TW: This video is PG-13. Discussions of child abuse, abusive parents, parental neglect, childhood trauma and garbage systemic violence against children.
Percy Jackson is Better than Harry Potter and Here’s How – A Fantasy Retrospective
(VIDEO ESSAY TRANSCRIPT)
J. K. Rowling needs to pay for my therapy.
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So, what’s up my beautiful scholars? I hope you’re having a lovely day despite, y’know the Plague.
Me, like a lot of millennials in quarantine, have been falling back on bad childhood habits. And one of those bad childhood habits, at least on my end, was reading a lot of fantasy stories.
A lot of them were pretty questionable. I’mma say this straight up — just because a piece of media was formative for you doesn’t mean any good.
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Two of the least questionable children’s books I reread in my little novelistic speedrun were the Harry Potter series by a terf named JK Rowling and The Percy Jackson series by an English teacher named Rick Riordan!
I think it had to do with structure, I think — Harry Potter books are essentially Agatha Christie novels in fantasy dressing, with Harry and his friends solving Scooby-Doo mysteries in order to pass their magical school classes in one piece — or yknow, not die at the hands of Lord Voldemort.
Percy Jackson, meanwhile, are a collection of tweenage road-trip stories where Percy and his friends go on a series of life-changing field trips and fetch quests because sometimes the greatest adventures are the friends you made along the way.
Percy Jackson was a much better time, I’ll tell you that much. Puzzles are great but white people bullshit isn’t.
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There’s also something else, and I think it makes the key difference: Percy Jackson never puts the onus of recovery, healing and forgiveness on the shoulders of the abusers in the same Harry Potter does? And that was just, amazing to read to be honest.
Let’s discuss —
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Harry and Percy are both very similar as protagonists as their both black haired/green eyes white boys with a sarcastic wit and a neverending loyalty that gets them and their friends in trouble. They also had very troubled non-magical upbringings with abusers and bullies and other garbage experiences
That’s just good writing to be honest — I do really believe that kids should be allowed to develop their own critical thinking skills and question systems that have authority over them. Rules are malleable and outright malicious if the death of an innocent person was deemed justice by the apathetic powers that be.
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Which makes what I’m gonna say here extra hard —
I’mm a say it here, I’mma play it straight with y’all, even though I’m gay —
Luke kinda had a point there.
For the uninitiated: Luke was the main antagonist of Percy Jackson. In the world of Percy Jackson there’s a lot of demigod kids and Luke was one them — as well being Percy’s former friend. The Anakin to Percy’s Obi-wan Kenobi, if you will.
Voldemort by contrast is — essentially — a Wizard Nazi bourne out of the xenophobia, euginics politics and toxic systems in Harry Potter’s Wizarding World, being less a horrifying outlier and more a ugly reflection of the Wizarding communities own worse qualities.
Except Luke never kills anyone (at least no one I saw in the books). He tries to kill people, but he spectacularly failed cuz plot armor.
Luke was a son of Hermes who’d grown up as a homeless kid from age nine on, escaping a house with an unstable mother to eventually scrape for food and fight monsters with his friends Annabeth and Thalia (daughters of Athena and Zeus respectively).
Luke was burnt out by his years of homelessness, parental instability from his mortal mother and overall neglect from his father. Eventually, Luke went to Camp Half-Blood, but that only lead to more problems.
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Hogwarts in Harry Potter is a fun, magical boarding school ; but that’s what it is, a school — an institution bound to the whims of the Wizarding government.
Camp Half-Blood is a safe place that all demigods can make friends and build their strengths for the adventures to come, but in the end, it’s a camp — a supplement to the lives and character growth of the demigods in the real world, not a replacement.
The whole point of Camp Half-Blood is to train the demigod kids for a world outside its borders.
It’s less permanent house and more plot-convenience pitstop. A safe space, if you will, for demigods to recoup from the nonsense that the mortal world and the godly bullshit thrown at them due to either parents’ neglect.
It essentially acts as a large foster home for the demigod kids involved, but Camp Half-Blood was made as a result of the shitty practices of the Greek gods it reigns from, not as a result of the gods’ kindness.
Camp Halfblood changes to help benefit future demigods make better lives for themselves. Hogwarts refuses too because, in the end it benefits too from the toxic systems it has in place.
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Speaking of systems, and going back to Luke for a second —
The systems in place by the gods are what made Camp Half-Blood necessary,and it’s up to the gods themselves to change the system from the ground up instead of relying on their demigod kids to just, yknow, deal with it.
Luke was gifted a quest from his father Hermes but Luke’s failure in that quest left him extremely bitter, raging at the gods’ apathy and indirectness on account of his own life and the lives of other demigods like him who were similarly fucked over by the Hellenistic system. It’s no surprise that he planned revenge against the Olympians in the end.
