PJO Magazine Issue #13 - November 2016

08 | Ship of the Month

So when the theme of anniversaries rolled around, I floundered a bit trying to find a canon couple that I could talk about who would have had a number of anniversaries together, perhaps starting in the first series.

Following that criteria, the list sort of started and ended with 'Percabeth'.

So I took a different approach.

Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano and Thalia Grace. Albeit not the average pairing most would expect to be discussed. Likely to be titled a 'rare pairing', the duo are not the most typical of pairings that have featured in the magazine thus far.

Personally I do indeed ship them, and not just because I shipped Jason and Reyna - side-note, I did not - and decided that when that wouldn't be happening to just exchange Jason for Thalia, Jason's sister. No, I did not even consider them a pairing until they met and Reyna was quite literally 'distracted' by her. It says so in the book.

Arguments may arise over this ship due to the fact 'Thalia is a Hunter', but that's the interesting thing. Artemis' Huntresses may have sworn off men, but nowhere it says anything about swearing off women.

Despite it being said that Reyna will not find a demigod to heal her heart, Thalia is not a typical demigod. She's a Hunter, an immortal being.

There is without a doubt a certain amount of chemistry between the two of them, and with more and more representations being introduced into the works by Rick Riordan - a true god among us mere mortals - it is entirely possible that such a ship could be introduced.

A while back, 2014 if I am not correct, there was a tweet floating around the internet that was allegedly made by Riordan in response to an inquiry that Theyna was canon and he apologised if it was too subtle to see. Whether or not that tweet was falsified - if you search twitter for it now, it cannot be found apart from some 'screenshots' on tumblr - is yet to be determined, but one should not dismiss the integrity for such a ship based on one tweet that may or may not have existed.

There is admittedly a lack of healthy lesbian couples in media today, especially in books aimed at teens and young adults who quite often need that good representation to feel validated in mainstream media. Lesbian couples often find themselves more sexualised in media than gay relationships due to the fact that the majority of media is made by men for men. While it is in no way fair, times are changing.

In addition to Theyna, the idea of bringing up Sally and Poseidon came to mind.

Despite the short period of time that they were together, just for the summer in which Percy was... er... conceived, Sally celebrated that summer each year by taking Percy back to that same cabin on that same beach in Montauk.

While I 100% agree with the relationship that Sally and Paul have, I can't help but love the romanticism of the idea of Sally returning to the spot that she met and fell in love with her son's father. It is truly something to fall straight out of a romance novel, something that I don't often read.

I also love the fact that Sally didn't exactly try to hide Poseidon's absence from Percy, she just told him rather truthfully that he went away to sea, building the rest of the story around that truth. Percy knew where he came from and where his father went which is more than some people could only dream of. For the mother and son, the cabin in Montauk proved to be a refugee from 'Smelly Gabe', a character that the fandom is unanimous in their hatred for, which is why it was so saddening to learn that the visit when Percy was 11 was the first in a few years.

It shows how bad the relationship between Gabe and Sally truly was - after all she only stayed with him to protect Percy - that each summer she tried to return to the spot where she first fell in love, which is why it was so brilliant when she finally found love again with Paul.

*~ See you next month for the next issue, chococookie1607