa's shop as increasingly uncomfortable - but he ignores the warnings of Grover and then Annabeth, and he allows a stranger to take a photo of them? CREEPY! Has his angelic mom not warned him about strangers? That seems wildly counterproductive. He tries to put it to his not remembering the Medusa myth in that moment and not connecting the dots, but I'm not buying it. She's all, "everyone loves children", and he doesn't go, "ew, stay away from me"? And after that, the very next situation he has a bad feeling about? "Nah, it's okay; I can stay alone with some weird stranger. You guys go ahead." *facepalm* Beating your reader over the head with something like that comes at the detriment of your characters' apparent intelligence. And the confrontation with Luke reinforces that. You don't have that many friends, Percy! And you refused to even consider the possibility of Grover or Annabeth being the one to betray you! To then cheerily prance away with an obviously troubled Luke doesn't look smart.

Lineage is not personality

Last but not least, why is this something that Riordan and Rowling gotta have in common? It frustrates me to no end - the assumption that you can easily sort people, in this case kids, into personality categories. And in Riordan's case, the personality traits are determined by their lineage. It's not Slytherins; it's the children of Ares who are cruel bullies. Annabeth the smartass is not a Ravenclaw; she's a daughter of Athena. The impulsive, fearless protagonist is not a Gryffindor; he's a son of Poseidon, one of the Big Three. Oof. This makes things very easy for Riordan, and it makes things very flat. Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty, so her kids are vain and useless (yes, I am planning to shred this via a look at mythology). Demeter is the goddess of nature, so her kids are gentle little flower children (same). Kids of Hermes cannot be trusted because he's a trickster. Kids of Hades were the fascists of last World War. Not only do these categories not work because Riordan's takes on mythology are at least very one-sided and superficial; he also tries to hammer home that who your parents are will determine your personality. It's a way to simplify characters, and a notion I loathe.

[eolewyn1010]

Reading Percy Jackson TLT was an ordeal for me 1 - Writing

Now, as a disclaimer in the name of fairness, I only ever read The Lightning Thief and none of the Percy Jackson series beyond that, so my experience with Rick Riordan's writing is limited (and I'm not planning to change that). It's also a distorted experience because I didn't read the original - I read a translated version, and I often noticed that it wasn't the best translation. For example, whoever was responsible was apparently incapable of translating an imperative mood, crippling quite a lot of dialogue. So I'll give Riordan that: I have probably not seen the best of his work.

That said, I massively disliked this book. Yes, even within the boundaries and rules of Kids' Fantasy. I won't tag this to the fandom because it seems nigh impossible to find anyone who so much as tolerates negative criticism of Percy Jackson. I've been called brain-damaged for not liking it, which is certainly a mature take. But I will feel better listing it all down that one time, getting it out of my mind, so here we go.

These dialogues are weird, these people are weird

I constantly catch myself thinking, "no one talks like that??" Even taking the translation aspect into account, a lot of the dialogue sounds just stilted. After the bus crash, some of the passengers are described by Percy as literally running in a circle yelling "We're gonna die" - no one behaves like that. It's a funny, over-the-top imagination that would fit in a cartoon, and it completely breaks with the serious tension of the preceding scene, and with my suspension of disbelief. People, even hysterical people, don't do that seriously. It feels like a scene in a theater play.

It appears equally forced when Annabeth apparently mutters to herself as she walks away from Percy: "Mission... Poseidon? ...[some cussing]... need a plan..." And I sit there like: Really? You mutter that to yourself? I can believe that you mutter a curse to yourself, but this "shreds of sentences" thing? Why would she talk to herself in the first place? So Percy can randomly hear some incomplete thoughts? No. It's to tease the readers. Riordan, you shouldn't make me aware of the author's presence all the time. Annabeth never talks to herself otherwise. It isn't even a character thing for her. And made out like this, it's so unnatural.

Same goes for Percy talking in his sleep... apparently very clearly and comprehensibly, so that Annabeth can piece together what he's been dreaming of. Except. People who talk in their sleep? They mumble. They hardly get a cohesive sentence out. How am I supposed to believe that this is playing in the real world? These people don't behave like people.

And one more thing that struck me as odd: A description of Grover with "his eyes narrowed; there was fear in them." Hm. Have you ever tried to look afraid with your eyes narrowed? It isn't actually that easy. When people are scared, their eyes widen. Tell me when you can narrow your eyes and get your expression not to look angry, not distrustful or doubtful, but afraid.

Is this plot ever going anywhere?

