i think a lot of people (especially those who haven’t read the books) are underestimating Hades
yes, he presents as the sassy queer uncle who’s done with his family’s drama, but he’s not “just some guy”
when his Helm is stolen, no one knows about it. he uses his own resources and orchestrates a plan to bring Percy to the underworld alive, all while managing an entire freaking kingdom
he doesn’t threaten war because he doesn’t have to and he knows it. unlike Zeus, he keeps a level head and thinks about the situation logically
think about Percy’s priorities throughout the show, look at what the flashbacks are teaching us about him and his relationship with others. think logically. this is a 12 year old kid who grew up with a single mom and no friends
his priority is his mom, it’s always been his mom and Hades knows that. Percy’s worst fear is losing his mother and Hades uses that against him
he takes Sally before Poseidon claims Percy because he has eyes everywhere. he already knew who Percy was and he already had a plan formed before Percy even set foot in camp
when he greets Percy and Grover he isn’t surprised, relieved, or agitated because he planned this. he knew that Percy would come to him whether by force or by his own choice (for my book readers, think about this in comparison to how Zeus reacts to the situation. Zeus comes off as desperate and angry, whereas Hades is at ease. annoyed, sure, but never panicked)
when he offers them pomegranate juice it’s in the guise of politeness and humour but it has an underlying meaning. Percy knows the stories about Hades and Hades knows that he knows. the pomegranate juice is a reminder, it’s Hades demonstrating his power without outright threatening Percy. it’s him going “I can make something as small as a pomegranate seed into a weapon” it’s him asserting his dominance and control over the situation
he leads them to a seating area clearly made for their arrival. another reminder that he knew they were coming and Sally stands, frozen in the middle of it as a reminder of what they have to lose
when he learns that it’s Kronos behind the robberies he immediately offers sanctuary to Percy, Grover, and his mom. Kronos, the king of titans, the father of all Gods, and a being who could once tear the world in two with the snap of his fingers, wants Percy, and Hades offers to protect him because he’s that powerful
so yes, Hades makes dad jokes and he talks in a way you wouldn’t expect an all-powerful being to talk, but he isn’t “just some guy”
he’s powerful, he knows it, and he shows just enough of that power to absolutely terrify Percy
10K notes
·
View notes
“Come here, you dweeb. Let me fix it.”
Will pouts, dragging his feet over and slumping half on top of him. Nico allows it with a smile and a roll of his eyes, pinching Will’s shoulder. He doesn’t react except for a wounded noise, muffled in Nico’s lap, so the situation is evidently quite dire.
“It’s just hair, Will.”
“But I worked on it!” He shifts around until he’s got his head in Nico’s lap, face turned towards him, body curled up on the grass around him. Nico brushes his tangled bangs off his forehead, meeting his big sad eyes. “I spent forty minutes with a stupid brush! And yet!”
“And yet,” Nico agrees, unable to appropriately school is face into one of somber understanding. Will scowls at him for his lack of proper sympathy, a little bit of genuine hurt in his eyes, so Nico leans down and kisses right between his brows in apology. He seems mollified, if only slightly, or at least he leans into Nico’s touch and stops mumbling quite so much.
“‘S’not fair.”
“Mhm.“
“Your hair listens to your instructions.”
“Yep.”
“Even Cecil’s hair listens to him, and no one listens to Cecil.”
Nico purses his lips thoughtfully. “I think Austin listens to Cecil.”
“Yes, I know. It’s an ongoing issue. I’m trying to train him out of it.”
“And how’s that going?” Nico murmurs, curling a strand of golden blond hair around his finger.
“Oh, well, I’m doing my best, so of course it’s going horribly.”
Nico snorts. He resists the urge to hold his palms to Will’s cheeks and kiss every single freckle at light speed, because he will screech something about how Nico is one-upping him in the romance department or something stupid like that. Instead he settles for looking at his dumb dramatic boyfriend’s face and marvelling over the fact that the cutest boy in the entire world, and Nico is being totally objective, hunts around camp until he finds whatever tree Nico is hiding under and curls up into a ball around him and trusts Nico to hold him while he complains about stupid things that genuinely hurt his feelings a little. It’s nice. So many people at camp are still so rigid around him, like he’s collecting information for their judgement day or something. Will prefers to exercise his lesser-known Apollonian talent of being a bigger drama queen than the god himself.
