#probably didnt have them as a kid :[ but ruby was like 'he should have just quit the jedi thing and become a pod racer' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

iamaweirdbeing · 2 years

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@p-bubblegum @rubies-nightinga1e @housecatdahousecat and @celtic-sword requested elaborations on this post

Buckle up bc this is going to be a long one (no seriously this is so long I probably should have made this more than one part) and I combine some explanations so not every bullet has one

- The version of Artemis in featured in the series is one of the most manipulative and selfish gods we see in any of the books

My example for this one will be the lovely Bianca di Angelo, because I think she is the most complicated example of this and then I will connect what I think are the more blatant examples.

Bianca was sent into the entire world of the gods blind. This isn’t odd, all of the characters are shown to either be raised to know about the gods and what life will be like as a demigod or they are drop kicked into this world when a monster tries to murder then. The di Angelos experienced the latter.

The thing about Bianca is that she joined the hunters after only like twenty minutes of knowing them. A twelve year old girl who just experienced one of the most traumatic things to have ever happen to her is in no position to be making major life decisions. Artemis (Percy Jackson Artemis only, in most myths she is wonderful) is SO MANIPULATIVE.

All of the other major choices Bianca is shown to make or have made in the past portray her as a very maternal and responsible person. She has taken care of Nico for years, she accepted the quest immediately when asked because she thought it would help people, she was willing to die for her mistake in the scrapyard, HER JOINING THE HUNTERS AND LEAVING NICO ALONE JUST SEEMS SO OUT OF CHARACTER.

Personally, I blame Artemis completely. There is no way that Bianca could have been given a proper explanation of the hunters in the time she was with them. I just don’t believe it. All the information we know for sure that Bianca knows is that the hunters are conditionally immortal, they are all girls around the same age as Bianca or younger (Zoe is described to be the physically oldest there and she is only like fourteen), the hunters go after monsters, and they have a cabin at camp. I think that the cabin is the main piece of information that causes problems because when Bianca tells Nico she is a hunter she tells him they will still see each other often, meaning she is unaware of how the hunters actually work and how little they actually stay at camp half blood.

BIANCA DIDNT REALIZE THE EXTENT THAT SHE WAS LEAVING NICO AND NO ONE CORRECTED HER

Another reason I blame Artemis and not Bianca is be ARTEMIS IS A GODDESS. Bianca just met a goddess who saved her life. She is a terrified twelve year old. Was she just supposed to say no??? to an all powerful goddess she knows nothing about other than she just saved her life??

Bianca just watched a monster who looked like a trusted teacher tackle a girl barely older than herself off a cliff and vanish. She was probably in the most terrified state she had ever been in and Artemis just jumps in to make her a hunter (it also bothers me that all three girls in PJO we see become hunters, those girls being Zoe, Bianca, and Thalia, are all very young girls who join almost immediately after going through something awful, Zoe being betrayed by Hercules and Thalia being told that she either had to join the hunters or become the prophecy kid after she thought she just killed her childhood best friend, with no time truly think about their decision). Then Bianca was chosen by an authority figure she trusted to go on a quest that she didn’t understand with no training where she died.

Bianca was killed because those around her failed to teach her about being a halfblood and Artemis manipulated her by using power and fear against her so that she would join the hunters. I’m willing to bet that a lot of other demigod kids died for those same reasons.

- Luke can be blamed for a lot of things but starting a child army is not one of them, he didn’t create a child army he stole Chiron’s

I’m not going to get into all of my thoughts about what Luke does in the series bc we do not have time for that, so I’m going to explain what he didn’t do. He did not start a child army. The titan army was in part a child army, it was also a monster and god army, but there were a lot of child soldiers.

However, Luke was not the one to create an child army, Chiron did that. Camp Half-Blood is not as obvious as Camp Jupiter with the child army thing, but Chiron is known to train “heroes”. In pjo the gods are well aware that a war is coming and none of them try to stop it. Chiron is also aware that a war is coming, so the “heroes” he’s training are children he’s knowingly preparing for war.

