[silima]

you were the one who could’ve rescued me

you were the one in the end

crossed all the borders just to look for you

i never saw you again

anyway um..... don’t think about how hazel spent decades searching through asphodel for her mom’s lost soul, it’ll make you sad

[ladyheart-deactivated20210919]

Jacob Blake is in stable condition.

If you can, consider donating to his family to pay for legal bills, medical bills, and therapy for the whole family who were traumatized by what has happened.

[archiveaccnt]

percy in pjo: I hate rich people. if I even see a rich person then I have no choice but to attack. I will personally personally dismantle the floor boards of capitalism with my bare hands so dni if you’re rich.

percy in hoo: i have decided to take my dear friend jeff bezos with me on this quest

[kubo]

annabeth has taylor swift energy. no i will not explain. no this is not a compliment.

[bunkernine]

this is the smallest thing, but i wish leo hadn't taken the magic dishes from chb. it means that the seven probably doesn't cook for each other. they just take out a plate and voila! a four course meal and you don't even have to get up

anyway, i mention this because cooking together or eating food at a table together is such a great bonding experience for a group. there's nothing like the banging of fists on the table chanting DINNER! DINNER! DINNER! or the mindless anticipation of being hungry and waiting for the meal to stew. it would've been interesting if they actually did have days where each of the seven cook: like, the absolute joy when percy flips a pancake and they all slowly walk in yawning, or when it's annabeth's day and she never learned to cook so they all look at each other and gulp.

there's just. a moment where they could've came back all tired and sweaty from a battle and there's the smell of a warm meal in the air, and coach walks around in a lacey KISS PUNCH THE CHEF apron, stirring a pot, while each demigod collapses in their chair, with their stomachs growling. or like a moment where they argue over dish duty and leo snarks "i think we should wash our own crap," and it cuts to him muttering about being stuck on dish duty and he shouldve installed a dish washer. or like frank trying to figure out a recipe and piper gets curious, but they're both rich and never cooked their own food so its useless. hazel talking about spices and swapping southern foods with leo. annabeth thinking a sandwich is good for every single meal. heck, maybe even that moment where nico has his first meal that isn't pomegranate seeds, and the seven is sitting there with him at a table, laughing and yelling, and a familiar cinnamon of Sally's Apple Pie is beginning to spread

idk if any of that makes sense, but i guess food and family go hand in hand in my mind, and it's the very minute detail, but you know. let them cook i guess. sometimes magic isn't everything. its just... the little things

[blackracheldare-deactivated2020]

When Rick described Piper’s body as having “soft curves in all the right places” I WAS DISGUSTED

[lightningmcleans]

LET ME TALK ABOUT THIS.

indigenous girls are sexualized to no end. our most popular piece of “representation” in the media is pocahontas, who is a sexualized version of matoaka, a girl who was kidnapped when she wasn’t even a teen yet. the MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous women) crisis is still happening today, and is considered a genocide. the abuse and sexualization of native women is so normalized. and whether rick intended it to be this way or not, describing a native teen girl that way has extremely harmful effects on indigenous readers. sexualizing teen girls is terrible, but when its a native girl, it takes on a whole new meaning. he does this when piper gets claimed, as well. and it hurts native girls who read the series and see ourselves in piper.

[silima]

can we talk about racism in fantasy character designs? SO MANY fantasy stories have characters of color with either eurocentric hair/eye colors or entirely made up ones while white characters are given natural color palettes—despite how common brown eyes and black hair are in real life, they’re shockingly rare in a lot of fantasy. authors are fine with blonde/brunette/redheaded characters and blue/green eyes but they’ve decided that the natural coloration of most people of color is simply too “boring” to be included. it’s so frustrating to have to have this conversation in so many different fandoms—yes this is about avatar, it’s about voltron, she-ra, the dragon prince, percy jackson, rwby, whatever you’re thinking of. this trope wouldn’t be racist if it were just a small handful of characters but it’s EVERYWHERE. please stop doing it.

[lesblah]

i saw a reply to someone's avatar post that was like, do you think it's okay for yue to have blue eyes to show her connection to the moon spirit? and i'm like, how do blue eyes have anything to do with the moon LMFAO just admit that you think light eyes = special and magical in a way brown eyes aren't.

there's nothing actually connecting light hair and light eyes inheritly with magic and fantasy. you just think it looks prettier. start by admitting that to yourself.

and the idea that rare/recessive features = valuable and revered is literally one of the foundational elements of white supremacy & is inextricably tied to the concept of "saving the white race." if it was actually about rarity, all of your pale as fuck white characters would have black hair and brown eyes to signify their ethereal beauty. but it's not, it's about the inherit white supremacy of valuing recessive features over common & racialized ones.

it doesn't matter if you don't THINK that's what your intention was, it actually really is and you need to do some self reflecting on why you think blue eyes have any special quality about them that would separate that person in someway from those with brown ones. (spoilers it's because you're a white supremacist. yes, you).

