hiii violation bean(s)?

i think percy is three steps away from an identity crisis. because be so fr, what does he like? annabeth? his mom? yeah, so does everyone else, that ain't special.

i want to play around with the issues of "who am i without my trauma? am i anything without the gods and monsters and fighting?" and i think percy is a good place to explore this for because of how long it took for me to figure out who he was outside of everything.

i especially like the idea of bringing in the idea of "can i be good at something that has nothing to do with my parents?" not necessarily with anyone in particular, though i do think that percy is a good place to start, since i do not think he will enjoy marine biology.

just like i don't think annabeth is gonna stay with architecture, but that's because of my own qualms with annabeths arc and how she got what she wanted and not what she really needed

which is a place showcase her own talents and mind in a way that isn't in direct thanks to the gods, which is a value that she is slowly starting to lose, and one that percy as already lost.

i think people forget that by the end of toa, the people who have done these quests have begun to lose respect toward the gods. out of the 7, i would say jason was the one to be the most... idk loyal?

however, hazel has carried nothing but pure unbridled resentment and guilt toward both her mother and Pluto. i think the only gods she ever showed genuine respect toward was thanatos and hecate, both of which proved to be useful and proved to value her existence.

percy answered apollo at his doorstep with "no." and was fully prepared to slam the door in his face.

nico cares more about the minor gods whom he is just best friends with and literal monsters. like. my man has literal demon pets.

and while i think that annabeth does still harbor a bit of respect to the gods, i think that's just a by-product of being raised thinking the gods were these divine, all-knowing people incapable of wrongdoing, and that shattered as she got older but i think she still truly looks up to her mom even if that's slowly waning away as well.

and this is not to say that she would give up architecture completely. it's made clear throughout the books that this is what she wants to do. but i do think that her motivations and end goals need to change.

her biggest aspiration is to be remembered and to create something permanent, which she did, in a way, but that's irrelevant because she wanted something that was just her. and you know, girlboss. but her primary reasoning for wanting to do architecture in the first place was because she wanted to make her mom proud. she was going to make a monument and a shrine that would be visited by scholars centuries later. she was going to redesign Olympus to appease the gods and have herself plastered in the space with it's unique character.

but after it all, i don't think annabeth would want to make something for the gods anymore. her need to be remembered has been fulfilled, she has a legacy, but she needs something physical that means more to her.

and i already know how i'm gonna do it. so. stay tuned for that.

then, on the opposite side, i'm gonna have piper fully embrace her mother and hate tristan.

as this fandoms #1 Tristan Anti, i enjoy spreading my propaganda across all of my works and caffeine escapades.

and i want everyone to be fully aware that all of this spewed off of a character study that was supposed to be a max of 5,000 words and is now a full fic that is currently about 15,000 words and created a whole fucking series.

so say thank you to piper.

anyway, i want piper to realize. huh. both my parents lowkey suck ass sometimes. but i don't have to hate what they've gifted me. and after years and years of trying to be the one who forever stayed away from femininity, i've realized i never really succeeded. i like wearing makeup and doing my hair and wearing these cute outfits and accessorizing them.

why did i hate this in the first place?

idk why i'm recapping this to you, as if i haven't told you every fucking detail of this fic so far.

anyway

CAMP CULTURE IDEAS

this is my favorite sub-genre of gabby is high on caffeine.

um, why is it that Hephaestus kids are always described as grubby people who hate the superficial nature of beauty and think that robots are eternal and just generally only spend time building things

first off, name one carpenter who was normal and not a chaos demon? exactly you can't.

name one engineering student who didn't just make whatever the fuck came to them, even if it's something so incredibly stupid (except the stupidity is the point). exactly.

and now let's take a second to remind ourselves what the hephaestus cabin includes

essentially: making cool shit. this cool shit can be made via welding, metalsmiting, casting, woodworking, carpentry, forging, mechanics, even metal detecting and foraging and fucking tumbling. and that's just what i got from canon.

guys

you know what has a solid half of those skills

lmao guess.