This was my main gripe with the movies by the way — the gods’ culpability was skipped over in favor of a misguided and well-meaning Poseidon causing a disconnect between the gods and their own demigod children as opposed to the actual book-backstory in which Poseidon himself was the cause of the gods not talking directly to their children but only in the sense of them doing so would cause another World War II (long story, fun lore, not important here.)
Honestly? Throws all the gods out.
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But look, don’t get it twisted —
Just because I agree that the Greek gods were full shit doesn’t mean that I think that Luke was right in how we went about his plans in destroying the system of power put in place by the Olympians that lists the gods as evading consequences and the demigods as pawns who clean up their parents’ bullshit.
That part was true! The problem is that you don’t fix one problem with the an even worse problem. Like, you would scorch the earth to make way for greener pastures in the future but you wouldn’t drop a nuke on a shitty building in order to knock it down, that’s not how it works.
Luke summoning his evil Titan grandfather Kronus wasn’t the right decision because it would eventually hurt the people Luke previously had sworn to protect.
You don’t stop abuse with more abuse.
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But that’s our antagonist!
Good thing we got Percy as a protagonist, right? If it’s not obvious by now, Percy grew up in a similarly shitty homelife to Luke but with one key difference — his mother Sally Jackson.
Sally is a mortal woman who’d grown up with her own difficult life so by the time she had Percy, she’d already been through some stuff.
The interesting thing is — Sally cuts off the cycle of abuse when it comes to Percy. She always makes sure that Percy feels loved and welcome when he’s at home.
Sally also makes a lot of sacrifices on behalf of Percy, marrying an abusive man because his pungent odor guards Percy from the threat of monsters and never denigrating Percy for his ADHD or dyslexia, sending him to specialized schools despite Percy’s poor grades and being expelled — like a lot — from K – 12.
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In the first book, Sally ends her abusive relationship with her ex-husband by straight up merking him — turning her ex-husband to stone by using a gorgon head Percy left to her, Percy seeing that his mother is perfectly capable of taking care of herself and that while she might need help, she doesn’t need to be rescued.
Percy’s mother comments that Poseidon wanted to build Sally a palace at the bottom of the sea, but Sally refused, wanting to live her life on her own terms.
It’s one thing to want to rescue someone from the evils of the world, it’s another to offer aid and a listening ear to those most in need.
Sally’s kindness, strength, and rebellious streak that teaches Percy to stand up to even the worst bullies and abusers of life, but also to be kind to those who deserve his kindness.
Sally — along with all those demigod adventures Percy goes on, of course — teaches Percy how to be a friend.
And I think that’s what sets Percy Jackson apart from Harry Potter as a series — it teaches kids people don’t need saviors, they need friends.
And Percy is nothing else if not an amazing friend.
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Let’s fast forward to the end of the series cuz there’s something important I haven’t yeah that’s why I wanted to make this video in the first place.
By the end of the series (slight spoiler) — Percy and his friends win the day (yay!) but not without significant loss and painful lessons learned (yay!)
As a reward for his heroism, the Olympians offer Percy immortality — basically giving him godhood as a reward for being extra-super-nice and defeating that pesky Titan/demigod threat they just couldn’t do themselves.
Percy — get this — PERCY REJECTS THEM. (what??????)
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I’ll let Percy himself explain.
“ I thought about the Three Fates, and the way I’d seen my life flash by. I could avoid all that. No aging, no death, no body in the grave. I could be a teenager forever, in top condition, powerful, and immortal, serving my father. I could have power and eternal life.
Who could refuse that?
Then I looked at Annabeth again. I thought about my friends from camp: Charles Beckendorf, Michael Yew, Silena Beauregard, so many others who were now dead. I thought about Ethan Nakamura and Luke.
And I knew what to do. “No,” I said.
The Council was silent. The gods frowned at each other like they must have misheard.” – The Last Olympian
Switching to Harry Potter for one last time: I was confused by the vitriol that people had for the epilogue at the end of the Harry Potter series because most of the vitriol was directed at Harry naming his son “Albus Serverus”.
I mean, I thought it fit right in with the weirdly British Tolkeinesque naming system Harry Potter had in the first place — but I grew up, and I realized something: Harry makes heroes out of the people that hurt him and that’s a bad thing.
“Voldmort Stalin Potter, you are named after two of the bravest people I ever knew…”
Cuz that’s what Harry Potter does in the end — it forgives without perspective.
As much as Harry chastises his abusers and mentors, and as much Harry learns throughout the series not to give into stereotypes and good people can make bad mistakes and back people can change, Harry still succumbs to the status quo, absolving both his mentors and his abusers of their transgressions and honoring them thru the naming of his own child.
When I say “dismantling systems” I don’t mean some Joker “watching the world burn so I can rule it” type bullshit, I mean “acknowledging the terrible shit that ends abusive cycles by breaking intergenerational curses.”