[diver-up]

I should probs wait til tmrw to post this but idc

[ID: a digital drawing of silena and charles in front of a white background. silena has her arms wrapped around charles & is kissing him on the cheek, smiling. she has light brown skin and is wearing a pink hijab, and her eyes are closed. she’s also wearing a long sleeved grey shirt underneath of a dark grey t-shirt, and her nails are painted pink. there’s some gold bracelets around her wrist as well as a bracelet adorned with camp half-blood beads. charles is wearing an orange tank top and is smiling at silena. he has dark brown skin with a few scars, darker brown hair, and brown eyes. there’s a small red heart drawn in between them. End ID.]

[pjolesbian]

fredrick only acknowledges annabeth bc she is an extension of his relationship to athena. like, he has his wife and children that he considers his actual life and family and annabeth exists to him only to fulfill his desire to be connected to the mythological world. it’s fucking depressing especially ESPECIALLY because annabeth Knows This and has to just learn to eventually accept it

[pjolesbian]

like you can see the progression of it throughout the books, in tlt annabeth is bitter and jaded but still holds a little hope that her father actual cares about her the same way he does his other children, enough that it’s worth it to put herself through the trauma of living with him again to try and reconcile their relationship. and by ttc we learn that it went Horribly because her dad and his family have made no real effort to make annabeth feel incorporated—because they DON’T see her as a daughter, fredrick only sees her as a memory of athena and his fleeting intersection with the godly world, which gives annabeth’s step-mom permission to see annabeth not as an important part of her husband’s life but rather an interference on THEIR life and marriage, and an instigator whenever annabeth tries to hold her dad accountable. so of course annabeth would just STOP trying to hold him accountable because like … what’s the point. like, message received. by ttc she’s back in new york at a boarding school because she’s learned at this point after repeated heartbreak that her dad is NEVER going to take responsibility for her, is totally fine with her running away and almost dying and doing totally her own thing and never getting the memo because he doesn’t WANT her as a daughter. he can be the hero at the end of the book and fly in to save the day, but he can’t be an actual DAD.

and of course annabeth would rather die than let herself be some kind of victim in her own eyes (even though she absolutely is a victim of abuse and neglect from a very early age), so if she just accepts that her dad doesn’t love her then she doesn’t have to worry about it. like, he doesn’t care about me? okay whatever i’m sick of trying to change that i’m just going to move on with my life and find people who actually are willing to value me as a human being. if you don’t want me in your life then i just won’t be a part of it, and won’t include you in mine either. meanwhile she’s like…. 14? 😢

[feeshies]

If this adaptation never gets made, then I can rely on my dreams.

This was really fun to do.

Poster Template

Show Template

[moontheapollocamper]

Medusa & Middle Eastern Representation

Hello! I’m Moon and I am Angry About Things, so I’m going to dive down a rabbit hole into one topic so I don’t cry! That topic is racism & islamophobia in PJO and I’m talking about Middle Eastern rep!

If you didn’t know, I’m Middle Eastern and I live in the Middle East and have lived here since birth. This means that I know first hand what people here are like and I can make fun of the stereotypes western media has made of us all I want. 

Where does Medusa come in? Well, in Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief, the gang crosses paths with Medusa. All fine and dandy, it’s just Medusa, the mythological monster that turns people into stone when you look at her that was killed by Perseus. 

But wait. It gets bad. 

Medusa is described to be Middle Eastern. Big yikes for being the only character in this book series to be somewhat Middle Eastern (Not counting Magnus Chase since I’m talking about Percy Jackson and the Olympians specifically). 

I’m going to paste in some direct quotes and talk y’all through them

–

Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle Eastern woman – at least, I assumed she was Middle Eastern, because she wore a long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was completely veiled. Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was about all I could make out. Her coffee-coloured hands looked old, but wellmanicured and elegant, so I imagined she was a grandmother who had once been a beautiful lady. (page 179, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

That black gown is called a burka (Or burqa) and it’s a viel like a hijab but it covers the entire body including the hands, so that’s factually incorrect. The thing is, using religious garments like a burka for the monster is not,, good. It’s taking something sacred and using it as a plot device. 

also can I add that you shouldn’t describe black or brown people’s skin colour with food?? Please???

