#was spent on their trio dynamic than frank/hazel/percy throughout hoo

[bayetea]

unfortunately at a point where I just don't trust anyone's opinions on frank/hazel or frazel or their dynamic with percy anymore. a lot of u guys have not read son of neptune in 5 years and it shows sorry 😔🙏

[theheightofdishonor]

Jason Grace in TLO (ok i tried)

I swear, I was going to write a meta on Jason Grace, on how he’s perceived to be vs how he actually is and all that. Trying to pinpoint why exactly Jason in canon is a boring character. No offense, but for the most part, it’s more fandom than the actual books themselves that lead to a person to liking Jason as a character. Now, i’m not trying to say it’s like that for everyone, just that it seems to be true for a lot of people from what I've seen. 

Anyway,  I started reading the Lost Hero again, to really get that feel for him because I haven’t actually reread the HoO in a while and god, the books infuriate the crap out of me. I don’t remember being this frustrated with it before. I actually like the Lost Hero as a book. But this time, it annoyed me so much I literally couldn’t get through the book or focus enough to stay unbiased as I observed Jason throughout the book. 

30 pages in, 30 pages and Jason’s still stumbling around. Now I understand the amnesia thing and he’s trying to figure everything out but there’s not a single instant where he’s solid about anything-except his minute jealousy/hatred of Dylan. I don’t understand why i’m supposed to like his character. Jason’s supposed to be a Roman, he’s supposed to be to Camp Jupiter what Percy is to Camp Half-blood. They’re supposed to be each other’s foils and I can’t see it. Except for his Latin knowledge and stuff, there’s nothing, nothing Roman about Jason at all. He’s been at Camp Jupiter for 12 years from what his SPQR tattoos tell us, far longer than Percy’s been at Camp Half-blood. Yet, how is it that I can’t see a single instance that would prove to me that this kid could stand Lupa’s training and make it to Camp Jupiter? 

And we all know the seen in TLO where he’s all ‘I’m the son of Jupiter! I’m a child of Rome, etc’. The speech he gives to Porphyrion, the one that he rattles off like ‘he’s said them many times before’. Nothing in this book shows me that Jason Grace is the type of person to have rattled of his many titles/accomplishments well enough that it would come instinctively out of his mouth. 

We don’t need a Roman that doesn’t really fit in, yet is respected, that’s what Frank ends up becoming. I want a Roman that is more, well, Roman. He doesn’t have to be full out Reyna about it but like enough to rival Percy’s Greekness should be good. 

And for all this ‘Jason’s a natural leader!’ crap, he doesn’t have that confidence that comes with leadership. And yeah, you can make a shit ton of excuse but the thing is, Jason’s a son of Jupiter, he’s used to being looked up to for this kinda shit and it should be just as instinctual for him to act confident as it is for him to rattle of those names or speak Latin. He has this thing for emotionally closing himself off (that makes complete sense, btw and oh look, also adds another similarity between him and Percy) yet even that doesn’t kick in here. Romans are all about not showing weakness. I know that the point is that he’s supposed to be un-Roman enough to accept/like going over to the Greeks. (Rick FAILED trying to do the opposite by making Percy ‘want’ to go to/prefer Camp Jupiter because his loyalty to Camp Half-blood’s already been too well established and the whole thing ended up coming off as shabby and badly carried out) The problem with Jason is that we don’t see that he’s Roman to begin with. in SoN, Percy’s obviously not Roman, he doesn’t fit in. From the way he thinks to how he fights, he’s Greek. The same can’t be said for Jason. Despite his talk later on, we don’t ever actually see Jason being super attached to Camp Jupiter and it makes me wonder why he was the one send over. 

The arc about choosing the other camp doesn’t make much sense to me with the two characters that Rick chooses. Yes, I can see why Percy of all people choosing the Roman Camp would mean something, but in-universe, Percy wouldn’t do that. It’s not believable enough. He may have been able to pull it off but Percy’s deeply rooted in camp and it’s just not played right. And Jason doesn’t come off as Roman enough for it to mean anything on his part. He has some emotional conflict regarding it later but it’s just a few thoughts and until that point, he’s never really shown attachment to the Roman camp or anything really to show that he was really influenced by the 12 fucking years he spent there. While that arc itself has some potential, it just doesn’t work. 

Jason as a character doesn’t work for me. He’s so boring, so bland and it bores and infuriates me at the same time. Jason has so much potential. 12 years as a Roman, think of how that would affect him and his views on Camp Half-blood, more than ‘Greeks are so carefree!”. Think of the struggles he’d have wrestling with two vastly different mindsets, especially in TLO. He’s exposed to the Greek beliefs/world far earlier than Percy is to Roman. He’s latching on what they’re telling him because he hasn’t had time to really figure his beliefs and shit out for himself. The mental struggle that would cause later on as he starts to regain his instincts and previous mindset and finding his place in them? God, that could’ve been great. And way more of how his adventures in TLO affect how he sees his previous experiences at Camp Jupiter and flipped. Instead, we can’t pinpoint anything about his character. He’s kind, gentle and cute. Okay, what else? I want something more to his character than that. If you asked me to describe his character, I wouldn’t know how. There aren’t a lot of defining characteristics in his personality  apart from the kind gentle thing and okay, maybe you could add that he’s a leader but on Jason, it’s more of a loose title he wears rather than a defining characteristic.