“Stay still,” Nico says softly, moving Will around so he’s laying perpendicular to Nico, now, head centered in his lap and staring up at the sky. Will sighs and squirms a little and turns his head to press a kiss to Nico’s knee, scrunching up his face and releasing it, and then settles in the position.
Humming something soft that exists on the fringes of his foggy memories, he sinks his hands into Will’s hair.
“It’s not that bad,” he promises, moving slowly and pausing whenever he comes across a knot.
Will harrumphs.
“I mean it, Marilyn Monroe. You can tone down the histrionics.”
“I used gel.”
Nico flicks a dried clump of it onto Will’s forehead, amused. “I can see that.”
“I followed every single one of Mitchell’s instructions!”
“I bet.”
“And yet!”
“And, yet.”
Nico has a sneaking suspicion that someone made a comment about Will’s hair, in the last few weeks. He can never confirm it and Will has been shifty about it every time he asks, but Nico has noticed the uptick in hoods and hats the past month and his little flinches every time Nico reaches up and tugs on it. Despite being oddly confident about the oddest things — why he is so proud of being able to fit his fist in his mouth, Nico will never know — Will is very sensitive to how people think of him. He needs to know he’s liked, and when people don’t like him, he gets…desperate, pleasing. The opposite of Nico, who becomes worse in an attempt to push them away on his own terms.
Nico leans down and presses a long, lingering kiss to his forehead.
“I like your hair, you know.”
“It’s a stupid mess.”
He smooths down a handful of it, pressing it over Will’s eye. He manages to keep a straight face for one, two, three seconds before he huffs a laugh, batting Nico’s hands away. Nico grins.
“I like the stupid mess.”
“Yeah, well, you like a lot of weird things.”
“Like you?” Nico suggests, pressing another kiss to the tip of his rounded nose.
“Shut up.”
Another strange thing about him, that Nico has to duck his head to hide his automatic smile: he gets embarrassed easily.
Nico never expected it of him, with all the dorky, medical-themed pickup lines and general shamelessness in his affection towards everybody on Earth, but especially Nico. When the poking, prodding attraction is turned on him, however, he shuts down like an overloaded Playstation. Nico can sometimes see the error messages playing behind its eyes. It’s hilarious.
“Will.” He pokes him in the cheek. “Hey.”
“What,” Will grumbles.
“I think you’re beautiful.”
Watching the slow spread of red from below the collar of his shirt to the roots of his hair is a delight. Nico watches in glee, wrestling Will’s hands away when he tries to slap them over his face.
“Shut up! Leave me alone! Go — flirt with somebody else!”
“You’d curse them to speak in rhymes for ten years,” Nico teases.
Will makes an agonised noise. “Who! Asked you! Shut up!”
“You’d sic Kayla on anyone who so much as winks at me, you jealous bitch.”
“I would not!”
“You would so. You rolled your eyes at everything Percy said for three weeks when you found out I used to crush on him —”
“I did not!”
“— and you didn’t even have the balls to ask me out, back then.”
“You are a — peddler of falsehoods! A prevaricator, a perjurer, and a fabulist!”
“And you sound like you swallowed a thesaurus,” Nico snickers. He catches the hand Will flails at him, pressing a kiss to the wrist, which only serves to fluster him more. He decides to take mercy when the kisses he trails down his arms result in one loud, long, tortured screech, pulling back and giving him some space.
Notably, he doesn’t move from Nico’s lap.
“I like it,” Nico admits, once Will has calmed down some. “I like that you’ve liked me for so long.”
Will peeks through the fingers he has covering his eyes. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Yes.” Nico squeezes his shoulders. “And endearing, which seems to be your sweet spot.” He presses a much softer kiss to the underside of Will’s ear, lingering there until he sighs, slumping under all the tension finally leaving his body. “I love you, Will. I love your clumsiness and your rambles and your nose and your freckles and your awkwardness and your jealousy and your hair and I love you, Will, all of you. Even the embarrassing weird parts.” He kisses him again. “Especially the weird parts.”
Will breathes slowly, carefully, evenly, face pressed to the inside of Nico’s thigh. His long eyelashes tickle his skin. Nico can feel the press of his Adam’s apple when he swallows, pulsing against his calf.
