lesbabeths:

honestly like i realize frank & hazel are under-appreciated or less visible in fandom, but it’s like…not a fandom issue, so much as it is a writing issue

they both had a MUCH less discernible arc than other characters and virtually…no narrative for more than half the series. they either completely dropped out of the storyline or weren’t in the book at all for three out of five books in the series. both of them COMBINED only have a pov in two out of five books!!!!!!! their only significant role in moa is to be props for leo (and i’m still unclear on what….that arc was even supposed to accomplish narratively, even for leo).

they are only major players—i would even go so far as to say that they’re only main characters in son and hoh. and even in hoh, they’re splitting the narrative with literally six other characters (including each other, bc tbh frank’s entire arc ALONE could have used a whole book to himself. hazel’s backstory is established pretty well in son and she seems to have made peace with it by the end of the book, so while it’s annoying that she HAS no tangible character arc past that point and her powers are totally inconsistent that’s a separate issue from “frank with the complicated bloodline and cursed life and vanishing grandmother that is barely elaborated on and never resolved”) (there is literally no reason why moa and hoh had to be narrated by both percy AND annabeth ((and quite honestly y’all know i adore him n his pov is like home but like…we know how his head works and i’m not totally sure why he narrated moa to begin with??))

as opposed to leo, who narrates FOUR books (and STILL didn’t develop a characterization with any substance behind it ((i’m SORRY like i know he’s a mexican genius who speaks spanish and is adhd and probably autistic too but like i am amazed that even with all these things working in his favor he can still manage to apparently be the “seventh wheel” in a way that doesn’t address any of this lmao)) and has…pretty awful arcs with hazel and frank…like his jealousy of frank is….just…bizarre….frank is a chubby chinese boy who’s not even really technically dating his first ever girlfriend, he’s not exactly known for being some conventionally attractive chick magnet, and considering that jason literally IS i just don’t get this weird leo/frank dynamic whatsoever, and it makes hazel look frighteningly like a trophy, which is especially poignant since she doesn’t have any personal reflection on her own feelings in all of moa), piper who also narrates four (fandom’s issues with her are a whole ‘nother problem, but like she’s still a very talked about/popular character and that’s just by sheer amount of content that we have to work with), and percy and jason who narrate three and definitely have the biggest narrative pull in son and tlh respectively. annabeth only narrates moa and hoh but she’s got an entire fucking book dedicated to herself, not to mention that she’s already an established character.

anyway the point is that hazel and frank are basically minor characters and so it’s not very surprising that fandom engages with them significantly less than the other main characters. there’s just not as much to work with. you’ve gotta generate your own content for it to be meaningful most of the time.

blame the narrative, not the fandom.