Cynthiav06 - Books, Multifandom, Percy Jackson+

As intellectuals, one would think the amount of times this point has been reiterated would indicate that a reasonable number of readers have developed the common sense to understand this. Considering we are all older now and aren't blinded by nostalgia, it's the only logical conclusion.

But of course, we have a large population of willfully blind people in the mix. Honestly, the state of the fandom is almost as disappointing as Rick's writing.

It is SO funny to me that some of the Percabeth/Annabeth stans are genuinely upset about wottg, because like. that's how Percabeth/Annabeth has always been with one sole exception: something to "justify" Annabeth's behavior.

For instance:

TLT: she offloads onto Percy about her hatred of Poseidon. Justification: she's 12, she's prejudiced (presumably based on myth? unclear? and she's learning how to be a person etc.

SoM: she offloads onto Percy and Tyson. Justification: Cyclops trauma (nevermind that Tyson had nothing in common with the Cyclops that scared 7 yr Annabeth other than his race).

TTC: she was barely in this book so we'll skip it.

BoTL: she offloads onto Percy and Rachel. Justification: she's jealous of Rachel, also she's in love with Luke AND Percy and is stressed about her prophecy/quest.

TLO: she offloads onto Percy about being a "coward" etc. Justification: he's spending time with Rachel destressing/managing his mental health instead of time with her at chb and she's jealous.

MoA: she offloads onto Percy aka judo flip + threats. Justification: he was missing for months and she was stressed. Nevermind that none of it was his fault.

HoH: she offloads onto Percy aka. using Rachel's name to keep him on his toes. Justification: she was in Tartarus, and therefore stressed (how this results in her actively making Percy anxious as a trauma response - I have no idea; especially when you consider that the only reason Percy is also there is to save her life)

BoO: she offloads about Percy to Piper. Justification: she's angry that Percy scared her in Tartarus while he was fighting - coincidentally against the same enemy she wasn't able to do anything but dodge while said enemy was killing Percy and planning on killing Annabeth next.

you get the point. she's consistently rude/taking her emotions out on people instead of working through it and setting healthy boundaries. there's always some reason that boils down to "I'm hurt and lashing out" that her stans use to justify her behavior.

but in wottg, Annabeth has everything she wants: her perfectly controlled boyfriend, her architecture studies and a non-stressful mission/quest from the gods.

there's no trauma to justify how she's consistently calling Percy stupid or talking down to him or being rude.

now the stans are seeing it. and some of them don't like it.

Merlin was the love to Morgana’s hate. The subservience to her tyranny. When he was willing to believe, she lost hope. When he forgave, she sought revenge.

Too much love made him blind. Too much hate made her lose sight. He clings to the future. She stays in the past. He is Prophecy. She is the Seer. She is Destiny. He is the Choice.

While Merlin lost people, she cast hers away. When she loved, they kept her in darkness. When they loved him, he set them on fire.

Morgana is truth to Merlin’s lies. She is the revelation to his secrets, the freedom to his prison, the chasm to his light. He is loyalty. She is defection. For Camelot. For the Old Religion.

In poverty, in wealth, in status and the lack of it, they mingle. In castles, in hovels, in huts, and dugouts, they dance. Death, despair, pride and joy are known to only them.

Morgana is teamwork. Merlin works alone. He is Diplomacy to her Ground troops, both of them wage losing wars on opposite fronts. She makes her plans by the candlelight and torches. He is impulsiveness and quick thought in the dark corners. He is the sleight of hand, the hidden tricks, misdirection. She is performance and presentation. She is counsel at the shining throne. He is an afterthought by the smoldering hearth.

He murders in the shadows, she kills in the sun. She the poison, he the antidote. Life and Death are at their mercy. They are judge, savior and executioner, playing god, magic and human whenever they see fit.

He is hope and healing. She is doom and destruction. He is complicit. She is active. She fights for the people. He fights for one man. She thinks only for herself. He thinks of everyone.

Selfish and Selfless. They are the same, but also not. Fear and Courage. Affection and Spite. Oh how they attract. Oh How they clash. Sparks fly. The destruction lasts.

Bodies hang. Innocents are chained. None are spared in their ego. Only a few are saved.