So, it's one thing that this structure of quest-hopping isn't how I personally like my books. A bigger problem seems to me that it's lacking coherence. Most of the kids' stops on the way and monsters to slay have nothing to do with their mission. Why is all of this so disconnected? Did we learn anything new from the Medusa adventure, from the episode with Echidna?

And at times, it feels like the plot is artificially prolonged. This is really bad in the beginning when no one can be arsed to tell Percy what the hell is going on. Neither Chiron nor know-it-all Annabeth can just give him a straight answer to anything. Which, Chiron comes off as plain gaslighting Percy at his human school when he denies that Percy just fought for his fucking life, and Annabeth? Percy even lampshades it; at one point he's like, "as if I was supposed to already know all that." Well, HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT WHEN NO ONE OPENS THEIR FUCKING MOUTH? And the one time that Annabeth actually wants to tell Percy something, she gets interrupted by a random outside occurence that isn't even important. Can anyone get this shit moving already?

The worst foreshadowing since Stephenie Meyer

I wish Riordan would stop slapping me over the head with Dead Herrings (aka Red Herrings that don't work the way they should). Telling me something very specific and then going "Nooo, it's couldn't possibly be that highly specific thing!" will not redirect my thoughts the wrong way; it will just make me wait jadedly for the moment when, oh, such surprise, it turns out it was exactly what you thought of first.

"Oh, Percy can do funny things with water and the only thing he's good at is rowing - who could possibly be his father!"

"This lady is surrounded by scared-looking statues and we can't see her eyes - who could she possibly be!"

"This statue looks like my uncle - what a weird coincidence!"

"Dude keeps telling Percy to put on the flying shoes - wonder what he's on about!"

Honestly, it feels very condescending. My friend said the book is written for 12-year-olds, but does Riordan know that 12-year-olds aren't idiots? It's not a good idea to treat your readers as being dense.

Inconsistent worldbuilding

Do we ever get a reason for Grover eating literal garbage? Oh, I know, the extra-diagetical explanation is a joke I'm not in on and that frankly enrages me (later more on that). But in-universe we are never told how he's capable of chewing tin cans without cutting himself to shreds. We're never told how he can digest that shit. If you have to make this a thing, Riordan, at least make it work!

Camp Half-Blood is... eh. Okay-ish? Riordan doesn't know the first thing about Ancient Greek architecture, and it comes back to bite him with Annabeth. But for now, I have questions about the strawberries. How are they growing so well when they never have rain over the valley? Like. Plants do need water. And there's no reason why Dionysus and his kids should be able to make them grow well, none. Dionysus isn't and has never been a god of nature, ever since he separated from Pan (and Pan IS a separate character in this book). The only plant he has a connection to is fucking grapevine. I can buy that he can make grapevines grow, but everything else should be under the jurisdiction of Demeter and her children. Who are allegedly largely unimpressive, but we'll get to that. Also. All strawberries? Nothing but strawberries, ever? Monoculture is ruining the soil, y'know. That camp should be on dead ground within a decade or so.

Then again, Percy also claims he hasn't eaten anything unhealthy ever since he entered the camp. And then counts, "grapes, bread, cheese, lean barbecued meat." No strawberries then? Anyway, my point is: This isn't healthy. It's a very reduced diet - a balanced diet for 12-year-olds, still growing and physically very active 12-year-olds, requires more than that! How do the kids in the camp not all have deficiency symptoms?

I'm not sure how the disappearing monsters work. Body parts can just randomly stay behind as the spoils of war? Who decides which parts? Riordan wanted Medusa's eyes to still do their work after Percy slays Medusa, because the eyes still working is part of the Perseus myth that he's processing, but that really doesn't roll with "the body just disappears when the creature is slain." Like, what. Why wouldn't her head just disappear with the rest of her; it's a part of her body? Can just the head disappear instead and randomly leave the body behind? What are the rules here?

And there's the bit with "does this actually play in the real world?" again. Because when they wander the forest, Grover complains that they cannot see the stars because of the pollution. Which. This red sheen over the sky shouldn't be a thing in the middle of a forest. This is not how light pollution works, unless they are close to a city, in which case, why are they sleeping in the forest? Or is Grover trying to tell me that there were no clouds before environmental pollution? (Granted, I don't know why they went into the forest in the first place and didn't just sleep at Medusa's shop...)

In a similar vein, why is the police looking after Percy as a criminal suspect and not as a missing child? When a 12-year-old disappears, who in their right mind goes, "he could have murdered his mother"?? Why isn't the reaction, "something really bad happened to them both; we need to look for them both!", but "we need to look specifically for this kid because he has definitely done something terrible to his mom"? What is that for an outlandish approach to a missing kid?

