On Octavian ruining Percy's panda pillow pet...
Now, I thought this wasn't even a serious thing that needs to be addressed but I just finished arguing with someone over this, so apparently it does need its own meta.
So, the take we're debunking today is "Octavian is mean/evil for ruining Percy's pillow pet".
The thing about this pillow pet is that Percy was homeless for six months, he had to steal to survive and fight off monsters every single day, a task that was getting harder and harder every day, all while he remembered nothing. He only had his name. He didn't have friends, a home, a family, a safe place, a purpose, something that can get people by so that they don't just give up when struggling every day for no known reason with no known end goal gets too much.
During those months, his panda pillow was the one single form of comfort and familiarity he was granted. A small mercy if you will, to help get him through this. Although many people downgrade, poke fun off, and affectionately ridicule his relationship with the panda pillow pet, it was definitely something meaningful. Like the first participation trophy you got for participating in a competition for fun, only to realize you really like that activity and get hooked on it. Sure, the trophy does not indicate any real talent or success in itself, but to you it's the starting line for something you genuinely love. And to Percy his pillow pet has value because of it's emotional worth.
Which is why it had to be sacrificed.
I'll explain why soon enough, but for now, hold that thought I put in your head just now while I add a second idea there too.
This isn't talked about in the books, but it's something Uncle Rick made sure to address in the show. As Chris Rodriguez worded it: The gods love the smell of beging.
In Camp Half-Blood, when meal time is over, demigods throw the remaining of their food into the fire as a sacrifice and pray to the gods. In the show it was specified that it's better to sacrifice a portion of your favourite food, because if the gods see that you're willing to sacrifice your own comfort (even if it's just in the form of your favourite food) just to please them, they are more likely to answer your prayer. Once again, as Chris said, they love the smell of begging. And the more you beg, the more you're willing to sacrifice, the further you're willing to go, the better.
So Greek gods like it when you pray by sacrificing your food, and to an extent, your comfort. And the Roman gods like it when you sacrifice a life.
Which is why auguries became a thing. Of course you're not gonna see the future in the guts of an animal just because. The gods will grant you spoilers for the next season if you kill the animal because it will make them feel flattered to see that you're so desperate for their help that you'd rip out the soul of a living being in their honor just to get their attention.
However, Rick is writing books for tweens and teens. He can't just have animals being slaughtered left and right, especially for the purpose of feeding the gods' narcissism. So what can he do to make the situation a bit more pg 13? Remove the slaughtering of animals. And how will auguries be performed then? By sacrificing something else that has value. Emotional value.
It's quite logical to assume that the stuffed toys Octavian uses in his auguries are really expensive or collector's edition or handmade or are someone's childhood companion that they donated. The gods wouldn't just let you have information about the feature when all you gave to them was a sacrifice worth 1$ that you could even fish out of the trash.
Now I want you to hold on to that too and knit it together with the other thought I told you to hold on to, got it? And if you do that part of the process properly you should get to the conclusion that the best sacrifice available at the moment to get the gods to tell you how they feel about Percy joined the legion was Percy's panda pillow pet that he is so deeply emotionally connected to.
Octavian did not ruin something Percy loved for kicks. He didn't even know him yet, there's no way he had any type of malicious feelings towards Percy yet. He was just doing his job. The job Reyna tasked him to and the job Hazel told him to do during their conversation. And that was to read Percy's augury (which wasn't an augury bc Octavian is a haruspex but that's irrelevant right now). He wasn't actively trying to soil Percy's mood and ruin his day just to be the evil villain. He was just doing his job.
Thus proven.
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Octavian’s treatment is one of my least favorite things about HoO because it isn’t his character, it’s his lack of one.
We COULD’VE had an excellent character who was a look into what could truly go wrong with blind devotion like Octavian’s, drawing an excellent parallel to Luke’s blind hatred in the original series (Percy even says Octavian reminds him of Luke).