Luke’s army is made from campers who defected from Chiron’s army, so Luke can’t be blamed for starting a child army, just for leading one, because that army is just made up of Chiron’s child soldiers.

- on that note Chiron sucks

- his favoritism and him ignoring the mental health of the campers is why the second titan war got as bad as it did

- It’s also the reason that Nico suffered as much as he did

Chiron has favorites. This is shown in the way that he personally advises some of the main characters (Percy and Annabeth) but others are left ignored. Not that this is referenced within the books bc Percy is the narrator and as a favorite who is only a seasonal camper, he is not in a position to recognize the favoritism. He also only trains a select few of them, Luke and other head counselors were the ones training kids. Now I understand that Chiron is only one person so he can’t train everyyone, but that’s just even more proof that the kids he trains are his favorites. As for ignoring the mental health of his campers, it is obvious that campers are not getting the help they need because of the actions they take throughout the series. (He locked Chris Rodriguez in a basement while he was having a mental break and a fouteen year old Clarisse was the one who looked after him, I think that says a lot)

My examples for this will be Nico and Luke bc I think they are the most extreme cases of this. When Bianca dies, Nico, a highly powerful, grieving, suicidal, ELEVEN YEAR OLD is homeless for an entire YEAR. Chiron never went looking for him, never provided him with healthy ways to grieve, and was more concerned with Nico being a child of Hades than he was with Nico being a hurting child who he was responsible for. Chiron never even helped to make him feel included at camp after the second titan war which made him run away again. Similarly, he never helped Luke through the grieving process. It was made clear in the books that, leading up to his betrayal (especially after his quest) Luke was not acting normal. Chiron never checked on him or tried to help him. Chiron was aware that there was a war coming and never thought to check on the campers who were very obviously not coping well mentally.

Imagine if you were Nico or Luke and the person you cared about more than anyone in the world died, and your new caretaker didn’t give a shit aside from general empathy that doesn’t actually help you in any way. Chiron is in charge of these kids. He’s supposed to RAISE these kids for their parents. He doesn’t do that, he raises some of them and leaves the rest to raise themselves and raise their siblings. If Chiron actually did his job, Luke might not have been Kronos’s pawn, way less campers would want to join the titan army, and Nico wouldn’t have ran after the first war, because they would have had a home with a stable parental figure who they trusted.

- By contrast I think that Mr. D is one of the most caring of the gods and the way he acts towards the campers is his loophole around Zeus’s rules

- Like he acts as a therapist for Nico and it’s implied that he does the same for other campers, he does care for them

Mr. D might act like he hates his job and hates the kids, but he is actively helping them in any way that he can while playing up that persona. And that persona is how he’s not getting in trouble with Zues, so long as he seems like he hates interacting with the kids he can keep doing it because Zues thinks it’s a punishment. He healed Chris, he plays games with campers, he PROVIDES THERAPY, HE CLAIMS ALL HIS KIDS. He does more than any other god, and more than Chiron does, for a lot of kids. I think that the reason it’s a little more difficult to tell with this is because he puts in a little less effort with Chiron’s favorites, who are the narrators and main characters so it’s their POV that we are getting, because he’s trying to help the campers who don’t have anyone else.

- Percy’s hatred of Luke is something I have a lot of thoughts on- I think it shapes a lot of his opinions of people and makes him oblivious to how similar he and Luke are/how much logic they share

- Like I think Thalia and Percy getting along is entirely dependent on Percy ignoring how intertwined Luke and Thalia’s lives were

- I don’t think Percy understands anyone grieving Luke and the only person he tries to be empathetic towards in regards to that grief is Annabeth

Percy tends to ignore Luke. After getting Luke a proper funeral because of a final heroic act that he respects, Percy never really thinks about Luke again. If he does, it’s not in a positive light. Him ignoring Luke is how he’s able not not see how similar their logic is. They share a lot of the same opinions about the gods, but bc of his fatal flaw Percy associates Luke with betrayal and war instead of their shared opinions. This also makes it hard for Percy to empathize with Luke, which causes the hatred and resentment, and makes it hard for him to understand those who grieve for him. An example of this being how he tries to empathize with Annabeth grieving for Luke without thinking about Luke as anything more than a person who hurt her and others.