“I never thought you were a freak.”
Nico brushes his knuckles over his cheek. “I know.”
“I used to — talk about you. All the time. And your oxytocin levels.”
He smiles.
“I know.”
“Lee had a — chart.” Some of the flush rises back up in his cheeks. “A ‘Days Since We’ve Heard About Di Angelo’ chart.”
Nico bites his lip. Hard.
“The number never got higher than six.”
“…I am trying really, really hard, Will.”
Will sighs.
“You can laugh.”
Nico cracks up, trying desperately to muffle his giggles in his bitten fist. It doesn’t work very well, but the glare Will sends him is somewhat softened by the smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“Gods, you are — a mess.”
“Mhm.”
Nico cups the side of his face. Will turns, slightly, enough to press a kiss to the centre of his palm and then stay there, eyes closed, breathing against his sword-callused skin.
“I love you too, by the way. Obviously.”
“I know.”
“Don’t Han Solo me, you bastard.”
“Go ahead and try to stop me,” Nico challenges, grinning into the passionately indignant kiss Will presses to his lips, finally, letting Nico curl his hands in his hair.
526 notes
·
View notes
Raph Is A Great Strategist
Numerous times in the show Raph has shown to have a preference for straightforwardly punching his problems away rather than think up a more complex solution. Like how his immediate fix to getting Mayhem out of the mirror in Mystic Library was to punch everything in the bathroom but the mirror. However, when Raph understands the situation requires more in depth strategy, he’s shown to be an incredibly capable tactician.
(long post ahead!)
In nearly all the plot heavy episodes like Shadow of Evil, Many Unhappy Returns, and the season finales, Raph gets moments where he’s highlighted for his strategic thinking. In Insane in the Mama Train, he’s the one who figures out which eyeball-button goes to the front car with the dark armor, because “‘it was the only button [the Foot Clan] didn’t want me to press!’” [21:05]. He’s also the one who came up with the scheme to defeat all the (known) combatants in the train, with Leo specifically attributing Raph as the deviser during their mind meld [19:46]. In Many Unhappy Returns, after spending a single night waylaying the Shredder, Raph formulated a plan using all the tricks the team learned, seamlessly transitioning the mystic collar Leo acquired into it [19:53], to defeating the Shredder. Additionally, he’s repeatedly called for a retreat during fights, like in Shadow of Evil, Shreddy or Not (Finale pt 2), and the movie, when he can tactically recognize that a battle couldn’t be won. Each time, the show/movie implied that that was the right call, for the family to lose the fight but win the war.
And it’s not just that Raph is good at strategy when he’s pushed to be more serious; the show characterizes him as passionate about creating plans, he enjoys doing it. Literally in the first episode, Mystic Mayhem, after the turtles’ initial plan failed of getting Splinter out of the living room to touch his Do-Not-Touch Cabinet, Raph immediately started devising a new plan that involved “ten chickens [and] a gallon of rubber cement” [9:35]. It was convoluted, sure, and they didn’t end up using it, but it was inventive and the opposite of reluctant. This is also shown in Bug Busters, where Raph planned out dousing Mikey in honey to attract the oozequitoes [2:52]; Snow Day, with the idea to freeze Ghost Bear like in Jupiter Jim Pluto Vacation 4; and Raph’s Ride-Along (and also Bad Hair Day), where Mind Raph created multiple schemes to get the criminals arrested. The show wouldn’t have made Raph be so creative with his plans if they were trying to characterize him as someone who didn’t like strategizing.
So does why Raph do stupid shit sometimes where he doesn’t think things through at all? Well, even though Raph is good at strategy and enjoys doing it, it’s clear his immediate impulse is still “punch the problem in the face”. In fact, all the turtle boys contain the fascinating dichotomy of being incredibly smart in some areas, and the dumbest teenagers alive in others. Just look at Donnie. It’s also how Raph is a loving protective older brother, and the guy who shoved Leo into a wall so hard he disappeared in one frame for shits and giggles (The Mutant Menace x). None of this means that Raph is bad at strategy though.
tldr: Yeah, Raph has a lot of dumb and, frankly, insane moments in the show, but he’s still an incredible tactician who’s plans consistently saved his family and sometimes the world. He's a great strategist.
908 notes
·
View notes