We COULD’VE had a fantastic contrast into a follower’s descent into insanity after making empty promises of power whilst under the influence of a massively elder being, thus leading to said follower’s death.
What makes me especially mad is that Octavian has no backstory. This is a problem with a lot of Roman characters, but Octavian especially. He doesn’t even have a last name. All we know is:
- He’s a legacy of Apollo.
- He used to be sane and probably very charismatic, due to Reyna stating she used to have a crush on him in TTT.
That’s it! One of Rick’s gold stars is that his human characters are just that: human. They have motivations and flaws, deeply personal origins and ideals that affect their actions and their outcomes. None of the villains are just plain villains, evil by birth. They have motives to back up their actions (now weither those motives make sense or not, that’s another story, but they’re still there.) There’s Luke, Medea, Lityerses (who is an entire other can of worms), Circe, Loki, Gunilla, Randolph, hell, even Kronos and Gaea. All of them have reasons for the shitty stuff they did. Octavian is a glaring exception. We know he’s power-hungry, but we don’t know why. We know he’s violent, but we don’t know why. We know he hates the Greeks, but we don’t know why. You may argue ‘oh, he’s a minor character, he doesn’t really get a reasoning’ which is just blatantly untrue on both fronts.
1: Octavian is NOT a minor character in the slightest. He has major roles in the plot throughout the books.
2: Him being a ‘minor’ villain wouldn’t have anything to do with his motivation. Chris from the OG series has stated motivation, and he’s way more minor than Octavian.
Another thing is that Octavian’s insanity is played off almost comically. He’s relatively well put together in SoN, only being super dramatic and reportedly blackmailing Hazel and probably other legionnaires, but by BoO he’s absolutely broken. He’s utterly obsessed with being a hero to the Romans, with being Pontifex Maximus, with killing Gaea and almost proving himself to Apollo (who is utterly disgusted by him), but it’s all either framed as ‘hate this guy more plsplspls’ or brushed away to the side.
I’m torn on his death scene, because it’s a good scene overall but too much of it is humorous in my opinion. Between Will calling Octavian an ‘anemic loser’ (which like. what.) and Leo describing his screams as a little girl’s, it seems almost too light for such a pivotal point in the story. Octavian has truly lost himself to madness, ranting and raving and insisting no, HE has to be the one to kill Gaea, HE has to be a hero.
His death is horrific, yet it’s framed as a silly oopsie.
What the fuck.
Overall, Octavian is a shining example of missed character potential. We could have gotten the Riordan special and made to empathize more with our villain, like what happened with Luke or Randolph from MCGA, but all we get is a crazy blond kid, character so shallow he could count as a tide pool. It infuriates me to no end how in a sea of good, properly motivated antagonists, Octavian is the outlier.
It’s a real shame.
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Percy would have worked with Octavian, but the Augur never gave him a chance
(or Why Octavian's actions weren’t justified)
As people spend more and more time critically examining the Riordanvese (often to a fault, it must be said) one of the most common revisionist arguments is to try and absolve the mortal villains of the consequences of their action; usually by exaggerating their motivations. That includes the argument that Octavian was so quick to war partially because he was treated poorly by the Greeks. Particularly by Percy Jackson.
But does that actually hold up?
People will argue that Octavian was not evil, because attacking Camp Halfblood was justified from his perspective; he thought they had broken a truce with New Rome and attacked it. And that would be a fair argument, IF that was the only bad thing Octavian had done, or even the worst thing. It wasn’t. And Octavian had begun trying to trigger conflict well before that. Percy, on the other hand, did his best to prevent it.
The first scene where Percy meets Octavian, is also the first time we see his sinister side. And that is of course when he tries to blackmail Hazel into supporting him for Praetor.