Her accent sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, too. (page 179, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

Personal thing, but I read these books when I was like 10 and this part confused me so fucking much because I had no idea what a Middle Eastern accent is. I go to school with people from all around the Middle east and everyone has a unique accent and it’s impossible to classify one as a ‘middle eastern accent’, but I guess if you didn’t know much abotu the different accents that I’m around every day, you could just group them as one (Even though they sound WILDLY different).

this one is just a personal pet peeve, back to the actual complaints. 

She hadn’t taken off her head-dress, even to cook (page 182, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

This one might be Rick writing Percy knowing almost nothing about muslim tradition, but really. was this line necessary? I don’t think so. I don’t like it, you can say what you want with it. 

“Wrong?” Aunty Em said, reaching up to undo the wrap around her head. (Page 186, Percy jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

Wrap?????? What??????? It isn’t a Hijab??? It’s a literal veil?? Look at this picture and tell me if you see a wrap:

it’s literally a viel that gets put on by a fitted area at the top that holds it in place, there is no wrapping involved, Russel. 

My eyes rose to Aunty Em’s hands, which had turned gnarled and warty, with sharp bronze talons for fingernails (Page 186, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

So anyways, she turns into a literal monster! Isn’t that an amazing way to have the only Middle Eastern-esque character in your books turn out! Please take my advice on this: Don’t make a race that is frequently stereotyped as bombers, terrorists and villians into a literal monster. That shit’s bad, don’t do it.

That’s all the quotes, but I still have more to say!

The whole thing about the Middle Eastern woman putting them under a trance and trying to make them stay is really, really racist (for lack of a better word). It’s making the only Middle Eastern character in the series (I know I’m repeating this a lot, but I need to emphasise this) a racist portrayl of an entire race of people. 

It was not fun for me, reading that part of the book and going “Oh hey! It’s someone like me!” and then continuing and finding that it’s a monster who tried to kill them. And it won’t be fun for other Middle Eastern kids who go and readthe book too. I know that I can’t change what’s already written and published, but I can yell my thoughts into the void and hope that it helps another author writing a Middle Eastern character. 

My final words are a few things that I can tell you as a native that you should keep in mind when writing a Middle Eastern character:

-Not every female wears a hijab (or some other variation)

-The Arab World includes nothern Africa, while the Middle East ends at Egypt. They are two separate things that intersect. 

-Middle Easterns don’t have a fixed look. Not every Middle Eastern has ‘coffee coloured skin’ and ‘dark mocha hair’ or whatever the fuck it is. Some of us have blonde-brown hair (my best friend), some of us have lighter skin (Me. not light enough to be white but lighter than what people imagine when they think Middle East), some of us could pass for East/South-East Asian (my other best friend), etc etc. Try not to make your middle eastern character a stereotype of what we look like. 

-Don’t make them the villian/a monster if there are no other Middle Eastern characters on the good side. If you make the only character from a region that already gets stereotyped as evil and evil character, that’s racist. 

-Don’t use Islam or Islamic phrases willy nilly. A Middle Eastern character throwing in a phrase like ‘Bismillah’ or ‘Allahuakbar’ in wrong situations basically tells me you have no clue what you’re doing. Don’t be Rick. Reading the Quran a few times means nothing if you don’t consult someone who’s experienced in this topic. (Not me. Please, I’m not google. Go find stuff yourself.)

-Finally, Do your research. This goes towards any ethnicity or race or gender or sexuality or anything that you are not. Learn about them, talk to people, get educated. Then go back and write your story. 

[hideandsneakless]

sadie “rules are made to be broken” kane

[housemartius]

“the gods should be portrayed as white otherwise it takes away from greek culture and greek representation” 😬😬😬

[housemartius]

see the thing here is: just how much of ancient greek culture has survived throughout the eras and still impacts modern day greece and modern day greek people? bc ultimately these books revolve around just that: the myths. there’s not a single reference whatsoever to modern day greek culture (clothing, food, celebrations, holidays, etc). not a single reference about having the greek demigods connect to modern day greek culture or even an attempt or intent on their part to be connected to it. there’s never any mention of any greek demigod identifying with modern day greek culture. and it’s bc technically none of the demigods are ethnically greek (except those who have ethnically greek mortal parents obviously) nor do they see themselves as such

also ancient greece was racially/ethnically diverse so don’t even

[housemartius]

apparently some people are not getting the whole point of the post so, again: the books are about the MYTHS (there’s two meanings to the word “myth”: 1. a traditional story that explains the early historical or societal phenomenons of a people that typically involves supernatural beings or events”; 2. a widely held but false belief or idea.)

