#percahel

It’s a feeling I’ve had for a while now, and I think I’ve been holding back on talking about it out of fear that the very few people in this community will turn on me, but with the recent casting of Leah Jeffries as Annabeth I feel like I need to speak out. 

I have criticised the writing of Annabeth’s character and her relationship with Percy many times, and while I stand by everything I’ve said about them, I think a lot of people are taking it to an unnecessary extreme (quick disclaimer: this is absolutely not a call out post for any specific perachel shipper, and I really don’t mean to start a fight or something I’m just putting my thoughts out there and am very open to civilised discussions on the matter). I’ve summarised all of my critiques of Annabeth and Percabeth here, and as I made it clear in that post, and what I want to make clear here, is that I don’t hate Annabeth and I don’t hate Percabeth shippers. I actually really like their friendship, and what most of us tend to not take into consideration, is that it’s pretty clear that there’s no malicious intent behind Annabeth’s more questionable actions. She’s not by any means an Evil Abuser™, she’s just a kid that occasionally lashes out on others due to her own trauma. 

I think it’s really easy to look at the handful of hateful and malicious Percabeth shippers and resent all of them for it, but it’s important to remember that they are in the minority. It’s just a very loud and big minority because Percabeth is such a big ship. It’s also easy to look at all of Annabeth’s bad traits and actions and forget about all of the good ones. It’s easy to focus on all of the times she’s mistreated Percy and never on the ones where she was kind to him. 

As always when I talk about shipping culture, I wanna link this post, because it just perfectly explains my thoughts on the matter. 

It would be incredibly hypocritical of me to say that Percabeth is a “bad” ship when I myself have said that I like Delena, which is just like and objectively more “problematic” one. I mean, Annabeth never murdered Percy’s brother. We don’t know other people’s interpretations, angles or perspectives on their favourite ship or character, we have no idea what they could mean to them, so calling them a “bad” person or their OTP a “bad” ship just doesn’t work. 

I’ve said before that I wanna take the Disney Plus series as an opportunity to try and grow the Perachel fandom, and if we want to do that we will have to make the Perachel community a safe and welcoming space, and wether you like it or not, one of the key ways to do that is to welcome multi-shippers. Most of the newbies are gonna ship Percabeth anyway, since they will have had 2-3 seasons of development before Rachel even becomes a character. We can’t just spend all our time getting mad at people shipping something we don’t, you know, the exact thing toxic Percabeth shippers we all hate are doing. I really think that if we continue down this road that we will not be any better than the worst of the Percabeth stans. 

I wanted to bring this up because of the casting of Leah Jeffries, because I think it’s a fantastic thing. The Disney Plus series will now have a black leading lady who’s portrayed as strong, capable and vulnerable person, who’s the main love interest of a white guy. That’s something that should be celebrated! What I also want people to think about is that this will be an adaption. The show is not gonna be exactly like the books, they will change things, which is a prime opportunity to fix the more problematic aspects of Annabeth’s character. Now, I’m personally not too optimistic about that, since everything points to the fact that Rick Riordan has not learned his lesson, but he’s not the only person working on this. The most important addition, I think, is Leah Jeffries. We have no idea how she will interpret her character, or how that interpretation might change over the years, so I’m keeping an open mind. 

Ultimately, I’m not gonna stop criticising Annabeth completely, but I have officially changed my tags on here from #anti annabeth and #anti percabeth to #annabeth crit and #percabeth crit, because I am not against these things, I am merely critical of them. 

I created this blog as a way to collect all of the limited Perachel content somewhere, and give shippers a safe space and community; I now want to make that community safe for everyone. My dream of expanding the Perachel fandom through the tv series is still very real, and I want everything on here to be working towards that, so I have made the executive decision to keep ship wars completely away from this blog. I would love it if you all helped. 

I feel like I’m one of the few huge  Percabeth shipper who literally gives no shits that Rachel kissed Percy. I feel people need to understand that 1) a kiss doesn’t have to be romantic and 2) Just cause a kiss is romantic on one side doesn’t mean its romantic on the other. This Fandom is so caught up on Percy staying with Annabeth But like.... how bout we just chill cause 1) Percy is always going to love annabeth 2) annabeth is always going to love percy 3) percy is not so shallow a simple kiss is going to turn him over to Rachel 4) Rachel and him would never work out to start with. Percy is a halfblood. Rachel is mortal even if she could see though the mist there are so many problems. First and foremost, I get the feeling that Rachel’s parents are only warming up to Percy with the guise that he will convince her to go to that big college of hers so once they find out he’s not going to they think he's a ‘bad influence’ another thing to note is that once Percy starts confirming her monster theory they will think Percy is looney cause they think Rachel is looney so that's another reason why Rachel kissing Percy doesn’t bother me. But the biggest thing is this. For three books Percy and Annabeth have bonded, Percy has 1) Fought mr d for her 2) lifted the sky for her 3) was the only person who took annabeth’s life from her point of view and didn’t judge her or say ‘your step mom is right’ (well luke might of but let's ignore that shall we) 4) held her hand when she was scared in lighting thief as they descended into the underworld. and the list goes on. the point is, for 3 books we have seen these two grow. and The romantic hints have been huge. why in the holy library of Athena would rick destroy this for somme random side character  who is added at the very end of the first series, who by the way in bol had a few more hints with Tyson then she ever did Percy.