#Zeus loved and favored some of his kids unconditionally

[gotstabbedbyapen]

Zeus feels like he’d kick up a fuss about his kid joining a club then seeing they’re really good at it and becoming super supportive.

He complained about Dionysus doing theatre then he was getting top marks in it and now Zeus is bringing home every flier he finds of local productions.

He wasn’t happy with Apollo doing music at first but then he was so good everyone admired him and now every birthday he gets new equipment.

He was upset at Artemis doing archery, then she was nominated for the state championship and and now he attends every single one of her practices and tournaments.

He was in fact happy with Athena joining the debate team because y’know, the fav, and he remains happy.

Zeus would never complain about his children pursuing stuff, even before they proved to excel in it. He might not "get" it, but he will support them no matter what.

In mythology, Zeus was super proud of Apollo when he played music at feasts and gifted Artemis mountains to use as a hunting ground when she asked. I haven't found any mention of Zeus discussing Dionysus' theater passion, but he would happily cheer for him.

Zeus had always favored Athena and everything she did. Can't argue that.

[percyjaczon]

i’ve only watched up till ep 4 of pjotv (🏴‍☠️ ofc) and i’m mostly finding it pretty bad, but i do think there’s some genuinely interesting tidbits in there. one of them was the line from annabeth about how she had to fight for thalia’s love — i thought that thalia making annabeth earn her love is a pretty interesting characterization choice for thalia. yes, it is a drastic change from tlo and ‘the demigod diaries’, where it was clear that thalia is soft for annabeth right away and tries her best to do right by her from the moment they meet, but when you keep in mind some of the context from the book + show, i think that the change they made does line up with thalia’s character.

ok so first of all, annabeth’s recounting of her relationship w/ luke and thalia is meant to parallel her upbringing with her father and stepmother, the loving doting father figure and the harsher mother figure (which was . . . smth, but that’s a whole other issue). smth that i realized later on was that this kind of alludes to thalia’s own upbringing as well. thalia has been taking care of herself pretty much her entire life, and even when she was on the run, she had to fight to survive by herself for years before she met luke. though it deviates from her book characterization, it makes sense that this would be the only lifestyle she’s ever known, and that she would expect others to behave similarly. luke could prove he could handle himself, but a 7 y/o child is dependent on others, smth that thalia couldn’t fathom, hence leading to her making annabeth ‘fight’ to earn her love.

to add on to my prev point about thalia’s upbringing, i kept on thinking about how in the show, they stress that demigods have to earn their olympian parent’s love. this is shown the most through annabeth’s relationship with athena, where she constantly has to be at her best to maintain athena’s favor and one little thing can cause it to be lost forever. while the line about thalia making annabeth earn her love was meant to reinforce why annabeth believes love is conditional, i also think that it could be a nod to how thalia bought into this mentality of conditional love as a result of her own relationship with her olympian parent. in the books, while she does feel bitter and resentful towards her father at times, thalia does believe in zeus and wants a connection with him. in ‘the demigod diaries’, thalia and luke only end up taking annabeth in bc of the chain of events that came from thalia chasing after what she thought was a sign from her dad! with the show’s insistence that (most) olympian love is conditional, it makes sense that thalia had to fight to gain zeus’s "love", and i think it makes sense then that mentality would transfer over to a relationship where she has to assume a parental role of sorts. i think it’s an interesting contrast to luke, who rejects everything about his olympian father and gives love unconditionally when he assumes a parental role. since luke (+ percy at this point in time) are irreverent of the olympians and actively question the way they treat their kids (ntm how both do know unconditional love from their mortal mother, regardless of their respective difficult home lives), of course they reject how the olympians show their “love” and give their own love freely regardless. but thalia and annabeth were seeking for a connection with their immortal parent, and have thus internalized this mentality that love is conditional.

also idk if the writers are keeping hoo canon in mind while they were constructing the tv versions of these characters, but the first thing that immediately came to mind when i heard this line was that thalia’s mentality had to have smth to do with the loss of jason. when thalia meets annabeth, she is only 12 years old, and jason would’ve probably ‘died’ 4 years ago. jason was most likely the first person that thalia had loved unconditionally, and its pretty obv that his disappearance shakes her up a lot, given that it’s the final catalyst to her running away from home and his memory is so painful that she never even told her best friends abt him. i think she did feel partly responsible for jason’s ‘death’ bc she didn’t keep her eyes on him and i think she did carry that guilt even 4 years after the fact. which is why i think it’s entirely plausible that thalia would not be so keen on opening up and getting attached to another young child.

ok last point on this but i also think the implications of this line would make the ttc emotional climax hit so much harder (assuming they ever get that far lol). luke, who was maybe the first person who had loved annabeth so easily and readily, manipulates and harms annabeth with no (observable) qualms. and thalia, who had been so hard on a 7 y/o annabeth, is so aghast by his treatment of her that she finally accepts her best friend is no longer the person she remembers and ends up kicking him off a cliff, and annabeth has to watch all this go down. isn’t that just heartwrenching?