And his relationships as established in TLO. Okay, let’s talk about that.  Jason’s two main relationships are with Leo and Piper. 

With Piper, it’s more of a romantic sort. He sees her, knows they’re together, tries to get a feel for this girl and figure out what his feelings are towards her but assumes that if he does have them, they will definitely be on a romantic level. The thing with Jiper is that they could be great friends and we could see them bond as friends first and slowly reach the dating thing and you could argue that’s what Rick tries to do but it’s not well done. Jason’s thoughts on the subject don’t go far beyond ‘she’s cute, I wouldn’t mind dating her but I have a feeling I had some kinda thing going on w/ a girl back home’ while Piper can’t stop fixating on what she thought was a relationship with this guy and kinda just wants to get back there without redoing all the work which is admittedly understandable. They don’t really sit down and talk about this. They have moments but they don’t clear up what they think about each other and where they are with each other. And this is the most pushed, most shown dynamic between the trio of Jason, Leo, Piper. It leaves me dissatisfied and disinterested. The whole thing with Piper’s dad and that one other time they had a meaningful conversation was great but come on, that can’t be all they’re getting. We know they’ll end up together eventually, Jason mentions that he thinks she’s cute like on the second page but make it count. 

This leads me to talk about Leo. Finally. Personally I think TLO is Leo’s book to shine. When I forced myself to read through the book for this reread, it confirmed Leo as my fav out of this trio (So far, this is before his character was reduced to the sum of his love interests) Now before I talk about Leo in regards to Jason, I wanted to note that Leo came off as extremely non-hetero to me, more than usual. He keeps focusing on girls-and in a horribly shallow way- almost obsessively. It’s like he’s consciously forcing himself to think about it either in order to avoid thinking about something else or to just convince himself that he should have his eye on a girl in a romantic nature at all times. It sounds a lot like I used to and just confirms ace!Leo. 

Ok, now let’s actually talk about Jason and Leo. I hate it. Jason does this thing (less than Piper does but still) where he’s constantly wanting Leo out, there’s this general feeling that Leo is unwanted and only there to get in the way of Jason/Piper. Leo’s rarely deemed important enough to consider an equal, the honor goes to Piper. More often than not, he’s just there to be ‘annoying’. Though they keep talking and talking about how their great friendship, they never form one. Part of this is the fact that they don’t realize this is a problem that’s actually happening and part of it’s Jason and Piper’s unconscious attempts to put a distance there. I also feel like it acts to make Jason and Piper seem like an even stronger relationship in comparison to either of their dynamics with Leo but that could be just me. I’m not saying that Leo’s completely faultless here because he doesn’t do anything to resolve this though he constantly feels left out and like a third wheel despite his attempts to repress those feelings. Leo hides his pain with humor and as the story goes on, it feels as if he’s putting up more of a wall if anything because the he’s starting to feel hurt from the constant exclusion, enough that he can’t fully repress it. It sucks even more because if you think about it, they could be a great friendship. They both tend to repress their emotions, they don’t like sharing their personal feelings and thoughts with others, they’re a little slow to trust and that could help both of them, knowing someone who is like them and actively working together to get over/deal with those things together, a kin spirit in a way. Their surface differences would work to make it an even better relationship and we never see that. 

Jason/Piper/Leo are meant to be like Percy/Hazel/Frank but in terms of bonds, the SoN trio is miles ahead of our TLO group. Jason’s relationships with Piper and Leo respectively are far more flimsy and ill-formed than Percy’s with Frank and Hazel. And this situation doesn’t give Percy the advantage because it has nothing to do with the audience being familiar with the character and everything to do with the author and how the story is set up/written. Where SoN is great in how it introduces new, likable characters, TLO almost completely fails. Now, it is partially that TLO has to work with three new characters while SoN only had two but that doesn’t excuse the vast differences in character quality. 

Oh, before I end this post, I did want to talk Jason and Annabeth. One of my greater regrets, especially following the Mark of Athena and Annabeth’s distrust of Jason was that the relationship between the two didn’t ever go anywhere. Outside of a few moments, it was nonexistent. You’re telling me that TLO Jason would see this girl that should be familiar to him, if only because of her similarities to Reyna and not have an opinion on her above ‘she’s scary’? We know what his relationship was to be with Percy but Annabeth? I’d pay to see that; some kind of pivotal moment where her distrust of him leads somewhere or is played off or resolved or whatever. It could be one-sided or both with Jason being wary around this girl. And though Jason’s reformed to the Greek side, he’s apparently like still somewhat Roman? ( I don’t think he was really roman to begin with but whatevs) I wanna know though how a partial Roman/Greek would stand with Annabeth who out of the 7 is the only one that is completely unapologetically Greek; the only one who’s had as long of an experience at one camp as Jason has. Of course that would unsettle her a bit because she’s never wanted to be Roman and never will and she sees this guy who’s been going to one camp his entire life and you’re telling me she isn’t going to wonder how he could switch over so easily? AND, Annabeth not really liking Jason would def affect his relationship with Percy too. In short, those two could’ve been interesting. I’m not quite sure where I would’ve gone with it but it could’ve been interesting. And that’s all folks.