:

I would have it set at least five years in the future, and I would not have made Percy and Annabeth main characters.

I would have really really emphasized Jason, especially not making him a literal replacement for Percy because that was basically a death warrant for his entire characterization. Some readers went, oh, Percy 2.0, cool! and some of them went, ew, Percy 2.0, except not as good (cough me cough). And that’s why they’re constantly pitted against each other and it’s boring, let Jason be his own character 2k16. Also, Percy wouldn’t have gone missing, because let’s be honest, that plotline completely took over The Lost Hero and became the central focus for most of the readers (me). Either not made Thalia and Jason siblings or like actually figured out a real plotline for that relationship.

Not have all of the Seven paired off. Really focus on the relationships with each other and how they’re all connected. Really delve into backstory, and NOT MAKE JASON’S PAST A MYSTERIOUS ENIGMA. Jason and Piper would still be a thing, but the only thing, everything else would be strictly platonic and you’d actually see Jason and Piper’s relationship development rather than setting them up offscreen (honestly what the fuck was that about, like just why).

No giants, just Gaea (or at least, not have all the giants killed in other books and then resurrected because that’s just stupid). That way you could spend most of the time focusing on Greek/Roman dynamic, and really develop the Seven’s relationship with each other. Actually like fight the final battle and talk about the deaths and what happened (it’s so ironic, because i remember reading/writing post-hoo fics before boo had even come out where the writer just glossed over the final battle bc you didn’t know how it would go down, and what do you know, boo did the same thing).

Scratch the plotline with the Sibylline books. There’s no need to spend that much time building up something that you know you’re not going to use in this book series, just so you can start the next one. It was a total red herring and it was annoying.

Percy and Annabeth come back as Greek diplomats and to lead the final battle, and sort of serve as mentors. Their relationships with the Seven are not really emphasized, because it would just distract from the Seven’s relationships with each other. There’s a definite reverence surrounding them.

Given the Seven definitive roles and actually utilized them, like how Piper was supposed to be the mediator and Percy was supposed to be the glue, except assigned something like that to everyone and actually showed them doing their job in detail.

My Seven would definitely include Jason, Leo, Piper, Hazel, Frank, and Reyna, but I’m not sure about the Seventh member. You could argue for Nico, but I really feel like Nico’s character development and plotline were really resolved by the end of Last Olympian. Perhaps if we’re running with Last-Olympian-heavy-sarcasm-dry-humor-no-tact-lazy-loyal Nico it would be cool, but I’m not a fan of Nico’s character regression in the Heroes of Olympus, and I think House of Hades era Nico would make a poor choice of main character.

Really amped up the Big Three kids, or just not had so many Big Three kids. I felt like Percy Nico and Thalia were a much bigger deal, not just because of the prophecy, but because they were powerful. I personally think Big Three kids are like genetically designed to be killing machines and as they get older they get this aura that’s intimidating as fuck. But Jason and Hazel don’t really jive with that, so either they just aren’t Big Three or they’re given some more respect.

But man, all I really wanted from this series was seeing a group of people learning how to work together and being a team, that’s the greatest plotline there is, and it’s not that hard to do it could have been so good (like Walking Dead or Teen Wolf or Last Airbender or Legend of Korra, even fucking Lost had better relationships than this mess). And really emphasized insecurity and how they felt like they couldn’t do it, and felt like the Seven should have included Percy and Annabeth and Hylla and Thalia instead and make the Seven wonder why us, and then show why the Seven were the Seven very effectively.

Bonus, crack: Switched Jason and Leo’s characters, as in Jason, the Latino elf son of Jupiter, and Leo, the tall hot blond son of Hephaestus. When I first saw the cover art of Lost Hero, I assumed that Jason was Leo and Leo was Jason, and tbh, I was about a thousand times more excited thinking about it that way around.)