Now there is an aspect of the context of this scene that I think a lot of people overlook; their ages. Octavian is 18, or near enough, and Hazel is 13. This is a guy old enough to vote, (the only one of them who isn’t a child soldier) blackmailing a girl too young to get a learner’s permit. Just before this, Percy says Octavian reminds him of someone; which is obviously a reference to Luke Castellan. This type of nearly grooming behavior would have really reinforced that impression; which explains Percy’s hostile reaction to it.
Percy slipped his hand into his pocket, and grabbed his pen. This guy was blackmailing Hazel. That was obvious. One sign from Hazel, and Percy was ready to bust out Riptide and see how Octavian liked being at the end of a blade.
But Percy keeps these urges internal. He doesn’t voice his anger, and doesn’t give any visible reaction. The other two keep talking like he’s not there. This is a pretty good demonstration of Percy’s hard won self control; on his first day at Camp Half-Blood he doused Clarisse with toilet water for less, without even meaning to.
The next interaction he has with Octavian isn’t much better.
“Recruit,” he [Octavian] asked, “do you have any credentials? Letters of reference?”
Percy shifted. “Letters? Um, no.”
Octavian wrinkled his nose.
Unfair! Hazel wanted to shout. Percy had carried a goddess into camp. What better recommendation could you want? But Octavian’s family had been sending kids to camp for over a century. He loved reminding recruits that they were less important than he was.
“No letters,” Octavian said regretfully. “Will any legionnaires stand for him?”
Now just asking this question is obviously standard practice, so Octavian isn’t wrong for that. It’s his condescending reaction that is the unsubtle putdown.
But then things come to a head very quickly, when that night’s game of capture the flag ends in a visit from the god Mars, and the command he delivers; a quest to retrieve the legion Eagle, and free Death.
Now what’s really important here is that, while people often think of Leo attacking Camp Jupiter as the point where Octavian turned against the heroes, THIS is the actual point. THIS is where he goes from being a nuisance to being an antagonist.
It starts in the Senate meeting the next day, when Percy tries to make sense of the situation:
“This Giant, the son of Gaea--he’s the one who defeated your forces thirty years ago. I’m sure of it. Now he’s sitting up there in Alaska with a chained death god, and all your old equipment. He's mustering his armies and sending them south to attack this camp.”
Percy is just repeating what Mars literally told them the night before. Octavian’s reasonable reaction to this is:
“Really?” Octavian said. “You seem to know a lot about our enemy’s plans, Percy Jackson.”
Him, and everyone else who was conscious at the end of the war games.
In spite of being almost outright accused of treason, Percy still keeps his cool. This shows a lot of growth on his part, compared to where he was in the second book of the previous series:
This was so completely unfair, I told Tantalus to go chase a donut, which didn’t help his mood.
After a bit more discussion, Octavian makes his move. First he gets in another insult.
“Mars has clearly chosen the least likely candidates for this quest. Perhaps it is because he considers them the most expendable.”
And then he argues that the senate should not give any of the support that would normally be given to a quest. The odds of them succeeding are already so low; better to use their resources to protect the camp.
It’s pretty easy for us, the readers, to overlook what a dick move this really is. Of course WE know that the heroes are going to come back alive; but in universe, there is nothing to guarantee that. Even a small magical trinket could be the difference between life and death. And Octavian is trying to deny them that.
This could be understandable, if there was any sincerity to it. A sad but necessary sacrifice for the greater good, to protect the camp. But after arguing that all their resources have to be saved for the battle, Octavian proceeds to do nothing with them. When the giant’s army arrives, the legion simply marches out and fights them with conventional ranks and swords. Aside from a few roman scorpions (large crossbows), no specialized weapons are brought out, no magical items are used, they didn’t even build a wall or a trench. So there was no real reason not to give them anything; even if he sincerely believed the quest was doomed, that was all the more reason to help. The right magical tool might have at least given them the chance to get back alive. Depriving the questers served no purpose other than to make them fail.
You can also see this, in the fact that all Octavian’s stated reasons don’t actually win over the senate.