Demean your partner consistently ✅️

Physically hurt him multiple times ✅️

Undermine him and his achievements ✅️

Blame him for being in mortal danger and make him apologize for it. ✅️

Disregard his trauma and his self-esteem issues and feed into them ✅️

Annabeth's hitting a pentafecta on this; high achiever indeed. There's probably more. Like when Annabeth talks about leasing Percy or when Percy says he fears Annabeth and how she consistently tries to keep him on his toes and how bringing up Rachel on any other woman is an absolute no-no around Annabeth.

Battle of Labyrinth, Mark of Athena and House of Hades truly showcase the toxic traits of Annabeth.

Also, if you have read Chalice of the Gods or any other non canon fanfics Rick has published, you will clearly see the propaganda of putting Annabeth on a pedestal by undermining Percy is a legitimate thing.

And to all the skeptics, let's look at it logically. Please read solo Percy books and compare the characterization of Percy there with books in which Percy is with Annabeth, especially in later books. See how his character suffers.

The Sword of Hades, Son of Neptune, Son of Sobek, The Stolen Chariot, and so on.

Brb currently thinking how insane it would have been if Percy judo flipped Annabeth at the end of Titans curse like she did with him in MoA 💀 💃🏽

“Annabeth pulled away and studied his face. "Gods, I never thought-“

Percy grabbed her wrist and flipped her over his shoulder. She slammed into the stone pavement. The hunters cried out. Some surged forward, but Artemis shouted, "Hold! Stand down!'

Percy put his knee on annabeths chest. He pushed his forearm against her throat. he didn't care what the hunters or Artemis thought. A white-hot lump of anger expanded in his chest. A tumor of worry and bitterness that he been carrying around since the dance at Westover.

"If you ever leave me again," he said, his eyes stinging, "I swear to all the gods”.

This Kid's Not Alright

perseus // unknown // The Battle of the Labyrinth, Rick Riordan // unknown // The House of Hades, Rick Riordan // unknown // @ vialjarhorn // The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan // The House of Hades, Rick Riordan // @ dying-dog // The House of Hades, Rick Riordan // brutal, Olivia Rodrigo // The Mark of Athena, Rick Riordan // unknown // The Gods Show Up, Michael Kinnucan // The Chalice of the Gods, Rick Riordan

Fun fact is that no one has even had an inch of an extreme reaction yet. If we wanted to be extreme, we would tear down other characters to prove Percy's supremacy like every other stan seems to do. There would be death threats flinging around the way percabeth stans do to any other Percy ship or to those who don't critique on Percy and Annabeth. There's not even basic curses thrown around in any of the posts.

We are literally posting as civilly as possible, pointing out flaws and inconsistencies in canon and the way Percy is mistreated also through canon evidence because we are sensible people who just want other people with common sense, emphasis on common sense to acknowledged the character butchering Rick is doing to Percy to prop up Annabeth or the endless made up arguments other character stans invent to prop up their favorite and tear down Percy. But as it stands, facts seem to give everyone in the community indigestion. We aren't even anywhere near the extremes others usually employ. Enough said.

"ppl in this fandom overreact when someone so much as breathes on Percy-"

I'm sorry, my favourite 16/17 year old has been tortured half to death TWICE in the last 12 months, and no one, not a single character protected him, checked in with him emotionally afterward or provided any type of medical aid. no one. instead he's blamed to defending himself in the only possible way he could've, and HIS TORMENTORS are comforted right in front of him, BY HIS LOVED ONES.

yeah I think this calls for a bit of an extreme reaction, don't you think?

The fact that Annabeth has nothing on Percy in terms of rank and reputation is hilarious to me. Prince of Atlantis, Praetor of Rome, Savior of Olympus, Head Counselor, Commander of the Demigod Army, blessed by PAN and so much more.

Rick can't really expect anyone to actually believe that PERCY "GIVE OTHER GODS AND THEIR CHILDREN THE RESPECT AND WORTH THEY DESERVE" JACKSON is not a complete celebrity and absolutely hero worshipped by literally all young and new campers. There's no way everyone wasn't raving about him nonstop. Especially the Hermes Cabin.

Rick completely lost consistency in HoO, and most of the Camp Hlaf Blood portrayal in The Lost Hero is very vague and iffy.

Also, Piper Mclean? Her? You expect her to understand? The character who looked down on her own siblings because they actually valued their beauty and invested time on it? The character who has been a consistent hypocrite? She literally turned to thieving for attention from her father, not to mention her thinking Annabeth leashing Percy is okay and necessary. To add to that, she herself tried everything to force the fake relationship on Jason more and more with no respect for his boundaries or his likes.

