(I don't care if you ship Percabeth or not. It's a good ship, healthy or otherwise. This is specifically just why some people may not like it. I'm mainly doing this because I'm tired of shippers bitching about non-canon ships & rarepairs, specifically targetting the shippers, calling them names and preaching purity when they're very much not an exception. It's just "??????". Anyway-)
If I may add my 2 cents, here are also a few things that also bug me. Now, I'm not saying Annabeth is purposely malicious towards Percy. I'm sure she doesn't mean to hurt him the way she does, thinking that it's all in good fun or that Percy doesn't mind (because he never really talked about it with her either, as far as I can recall), but that doesn't make it right.
I'm sure Annabeth means well in the end, but how she's presented and written is :/// and how Percy would think about her at times is also :///
I'm just not sure why they would be written this way when they're supposed to be this fandom's golden couple.
[Excerpt from The Crown of Ptolemy:
I mean ... we'd just passed our one-year dating anniversary. I figured I was a sort of long-term investment for her. She hoped I would pay dividends eventually; if I died now, she would've put up with all my annoying qualities for nothing.
Sir? You shouldn't feel like you owe your partner for "putting up with all your annoying qualities", sir.
[Excerpt from The Staff of Hermes:
Far below I heard Cacus bellowing as millions, maybe even thousands of filthy gallons of water slammed into him. Meanwhile Annabeth alternately shouted, gagged, hit me, called me endearing pet names like "Idiot! Stupidâdirtyâmoronâ" and topped it all off with "Kill you!"]
I'm bothered with Annabeth hitting Percy, but it's mainly the names that really bother me in this scene. We all know that Percy has dealt with these types of assumptions and name-calling from teachers, Gabe, and bullies, but from Annabeth? That's-
Why? Like, why though? What was the point?
[Excerpt from The Staff of Hermes:
Before she could protest or cause me bodily harm, I grabbed Hermes' arm. "Let's step into your office."]
Him expecting bodily harm from Annabeth shouldn't be normal, but I know just why it's become the norm for him, seeing how she hits him at times throughout the series.
It still shouldn't be normal. Not for couples, especially.
[Excerpt from The Mark of Athena:
Percy ignored him and turned to Jason. "You're Thalia Grace's brother, huh? Wow. You guys look nothing alike.
"Yeah, I noticed," Jason said. "Anyway, thanks for helping my camp while I was gone. You did an awesome job."
"Back at you," Percy said.
Annabeth kicked his shin. She hated to interrupt a budding bromance, but Reyna was right: they had serious things to discuss. "We should talk about the Great Prophecy. It sounds like the Romans are aware of it too?"]
What was the point of making her kick his shin rather than just making her talk. That sentence could've not existed and everything would've still made sense. What was the point.
I also don't understand some people defending her, saying that it's normal for them because they're demigods or that it's because of her trauma.
I'm sorry, but the fact trauma is being used as an excuse at all is absurd. But even if it could be used as an excuse, it still doesn't make sense, because as far as I'm aware, she mainly dealt with neglect from her father and, apparently, "lack of acceptance" from her step-mother (who didn't know anything about their world, and-
[Excerpt from Mrs. Chase's page in Fandom Wikipedia:
Despite Annabeth believing that Mrs. Chase disliked her, she in reality had no hostile feelings towards her step-daughter and was saddened by her departure, even asking Percy Jackson to tell Annabeth that she had a home with them.]
I'm sorry, but "neglect = hitting your partner"??? It doesn't really add up to me? You could argue that it's a way of her getting his attention and how it's the only way she knows how to get attention, but I don't even think she does this to anyone else in the series? As far as I recall, at least. Either way, that doesn't make it right.
Percy was also abused in the series, physically and verbally. Whether you believe that Gabe has hit Percy or not is up to you, but it's canon that he was paddled by the several military academies he attended before Yancy, Meriwether, MS-54, Goode, and AHS. Gabe definitely verbally abused Percy, which is also one of the reasons why Annabeth & Thalia's nicknames for him (Seaweed Brain & Kelp Head) bother me because it's similar to what Gabe called him (brain boy).
Annabeth was done dirty and she deserves better than to be presented and treated like this.
This might be irrelevant or even reaching, but I might as well put it out there.
[Excerpt from The Hidden Oracle:
Nico commandeered a dispenser from the snack bar and carried it around, yelling, "The line starts to the left! Orderly queue, guys!"
"Is this really necessary?" Leo asked.
"Yes," said Miranda Gardiner, who had drawn the first number. She punched Leo in the arm.
"You're a jerk, and we all hate you," said Miranda. Then she hugged him and kissed his cheek. "If you ever disappear like that again, we'll line up to kill you."
Percy hugged Leo and didn't even punch him. Still, the son of Poseidon looked disgruntled.
