#and things like annabeth outsmarting arachne with the spidertrap made sense too

[crossdressingdeath]

Y'know, the Read Riordan Hypnos spotlight (side note, very worried about that "Especially once [Nico's nightmares] become real" bit given how absolutely batshit Nico's nightmares are in the excerpt) has me thinking about Nyx again and how much it pisses me off that she's so damn stupid in HoH. And you know, I think the explanation that would be most satisfying is that... Nyx deliberately played along to let Percy and Annabeth go without having to outright say she was letting them go. Like, the sense I'm getting is that TSatS is going to feature Nyx as a major player (and probably an antagonist), and if she's got some sort of plan in place that's coming to fruition in TSatS (maybe involving getting out of Tartarus?) she'd likely need Gaia gone to enact it since if the world's ended any plan involving people in that world would be scuppered. Since the Seven needed Percy and Annabeth to complete the quest, assuming Nyx wanted the Seven to succeed she'd need to let them through, but if she just let them pass that might raise suspicions about her intentions. Hence, pretending to fall for the incredibly blatant lie that there are tourists in Tartarus. And also pretending that Mother Night can be easily outwitted by... making it darker. In fact I'm going to believe that that's the case unless it's explicitly proved to be false, because I cannot get over how stupid it is that Percy and Annabeth's tourist ploy actually worked. Like, I can't even be impressed by their success because you'd have to be a complete and utter moron to buy it. Feels a bit like taking candy from a baby if Nyx actually fully believed them.

Also, I'd love a bit in TSatS where Nyx gloats a bit at how effortlessly she got Percy and Annabeth past her without them realizing she was letting them go. Like... "Heroes are so gullible, they'll believe anything if it makes them look impressive!" Because it's incredibly stupid that Nyx bought the claim that there are tourists in a place that—at this point in the series—as far as we know only one person in the whole history of the setting has ever survived, and it's incredibly stupid that the goddess of night can be stopped dead by making it darker... but it's also incredibly stupid that Percy and Annabeth don't question either of those things. It doesn't make sense that a primordial goddess wouldn't realize that tourists wouldn't be in Tartarus, and it doesn't make sense that the goddess of night could be stopped by the magic darkness her children got the power to create from her, but they just... fully buy that both of those things worked and largely put the encounter with Nyx out of their minds. It would be interesting if the fact that these two believed wholeheartedly that a primordial goddess without hesitation took the word of two teenagers that they were tourists in the nigh-unsurvivable hellpit and then got outplayed by making the area darker despite being the goddess of night became a plot point because it was objectively ridiculous for that to actually work. Something something hubris something something.