Every time I get reminded that Piper didn't think Percy was all that, I wonder. Is it because she thought Jason was the ideal man? And nobody could top that? Or was it because Annabeth talked bad about Percy, so Piper thought he was a dumbass and not all that.

Okay so I saw this post about dark percy (really him reaching his Limit and fighting full strength with everything he had) and I was imagining the potential fallout of that. Pretty bad, as you can guess.

The thing is a lot of percys strongest moments happen out of view of the olympians, especially in hoo. The hurricane atop the glacier in alaska, the poison scene in tartarus, bending the depression river and the one in the palace of nyx.

Stuff like the St Helens eruption got him washed up on an inescapable island literally removed from reality until calypso gave him the OK, the achillies curse he got tricked into losing by hera. Smaller moments, the minotaur, fighting ares, the stolen pirate ship, walking on water vs hyperion, freshwater sources, him knowing both Latin and Greek, they're more easily brushed off or at least mostly due to cunning, sword skills and sheer luck and grit.

But basically the olympians don't actually know the full extent of percys strength and divine power. They have hints - percy standing on the throne, winning against ares, his many victories - but what they aren't willing to brush aside in the heat of (an important) battle there have been pretty strong consequences for.

Heck, just look at Frank, he's no prodigy with weapons, he's polite and respectful, but his distant relation to two olympians letting him inherit shapeshifting earned him direct divine meddling and his life force tied to a hunk of half toasted firewood. Man is a honey bear with lactose intolerance and he was punished with a mythical death curse for being too strong.

If Percy's true strength came out, he would risk losing everything. His freedom, most certainly. If he wasn't straight up executed he might wind up in a Greek myth style imprisonment, the way of atlas, prometheus, calypso, or something like the myriad of ways Greek heroes met their end. Good scenario he survives a dozen curses and gets on with life with a dozen new disabilities, best case scenario he's stripped of every inch of divine power and dropped back to the mortal world, not even clear sighted. Total separation from the Greeks and Romans. Oh, annabeth would marry him either way, and his friends would hardly abandon him despite the gods wishes, but they'd hardly be able to see him, and no long range contact without the ability to IM him or vice versa.

All of that to say Percy is hiding his true strength from the gods themselves - maybe not consciously, and it's not even power he particularly wants - but if they ever find out?

It's game over.

But why is he so strong? I don't know. What I do know is that the half bloods of the books are so much stronger than the ones of myth. Used to be that divine blood would get you divine favour and a great fate whether you liked it or not. Maybe some cunning and bow skills. A spot of spell casting if you were really lucky. Achillies got his curse after he was born, Perseus had a dozen magic artifacts, orpheus had something going on but hercules is to my knowledge an outlier. Now? Everyone in camp has some special power. Flight, fire, necromancy, hypnotism, dream walking etc. However it's happening, half bloods are slowly but surely getting a lot, lot stronger every century that passes. Meta? I mean I guess. But.

What no one has done before is something that their godly parent couldn't.

Except.

Except Percy.

Except Percy, in tartarus, at his mental, emotional and physical limit, controlling poison with his mind, overpowering the goddess of poison in her home, making misery choke on misery. Feeling something in his chest crack. Doing something poseidon could not, and doing it better than the person who could.

Down there, hidden away from the gods, he evolved. For that brief moment, he did something, was something new.

And that was how the gods overthrew the titans.

And that's why they must never find out.

Percy has always been more godly than mortal. From Book 1, his powers have been exponentially expanding, and we can literally see Percy keeping a tight leash on his powers. As evidenced by how words like something tightened in my gut/something uncoiled in my gut precede Percy's power usage.

Then there are times of physical, emotional, and mental duress where he instinctively loosens his hold on his powers, and it always transcends the limits of a demigod.

Water bursts and floods, storms/hurricane, volcano erupting, uprooting an entire river along with it's riverbed, summoning an independent water reservoir, controlling Rivers of Underworld(Hades/Tartarus domain), controlling the water in the Sea of Monsters (Chardybis's domain), glacier manipulation (outside of the land of gods) and so on.

But until Tartarus, there was some sort of phantom line. At least he had convinced himself of one, but Tartarus erased all his pretenses. Those he kept around for others and those he kept around even to himself. When he chokes Akhyls, he feels something inside him break. Either that's his mortality breaking or it's the threshold of his power breaking. I like the second idea. That Percy Jackson has in overpowering a primordial in their own domain done something so singular, neither a demigod shell nor a godly one can keep his power contained.

