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forestmossling · 17 days

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okay, time for some serious caleo bashing (i’ve been gearing up for it for a while).

so we have leo valdez - admittedly the loneliest and saddest character in pjo (fuck people who think it’s nico because it’s not, and i can elaborate on that in another post if anybody wants me to). his entire character arc is formed by his loneliness - he loses his mother at a very young age, so he’s left without any real, loving family or any kind of safe, stable home for the majority of his adolescence, because foster care throws him around (or he himself is forced to run away) he doesn’t get an opportunity to form any real connections. and then, finally, he gets piper and jason. except he doesn’t, really, because they mostly ignore him in favor of dealing with their rocky relationship. he seemingly gets a family - the hephaestus cabin - but he quickly becomes a social pariah there too because of his abilities and general demeanor (which is, in fact, a coping mechanism). and yes, later on we see him getting on better with his siblings, but that doesn’t happen for a good long while.

his loneliness becomes even more glaringly obvious on argo II. i don’t think i have to remind you of the whole narcissus and echo ordeal. and the way absolutely everyone is paired off, except for him. so he’s basically abandoned by everyone throughout all of hoo - by his family (godly and otherwise) and by his friends and those he tries to befriend.

so how to fix that? how to rid leo of this staggering loneliness he carries around like a suffocating cloak three sizes too big? well, i would say, let’s improve platonic relationships on argo II and let these kids be friends with each other instead of just getting tangled up in all possible variations of romantic affairs. let leo visibly (ON SCREEN (or well, on page)) get closer to his godly siblings and find a family he longed for since he lost his mother. let him find out from reliable people who love him, that his powers and what happened to his mother don’t make him a monster. let him thrive in a safe environment where he isn’t pressured to play an entertainer just to be kept around, for once.

but what did rick decide? LET’S GIVE HIM A GIRLFRIEND!! let’s throw a cute girl at leo, blatantly ignoring the fact that most of his issues stem from lacking a loving family and genuine platonic companionship, none of which will be solved by a romantic relationship. and not just throw a girl at him - let’s dump him on a cursed island which magically forces the girl in question to automatically fall in love with anybody who lands on it. let’s leave caleo no other choice but to fall in love with each other, because calypso has no other way of getting off the ogygia and leo feels guilty about leaving her there alone and also she’s his only chance of survival. sure, why the fuck not.

and i understand why caleo would be attracted to each other. when they first met and when i first saw them slowly warming up to each other, i genuinely could see them becoming a badass power couple and had pretty high hopes for them.

but then they get off the island. and well. everything goes to shit. calypso resents leo for losing her immortality, and leo somehow? feels guilty about it??? (if memory serves me right. if it doesn’t, well, i have a lot more points i’m completely confident in). every time we see them talk to each other, it’s calypso throwing jabs at leo which aren’t returned in kind. and, i hate to break it to you guys, but if it’s one person just talking shit at another without another doing the same (very likely because leo’s afraid she will dump him just like everyone else did the moment he steps a foot out of line, which, again - is a VERY BAD FUCKING SIGN), that’s not flirty banter, that’s just straight-up bullying. and let’s not forget the great hits by calypso such as “oh my gods, he doesn’t experience empathy in all the same situations and the same way i do, he’s a heartless fucking monster. hey, leo, you’re a heartless fucking monster for not empathizing with people exactly the same way i do!”, when leo was explicitly shown to struggle with empathy and social interactions in general in canon, because it’s easier to deal with machines. again, largely because he had little to none healthy socialization growing up and he does feel empathy, but just expresses it differently. and i would hope that his actual girlfriend would know that about him and, instead of judging him for it, would learn how to work around it or at least understand that people can be different and that’s not a bad thing, especially when it comes to a person you (are supposed to) love. and even if it was an actual faux pas on leo’s side, i can let it slide because he’s a teenage boy with adhd. calypso, however, is not, and i really feel like a shit ton years old immortal sorceress should know better (and yes, the huge fucking age gap in a relationship with a minor, which is another can of worms entirely, but i will skim over it for now, because there are actually ways for it to be handled better, it just wasn’t).

and, however it looks like, i genuinely don’t have any particularly strong feelings about calypso outside of the way she treats leo. she was admittedly dealt an incredibly shit hand and all the continuously-getting-her-heart-broken-because-of-the-fucking-gods deal is a lot to get over. but that doesn’t excuse how she treats leo. it’s not even a question of “does she really love him?” for me, because i find myself wondering if she even likes him in general, just as a person. and that’s another giant fucking red flag.

