#pjo crit

Not only would you avoid having a virgin goddess being utterly disrespected for no good reason, but it would justify way better why people constantly underestimate Annabeth. Because, oh dear, do Aphrodite's sons and daughters get dragged through the mud in these series!

Annabeth being a child of Aphrodite would be a ruthless situation to be in at first; she would more often than not be judged on her looks rather than her wits.

In Rick's very nature-deterministic world where the Dionysus kids will hand you energy juice bottles while all the Ares kids are on the frontline and all the Apollo kids are archers and/or medics, Annabeth Chase would be expected to sit nice and look pretty and break some hearts and maybe fix other campers' armors.

And she'd understandably hate the idea.

Annabeth would attempt to deny and escape her parentage, such as by avoiding her siblings or trying way too hard to make an impression on Athena. She'd despise pink and femininity, just like Uncle Rick did with all of his other main female characters, because there's only one way to be a likeable girl and it's by not wearing any makeup and not trying 'too hard'.

Annabeth's pride, which she would take after Aphrodite's, would have her deliberately avoid learning about the numerous myths relating to her mother, and that could prove dangerous in missions.

Then she would learn to embrace her divine parentage. She'd stop running away from the parts of herself that society had conditioned her to hate, she'd learn about the actual Aphrodite, about her mother's cunning and bravery which has her not think twice before thrusting herself into a decade-long war, about how feared she was even on Olympus.

Annabeth would learn to let her heart lead her on, as she'd realise how remarkably good of a compass it can be when the entire world seems dark and hopeless.

It would also be far more powerful message than what we're currently working with.

Can we talk about how Rick Riordan read about demigods and inmediately chose to call them half-bloods?

First of all, it's not a word that ancient Greeks used: those who were considered "superior to mankind, but inferior to the gods", to say it somehow, were called demigods or heroes. Pretty sure it started being used during the Middle Ages, as... literally, as a term, to call those who were of "mixed race" during the colonization of America. It originated from that, and it many negative connotations: pretty sure it could be considered a slur. And he KNOWS this. At least, I want to think he does. I mean, explain this:

Yeah, Rick, it's good that you wanna point out the discrimination Indigenous and African people suffer, but I think Piper' and Carter's discomfort with that name could be erased by simply not calling them that. It is really unnecessry. Sure, you could add a scene in which someone calls demigods that, be it with ill intentions or just as a misconception, but both ways could serve to show the characters' upsetness before such name.

Don't you think, Rick, I don't know, it comes to my mind... that there are better ways to call the children of gods? I believe that throwing this word around like it's nothing in a children's book is... questionable, to say the least. It minimizes what the word half-blood meant. What it was used and is still used for.

"Oh, but he does call them heroes and demigods!" Oh, so he IS able to not use a racial slur for his literal childrens book, huh? Not to mention, he STILL called it "Half-Blood Camp" and the term that is used the most is still that one.

I've counted just The Lightning Thief, but the word half-blood is said like 60 times, the word hero is said like 50 and the word demigod is said only 6 times.

its pretty obvious at this point that a lot of neurodivergent (obviously), poc and queer kids saw themselves in percy when the books first came out, sharing a lot in common with all those groups, and theres a somewhat decent amount of tweets rick made regarding headcanons like those, where he passive aggressively says something along the lines of ‘cool headcanon and you can see him however you want but please keep in mind that thats a headcanon and not canon’, in a way that feels like he just fully hates headcanons or interpretations like that

and rick himself did say that a big point of the show is that hes making changes to the story hed make if he were to rewrite it, and i know this could just be walker being the best suited for this, but we’re gonna go a little deeper than that. it feels like one of the changes rick is trying to make, is to completely erase those previous headcanons and interpreations people had on percy

so far in the show its undeniable that percy is white (obviously), but the biggest thing id argue is that hes getting rid of any possible queer coding within percy, as we dont see him hold any kind of attraction/fasciniation with anyone, let alone any guys, aside from annabeth, when in the books there would be paragraphs of him describing a guys physical apperance and make it very obvious, sometimes saying it outright, that percy found the guy attractive

another thing about percy that a lot of people see him as, is him holding punk values, whether or not people realize thats what theyre seeing in him. percy is very anti-authoritarian, hes very anti-war, anti-capitalist, mutual aid is a big point for him, all of which (and more) are punk ideologies, while show percy tells annabeth to not talk back to a cop. (as i work on my show rewatch im probably gonna reblog this and add on more points if/when i find them, but i feel like this point alone showcases what im saying pretty well) i think its also stated a few times in the books that he listens to punk and alternative rock, and other music genres similar

Mind you, it’s not like the LGBTQ+ community was in hiding during that time. One of the most popular videos to make in 2013 was COMING OUT videos. And those videos were BOOMING all over social medias. It was genuinely like Rick read a few popular fanfics and decided “Hey, I’ll just do that because people eat this shit up” and tossed it in with the utmost half-assery he possibly could and so many of his die hard fans genuinely do eat it up. Rick Riordan can do no wrong! Rick is just a itty bitty widdle straight white man, he doesn’t know guys.

Adapting a book to film (live action or animation) is like translating a novel from one language to another.

The author, more likely than not, is NOT fluent in film; this is similar to a translation in that an English author is not fluent in, say, Spanish.

The author can and should be consulted: "what should the visible background of this scene be like in order to reflect the tone?" for film/animation; and "which translated verb most closely resembles the diction?" for written translation.

But, because the author is not fluent in film or foreign language, THEY SHOULD NOT BE THE ONE ADAPTING/TRANSLATING.