The senators’ eyes moved back and forth between Octavian and Reyna, watching the test of wills.
Reyna straightened in her chair. “Very well,” she said tightly. We shall put it to a vote.”
No one gives their support to Octavian before this. The senators are waiting to follow the person they see as more powerful, not the argument that was more convincing.
As for motivations, there is only one that Octavian could have; with the election just days away, he wants to prevent a rival for the praetorship.
Is the fulfillment of an epic quest a silly basis for entrusting someone with supreme executive power? Yes, in the real world, it is. But demigods don’t live in the real world; and in their world, everything revolves around quests. Quests drive every important event in the series, and are the ultimate standard by which the skill and power of a demigod are demonstrated. As Annabeth puts it in TLT:
“At camp you train and train. And that’s all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That’s where you learn whether you’re any good or not.”
If Percy returns from a land that wiped out half a legion of demigods, with the long lost legion Eagle, the mob that is Rome will raise him up on the fanciest shield they can find. And Octavian isn’t the only one who has put that together. The very next chapter sees Reyna tell Percy that he could stand for praetor if he succeeds; and we are reminded several times that Octavian is far more politically savvy than she is. If she’s put it together, you can bet that he has.
But going back to the senate meeting itself; we see another example of Percy choosing not to start a conflict with Octavian, even when he seems to be trying to get him killed. Instead, he focuses on the important issues:
Frank jumped to his feet. Before he could start a fight, Percy said, “Fine! No problem. but at least give us transportation.”
Percy is more concerned about succeeding in saving the camp than satisfying any grudges. Octavian is more interested in how many insults he can fit into one meeting.
“A boat!” Octavian turned to the senators. “The son of Neptune wants a boat. Sea travel has never been the Roman way, but he isn’t much of a Roman!”
(The insult proves to be quite a hypocritical one in BOO, when Octavian has boats built to surround Camp Half-Blood.)
Octavian’s next attempt to start a conflict with Percy is slightly more subtle.
They were only halfway across the forum when someone called, “Jackson!” Percy turned and saw Octavian jogging toward them.
“What do you want ?” Percy asked.
Octavian smiled. “Already decided I’m your enemy? That’s a rash choice Percy. I’m a loyal Roman.”
Frank snarled. “You backstabbing, slimy–” Both Percy and Hazel had to restrain him.
Why is Octavian talking about being enemies? It doesn’t say Percy asked angrily, or Percy growled, or Percy glared at him. It’s a very dramatic reaction.
And Percy has done nothing to suggest that he wants to be Octavian’s enemy. Sure he has grown to dislike the augur, as most people would with someone who insults them and blackmails children:
Nico put his finger to his lips. Suddenly all the lares went silent. Some looked alarmed, like their mouths had been glued together. Percy wished he had that power over certain living people . . . like Octavian, for instance.
But he’s been keeping those critical thoughts to himself. He even avoided arguing in the senate meeting so as not to escalate things. The worst thing he’s done was knocking Octavian out during capture-the-flag which was both a perfectly fair move and a good strategy. Hardly something to base a feud on.
Most likely, this is a freudian slip on Octavian’s part. He’s already started to see Percy as an enemy, for no other reason than he might be a rival. That, or it’s an attempt at gaslighting Percy into thinking he somehow provoked Octavian into trying to get him killed. In any case, the augur hardly seems unhappy to see him, and the two legionnaires at his side, go off to their deaths.
Octavian smiled wickedly. “The last person she [Reyna] had a private talk with was Jason Grace. And that was the last time I ever saw him. Good luck and goodbye, Percy Jackson.”
If he’s happy to see them go, he’s certainly not happy when they come back alive.
The look on Octavian’s face was priceless. the centurion stared at Percy with shock, then outrage. Then, when his own troops started to cheer, he had no choice except to join the shouting: “Rome! Rome!”
Not the appropriate reaction when Percy is saving the city, not to mention Octavian’s own life. The auger doesn’t have a single kind word to say.
