Day 22: Favourite villain/anti-hero
Are there even any anti-heroes in these books? Everyone's pretty definitely a hero. Except Luke, I guess, but how boring is he?
Oh, well, Clarisse counts too. She's a lot less boring.
And then there's Hades, who kinda counts as both, depending on where you are in the series.
I know I've ranted about misrepresentation of characters in pop culture before, but seriously. Why is Hades always the villain of these movies and books? Because he's the god of the dead? He just drew the short end of the straw, that's not his fault. His brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, got luckier with the realms they got, that's it. I mean, he did technically kidnap Persephone, but in the myths, you never really hear about Persephone complaining about it. You hear about over-bearing possessive mother Demeter complaining about it (which is the reason we have seasons - in fall and winter Demeter mourns and the harvest dies, but in the spring and summer Persephone returns and she's happy again). But by all accounts (except the Percy Jackson series, for plot reasons), Hades and Persephone have a loving, faithful relationship. Hades isn't a bad guy. By most accounts, the villain of greek mythology is a lot more commonly Zeus's penis. It causes most of the death and destruction. (It was a lot of fun exploring Hades's character in my book I'm writing. I gave him a nervous stutter. It was so much fun seeing where that went.)
But anyways.
From the books, I guess I'll say Clarisse is my favourite anti-hero.
She starts out as this stereotypical bully, yeah? Percy Jackson has this thing where there always needs to be a school yard bully somewhere alongside the monsters and giants and things. She's big, she's mean and she's the daughter of the war god. She is the schoolyard bully. But even then, she's not dumb muscle. She's... mean, but competent muscle.
Then in the second book she goes on the quest to find the Golden Fleece. Percy figures automatically that someone like Clarisse will screw it up (plus it involved rescuing Percy's best friend, so no way was he going to miss out on that), so he also went on the quest. He overhears Clarisse talking to her father, Ares, the god of war. And overhears him threatening her. Straight up: Ares is an abusive father. So, yeah, Clarisse has got my sympathy there.
Then in the fourth book, they find someone from the Titan army, a demigod called Chris Rodriguez, who got lost in the labyrinth and nearly went insane. Before he was part of the evil Titan army, he and Clarisse were a thing, and so now she's trying to nurse him back to health as he recovers from the trauma of the labyrinth (it's the general theory that he had PTSD during this period) while everyone else gives up on him. Notable in that this is the first time we really see Clarisse being soft.
Then in the fifth book, we discover that she has a friendship with Silena Beauregard, a daughter of Aphrodite, which is sorta counter-intuitive, given that the Ares cabin is known for bullying, booby traps, hot-headedness and stubbornness, and the Aphrodite cabin is known for.... not fighting. But even so, they're close friends, and so when Silena dies? Clarisse throws it down. She single-handedly takes down a drakon (making no modesty of it, either: "I AM CLARISSE, DRAKON SLAYER!!!! I WILL KILL YOU ALL!") and makes the Titan army retreat, earning herself the blessing of Ares. Damn, girl, you go.
But, yeah, she was an important player in the Titan war, and I think that makes her a hero, even if it is an anti-hero. And she's fun. And interesting. So, yeah. She's my favourite.
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