The Riordan Autism

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The thing I remember about the Percy Jackson series was when the Lightning Thief came out it was the book school librarians insisted parents get if their child had some mental illness due to Percy having Dyslexia. I never had an interest in it due to being a bit too old for the series when it came out (As well as the fact that it read like an obvious Harry Potter ripoff. Camp Halfblood anybody?)
 
The handsome tard said:
But now its going all over the place, Im surprised he didnt add an Expy Trump (or maybe he did and I didnt notice yet). It does make me wonder how someone can throw all of this out of the window.
My opinion? He should have kept the different mythologies as their own universes, for real, I would definetly read them (if they werent political) if they just had their own rules and lore. But no, it has to be a shared universe, doesnt matter how it clashes with the other mythologies...
At least when God Of War went to norse mythology, the greek pantheon was all dead so...
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You know, I think the idea of pantheons existing in the same universe can work. Personally though, that concept seems to work when the story is character driven; God of war especially being the case. The way Riordan does it comes across as awkward.
 
The Great Chandler said:
You know, I think the idea of pantheons existing in the same universe can work. Personally though, that concept seems to work when the story is character driven; God of war especially being the case. The way Riordan does it comes across as awkward.
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I like how in God of War if you look closely you can see what might be Helios' chariot being chased by Skoll and Hati in the Jotnar shrine about them.
 
The Great Chandler said:
You know, I think the idea of pantheons existing in the same universe can work. Personally though, that concept seems to work when the story is character driven; God of war especially being the case. The way Riordan does it comes across as awkward.
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I think Kane Chronicles did it rather well. All it really was was one goddess saying something like, “Yeah, the gods over in Manhattan are pretty weird. We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us.” And left it at that. It was more a nod to earlier books than anything.
One book that did it well was American Gods. It set up how the gods actually work and are created and went from there. I highly recommend the book, Neil Gaiman actually took more than the classic Greek, Norse, and Egypt gods most people kind of know about and included some more obscure but fun ones.
 
CivilianOfTheFandomWars said:
I think Kane Chronicles did it rather well. All it really was was one goddess saying something like, “Yeah, the gods over in Manhattan are pretty weird. We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us.” And left it at that. It was more a nod to earlier books than anything.
One book that did it well was American Gods. It set up how the gods actually work and are created and went from there. I highly recommend the book, Neil Gaiman actually took more than the classic Greek, Norse, and Egypt gods most people kind of know about and included some more obscure but fun ones.
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Oh yeah, I found it clever that the American Gods were modeled after 50s icons, which makes sense given America became a superpower by then.
 
I haven't paid attention to Percy Jackson for years, but I do know that the second movie is the only movie that my film nerd friend had ever walked out of in disgust.
 
I read the original Percy Jackson books when I was younger. The style of writing felt very "How do you do fellow kids", but overall, it was a pretty enjoyable series. Despite wanting to check out the other books I never got around to reading them, but considering that the series is still apparently going on because of muh shared universe shit and bucks, it was probably for the best. If you just keep a series going on and on and on, it's inevitably going to turn into junk food literature sooner or later.

There was also another book series (unrelated to Percy Jackson) which I believe was written by him and which I never finished because it was so poorly written. The only thing I can recall is that it was told from a third person view and that there was a TL note stating that the Swedish translator had switched out "Walmart" for "ICA" because most Swedes wouldn't be familiar with the former
 
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The Great Chandler said:
You know, I think the idea of pantheons existing in the same universe can work. Personally though, that concept seems to work when the story is character driven; God of war especially being the case. The way Riordan does it comes across as awkward.
Click to expand...
Yeah but it just makes things awfully confusing when you consider the grand scheme. For example, are there multiple afterlives/underworlds? (There are a version of it for each pantheos). Are there multiple gods of certain things? Like Thor and Zeus being the thunder gods (I know Zeus is the "sky" god but thunder is his weapon of choice). Dont even get me started on what prevents these extremely arrogant deities from clashing against each other in a out war scenario. What if Cronos won? Would the other pantheos get affected?
See how is it confusing? For this type of story, it would have been better if they were on their own separated universe (with maybe some dimensional crossover here and there).
 
The first book in the Norse series was alright, aside from the Muslim character (whose devout traditionalist grandparents put her in an arranged marriage with a distant cousin but Rick says it's totally empowering and great guys just trust him) whose existence brings far more questions than answers, frankly.

The second book sucked ass, though. Cultural appropriation was brought up in chapter 2. About five chapters in he introduces an ambigiously brown 3edgy5me genderfluid character who has green hair and is punk and badass and hot and dangerous who the main character loves immediately and it was the stupidest fucking shit, I swear to God. It was like reading some tumblrite's self-insert fanfic. I had to put the book down at that point.