the books are solely about ancient greek myths. and back then, as the post i linked above explains, the concept of race was very much different than the one we have now (seriously, read it). so take a racially/diverse ancient greece that does not look at race/ethnic the same way we do now, and look into its people and consecutively its mythology: the stories they created would ultimately reflect their own selves and views and culture, because that’s always the case, meaning, the stories draw inspiration from real life and real people. real racially and ethnically diverse people

so this “no, it definitely has to be white people portraying the gods” makes no sense in the end because there was much more than white people back then. in fact, there wasn’t even “white people” (the concept) back then for that matter!

let’s look at another canonical fact from the books though, in case you’ve yet to understand that racial/ethnic diversity is an absolute must both in and for this series: the gods change along with mankind depending on where the center of society is currently during the eras. they started out in ancient greece, then moved on to ancient rome (also incredibly racially and ethnically diverse back then). then paris at some point if i’m not mistaken (probably during the 1920′s) and finally new york city

so the gods reside in the usa as of the mid-late 20th century. they shape themselves alongside with the mortal world. the usa is also one of the most diverse countries in the western world. need i go on?

also to all the people saying “but white people also exist in x culture”/”the z gods were worshiped in white cultures”, “does that mean we can portray those gods from non-white cultures as white then??”. don’t even. reverse racism doesn’t exist you clowns

[housemartius]

ultimate matter of the fact is: representation isn’t important until white people say it is because we want our x ethnicity to be represented bc “there’s a big lack of it in the media” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ourravenboys]

ok im literally just rambling but like when people say sadie’s “white passing” and therefore cannot be drawn with Not Pale Skin and Not Straight Blonde Hair,,,,like literally she was not described as blonde. She was not described as pale. She was not described with straight hair. All that was said was that she’s “lighter than Carter” and “takes after her mother”. And one thing I think people don’t understand about being mixed is like…everyone perceives you differently. I’m half east asian n half white and I consider myself to be white passing. I live in a predominantly asian area and I’m usually perceived as white. But when talking to my friends from predominantly white areas, or visiting my relatives in small predominantly white towns, they perceive me as a poc. Obviously it’s not the same for every mixed race person but it’s something to think about. Everyone in the story probably perceived her differently. And that affected the way she was described

tl;dr stop whitewashing sadie and trying to justify it 

[edenprime]

I just heard about how outspoken black pjo bloggers are currently being treated, what's been done to them, and I'm livid.

I want to say, if you think harassing people like this is in any way, shape, or form acceptable, or you are somehow complicit, or you don't think this is a big deal, please unfollow me, block me and don't you even DARE to interact with me.

If you support this sort of disgusting behavior, you're a despicable human being.

To everyone staying silent on fandom racism: the time to speak up is well past yesterday. This is the sort of thing people mean when they say that staying silent is being complicit. If everyone who "is not racist" but will not say anything regarding racism spoke up, hardcore racists would be quicker to be discouraged.

These people need to be shunned. They don't deserve a space on fandom. They don't deserve to feel safe enough and confident enough to do this. They deserve to be ran off the site.

Please listen to black fans, please show solidarity with them, please put your money where your mouth is and do the bare minimum of calling out racist fans and creators.

To everyone affected: I'm so sorry this is happening to you. Speaking up for your right to be respected as a human being should not get you any sort of negativity your way.

[silima]

hi! for the palette thing can I please get Ethan Nakamura in the “greek tragedy” palette? thank you! love your work!

send me a palette & a character

[silima]

racism ruined leo it makes me mad

[pjolesbian]

[glittertimes]

Okay I'm going to say this again bc people aren't getting it. Yes Latinx folks use 'mamacita' as a term of endearment and most of the time there's nothing wrong with it.

But Leo isn't real, you can't give the same room for nuances to these characters because a non-latinx white person wrote them!

Rick Riordan doesn't know much about any of the non-western / non-white cultures he includes in his books. And he uses his white perspective and interpretations to determine what he thinks is okay to include.

He decided to make Leo much more flirty than his non-latinx characters, and that's stereotypical!

It's not about whether latino men like this exist or not, or whether you hear people use 'mamacita' often.

My mom says it to me all the time, but the problem is, that instead of giving Leo a compelling story and focusing on his cool traits (like his intelligence and the fact that he's a literal firebender lol) rr decided to give him a girlfriend and misuse spanglish in an attempt to give Leo a personality.