This is a Very American Perspective (and it doesn't work)

Now, telling me that the USA are the center of Western civilisation is obviously extremely subjective, and as a non-American, I'm probably not supposed to agree. That Chiron goes on to declare the nebulous future "fall of Western civilisation" this huge, apocalyptic catastrophe and in the process sounds like a whiny rightwing politican - okay, that's me being cynical. But this really fails as soon as the Olympus and the Greek gods get in on the equation. I cannot imagine any place in the world that's less into pagan polytheism than the USA. The Greek gods aren't revered there, or if they are, it's by very small groups.

So, if Riordan's train of thought is "they are revered by whatever name; they may have different names, but it's always the same gods", then we get into a real conundrum with the multitude of pantheons in various religions. Because the gods in different religions are very incongruent in what functions and personalities they have. It already fails with the Greek-to-Roman transference - close as these two mythologies may be, they don't work in 1:1 accordance (something which Riordan heavily misrepresents, but I'm not going into that here). So, if the modern USA are so central to Western civilisation that the gods moved the Olympus and the Underworld and everything there, how did the gods' personalities and powers not massively shift over the millennia; how did gods not disappear and appear and merge to fit more contemporary notions of God / gods? Are they completely unperturbed by mortal developments and mindsets? Then why would they ever change anything, including their location?

Speaking of Greek and Roman gods... I really enjoy the action scenes. Riordan is good at writing action; it's fun. So. It ires me that I got completely ripped out of the scene by Percy randomly spouting Latin curses. Why Latin? What does that have to do with his prodigious propensity to Ancient Greek? Why. Why does Riordan keep mixing up Roman with Greek mythology, one language with the other? They are very distinct!

Chiron at one point describes the cooperation of gods with mortals as "the dawn of the Western civilisation". This is funny, as Western civilisation hit a real low after the fall of the Roman Empire (and yes, I'm focussing on Europe in this part of my argument - there was no Western civilisation in America before the late 16th century). And it stayed like that throughout a large portion of the middle ages. The civilisation on a roll until about the 11th century was what we'd today sum up under "Arab". They were the big scientists, the big architects, they dominated the trade, they spread all over the place; it was a whole thing. Yet of course gods of Western civilisation cannot be worshipped in Fez, in Tunis, in Granada, in Baghdad, in Alexandria - so where were they in the meantime? How did they not disappear while Christianity became a thing? They were not being worshipped anymore; the majority of people alive in the Western world weren't aware there had ever been other religions in Europe than Christianity because translating the old texts into modern languages was something Arabian scholars did early on, but it was a late fashion to Christians.

"The Second World-War was a war between the children of Zeus and the children of Hades, and the losing side (aka the Nazis and their allies) were the children of Hades." ... There are certainly ways to help kids approach the very complicated layers of politics and social aspects regarding the World Wars. This isn't one of them, and I curse Riordan in the tongues of a thousand historians for the paragraph in which he summed it up like that. This is how you're explaining fascists? "Oh, they're the children of Hades, so I guess they're just born evil." This is just vile.

The weird implications of fantasy creatures being treated as animals

Percy doesn't want to walk behind Chiron because he thinks the dude would just randomly take a literal shit on him. Toilet humor is funny, you guys! Except this isn't a horse, no matter how often Percy calls him one. The nymphs aren't trees. Grover is not a goat. It's one thing to integrate features of these because we're talking fantasy mix creatures, but they are still sentient and sapient on a human level! In case of Chiron, he's hundreds of years old and a wise guardian and teacher to Percy and others. Why are we always accompanied by the implication that they are, in some capacity, animals? That's just plain old Fantasy Racism. Stop dehumanizing people you yourself have established as people, please?

Grover is the most present non-human character in this book; so he's the usual victim of this. I cannot count the times Percy calls him a goat boy, or just plain a goat. He is not. A goat. He's a person. I'm supposed to believe he is Percy's best friend. Why does Percy talk to or about him like he's holding him in contempt half the time? Why does Annabeth? She's been living with intelligent non-humans since she was seven! They make fun of him, they dismiss his warnings and instincts as "whining", even though he turns out to be right. They don't treat him seriously, they aren't friendly, they hardly do more than scold him, boss him around or roll their eyes at him.

