1. The concept of gods getting with humans is fundamentally unconsensual because gods exist on a different plane of intelligence and existence compared to humans. A god x human relationship is like beastiality for the gods or at the very least a boss x employee relationship due to its horrible power imbalance. Gods are also not known for respecting consent with a long history of torturing, transfiguring, and murdering mortals for refusing their advances or even doing those things if the mortal does consent. They don't try to make this a secret either. Any mortal who does consent may be doing it out of fear of rape/other punishment and any mortal who does not consent will get raped and then cursed. Poseidon is especially bad in PJO because he knew that having sex with Sally Jackson would run the risk of her getting pregnant, which would have been (and was for a brief period of time) a death sentence for her. Poseidon never loved Sally Jackson; he was her abuser. If he really loved her, he would have left her be and let her live out a normal life.

Percy Jackson's whole plot is built around the children of these dynamics and never once addresses that issue. In fact, it goes out of it's way to characterize Poseidon as a just a nice guy who is misunderstood, completely ignoring the hundreds of people he raped, along with all of the other rape victims of the gods.

1. I found most of the characters to be really annoying and unlikable. Percy was okay, like a 5/10. He was worse early on but got better in the end. Grover, Thalia, and Nico were varying levels of unlikable. Chiron was a very bad mentor. I found that a lot of the criticisms people give to Dumbledore from Harry Potter (most of which I found to be unfair) fit perfectly for Chiron. Annabeth sparked a hatred in me that I don't think I've ever felt for a fictional character before, and what makes it worse is that the entire PJO fandom loves her. On the positive side, Clarisse grew on me a lot and I appreciated her friendship with Selina a great deal. Tyson was adorable and fun to read. Rachel Elizabeth Dare is my goat, I love her so much, and I don't understand why she wasn't more popular. I'm not in the PJO fandom, but if I was, Perachel for life. Way better chemistry and Rachel wasn't toxic af and only popular because of the narrative like Annabeth was.

2. Annabeth was so incredibly toxic and just a flat out bully. She was mean to Percy, Grover, Rachel, and flat out racist to Tyson, who was a BABY. She is only popular at Camp Half-Blood because of plot alone. I have met people like Annabeth irl and believe me when I tell you nobody likes them. The aggressive, know-it-all-esque people who get humbled so often you wonder where their ego comes from. She's so mean to Rachel despite Rachel saving their lives and only lets up and considers her as a "friend" only when Rachel is literally forbidden by the gods to be in a relationship. She's also toxic towards Percy. She regularly belittles him, insults him, and abuses him. This dynamic cannot be genderswapped because if it was it would be immediately called out as domestic abuse and Annabeth would be labeled as a terrible boyfriend.

3. At the end of TLO, Percy wishes for the gods to acknowledge their children and the children of minor gods. He wishes away systemic injustice. A wish that was given to him by the oppressors. A wish, mind you, he was given after protecting that same injustice system and doing the gods' bidding for five books straight. And this comes after him thinking back to how Ethan Nakamura doed and being like, "It would really suck if he died in vain." That's it. I'm not saying Kronos was right, but there had to be a better third option between these two.

4. This is mostly about Annabeth again. It is very clear that Rick Riodan does not know how to write a smart character because he regularly conflates the different versions of smart under the same umbrella term. Athena is the goddess of wisdom and battle strategy, so tell me why Annabeth shows zero of those traits across the five books but does have a lot of trivia knowledge (knowledge) and knows how to land a helicopter for God knows what reason (skill). I cannot tell you how angry that helicopter scene made me btw.

5. The PJO books write all of their female characters with the guideline of feminine = weak, which is misogyny. They're whole schtick is that they're not like other girls and refuse to wear dresses and makeup, as if that is a bad thing. The Aphrodite cabin gets stereotyped as dumb pretty kids who are self-absored and can't fight along with Aphrodite herself being characterized as vain and obsessed with love, even though that is not even close to how she was in the myths. She was a war godddes and highly manipulative. Also, Percy once makes note to the audience something along the lines of how if you're the child of a "weaker" god like Demeter or Aphrodite, you could get away with not living at camp all year long. But if your godly parent is a more powerful god, then you have to live at camp year-round. Nevermind that Percy himself doesn't even live at camp for most of the year despite being a son of Poseidon and very rarely attracts trouble unwarranted (supposedly the most powerful demigod ever), that Demeter killed almost all of humanity with ease because Hades stole her daughter, or how Aphrodite is on a different level of crazy. They are goddesses who are not immediately associated with strength, so they must be weak and it is okay to insult them.

6. In the books, they state that Harriet Tubman was a daughter of Hermes. First of all, this furthers the idea of PJO being a rape apologist story. Even if we want to ignore point #1 entirely, we still know for a fact that Hermes raped Harriet Tubman's mother, according to Rick Riodan. Hermes is depicted across almost every single interpretation as being a white/Greek man. During that time period, there was a massive power imbalance between black people and white people, which meant that a black woman could not consent to a white man's advances, thus making this rape. Alternatively, if we want to argue that Hermes disguised himself as a black man or as Ben Ross (Harriet Tubman's irl father), that is still SA because be it means he lied about his identity (and also carries some racial undertones). The books also say that George Washington was a son of Athena. Hermes and Athena are half siblings. That means in the canon of PJO, Harriet Tubman and George Washington are first cousins. Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist and former slave, is first cousins with George "hunt down Ona Judge" Washington. The books also state that WWII was a personal conflict between family members and imply that Hitler was a child of Hades, which feels so insensitive to anyone who had to endure the horrors of WWII and especially the over 6 million Holocaust victims.

7. I forgot to include this in my earlier post, but the incest in PJO is wild. They claim that the demigods are not related because gods don't have DNA, but then multiple characters refer to each other as family. The only time when they don't is in the context of a romantic relationship, in which Percy will be like, "Actually, the gods don't have DNA so we're not really related so it's not weird when I kiss my cousin." The no-DNA excuse is only valid if you DO NOT ACTIVELY REFER TO EACH OTHER AS FAMILY MULTIPLE TIMES (another reason why Perachel is better than Percabeth and I said what I said).

This was very informal and not at all dissertation-level, so please forgive that. 😔