this can seem like a stretch if you want it to I dont really care but I feel like the need to place annabeth at the center focus of everything isnt really bc shes a main character but bc shes an angry white girl and ppl feel like that is the best shit ever currently and that's where you get things like annabeth is the strongest demigod or annabeth was actually completely okay for thinking shes oppressed for being blonde
There's obviously nothing wrong with appreciating annabeth as a character, like she is one of my favorite characters she has been there since the beginning. But I also think it's another one of those things where fandom can focus solely on the white character at the expense of characters of color. And that's where the whole annabeth things come into play because, really it's like are you pulling that from serious examples or is it because of white favoritism from your subconscious
i know a lot of people will read this and scoff but if you really take the time to consider it you might realize how often this happens. the most obvious example to me is through the treatment of intelligence amongst the characters. leo valdez is canonically almost unbelievably intelligent as he was doing college level math as a child. however, he is also a character of color written to be an adhd goofball. when that is juxtaposed against annabeth and her mother being athena—the goddess of wisdom—annabeth is the one who is called a genius, meanwhile leo is written-off as being a total idiot and his intelligence is completely ignored and/or forgotten.
trust me there are issues with leo’s character, i know. but praising the white girl for being a “girlboss” and assuming she’s some intellectual prodigy because of her mother, ignoring the fact that she literally hasn’t been in school since 2nd grade, while disregarding the fact that leo, a poc, is smart is insidious and reeks of racism.
and this isnt to say education = intelligence because thats simply not true. my point is that leo has had a natural talent for math since he was really young and built a literal warship almost entirely on his own yet his entire character get summarized as the hyperactive class clown, meanwhile annabeth who has only really been shown to know riddles is considered the smartest demigod in the entire series because she’s a white girl and leo is not.
also like. r*ck’s favoritism when it comes to annabeth compared to the female characters of color is glaringly obvious and all the traits that are celebrated in annabeth are shown to be undesirable in characters like reyna, hazel, piper, and drew
when annabeth is smart and/or aggressive, it’s made clear that this is a positive trait, and riordan flexes his feminism. when reyna is smart, it’s scary, it’s conniving, it’s intimidating.
when annabeth is mean or jealous— which she is, all through botl— it’s played off as funny, and her flaws are softened by the wealth of characterization we have that shows that that meanness is not her whole personality. when drew, on the other hand, is mean or jealous, it is the only thing we know about her— she’s a bitchy asian girl. okay!
annabeth is powerful. so is hazel. and according to the laws of the narrative that riordan wrote himself, hazel should be more powerful than annabeth, but she isn’t, because, uh...
annabeth has a complex relationship with femininity and that’s okay; but piper’s aversion to femininity, on the other hand, is written soaked through with riordan’s own misogyny to the point that piper’s “internalized misogyny” has become a common topic of discussion in fandom.
i would just like to say that i don’t begrudge other woc for liking annabeth more because, let’s be real, riordan made it clear in hoo that she was the only female character he actually cared about.
