Thoughts

A little bit of yapping I guess. Dw, the chap will come out a little bit later, I just need to edit it.

But yea, here are my thoughts.

I am trying to make this series as close as possible to that of the source material in terms of characters and characterization, and that leaves me stuck in a lot of conundrums.

Take the hunters for example, I had to jump through so many different hula hoops just to make it plausible that they'd like Shalom.

And now that I'm actually giving deep thought to who the FL should be, I'd like to express my own thoughts and explain to y'all how I came to the decision I came to.

Originally, the FL was going to be either Artemis or Thalia, one of the two, but after a few days, I completely scratched Thalia off the ballot.

Why?

Well, it was because, after having "studied" a lot more "research material" (reading an ungodly amount of PJO fanfics on ff. #&^net [I'm trying not to get myself shadow banned by WN here], I realized that throughout all the dogshit fanfics on the site, and throughout all the two dimensional, dogshit characters on the site, Thalia stood out as basically the only constant. She was like, super easy to write or something, cause like, almost every single writer nailed her character to a tee.

In the end, I just realized that her character wasn't suited for romance at all. She was Percy's sister, THE shoulder that he could cry on, and she would probably never get into a romantic relationship due to her past (she prolly still identifies as a tree to this day lol).

Anyways, after crossing off Thalia off the list, I went around, reading like, the top 10 of every single Percy x Female Character pairing on the site (the site's filters are actually so nice, and life saving when I'm doing "research"), and found a few that I thought I liked (mostly non-popular ones, ones that didn't get as much love).

Hera, Aphrodite, Athena, etc. I actually ended up finding a really fucking good Amphitrite one called "Sea Glass;" it's one of the only 3 I'd actually put in the High Tier of fanfics I've read.

Anyways, I soon came to the conclusion that Pertemis and Percy x Hestia practically dominated the site. Like, those are the top two ships I'm pretty sure.

Like, when I started reading PJO fanfic, believe it or not, that was somewhere close to two weeks ago (I can confidently say I've read more than 200 at this point now), I really did like the Pertemis and Hestia ships.

Now though, they honestly just feel plain and dry, although there are still some of them that I do hold really close to my heart due to the wonderful writing in them.

Unfortunately the large majority did end up being really fucking misogynistic and honestly, just disgusted me, hence why I was more drawn to the less written ships, as they were almost always really damn good.

TLDR: I ended up dropping the idea of pairing Shalom with Artemis. At this point, it wouldn't make sense in my fic anymore because they all considered each other family, and also...

Hmm...

The author paradoxed explains it way better than me, so just check out his analysis in the last chapter of "Gambit's Refrain."

The short of it though is that, to write an Artemis romance is an impossible task if you want to stay faithful to the original story.

It is a really fucking good pairing though when done right, and I'll be a Pertemis shipper any day, I just don't think I can do it in this fic of mine.

Thus, this leaves me with the lesser chosen options.

As much as I loved "Sea Glass," it obviously didn't make sense to pair Shalom with Poseidon's wife.

That left Hera, Aphrodite, Demeter, Athena, Persephone, and Ares.

...lmao, that last one was a joke.

The first one I ruled out was Demeter, she was practically never mentioned in the show, and the ff's of her are few and far between. I just really didn't have much feelings for this ship.

The second one gone was Persephone, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Hades' character in both the source material and the fanfics, and so I couldn't do it to my boy.

Athena... Well, I really loved Percy x Athena ships, they were really nice actually and probably one of my top two favorite ships to read in the PJO category. But, this ship only works because it is Percy and Athena. I might consider writing a PJO AU one or two shot (if people like it, maybe a whole 20 chaps or so) in the future about this pairing, but it wouldn't make sense in this fic.

In the end, I was left with Hera and Aphrodite.

And honestly, from here, I've chosen Aphrodite.

It's just, if you think about it, a pure love romance would be super interesting to explore with Aphrodite, no?

I won't talk about the specifics because I might use them later in the story, but Aphrodite's practically the best option for me at this point because of how little she was used in the og material and because of her personality, beliefs, and desires. And, I honestly hated 19/20 Perodite ships on that website, because they all depicted Aphrodite as a yandere, which I really didn't get, and so I want to make my own one about her exploring a much healthier relationship.

So yuh, this will be a Shalom x Aphrodite fic.

Needless to say, if you don't like this pairing, or you were reading this fic expecting another pairing, I am sorry to say that you are in the wrong place, and that you should probably read another fic.

At the end of the day, I'm just a dude writing about the stuff I like, but I'll still defend my works if needed, because they are the product of my own hands after all.

Welp, I ended up writing a whole chapter's worth of yap, and so I'll leave y'all with that.

If y'all have any questions, just ask away here or in the review I did on the novel which is technically the official designated Q&A section.

That's all, hope y'all continue to enjoy this fic!