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aroaceleovaldez · 3 months

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hey! hope this isn't weird but i wanted to know why you think artemis wasn't up to standards even in the original pjo series. you reblogged from me and so i had front row to your tags on the post about zeus jaja i've not seen people talk a lot about her and it got me interested as i'm a classics student!

- @zoebelladona 🌙

HELLO OH BOY okay so I have half a rant already about Artemis in terms of Rick and general aphobic tropes in the series. see: that open letter on twitter. i still need to transfer that to tumblr. fun fact: Rick replied to that post but deleted his reply at some point. probably because two replies after he replied to my post and word-of-god confirmed Reyna to be ace-coded he left social media for a bit.

Fun times! Anyways.

The thing I dislike about Artemis as she's depicted in the series, besides her constantly appearing as a teenager and the aphobic tropes with that [see: open letter linked above] - which on some level is slightly more excusable than other examples given she's a goddess of young women, but given how he writes Athena, Hestia, and the Hunt instead leaves a bad taste in my mouth - and other similar aphobic tropes with her, is her whole weird anti-men thing (which is also, in itself, also an aphobic trope in this particular circumstance). I understand TTC was written in 2007 so that flavor of radical feminism that Artemis and the Hunt is clearly supposed to be was only just coming into major public awareness and the flaws in the ideology (and the inherent bigotry, particularly transphobia and racism that often comes with it) weren't as well recognized at the time. But in hindsight it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth for obvious reasons and is one of the things from the first series that severely aged poorly in my opinion, and I greatly dislike that in every subsequent retcon of the Hunt for other reasons Rick more or less retains that aspect.

Secondly... it doesn't make sense from a mythological standpoint? Because there are multiple examples of men being Hunters in Artemis' retinue. Even ignoring Orion, no matter how you go about shaking that stick (which for the record I really dislike how Rick retconned him in the series/wrote him in HoO), Hippolytus is a very notable example. Literally his big whole original shtick was he joined the Hunt because he didn't like romance and Aphrodite got so pissed about him not needing her (romance) that she killed him. And even when Aphrodite was trying to ruin his life he held on to his virtues and vow to Artemis (refusing advances even when his life was on the line). He is otherwise totally chill and devoted to Artemis. Some versions of his myth has Artemis have him resurrected after he dies (by Asclepius, which is why Asclepius is punished for reviving the dead). This also obviously doesn't address the major glaring logical flaw in Artemis hating all men which is... Apollo. Especially within the series he seems to be an exception for no reason, despite Artemis also very overtly having a "brothers are not an exception to the no-men rule." And from a modern queer standpoint, it obviously begs the question of stuff like gender identity within the Hunt and if you bring back the radfem stuff it gets real bad vibes real fast. Which also sucks when you particularly look at historical/mythological descriptions of Apollo and Artemis and how they very poignantly encompass defying gender roles and expectations particularly within their cultural contexts.

And every time Rick tries to retcon the Hunt, he somehow manages to make it kind of worse, particularly with the oath. I have a whole personal thing for how I think to best rectify all that nonsense in a way that isn't horrible and is related to some of Artemis' aspects in a more sensible way (buried somewhere in this monster of a post. Honestly i'd just recommend ctrl + f search "Hunters" on that post and it should be somewhere near the first ping there). In there I also go into some of my other thoughts for the general meh way the Hunt is written in the series, mostly being aphobic tropes and random death fodder.

So yeah. Basically, tl;dr: I am personally not a huge fan of how Artemis in the series is halfway to being a terf and chock-full of aphobic tropes. And I need Rick to stop retconning things into the ground.

#pjo #riordanverse #hunters of artemis #artemis pjo #analysis #< yeah sure it warrants that tag #ask to tag #zoebelladona #ask #i really need to transfer that open letter rant to tumblr #still amused that rick replied to it within like an hour of me posting it but clearly didnt read it #long post //#also heads up this is only like half-proofread cause i'm ill right now #so i apologize if it's nonsensical at all

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zoebelladona · 27 days

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PIA ZOEBELLADONA YOU ARE SO RIGHT !!!! the thaluke goggles NEED to be on. personally, i think it is entirely possible that luke knew about the fleece bc he had researched it priorly to attempt to save thalia from the fate she had been subjected to by zeus. the luke goes on a quest for the fleece is too real of a possibility if you ask me 😵‍💫

in canon i cannot decide if luke knew or not that the fleece could bring thalia back. if he didn't i see it this way: luke poisons thalia's tree so chb is given a quest to get the golden fleece so he can get the golden fleece and revive kronos, he always planned to let the questers take the fleece back after he was done with it because he wouldn't have let thalia's tree die that was never his objective, he did not want to kill thalia. if he did it's like you said: he poisons thalia's tree in a bit of a desperate attempt to find a magical object that, after doing some research, he realises can not only revive kronos but bring thalia back. did he blindly believe she would side with him? probably. but the point stays the same: luke did not plan to let thalia die, if she came back it was a bonus, he could not let thalia die.

which leads to my "luke goes on the fleece quest" fic. it's an au where luke does not join kronos and in a desperate attempt to free thalia from her fate he poisons her tree to be given a quest for the one object that could save her ✨️

#this is a personal gripe i have but i really cannot deal with the way luke is written in som #i remember very vividly that moment where he threatens to like. let his bodyguards crush annabeth and grover #y eso a mí no da idk #i really Really think rick should have leaned heavier on how annabeth and luke were basically siblings #i feel sometimes richard leaned too heavily into making luke cartoonishly evil #pero bueno no venimos a eso 🫶#also if luke at any point in som mentions he doesn't give a fuck about thalia's tree. i have not reread the book in a bit but...#i pretend i do not see 🫶#answered #pjo #thaluke #.txt

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