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I would like to dispel a myth concerning Percy Jackson.
I'm a half-blood. I know a lot about myths. They may as well be seared into the back of my eyelids for all the vases and frescoes I've seen. Therefore I think I'm pretty qualified to talk on the topic.
Percy Jackson is not the kind of hero everyone thinks he is: namely, some kind of bizarre clone of Luke Castellan.(1) He doesn't have the capacity to plot his rise to glory that way, trust me. If he's looking out for anyone, it's definitely not himself. Percy is kind of lacking in the brain department, if we're being honest. He does most of his thinking with his heart.(2)
He's not a glory hound; he's actually quite modest about saving literally everyone's Calydonian bacon on multiple occasions. It takes a whole bag of blue M&M's to even get him to talk about some of his more interesting hero stories, like the time he and Thalia Grace broke into a shopping mall and ended up with some mannequins in a-- well, that's his story, like I said.
Percy's not arrogant; just slightly over-confident. Does that mean he can't be a vlákas with an attitude problem? No way. Some of the things he's said in front of the gods... To the gods... I have to excuse myself for my French almost as often as Piper, but Percy puts us both to shame.(3) He has a temper like a light switch, especially when you insult someone close to him. There's a reason they call him "lupo paternus" in New Rome.
Percy Jackson definitely fits the standard definition of 'hero'. With his black hair and the tan he somehow maintains even in the winter, he could have posed for a stamnos or two a few thousand years ago and he wouldn't look out of place at all. He's practically a dead ringer for Achilles, arguably the most famous hero of all time.(4)
Moreover, he's a half-blood, which was another thing on the 'famous hero, protector of the weak, no autographs please' checklist back then. Let's go down the list, shall we? He's noticeably physically attractive.(5) He's compassionate to a fault. His bravery verges on stupidity. He loves puppies. He's gotten people killed before, something most heroes end up doing at least once.
But he has also saved people, a fact which the editor of this, uh, essay, I guess, is now elbowing me in the ribs to remind me of. Yeah, thanks, I know, and also ouch. Percy has saved a lot of people, obviously. He's saved Camp Half-Blood more than once. By Hades, he's saved Camp Jupiter more than once too. He saved me, but that's another story and another kind of saving altogether.
Percy Jackson is a hero; no one's going to argue with you if you say this. But a lot of people don't realize that Percy isn't perfect. The whole point of heroes is that they're not perfect. It took me way too long to realize this and I got hurt along the way.
But now I know: every hero has a flaw. Every hero. If you're a half-blood or even somehow a mortal reading this, I'm talking about you. Don't even think about doing half the stupid stuff Percy's done if you don't know what your fatal flaw is, because not only will it kill you, it will hurt the whole time you're dying, in more ways than one.
Fatal flaws do not make us bad people. Percy is not a bad person. The jury's still out on whether I am-- yes, Jason, that was a joke, stop looking at me like that. I do in fact have a tiny shriveled up sense of humor in here somewhere.
Fatal flaws, like I said, do not make us bad people. A few very smart dead guys are of the opinion that fatal flaws are our human half struggling to accommodate our divine half. I know-- I've asked them. I will neither confirm nor deny having stayed up very late a few days ago with my editor in order to discuss the matter with the ghosts in question. My editor is fascinated with duality at the moment. He wanted to pray to Janus, but Aristophanes laughed so hard that we had to postpone that idea until a later date.
Some heroes are so good at keeping their flaws in check that you'd hardly even know they have one. Sometimes they even get promoted to godhood.(6) Others, not so much. Some heroes only care about themselves and will let their flaws get to them so much that it literally kills them, especially if said flaw is pride and your name is Arachne and you happen to have just woven a really excellent tapestry.
Percy's flaw has nothing to do with pride, what we Greek demigods call hubris. If that were the case, maybe he would be the kind of hero everyone thinks he is-- a glory-hound who likes to show off. But the heroic things Percy does, often without thinking, usually to the detriment of the overall plan, occasionally without regard to personal safety, are not for any kind of personal gain. He's not showing off; he's just doing what he knows.
Because Percy's fatal flaw is, oddly enough, that he cares too much about other people. If you'd told me that a year or so ago, I would have looked at you like you had pegasus wings coming out of your forehead. Then I would have said something witty/underhandedly insulting and walked away and/or avoided all my friends for days/weeks at a time.