I was a MASSIVE Percy Jackson fangirl as a tween so it was legit disappointing to see the bullshit Rick's churning out now. Oh how the mighty have fallen and all that, I suppose.
 
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The handsome tard said:
Yeah but it just makes things awfully confusing when you consider the grand scheme. For example, are there multiple afterlives/underworlds? (There are a version of it for each pantheos). Are there multiple gods of certain things? Like Thor and Zeus being the thunder gods (I know Zeus is the "sky" god but thunder is his weapon of choice). Dont even get me started on what prevents these extremely arrogant deities from clashing against each other in a out war scenario. What if Cronos won? Would the other pantheos get affected?
See how is it confusing? For this type of story, it would have been better if they were on their own separated universe (with maybe some dimensional crossover here and there).
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I think the strangest part is how Riordan handles the Judeo-Christian god. In the first book Percy asks somebody and they respond with something like "let's not get metaphysical". It's written like a joke in that scene, but by the second series Riordan has introduced other pantheons and there's one or two scenes where the characters seriously start wondering if God is real. It felt really out of place to me.
 
Cryptojew said:
I think the strangest part is how Riordan handles the Judeo-Christian god. In the first book Percy asks somebody and they respond with something like "let's not get metaphysical". It's written like a joke in that scene, but by the second series Riordan has introduced other pantheons and there's one or two scenes where the characters seriously start wondering if God is real. It felt really out of place to me.
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They obviously dont want to trigger anyone by saying "No, God aint real. There are a butt load of other ones tho." Its fictional, its not trying to take a stab at anything. If anything, Zeus being "God" is far more insulting, you know what? Zeus is one of the most unlikable, despicable gods that there are (say whatever you want about God, he never raped several women and left their kids on their own devices).
Honestly, Percy Jackson only works if you know a mostly "kid friendly" version of the greek mythos (because if you go balls to the wall with it, mostly all the greek gods are awful beings that deserved a God of War 3 upon them all). If the series was more adult oriented and willing to take risks, it could have Percy realizing that maybe between the gods and Cronos, there had to be a third option.
So I personally dont think God is real in that universe (or if He is, then He is the only one managing to keep all these pantheons from clashing and destroying the fabric of reality).
 
madethistocomment said:
The first book in the Norse series was alright, aside from the Muslim character (whose devout traditionalist grandparents put her in an arranged marriage with a distant cousin but Rick says it's totally empowering and great guys just trust him) whose existence brings far more questions than answers, frankly.

The second book sucked ass, though. Cultural appropriation was brought up in chapter 2. About five chapters in he introduces an ambigiously brown 3edgy5me genderfluid character who has green hair and is punk and badass and hot and dangerous who the main character loves immediately and it was the stupidest fucking shit, I swear to God. It was like reading some tumblrite's self-insert fanfic. I had to put the book down at that point.

I was a MASSIVE Percy Jackson fangirl as a tween so it was legit disappointing to see the bullshit Rick's churning out now. Oh how the mighty have fallen and all that, I suppose.
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The character in question almost feels like a parody of Mary Sues
 
madethistocomment said:
The first book in the Norse series was alright, aside from the Muslim character (whose devout traditionalist grandparents put her in an arranged marriage with a distant cousin but Rick says it's totally empowering and great guys just trust him) whose existence brings far more questions than answers, frankly.

The second book sucked ass, though. Cultural appropriation was brought up in chapter 2. About five chapters in he introduces an ambigiously brown 3edgy5me genderfluid character who has green hair and is punk and badass and hot and dangerous who the main character loves immediately and it was the stupidest fucking shit, I swear to God. It was like reading some tumblrite's self-insert fanfic. I had to put the book down at that point.

I was a MASSIVE Percy Jackson fangirl as a tween so it was legit disappointing to see the bullshit Rick's churning out now. Oh how the mighty have fallen and all that, I suppose.
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It gets worse in book 3 of that shitty trilogy.

The genderfluid freakazoid, Magnus, and TJ all make a Golem (While jamming out to some Anime song *I swear that I didn't make this up*) which is named Pottery Barn who then whispers to Alex about it being non-binary and preferring the pronouns of they / them.

I swear that I took a week long break from the book, and finished it later.
 
I remember that the Muslim character in the Norse books dismissed the Norse gods as simply being creations of Allah, and one of the Norse gods, I think Heimdall, even agreed with her. It was fucking disgusting and actually insulting, despite Riordan trying to be as woke as possible.
 
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