I’m not saying that Harry is an abusive person to his children, I’m saying that Harry and his friends were in a unique position to change the bullshit that made ugly and evil things that made Voldemort what he is and they just don’t? Harry assimilates into Wizarding life as the hero who saved the Wizarding world from their sins and instead maybe, pushing to change Wizard racism, recognize humanoid folks like Hagrid or Dobby as real beings worthy of having their own voices.
Just?? Listening AND trying? And instead of acknowledging that they’ve made some sort of better world for their children, they’ve become part of a system that has harmed them putting themselves at the very top.
Like, Dumbledore literally laid you out as a lamb for slaughter, Harry! I’m sure it’s not only Slytherins who are capable of great evil!
In the series alone, Harry was: left and sent back into an abusive home even after Hogwarts, slandered by the Wizarding Government and the Wizarding Press for stating that Voldemort is back and he saw with his own two eyes, tried for a misdemeanor when he acted in self-defense in an effort to silence him, abused by a government entity to the point that his only safe space, Hogwarts, compromised because the adults didn’t wanna push back against it, and Dumbledore just bounced when Harry needed him most because he figured that his inaction would direct Voldemort to Dumbledore himself.
BISH HE DOESN’T WANT YOU, HE’S KILL HARRY SINCE HE WAS FUCKIN BORN —
HARRY HAD TO MAKE UP FOR HIS MENTORS INACTION AND IN COMPETENCE IN ORDER TO PROTECT HIMSELF AND HIS CLASSMATES FROM ACTUAL DEATH AND YOUR TELLING ME TO MY HOMOSEXUAL BLACK-ASS FACE THAT HARRY POTTER BECOMES A FUCKIN FED AS A RESULT OF ALL THIS.
AND THIS IS JUST BOOK 5 I COULD GO ON FOREVER BUT I WON’T—
Percy, by stark contrast, realized that all of the actions the book ended up being as a result of the gods breaking their own rules and seeing their demigod kids as either ammunition or collateral, and Percy, who’s been seen that the gods are full of shit — yes, even your favorites, rejects godhood and immortality in favor of making sure that a situation like this will never happen to the demigod kids ever again.
(Insert Percy Jackson quote where Percy makes the gods swear that the River Styx that nothing like this will ever happen to these kids again)
And that’s why the Percy Jackson-centric series ended when Percy held the gods accountable for their bullshit.
It’s a whole new world out there, with a system that puts the demigods first and turns Camp Half-Blood into a safe house option for the Half-Bloods themselves instead of a last resort from the gods’ negligence and putting their kids on societal life support.
Percy didn’t want to put himself on the top of a pyramid of s toxic system, throw all that shit away!
He wants this cycle of abuse to stop! So he stops it! It’s that simple.
Again, listening and trying.
I mentioned briefly before that Percy’s fatal flaw is loyalty, so even if Percy rightfully his takes down his enemies for their transgressions, he also takes in their grievances — especially if they’re demigods like him.
The fact that a vulnerable poor kid with cognitive disabilities has to make the apathetic people in power listen or else is rich to me, but children are the future and all that, and I think Percy has learnt well by his eponymous’ series end.
As much as Harry fights back the monsters and villains that the Wizarding World has created, he still chooses to continue the toxic system that benefit him and his generation as heroes.
Percy is a hero that uses his platform to hold the powers that be accountable for the monsters that they create, aiming to leave a more just world behind him, make a better life for himself and his friends in the end so no other demigod kid will ever be hurt in the way that’s he’s been hurt.
And that makes all the difference.
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You couldn’t pay me to talk about Harry Potter ever again — not online anyways. I started this video poking fun at all the crappy fantasy books and other stuff I liked as a kid. Bad childhood habits, I said — even making fun of the things that made me happy as a kid.
I’m not gonna do that anymore — I had different needs as child than I do as an adult. So while visiting Hogwarts with Harry and hanging out with Percy and the other Half-Bloods in New York City was fun, I find that the same crappy playground stuff I noticed as a kid are the same crappy playground stuff I noticed now.
Kids are ill-treated by a lot of adults — I think that as a society we see kids as a bargaining chip or full of productive potential as opposed to the little people they actually are.
It’s no wonder that some adults who had shitty treatment as children learn to gain their own power back by mistreating more children, continuing the cycle as it goes along.
That’s why I’m glad to have read Percy Jackson as a mistreated kid (Harry Potter is like a shitty relative, thanks for the memories but I’m chucking you into the garbage now). It validated my issues as they presently were, and made me hopeful for a future where what I said mattered and I had the power to make a better world.
I’m listening, and I’m trying and I’m doing the best I can.
Stay brilliant, scholars. I’ll see you on the other side.
THE END
Original publish year: 2021
(c) Jean M. Hodges
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