anaklusmos | riptide

me: the reason we find it easier to assign love language headcanons to percy than to annabeth - such as him calling her pet names or hugging her all the time - is because not only do we read his first person perspective and we truly see how deeply he cares for the people he loves, but also because one of the first scenes we ever get from him is him being stoked about seeing his mom, who sits on the bed with him, gives him candy and asks about his day and does her best to protect him from gabe. it's established from day one - percy's had a rough life but he is loved. he's grown up with that love and it's a constant in his life, he knows he's gonna go back to it eventually, therefore he constantly acts like a person who knows how to love. annabeth is the stark opposite. her feelings are never validated and she doesn't learn how to be honest about them because when she was, she was told she was lying. being a little kid and having that ingrained into you from such a young age... of course she has anger and jealousy fits, she is a kid who never had experience with feelings because from the get go she's told they don't matter, she's never done anything but push them down. that coupled with the fact we don't have access to her internal narration leads to the interpretation that she's cold or a 'bitch' when she is simply an emotionally stunted teenager but you don't need to dig much deeper to realize that reading of her is very, very superficial. rather than saying percy is the affectionate one in the relationship and she is the cold one, let's entertain the thought of annabeth slowly discovering what she's truly comfortable with in regards to expressing love (and other feelings) because her friends and bf build enough of a safe environment around her she finally feels okay with doing so. thank you for coming to my ted talk there's coffee and biscuits by the exit