Another thing that's almost just as often theorized is that when Percy was offered godhood, his fate was sealed. No one, probably not even the fates, had seen the denial coming. This implies that Percy was already mid process to his transition into a deity, and he has been singlehandedly holding himself back from his own fate all the way until Tartarus. And that becoming a God/deity is inevitable for him. And do we not talk enough about this. Percy Jackson saying no to godhood was the most groundbreaking thing to happen in Olympus in this millenia, only to be followed up by Percy making the gods swear multiple oaths that upend the very roots of how Olympus has functioned until that moment.

So yeah, All hail Perseus Jackson, no one is doing it like him.

Obsessed with these parallels.

Ares in tlt after Percy stabs him in the ankle:

Percy in cotg, breaking free of the river god trying to kill/torture him:

Percy Jackson is a god (and he doesn't know it yet) theory has been born yall.

After Son of Neptune and except for the Tartarus bit, Percy personality change was so radical and absolutely out of character for him, and the Fandom doesn't talk about it nearly enough. It's literally the character assassination of the main character. How do people not talk about it?

Is...Rick seriously implying Percy 'fatal flaw is his loyalty to friends' Jackson would...literally prefer being captured and put in chains and taken to be sacrificed to Gaea...just so he and Annabeth can be together still??? Keep in mind, Percy KNOWS Hedge would have been sold to Cyclops as food (so one friend would be killed) and that Chrysaor would have sold Hazel and Piper to Circe (depending if this is just Rick forgetting Circe got defeated in Olympians or Chrysaor is unaware of that) and given he had no use for Jason (and likely Leo and Frank), its likely he would have killed three more of Percy's friends. And therefore, you think Percy would be happy his friends are safe from that shit, given his fatal flaw.

But...no, Mark Of Athena decides he suddenly would have preferred all that happening just so he and Annabeth won't be apart, meaning Rick wrote Percy forgetting the danger his friends would be in in that situation in favor of Percabeth...which in itself is weird as uh, I know he's got faith he and Annabeth can figure it out, but like, he really wishing he and Annabeth would get into that danger with Gaea??? For someone whose fatal flaw is loyalty to his friends, it really did not pop up here.

headcanons for Percy?

WHOOP WHOOP okay just to preface this, most of this is me going “hey i think being a kid of poseidon is a weirdly complex experience”

i think this is canon officially but percy’s music taste is one of the 78378837 things in his life he got from his mother; sally’s an old-school rock and old-school rap diehard, and percy follows right in her footsteps, because on days when gabe wasn’t home sally would turn their shitty little radio that sat on the kitchen countertop on and bang her head while cleaning or cooking or shuffling bills. trips to montauk were sally shouting the lyrics to an AC/DC song and tiny percy not knowing the words but wanting to join in, so he’s just shouting nonsense. a lot of the things percy likes, he likes them for sentimental reasons, and music’s just another one of those things.

when percy was first born for three weeks he would literally not stop screaming. he would not shut up. he would sleep for half an hour and then he’d scream for three. and then sally gives him his first real bath, and percy is the happiest he’s ever been since he’s been alive. i have in my head a very comical image of sally pulling percy out of the little tub and he starts screaming like a banshee, and then she sets him back down and he’s back to giggling happily, rinse, repeat - so eventually sally learns that she can clean the kitchen sink really good, stop it, and just drop percy in. after she figures that out he’s an insanely easy baby, and also toddler, because imagine if you could just dump a cup of water on your kid’s head and he’d just instantly be less upset. the downside to this is that water gives percy a lot of energy, but sally would rather be chasing a giggling toddler than a screaming one.

because of that, growing up, whenever percy was angry or upset and sally couldn’t immediately calm him down because she had to wrangle gabe, she’d tell percy to take a shower. percy takes showers based on his current mood. he thinks everyone does this, and one time at his first summer at CHB, annabeth is upset about a fight she had with someone in the athena cabin and percy’s helpful advice is, “maybe you should take a shower?” and annabeth gets so pissed because she’s 12 and she thinks percy’s telling her she smells. percy is extremely confused.