The Roman symbols burned into Percy’s arm: a trident, SPQR, and a single stripe. It felt like someone was pressing a hot iron into his skin, but Percy managed not to scream.
Octavian embraced him and whispered, “I hope it hurt.”
Just before this, Octavian kills a teddy bear and reads the future from it, announcing:
good omens for the coming year–Fortuna would bless them!
It has been suggested that Octavian actually had a very different vision at this moment; that he saw the Argo II opening fire on New Rome, and kept that to himself, but turned against Percy and the other Greeks because of that. This doesn’t seem likely. It would serve his purposes better to share that information; and he would have seen that vision in front of hundreds of demigods hardwired to notice small details, none of whom notice him having any visible reaction to it. Besides which, this can’t be the point when he turns on Percy, since he’s already been trying to sabotage him for most of the book.
Now if there is some big conflict between Percy and Octavian, this is the time for Percy to win it decisively. To use his new power and authority to put the auger in his place.
But Percy doesn’t do that.
“Why should we trust these Greeks?” Octavian was saying.
He’d been pacing the senate floor for five minutes, going on and on, trying to counter what Percy had told them about Juno’s plan and the Prophecy of Seven.
Rather than simply steamroll over the discussion, and try to use his authority to silence any opposition, Percy allows Octavian a reasonable amount of time to air his concerns, before finally stepping in with his counter argument.
When Percy lays out the details of why they must join the Greeks, Octavian never comes up with a logical counter argument. Instead, when a messenger reports the Argo II has been spotted, he resorts to paranoid rambling.
“Praetors!” The messenger cried. “What are your orders?”
Octavian [who is not a praetor] shot to his feet. “You have to ask?” His face was red with rage. He was strangling his teddy bear. “The omens are horrible! This is a trick, a deception. Beware Greeks bearing gifts!”
He jabbed a finger at Percy. “His friends are attacking in a warship. He has led them here. We must attack!”
Yesterday when he last read the entrails, Octavian said the omens were good. Now, they’re suddenly horrible. That pretty well justifies Percy’s growing disregard for Octavian’s auguries.
Not only that; he is accusing Percy of treachery, while at the same time suggesting they attack a ship that can be seen bearing a white flag.
And this is before a single shot has been fired on New Rome. That false-flag attack by Gaea can not be the inciting incident for Octavian’s hostility to the Greeks. Not if what he wanted to do before it happened is the same as what he wanted to do after it happened. The attack is just what incentives the rest of the camp to support him.
The last interaction between Percy and Octavian is pretty much the first two chapters of MOA, where Octavian does his best to offend the Greeks.
“You’re letting these intruders into the camp!”
When Reyna orders Octavian to go make a sacrifice to the gods, Percy adds:
“Good idea. Go burn your bears Octavian.”
An insulting way to put it; but no more so than calling the Greek ambassadors (including a Roman praetor and Percy’s own girlfriend) “intruders.” And no more harsh than the insults Octavian has used for legionnaires below himself, like Frank and Hazel. And Percy has been given enough reason not to trust Octavian’s auguries any more than he trusts him.
The last exchange between them is about the praetorship:
Octavian snorted. “Which means we have three praetors! The rules clearly state we can only have two!
“On the bright side,” Percy said, “both Jason and I outrank you, Octavian. So we can both tell you to shut up.”
Octavian turned as purple as a Roman T-shirt. Jason gave Percy a fist bump.
I can only imagine how long Jason has been waiting for someone to say that to Octavian. It has been suggested this is an abuse of power on Percy’s part, but there is no reason to think so. They are surrounded by the senior officers of the legion, some of whom will be on Octavian's side, and no one raises an objection. And it's not like Octavian actually treats it like an order.
“I’ll step aside for Jason,” Percy said easily. “It’s no biggie.”
“No biggie?” Octavian choked. “The praetorship of Rome is no biggie?”