MAKING JEWELRY. SPECIFCALLY RINGS.

for reference, making a ring includes, metal detecting, foraging, tumbling, possibly lab growing (though that's not technically a hephaestus thing), metalsmithing, and casting. not to mention the incredible skill that it requires.

but let's just imagine for a second the hephaestus cabin not wanting to do the part that involves exiting their home, like looking for metal. i can see them practically on their knees, begging hecate to give them the cool stones and crystals, and in exchange they'll give lou ellen whatever they make, they're just bored. and hecate cabin is like... i have one amethyst. you better have it done in a month.

and then we can have the people in hephaestus who really love weaponry begging, on their knees, please nico. please. i know the underworld has super cool shit. pleasseee bring us some. please. i wanna make cool shit.

and from the cool shit they make after nico brings them the smallest amount of stygian iron--like it's offensive how small the nugget was--the ares cabin is looking at it, like, dude that's metal as fuck.

speaking of metal, hermes, aphrodite, and apollo do this thing where they keep log of the concerts going on in new york and will get you good tickets and get you out without anyone knowing if you do something in return. like, say it's dance season. aphrodite might say, okay, here are your tickets. when you go out there, you go to goodwill and get me cool fabrics.

one time, someone didn't do it, and they were cursed for a solid year to speak in limericks and they could never do their makeup right and their clothes were always ill-fitting. they couldn't get the hermes cabin to smuggle anything in for them. like, it was bad.

people tend to always carry their side of the bargain now.

i also like to think that the camp counselors have private meetings (aka, Nyssa kicked her cabin out of the bunker and Will got the speaker and iPod and hecate as the thing take makes it so that no one else can hear us and Chiron and Dionysus are not invited.) and it's a whole ass party on those days.

and speaking of, remember that idea of older kids drinking, like, every other week. that's essentially them, plus a few other people. and they have to pair up. they draw sticks on who has to make sure they don't kill each other. and unlike the counselors meeting, this essentially turns into a chill hangout between friends. but then people get drunk or high (it depends on the day and what hermes has stashed) it's anyone's game.

Sometimes, it becomes the most productive thing ever. Maybe athena and ares create a capture the flag plan that's actually genius. hephaestus will start calculating how to make a trebuchet to throw out Miranda because she didn't give Nyssa starfruit and Miranda is about to scream because they don't grow in this soil, and i'm not that good. Malcolm is silently trying to solve an impossible equation and approximate it to the closest possible degree. Nico conjures some bones and has an in depth discussion with lou ellen about their magical properties. Drew and Piper are drawing clothes for the dance in three months.

Other times it's a crying trauma dump. Will is sitting there, bawling, trying to chart while ranting to everyone. It's Cecil's mom's bday, and he can't celebrate it with her. Sherman doesn't know who he is outside of camp and his time in new rome was terrible and now he doesn't know what to do. Someone is usually finding a way to record this and use it as blackmail later on. Percy is just showing everyone pictures of Estelle that no one asked for, but none are complaining. Instead they start crying with Percy because percy didn't think he was gonna live this long. some are like "i haven't gotten my period in two years. i always wanted to be a mom but i can't do that anymore because my body is going through so much trauma rn"

i just want more community. these people would be best fucking friends and would die for each other. especially the year-rounders. these people are all they have.

speaking of

MAN FUCK THE IDEA THAT THEY JUST LEFT CAMP FOR GOOD

like, lmao, they can try, but it aint working.

i can imagine sherman in camp jupiter for a whopping ten seconds before dipping. when he comes back, he's like, "will. that shit sucked. i couldn't beat people's asses in their dumbass war games. nico, you didn't say i had no freedom. they had me stay in the back of this bs battleformation. then made me scoop pegasus shit when i ran to the front and won. fuck that."

drew comes back from brooklyn like "they want me to go to school. daily. and i do that, only to be disrespected constantly by some punk ass british girl. and i was doing costumes for the school play, but they didn't let me take control. because its easier to go to spirit halloween. and then i got attacked like three times because i have no mortal friends. nico stop laughing. when you also get suspended for telling a bitch to square up, i will not support you" (this statement causes nico to laugh even more).

percy comes by once a month because "fuck college, i miss my mom"

unrelated, but my dog is snoring and doing that little dream bark thing. i want to boop her snoot.

update: her snoot has been booped.

i'm also lowkey hungy but then i would need to go all the way down the stairs and that's a lot of work

anyway, i have no ideas now.

bye

love y'all.