We still get the other side of the coin

Despite the former problem, Riordan manages to be contemptuous of humans, too. People inside the camp, Annabeth most of all, but Chiron (in a softer way) as well, and eventually Percy and Grover keep talking down at humans. Chiron says the reason why Percy's sword can't kill humans is because "mortals aren't important enough." You know, I would have been fine with "it's to protect humanity" or something; I didn't need a complicated justification for how this sword works. But it would have been nice to not get the most disparaging version that makes icky humans out to be a lower class of life! "Not important enough"? With all his talk of the precious Western civilisation, Chiron should know that mortals are vital to the immortals. No humans, no gods.

Funny thing is, Annabeth repeatedly describes mortals als blind and stupid because they don't know of the mythological goings-on. I thought that was the Mist(TM)? So, what is it? You are magically protected from being perceived as being and doing supernatural stuff - then it isn't the humans' fault, is it? - or people are just stupid and self-censor in their heads. Then why bother with the Mist. The Mist existing and being explained makes me wanna yell at Annabeth to stuff her high-and-mighty attitude. Granted, the Mist isn't too internally consistent. It hides centaurs randomly galloping across the landscape in plain sight of humans, it hides the furies, but it doesn't hide Echidna and the Chimera. I would have liked an explanation for that.

Harmful stereotyping

So. Riordan really hates dog owners, doesn't he? What was with the pink poodle? I mean, I got it; the owners are terrible - that's why he has an unfitting name and why he ran away. But Riordan has to hammer me over the head again. They dyed the doggo pink. Oof. And then Echidna. Here's wondering if Riordan ever depicts a dog owner as a decent person who treats their dog well.

But I take a vastly bigger issue with his consistently hateful depiction of step-parents. Now, Evil Step-Parents(TM) are a well-worn fairytale trope. And Riordan just... never questions it. Personally, I hate it. If it's a step-parent, they're abusive; no exceptions. Percy's stepfather is beating his wife, Annabeth's stepmother treats her as a freak and isolates her from her siblings; it's all very on-the-nose. Only once, I wanna read an acknowledgment that step-parents are just people, and they are as likely to be good people as everyone else. In fact, someone who decides to take a partner who already has a child usually has to internalize that fact at first and accept that this child is going to be a part of the relationship in some capacity. Can we not shit on non-biological parents all the time?

In that context, Annabeth's biological father being a lousy parent as well looks odd, granted. It's definitely something different than Percy's angelic mom. Is Riordan telling me that Athena just has a bad taste in men? Or is that more shitting on humans?

Oh boy, and he loves him some fatshaming. And no, it isn't just "this fat character turns out to be evil", it is "every single character described as being overweight is a negative character in some way, plus depicted as someone with really poor hygiene, plus just generally physically revolting. Go on, re-read the Echidna scene. Tell me that he doesn't go out of his way there to hammer home just how obnoxious and repulsive she is before she turns out to be a monster. How many unflattering words can he squeeze into one paragraph? Why would a kid care? Why does Percy even look at a complete stranger long enough to study how bad her sense of fashion is? Other big characters include Dionysus (more on him when I talk about Riordan's takes on mythology) who's... not evil, but mean-spirited and grumpy and contemptuous and constantly pissed-off. And Gabe, the stinking, ugly, abusive stepfather who literally lives among trash and is so unsubtle that he complains to his wife's face that he didn't get her life insurance because she showed up alive. Gabe Ugliano, because he's ugly, you see? Rick Riordan is funny. He's also trying to beat me to death with an anvil. And showing his ass, because a lot of domestic abuse is way subtler than that.

Ugly = evil is a shorthand that Riordan keeps reusing - and that his hero has weirdly internalized! And don't even tell me of a judgy 12-year-old as an unreliable narrator - because the narrative keeps proving Percy right. Ares' ugly daughters and the ugly girl at human school are brutal bullies (I mean, Annabeth keeps insulting and bullying Percy, but she's pretty, so it's fine when she does it). That Medusa looks elegant and refined and "must have been a beautiful woman once" makes Percy trust her, but the moment he stops trusting her, she starts looking monstrous. It's really lazy characterization.

Also, a fun little detail from Camp Half-Blood: The phenotype of people with sharp noses? Is associated with troublemakers. Uh-huh. I'm comfy with that. That doesn't sound anti-Semitic at all. ... FUCK THIS. Riordan, stereotypes like this are HARMFUL. Do. Your. Research.

An afterthought

Does Riordan have any faith in his own writing? Because the one time I'm sold on a dramatic moment, he ends up subverting it. I'm all, "Percy's falling towards the river! Monsters! Everything is panic!" And then the new chapter starts, and the moment falls flat. Because Riordan doesn't hold onto the fear Percy feels in that moment; he makes him snark about it in hindsight. It's really not a good idea to set up an emotionally captivating moment and then make fun of it.