No need to go into detail about how the rest of the series goes. Gaea triggers a war between the Greeks and Romans, and Octavian walks right into it. There is no reason to think he was working for her; but he was plainly looking for an excuse to start hostilities.
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I feel like a big part of Heroes of Olympus was influenced by audience reaction.
I don’t think I’m grasping at straws here. I genuinely just don’t get why some decisions were made if this wasn’t the case.
The plot of the books themselves has always felt very muddled to me and that’s why it always feels like it’s supposed to be a story about characters and relationships, but it just kind of isn’t. Sure, on a surface level, yes, and we get some very lovely character dynamics, but it also feels slightly artificial in a way? The plot was built first and the characters thrown into it, but there wasn’t much thought given too how the characters should be with each other. Even the romantic ones.
Though I feel that I could tie this idea into pretty much every part of the books, there are two things that I personally think of the most while discussing this idea.
For one, there’s Octavian’s entire character.
I have always been confused as to what exactly Riordan wanted from Octavian. He really feels like a plot device most times, made solely for the purpose of stirring conflict between the Greeks and Romans. He as an individual never really mattered. Now, there are some very cool people on this website that have managed to squeeze a decent character out of the scenes we got, but with the way he was written, that in itself is a challenge, as post SoN, it feels like the only intent behind his character was to make him as unlikable as possible. He really was a real character in SoN, despite weird decisions here and there (The killing Gwen scene for example was purely to establish that the doors of death weren't working, and to make Octavian unlikable, but Octavian himself really didn’t have any motive for the killing. It benefitted him in no way.)
In SoN, Octavian is manipulative and well spoken, but after that, he is portrayed as some sort of dim witted idiot, clouded by his desire for personal glory.
The only way I can rationalize this shift in character is in the truly visceral reaction the then fanbase had to his character. They loathed him, taking not a second to rationalize his actions, but simply hate. It also made it so Octavian became the but of a lot of jokes. Those jokes characterizing him as his idiot and megalomaniac that it he shown as in Mark of Athena, House of Hades and Blood of Olympus.
I always suspected Octavian was supposed to serve some sort of grander purpose, or his role in HoO was supposed to be at least a little more dignified or dare I say sympathetic, but there really was no turning back with how hated he was, making Riordan embrace it rather than giving him actual human qualities.
Then on the other hand, there’s also Leo and his relationship with romance in general.
I’ve touched upon it in my Caleo essay (That I kind of wanna redo with more points and evidence to back up my claims, because I am unhappy with certain aspects but I still stand by all I said) that Leo is a character that was written in such a way that getting a romantic partner before resolving certain things would actively detriment the development of his character, including healing from his trauma. The way he was written was just not meant for romance and I will take this to my grave. I’m not saying there was no room for romance, but the way they went about it was... very bad. (A girlfriend will fix my problems. That is his mindset. But he doesn’t grow out of it. Instead he gets a girlfriend. A girlfriend that he treats as a fix to his problems when she is not. A girlfriend that is bad to and for him in so many ways.)
But it is very interesting to note, that especially after Mark of Athena, the speculations and demands for Leo’s future girlfriend went absolutely crazy. I can’t speak from experience but from the tweets from Riordan and fanarts from that time that I've seen it was at least to the point that he took active notice of it.
Besides Nico and Reyna, there weren’t really any other characters just lying around to pair Leo monogamously up with (I doubt Riordan be willing to make any characters besides Nico explicitly queer at the time and then in the next book he decided to pick up one of the background characters and said, you will do, when pairing Nico up with someone. )
There are many more examples I could go into. The universe suffered in many ways from this. Sure, it’s not the only problem that were detrimental. I believe Riordan had a plan from the beginning with all the main plot points of the series, but I feel he didn’t exactly know where he was going with the characters besides the basics. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the HoO characters. That is why I spend so much time talking and thinking about them, but the issues with the series and characters are so many that it’s borderline ridiculous.
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