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citrusreadstoa · 1 year

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Reading The Dark Prophecy: Chapter 19 (SPOILERS)

"You cannot commit murder. Any death you cause is the will of the gods and entirely beyond reproach." That's an... interesting take on things. I never thought of that before, but from a mortal's perspective, that might be the case. However, we are judging the PJO gods as people, and thus murder on their part is still murder.

"It's true I had laid waste to whole cities with my fiery arrows. I had inflicted countless plagues upon humanity." Yeah, I think individual murders are the least of your crimes and maybe these acts of mass destruction should be what you're repenting for instead. I guess the latter could be connected to the plague spirits and how some disease has to be let loose to keep them in check, but the "burning down whole cities" thing is still unnecessary. "Once Artemis and I slew a family of twelve because their mama said something bad about our mama." I know that myth. Queen Niobe. During a ceremony honoring Leto, she bragged that she shouldn't have to partake because she was superior, having seven sons and seven daughters (sometimes six of each, it varies). And then Artemis and Apollo killed all her children. And the dad either killed himself or was killed by Apollo. And then Niobe turned to stone. The end. This is vaguely linked to the seven girls and seven boys that were annually sent as sacrifices to the Minotaur. Anyway, this is still a tragedy and unbelievably petty, but still pales in comparison to all the other stuff Apollo and Artemis have done. Mostly Apollo, 'cause I haven't heard about Artemis causing too many natural disasters (though I'm pretty sure she sent a giant boar to trample a city once, don't quote me).

"None of that did I consider murder." You... you sure about that? Okay, the burning cities and plagues are just you carrying out your duties as the harbinger of natural disasters, but Niobe's family isn't murder? That was definitely murder.

"I was Narcissus, Caesar's trusted personal trainer." Eh? Same Narcissus as the reflection guy? I didn't know he was employed! So he must've been a trainer before he got cursed. If this is just another dude who just happens to be named Narcissus, I'm gonna sound real stupid... Nah, this is a valid question.

"We can take him" Oh no, so that's why what Meg said sent him spiraling.

"considering his mistress and prefect had poisoned his wine at lunch." Lmao is everyone around him just trying to kill him dead? Lemme guess: he grew paranoid when there wasn't any reason to be and then the violence from that paranoia became a self-fulfilling prophecy so people actually started trying to kill him because of how horrible he was and now the paranoia comes from actual danger.

Okay, I realized something last night: Commodus's character art kind of makes him look like the type of shady love interest you'd find in books/movies like 365 Days that, despite his violence and paranoia and lack of respect for boundaries, the leading lady will inevitably irrationally fall for, doesn't he? (This has nothing to do with the actual character; it's just what the character art reminds me of.)

"Not that he knew my true identity" Why doesn't Apollo visit him as himself?

"I'm done thinking about consequences!" He's done? Did he ever start thinking about the consequences to begin with?

"Then I closed my hands around his neck. 'I'm sorry.'" So what's it gonna be: drowning, strangulation, or snapped neck? How did Commodus get the chance to become a god if he died here? Are all the Triumvirate emperors escaped souls?

"You. Blessed. Me." Fuuuuuuuuck.

"I simply couldn't look at the surface of any pool without imagining Commodus's face, stung with betrayal, staring up at me." So, as a god, do you just keep accumulating regrets forever until you can't look at anything without remembering some horrible deed you did? 'Cause that sounds absolutely comical.

"WE CANNOT REMAIN." We cannot remain at the Waystation? It's not safe?

"his carotid pulse" CAROTID (n.): each of the two main arteries that carry blood to the head and neck / (adj.): relating to or denoting the two main arteries which carry blood to the head and neck, and their two main branches

"Was there anyone I hadn't betrayed and disappointed? Any relationship I hadn't destroyed?" No. Sorry, did that come out harsh? I'm sure there's at least, like, one singular-- no, probably not.

"I was Al's . . . liaison to the African American bootleggers." Again, how old was she when she joined the Hunters?

"I have no idea what that means." For a god of poetry, Apollo sure does let a lot of metaphors go over his head. I wonder if losing his powers somehow affected his reading/listening comprehension.

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child-of-helios · 2 months

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Calypso x Leo SUCKS, here is why

Look, I get why that sounds harsh, and it is, but hear me out.

First and most importantly, Calypso is a pedophile. We see her fall in love with 14 year old Percy, then 15/16 year old Leo. Already weird, right? And look, if we got some explanation as to why it would ever be okay for a titaness who is thousands of years old to fall in love with CHILDREN, maybe I could see past it.

BUT in the odyssey myth, Odysseus was MUCH older than a teenager. He was already noted to be an old wise king (who was old enough to feign madness from old age) at the START of the Trojan war. Now that war lasted 10 years and add to that the multiple years he spent traveling to Ithaca, and you got an old-ass man. So either Calypso was already a mature adult, or a child thirsting after some old dude. Sure, it happens, but weird. Let's not forget that Odysseus was married and very much still in love with his WIFE Penelope, but Calypso basically kept him hostage on her island and would not let him leave at all.

Now let's get to Percy, he got blamed for not making sure that the gods kept their promise??? Good sir that is a 16 year old who just got out of a WAR and had his memory stolen, of course he didn't check with the gods. ITS NOT HIS RESPONSIBILITY! He shouldn't be held accountable. Also let me remind you that Calypso wanted him when he was 14. Not a good look.