if he’s ever landlocked far away from the coast for a long time, he gets antsy and irritable and depressed, which is not something they figure out until annabeth’s first job involves her relocating to denver for six months and percy goes with her, and it is a truly hellish six months. they figure it out when they stop off at CHB on the way home because maybe percy just needs something familiar, maybe he’s just homesick, and then he proceeds to stay under the ocean for three days straight

while i’m thinking about headcanons relating to percy being half sea god, this kid drinks a truly astronomical amount of water. he’s like the king of the hydration nation. he has a reusable water bottle of truly monstrous size that he has to fill up every hour, because he is the most hydrated person alive, and he has been known to sometimes just stick his head under the faucet and drink directly from the sink like an oversized dog. beverages that are not water are unacceptable. annabeth, who lives off of tea, coffee, and red bull, thinks this is weird.

half sea god metabolisms go hard because percy’s body, although he doesn’t realize it because he’s never lived in the ocean, works doubletime when he’s not in the water. he eats so much because it takes more energy for him to exist on land than it does for literally anyone else. zeus and hades kids have it easy, they’re literally always breathing air or walking on land, they’re in their natural element just all the time. percy’s magic godblood is just screaming “what the fuck is this what the fuck is this what the fuck is this” and that’s why percy eats almost an entire meal every three hours.

further Percy’s Blood Is Half Seawater headcanons include: he has never owned an umbrella in his life because he just trots through the rain like nothing in the world is wrong, he’s not only more resistant to heat but also resistant to cold because the ocean’s pretty damn cold most of the time, he has a high tolerance to mortal drugs so when he gets sick not even the tamiflu can’t save him, if he’s near the ocean he gets really bouncy at incoming tide when the waves are strongest, always knows whether it’s an el nino or la nina year, and he doesn’t know it because NYC isn’t exactly at risk for hurricanes, but the closer he gets to natural ones the more batshit he goes. completely chaotic, can’t focus on anything, running around like a chicken with his head cut off.

living on a fault line or near a fault line is a NO GO he CANNOT DO IT. not just because percy accidentally triggering an earthquake on a fault line could Fuck Shit Up, but because the constant tension of the colliding of the tectonic plates puts him on edge. he gets stress migraines near transcurrent faults. being near intense volcanic activity for a prolonged amount of time, like living near an active volcano, just makes him angry. sometimes he gets inexplicably frustrated when traveling, it’s just because they’re over a failed ancient rift in the middle of a tectonic plate. and percy accidentally triggers a lot of earthquakes, but since they’re all intraplate quakes and he has no idea he’s doing it, they turn out to be more like lil tiny tremors, and people just kind of... don’t notice it. no one figures this out until after the giant war and percy’s struggling with night terrors and those tremors start getting a lot more noticeable. percy, annabeth, and grover have to go on a Recovery Roadtrip because staying in one place means percy’s doing a lot of damage to one specific area of a gigantic tectonic plate and creating a weakness in the earth’s crust increases the tectonic stress making subsequent earthquakes worse and also i fucking think they deserve a roadtrip what the fuck!

being a kid of poseidon needs to come with a goddamn handbook, but it’d be 1000 pages of the wildest shit imaginable, like “if you need a blood transfusion there’s not going to be any human that can help. you’re going to have to find a willing horse or ocean creature, and pegasi do not count” or “if you ever have the urge to just knock back a salt shaker like it’s a shot of vodka, that’s also normal, and encouraged”

i’m pretty sure canon contradicts this but lol canon is mine to ignore, but i think because of gabe’s tendency to be a gross human being, percy has grown into being a neat freak. annabeth leaves one (1) empty can on the table and percy makes distressed percy noises about how they HAVE A RECYCLING BIN, BABE, TRASH DOESN’T BELONG ON THE TABLE - also because of gabe, percy gets weird around alcohol and the smell of beer makes his heart hammer. which is awkward, because sometimes the older CHB kids who survived the titan war and the giant war celebrate being alive by sneaking in alcohol, and chiron will turn a blind eye to it because CHB is one of two places in the world where demigods are safe to be off their game. mr. d is seething, but, you know, that’s fine. so percy spends those parties cleaning up after people and cutting people off when they’ve had too much and chatting with the people who got drunk but accidentally got sad drunk. if they’re on the beach and the waves are crashing harder than usual, well, they’re a bunch of demigods excited about being alive, and no one really notices.

extremely good taste in sneakers he just wears those sneakers with like, the worst outfit imaginable