their whole relationship just feels like rick incredibly carelessly tied his loose ends, like “oh! there are two characters i don’t know what to do with. well, let’s just smush them together. that will surely solve everything and let me get on with the rest of the story!” (and maybe not even carelessly but, dare i say, uncaringly)

but, okay, let’s say they’re both severely traumatized and just get off to a rocky start. alright. well, how will rick work on improving their relationship and finally resolving the issue of leo’s deep-seated loneliness? oh. he won’t. he will make them leave camp half-blood indefinitely. the place where leo found his first real family, where all of his friends are. where he was, for the first time in the series, shown some actual recognition, respect and care by the other campers (which they did by… hitting him. but considering all the demigods are weird with affection, i will let that one slide), just as he finally got close with his siblings. rick will make them stay at waystation and get a “normal teenage experience” by… going to high school. and i don’t think i’m wrong in assuming leo’s average high school experience prior to this was getting bullied and isolated. which will probably not change just because he goes to a new school in a city he doesn’t know with his girlfriend who hates him.

i’m sorry, but - WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK???

and i understand that letting himself believe that leo dating calypso and changing scenery would magically solve all of his problems was a lot easier for rick than laying huge groundwork for leo finally finding his place in chb and building a bunch of close interpersonal relationships with other campers that would let him feel at home somewhere at last and also breaking his problematic tendency of just pairing teenagers off with each other instead of letting them bond platonically. and i’m also not saying there aren’t A LOT of great platonic relationships written by rick (percy’s family and his friendship with grover, basically all of nico’s immediate circle, all of will’s immediate circle, i really was mostly talking about the argo II debacle there). but this feels a little bit too much like carelessly tying loose ends again for my comfort.

and it’s not like rick just doesn’t realize leo’s motivations and biggest struggles. he doesn’t just make leo a flat comic relief character: he encourages us to empathize with his loneliness and pain all throughout the journey on argo II, he forces us to notice how hard he takes being the seventh, always forgotten wheel. he just… doesn’t really do anything about it.

i am a firm believer in the fact that leo just didn’t need a romantic relationship at all throughout the series. it wouldn’t solve any of his issues (and romantic relationships shouldn’t be founded on the goal of solving anybody’s issues, that’s just a disaster waiting to happen), it would most likely distract him from building a wide and stable support system he actually needs and throw him headfirst into something he, in his current state, would not be equipped to properly deal with. but even if he did enter a romantic relationship at some point, it definitely shouldn’t have been the main point and the grand finale of his story, and it definitely shouldn’t have been with calypso. i can see him with frank (i genuinely remember reading their interactions in books and thinking that they would make a very interesting and fun couple with their dynamic, and the conflict of a guy whose literal survival depends on staying as far away from the fire/a guy who spontaneously ignites all the time would be really tasty and fun to explore, you could throw a good ol’ icarus and sun metaphor in there, but maybe that’s just me), hell, make it leo/frank/hazel (even though dating a guy you only seem to be attracted to because he’s a many-times-grandson of a boy you loved in the past doesn’t seem like a very good basis for a relationship, but at least she wouldn’t treat him the way calypso did). hell, i started really warming up to the idea of valgrace, because, even though their relationship wouldn’t have the time and space it needed to properly develop in canon (rip jason, i love you), they would have a really fucking cool and sweet dynamic. who if not jason grace can understand feeling lonely in a room full of people? who if not jason grace can appreciate leo for all the great things that he is while making him feel genuinely loved, instead of belittled? who if not leo can get jason to loosen up, make him realize he doesn’t have to carry the world of the whole world on his shoulders alone, become the ride-or-die jason never really got to have? but well, that’s me veering a little bit too much towards speculations, and i tried to work mostly with what canon had given us.

anyway. (i promise i’m almost done.) all of this doesn’t mean that i hate rick riordan - i admire his work on pjo, i really want to read the other series in riordanverse, and the sole fact that i had so much material to go through speaks for the immense work he does on giving depth to his characters. and i know he can write good romance: percabeth is one of the very few straight pairings i can not only stomach, but actually love immensely, solangelo is genuinely one of the best things to ever happen to this god-forsaken planet, in my humble opinion, and apollo’s entire history of past relationships has me obsessed (especially the commodus part. i cannot stress enough just how much feelings i have about their story). this is caleo bashing, not rick riordan bashing. but i just feel like he didn’t care enough to give the same carefully thought-out beautiful relationship to leo, and that, regretfully just happens sometimes, especially if there are as many important characters as in pjo, and we can’t really do anything about it. but as an unhinged leo valdez enjoyer and appreciator i’m very sad to see his story go that way, because he really deserves better.

and that’s about it!

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