If we apply this to Percy’s opinion and perception of Thalia, that means Percy has to ignore a huge part of her life in order to make his feelings about Luke make sense.

It’s said by Annabeth in the books that she thinks Percy and Thalia will either get along really well or try to kill each other, but the former is what actually happens after some time

Percy and Thalia get along on a personality level, but Percy is also shown to not understand why Thalia cares for/grieves Luke. In ttc he doesn’t understand and actually gets mad at her for crying over Luke while they’re on their quest to get Annabeth and Artemis back. Thalia is not Thalia without Luke just like how Luke is not Luke without Thalia. They grew up together, fought together, fought for each other, and care more deeply about each other than either is shown to care for anyone else. In fact the betrayal is the only thing that truly shifts those feelings. They are such important pieces in each other’s live that it took a war for their relationship to shift.

Percy doesn’t understand what Luke and Thalia were to each other and he doesn’t want to. He wants to be friends with Thalia, but he won’t compromise his opinion and ignorance of the person Luke was to do it. So he ignores how connected Luke and Thalia are in order to do just that.

- I don’t think it makes sense for Thalia as a character to stay a hunter after she learned Jason was alive

Thalia became a hunter for the immortality so that she wouldn’t have to become the child of the prophecy. I’ve already talked about how I think that Artemis manipulates young traumatized girls into joining the hunters, that combined with the fact that Thalia was very much against joining the hunters for all of ttc proves she never actually wanted to be a hunter. When she no longer has to worry about the prophecy and she gets her brother back, there is no way that she would choose the hunters, who she didn’t want to be a part of in the first place, over her family.

- I think a majority of camp half blood campers (like those who aren’t his friends) are afraid of Percy

Percy is objectively terrifying. He helped win two wars, survived tartarus, has threatened gods, was offered godhood, and has been described as looking incredibly intimidating. There is no way that campers who have never interacted with him before aren’t scared of him. And he’s a seasonal camper, he’s not around enough for most campers to have interacted with him so that they aren’t afraid of him.

- Will Solace hates Percy Jackson and you cannot convince me otherwise

Percy Jackson lead the two battles that ended in Will losing his older brothers. Are those deaths Percy’s fault, they aren’t, not really, but Will is a child who is going to blame someone. That someone is most likely going to be Percy because he was the child of the prophecy and because Percy was incredibly insistent that Will heal Annabeth during the battle of Manhattan while Michael Yew was MIA and dying.

Moving on to stuff that WAS Percy’s fault. Percy tried to strangle Nico di Angelo. It’s not that Nico wasn’t doing anything wrong, it’s not that Percy didn’t have a right to be mad. It’s that Percy was almost SIXTEEN and his response to and to Nico’s mistake was to strangle him. Nico was TWELVE. Yes he was wrong to do what he did, and yes Percy was still a kid, but a sixteen year old knows better, a twelve year old who’s incredibly mentally unstable and has been practically homeless for two years doesn’t.

Nico would tell his boyfriend what happened and Will would understand what was wrong with that situation even if Nico does not. Will would not forgive Percy for that, especially bc Percy has never tried to make it right. So yeah I think Will hates Percy.

- Cabin 11 never recovers from the second titan war and it is Hermes fault, Luke hurt them, Hermes’s actions made it so they would never recover

- I do not think a single child of Hermes likes their father, there will never not be resentment there

Cabin 11 shatters after the titan war. Luke raised and trained everyone in that cabin. They are probably never going to be trusted by the camp the same way ever again, they are probably never going to trust themselves and each other the same way ever again. After all of the hell that was the second titan war, Hermes doesn’t change. He doesn’t interact with them, or raise them, or even do anything more than claim them (which is a requirement because of Percy’s demands after the war). Cabin 11 breaks because of Luke’s betrayal and the war, but Hermes’ not changing his ways after all the pain he caused is what chatters them. And they all hate him for it.

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