"I can't believe it," he said. "Six monthsâ"]
How funny is it that Percy is the only one that doesn't hit Leo when he came back from Ogygia
(not even gonna ramble about how Caleo and Percabeth have similar dynamics and the fact this is how Rick treats his characters who were canonically abused and clearly has self-esteem issues)
These are just some of my thoughts on it, though. Percabeth is a good ship regardless of how healthy or not healthy it is for either parties. :)
Just pointing stuff out and adding my own thoughts on this.
Again, I'm just not sure why they would be written this way when they're supposed to be this fandom's golden couple.
Now, it seems like I'm just talking about how bad Annabeth is for Percy, but it very much goes both ways. This relationship is not healthy for the both of them.
Neither of them hold any malicious intentions. They're just...not good for each other. That's it.
From what I've read and remembered, Annabeth seems to be insensitive towards how other people feel, and I think we have to keep in mind that she's neurodivergent and this might affect how she reads people and how she responds on return, but still. She could also possibly lack emotional permanence. That's a possibility. That's why communication is so important in any relationship. A clear line of communication is crucial. They also have to actually understand what the other is saying. They have to comprehend and understand how the other feels and what they mean. The fact it's canon that they both have trouble communicating with each other and never worked on that is troubling.
I also see that Annabeth likes being "the best", or at least the "better option". I mainly see this in how she's her cabin's head counselor at her young age and how she's desperate to go on a quest to prove herself to Athena.
I also see how she mainly prides herself in her intelligence & smarts.
She's a very proud daughter of Athena, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I see her need to be in-charge/the best and putting most, if not all, of her pride in her smarts & intelligence as something that stemmed from the neglect she experienced as a child.
She has a constant need for outside validation and strives to be on top because she fears becoming forgetten, invisible, and irrelevant. She fears that "not being the best" will leave her abandoned and alone. Forgotten, invisible, and irrelevant.
Now, what I see after realizing this is that her nicknames for Percy that implies that he's stupid and just her being with Percy in general helps her with validating how smart she was, or how she was the best.
I'm not saying she's intentionally doing this. I'm not saying she's purposely malicious. She's mostly likely unaware of it. That's often how some people are. They're just not self-aware enough or have trouble being self-aware, which are both very likely.
But it's still not right.
Her having a nickname for Percy that stems from how stupid people think he is and being in a commited relationship with the guy himself would almost constantly validate how much more smart or better she is, at least, compared to him, because he's "impulsive", "reckless", and "not as book-smart as her".
Now, the unhealthiness for her kicks in when she becomes dependent on Percy and how he's a source of validation for her. I'm not saying she just cares about how much Percy makes her appear better, but it could be a large part of it. I'm sure she genuinely loved him, but genuinely loved him as what and why?
It doesn't help that Percy became a constant in her life after Luke and Thalia. Percy was familiar. He provided her with familiarity, comfort, and validation, and she depended on that.
The relationship became co-dependent.
She relies heavily on Percy for these type of things, and anyone who's a "threat" to them is an enemy. Mainly referring to Rachel here because that was before they became a couple, which meant Annabeth wouldn't have had a tight grip on Percy and his loyalty to her.
She was scared of the idea of someone else, some other girl, getting that type of attention from Percy.
I totally understand why. It's understandable. My problem here is that it never improved and only seemingly got worse if anything.
Name all the characters Percy spent time with after the reunion in MoA without Annabeth.
It's like they got put in their own bubble, isolated from everyone else.
Now, after rambling about all of this, I feel like I'm just repeating myself, and I probably have, and for that, I'm sorry đ But I need these thoughts out.
I think this is where both Annabeth and Percy's fatal flaw become really relevant.
âą hubris/deadly pride = She thinks she can do anything better than everyone, even the gods, such as saving her family and building a brand new world exactly as she wanted.
âą ambition = She desires power even though she knows she either doesn't need or can't have it.
âą excessive personal loyalty = He will risk his life (and even the world) for his friends, family, and sometimes even strangers and enemies who he empathizes.
Fatal flaws are very, as the name suggests, fatal. They are weaknesses. These flaws can often cause the downfall of the being, but are particularly dangerous to demigods.
I might be reaching on this, but I think Annabeth putting most of her pride on how smart and how much of a leader she is and then depending on Percy for that validation she craves is toxic and unhealthy. She becomes so dependent in Percy's love, how he's a constant, how he's familiar to her, how he so proudly talks about her, that she'll eventually fail to function without him. Almost like how she was in TLH, but worse. Much worse after getting a taste of what it was like without Percy.
And Percy? Percy's so blinded by his loyalty to Annabeth that he fails to see her faults and just how harmful their relationship is to the both of them. It's self-destructive.
These two are each other's downfall.
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
discoholicmusic
turnnoffyourmind
gracieabrams
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