And finally, we get to Leo. Poor poor Leo. A boy who was oh-so starved for love that he took anything he could get, and that's my explanation as to why Calypso x Leo ever happened. Honestly, I adored Leo. I had a crush on him (still kinda do shhh), I won't lie. However, I also adored Annabeth but since her and Percy are amazing together, I could get behind Percabeth. But Caleo? Hell no. Sure, they have a fun dynamic, but it's more of a sibling dynamic in my opinion. I would've rather had Leo x Khione or something. Maybe Leo x Echo cause that would've been adorable. But Caleo??? No. He should've never gone back for her. Leave her to rot.

Secondly, Calypso is simply a jerk. And I'm the type of person who adores asshole characters when done right. Octavian is great because he's an irredeemable asshole AND he gets karma. But Calypso? She's a bitch and gets such a kindhearted boyfriend in return. Like I said, she tried to pressure a (married) man into sleeping with her and is simply a dick to Leo (HER BOYFRIEND) and I could understand if they were siblings, cause siblings are dicks to eachother with love underneath, but she just sucks. She immediately hated him, which she has reason to do after what happened to her, but even after that she was just horrible to Leo. I seriously don't see why he loves, likes, or even tolerates her.

In conclusion, I hate what Rick did to Leo. I adore his stories like no other (which is why I'm so passionate about this), but he really fumbled the bag here. Calypso is just not a good fit for Leo.

Personally I really do prefer Leo x Jason, Leo x Nico or even Leo x Echo. And yes it does sound weird for me to say that considering that I call Calypso a pedo, but I could see Echo not being able to age normally because of being stuck with Narcissus. Echo x Leo is in my opinion much better than Calypso x Leo.

Um sorry- that was really mean but I needed to say that.

On a lighter note I saw this really long worm which was cool! :D

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serene-winter · 25 days

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it's 12 am, currently thinking about Echo from Mark of Athena

#ok i love calypso and all but caleo?? hahah... no...#leo and echo... i miss them... :((#Leo could've had a partner that didnt berade or insult him every 5 minutes but noOOO they decide to leace echo with narcissus #Leo and Calypso give off sibling vibes with the way the bicker #Leo and Echo had more chemistry in one chapter than Leo and Calypso in multiple #ok im done with my rant now #pjo #percy jackson #hoo #heroes of olympus #leo x echo #leo valdez

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rosesradio · 6 months

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[mark of athena, page 114] just throw the whole book away 🧍

#this was proceeded by 113 pages of ‘oh my new boyfriend/girlfriend! oh the gods are Being Schizophrenic 👀’ & other fun things #some things didn’t age well others are just straight up problematic 🫠#sometimes i forget how much i adjust the characters in my fic to make them not…like this #but yk what? the ehco/narcissus/Hot Stuff scene still fucks lmao #pjo #rr crit #just in case

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cyberphantompuppy · 7 months

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Narcissus, staring at his own reflection:

So Elegaant..... so Beautiful........ just looking like a WAOW

#desiblr #desi tumblr #desi #desi memes #adhd #desi tag #adhd post #txt #pjo adaptation #pjo hoo toa #heros of olympus #greek mythology #mythology and folklore #narcissus

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bethordnz · 5 months

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why do we never talk about echo ? like the poor girl was left alone w no one but NARCISSUS. i would have went mad, i have no idea how she stayed sane.

#percy jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #pjo #hoo #echo #greek mythology #narcissus

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artemx746 · 4 months

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Just thought of Godswap au where Hazel is a child of Nemesis and am now thinking about that scene in MoA with that and now I am sad

#Hazel’s also 15 in this au #It has no change to the plot but I felt the need to say it #pjo #percy jackon and the olympians #nemesis (pjo)#Nemesis using Narcissus as some sort of example of what would happen if Hazel ended up disappointing her

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i-didnt-do-1t · 2 years

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A poem about Will Solace and the burden of responsibility

He turns his hatred to the sun.

Every taste of salt and heaving breath and burning chest,

His fingertips are blue, ironic in their mockery of the sky

As cold as the metal frozen to his hands,

Sharp and unforgiving,

A scalpel glare and red-rimmed eyes.

He turns his hatred to the sun.

In the understanding he cannot wound it,

Anchored and resolute.

And he is green with the burning need to thaw,

His chest aches for the same warmth he exudes with every silent glance and soft touch

Despite cracking collar bones and fracturing shoulders that press him to the ground

He turns his hatred to the sun.

The mutual understanding is swallowed with water

He is intimate with the arrogance of Narcissus but will drown willingly

If it means other mouths don’t go dry

#will solace #please ask me about my poems meaning I have so many thoughts lmao #percy jackson series #heroes of olympus #pjoverse #pjo #nico pjo #pjo will #not saying he’s arrogant like narcissus was #but we love an extended metaphor about how he feels he’s arrogant not always wanting this responsibility #and how he sees himself in the sun #he hates it but he understands he is like it #a reflection if you will #and that is the reason for our narcissus imagery #percy jackson #trials of apollo #poetry #the burden of responsibility

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forestmossling · 16 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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