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Sorry it took so long. I took the week of April 14-April 20 off, partly for Easter, and partly because my grandpa's funeral was that weekend. Then I got PMS and felt unmotivated, then I had to use a driving simulation app my driving tutors wanted me to use, and then, when I finally had this page done and ready to go, this site had disabled uploading. Better late than never, I guess.

Perhaps the most unrealistic part of this is an authority figure punishing the bully instead of the victim.

Nico mentions Henry Whittaker in The Sun and the Star. Those of you who haven't read any Percy Jackson books might need a little extra context: Nico and his older sister, Bianca, were born in the early 1930s, the children of Hades and an Italian woman named Maria di Angelo. After the Big Three gods (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) made a pact to not have any more demigod children, Zeus tried to kill Nico and Bianca. Hades managed to save the children, but their mother sadly died, after which Hades put them in the Lotus Casino (basically the modernized "Percy Jackson" version of the Lotus Grove from Homer's Odyssey), where they stayed for seven decades, still the ages they were when they entered.

I say this to keep in mind that this conversation took place during the early 1940s, when LGBTQ+ wasn't accepted in America and certainly wouldn't have been shared with kids. Anyway, when Nico was eight years old, he played Mythomagic (a battle card game in the Percy Jackson universe made up of Greek mythological characters) with Henry Whittaker, whom he was in elementary school with. When Nico said he thought Ares looked attractive on one of Henry's cards, Henry called him weird and stopped hanging out with him. Nico cites this as one of the main reasons he's always been afraid to admit he's gay, along with being from an earlier time and raised in a conservative Christian household.

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, used to draw a comic strip called Life in Hell, which I was introduced to at a young age since my dad had a few book collections. The strip is very adult-oriented, so most of the humor went over my head as a kid, but parts of it did stick out to me in their own ways. There are several one-panel cartoons of the character Binky, cast in an eerie silhouette, looming over his son, Bongo, who has presumably done something wrong. I remember those freaking me out when I was really young, and I bring them up because I think the third panel of the last row was subconsciously influenced by them.

I've said enough. Stay tuned for another page of Big Brother Turd.

Percy Jackson characters belong to Rick Riordan and Disney: Hyperion