As the editor of this essay is now once again elbowing me in the ribs to remind me, my fatal flaw is holding grudges. I internalize things and let them stew until I explode. Just call me Typhon, whoops, I'm going to decimate Mount St. Helens. Up until cooperating with someone(7) who truly disliked me(8) became the number one most important thing in the world, my fatal flaw was living up to the 'fatal' part.
That's why I was so miserable the whole time-- I was letting everything I hated about Percy bubble up to the surface and bury all the good things about him, just like a giant convection current. I hated his stupid green eyes; who told him he could have eyes that green? I hated his sword for obvious reasons. Why a pen? Why not the same brooch Zoë Nightshade's mother Pleione had owned?(9) And if it had to be a pen, why was it the kind with a cap? How did he not lose the cap constantly? And I hated Annabeth for even more obvious reasons.(10)
I had hated him for years, but in some bizarre form of hero worship, I also idolized him. I wanted to be by his side every time he triumphantly held up a fistful of monster guts and screamed, "FOR OLYMPUS!" I wanted him to protect me like he'd never protected anyone else-- only the camp. I wanted to move mountains for him, literally. I wanted to raise the dead to serve as his own personal army. I wanted to bear his standard into battle on a skeletal horse. I wanted to polish his sword when the battle was done.(11) We could have been a terrifying team, two sons of the Big Three, two traumatized warriors, two killing machines ready to protect what was most important to them, side by side.(12)
Funnily enough, not only did I hate Percy that whole time, I also hated myself. Big surprise, right?
If you were ever wondering if it's possible to hold a grudge against yourself, the answer is yes, and additionally, it sucks like Charybdis. I guess mortals have that problem a lot, where they worry constantly what other people think of them, how they're going to mess up this time, what stupid phrase will get stuck in their head after they've said it wrong and made a fool of themselves at McDonald's. They call it social anxiety. It makes a lot of sense to me. I still have anxiety about a lot of things, but defeating a giant dirt monster is kind of hard to do if you're worried about looking silly while doing it, so, you know, I'm working on it.
Back on topic, though.
Sure, Percy Jackson is undoubtedly un coglione totalmente massiccio who can occasionally end up with his head su per il culo, but it's really not his fault. He trusted me when he had very little reason to, which, at the time, made me buy into the 'Percy Jackson is some kind of weird spy' theory. Yes, people at camp actually thought that.(13) He embraced a cyclops as his brother. I don't need to mention how many people would run screaming in the opposite direction in that situation.
I guess this ended up as more of an open letter that no half-blood who lives within a hundred years of me is ever going to read, because I've said a lot of stuff I'm not willing to defend in public in here. I trust my editor to burn it with the strongest Greek fire our captain will agree to acquire for purposes that will not be revealed to him, yet simultaneously know that my editor will not actually burn it, so my condition for publication is that he leave in the following sentence: Jason Grace sucked his thumb until he was twelve.
(Thanks a lot, Nico. -- Ed.)
Footnotes
(1) You know, before he got better. ^
(2) He does the rest with another body part. I categorically refuse to say which one. ^
(3) Piper usually excuses herself for her French because she's actually speaking French and doesn't realize it until only Hazel and Frank answer her in a very confusing combination of Québecois and Cajun. ^
(4) You'd think he'd look like his namesake Perseus (similarly of Medusa-killing fame), but I've met him and he's actually a redhead. Go figure. ^
(5) You'll get nothing more from me. I've seen your search histories and I am afraid. ^
(6) Not that the gods don't also have their own special brand of flaws. But you didn't hear that from me. ^
(9) I'm still kind of mad about that, come to think of it. ^
(10) Now I mostly just hate her because she destroys everyone at Monopoly. Children of the goddess of strategy should be banned from playing strategy games with the rest of us. ^
(11) Potentially a euphemism. ^
(12) The resident military history nerd slash Animorph informs me that an ancient Theban troop consisted of, uh, boyfriends who did just this, excluding the 'sons of the Big Three' part. Look up 'Sacred Band of Thebes' on Demipedia if you're curious. ^
(13) I won't say how I got this information. I will only imply that it involved some of my more nuanced talents as a son of Hades as well as several carrots, the entirety of Hermes cabin, a large pillow, and a nonzero amount of assistance from my editor, who is almost a foot taller than I am. I will also mention that that fact played a significant part in the acquisition of this knowledge. ^