Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Meeting New People, Part Percy Jackson

(Spoilers for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lost Hero and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.)
Yay! We're on the last part of "Meeting New People"! Percy's a pretty great kid, and the people he meets are furthermore great. So let's go into another analysis of relationships, why don't we?
When Percy meets Annabeth, she's kind of annoying. Since she's been at the camp for a number of years and her mom is the goddess of wisdom, she thinks she's pretty cool. If that's not enough, her mom hates Poseidon, so Percy, who's actually willing to be friends at first, is pretty much being shunned and sometimes bullied by Annabeth because their parents are enemies. Not cool. But as J.K. Rowling said in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, there are a few things that you can't do with someone without becoming their friend. One of those things is fighting a troll, as we learn in Sorcerer's Stone. In The Lightning Thief we learn that another one of those things is going on a quest to recover the god of the sky's missing lightning bolt. Annabeth and Percy start emailing each other, and are pretty good friends and their relationship grows so slowly that suddenly it's The Last Olympian and what do we know? She's his girlfriend. Which is something we all wanted to happen but weren't totally sure that we wanted it to happen until Percy brought up even the vaguest idea of it in The Titan's Curse. But hey, we have to admit we're glad it happened.
Grover and Percy's relationship changes kind of in the same way that Harry's and Neville's did. When we met Percy, he and Grover were already bros. But Percy is a friend who is as loyal as heck and Grover was kind of timid, so Percy thought he had to protect him. Grover was constantly bullied and he was a crip, so it made him appear weaker and might have even made the kids want to bully him more. If bullies find a weak target, they'll go for it. (Random life lesson while we're talking about this: If you are getting bullied, even if you think you're weak, they don't need to know that. They won't bother you if they don't think that they'll get a reaction out of you. Remember you have tons of fandomeers out there who love you. :) ) Percy loves his friends, and he especially loves Grover because at the point in the story we're talking about Grover is the only friend he has and he values that, not to mention Percy gets messed with a lot too and so he doesn't want that to happen to an innocent person like Grover. What Percy learns later is that Grover loves his friends as much as Percy does. Grover devotes his entire young life to protecting his friends, even! And he continues to do that even when he's a searcher, because he still gets into a few adventures with his friends. The only thing that changed was Percy learned that he didn't need to protect Grover alone. Grover was strong, and he and Grover could lean on each other. :)
Thalia! All that Percy heard about before he officially met Thalia was that they were exactly the same person, which they were kind of similar but I don't think they were as much as Annabeth says they were. I feel like Jason from Heroes of Olympus is much more like Percy. Which I guess makes a lot of sense because Jason and Thalia are siblings. But Percy heard that they would either be best friends or worst enemies. (Luckily, it was closer to the first one.) When Percy finally meets Thalia in person instead of just hearing about her, he likes her. They were friends just like they said they were. But like was predicted, they would get pretty mad at each other a lot and get in fights. Percy was also slightly jealous because Annabeth had so much fun with Thalia being with them again. Thalia also knew a number of things that Percy didn't, even stuff that she had learned from Chiron that he hadn't. That's enough to make anyone feel pretty bad. Luckily, all those insecurities and things that Percy felt in the beginning kind of disappeared. Thalia became a Hunter, so she didn't see Percy very often, but when she did they were incredibly glad to see each other. They were even going to go out to get burgers together after the war with Kronos was over. Is that cute or what?
Nico, poor kid. Don't you guys just kind of love nerdy Nico? Everyone talks about how they like how his character developed. Me too. But nerdy Nico in the beginning was just so adorable. Well, Percy didn't exactly think so. Nico was such an annoying ten-year-old kid to him. (Sorry, Percy, I thought he was kind of funny. Although yeah, I would be pretty upset with him too when he asked about Annabeth going over the cliff and if she was your girlfriend. But the thing about you being a good surfer? Dang, that kid is perfect.) Nico obviously changed a lot when his sister died. He relied on himself and blamed Percy, which meant he hated him... a lot. Percy and Nico had some rough times and betrayals all the way into the fifth book. But that didn't mean they weren't friends. They made up about the whole sister thing in The Battle of the Labyrinth.  He even went to Percy's birthday party. And I think they were even bros in the end after the whole war was over.
Well, Luke took Percy in the second he walked into Cabin Eleven. Luke was a really good friend that Percy trusted, and it was great to have someone who understood him. That pretty much all ended when he betrayed him, tried to kill him and ended up working for Kronos. That would end a friendship pretty fast. It doesn't help that Luke kind of had a thing for Annabeth and no matter what Percy said about not being able to trust him Annabeth had a thing for him too. And Percy really  had a thing for Annabeth, so that wasn't exactly cool with him. That kind of went away when Percy realized Luke was under too much pressure, and once he was in he couldn't back out, and he saved Olympus and all of his friends, including Annabeth. He still cared about them all. So in the end, I guess it was okay.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this!

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