Can we talk about how interesting Percy’s dynamics with the Olympians actually is? Like, both on an individual and on a general level?
He and Ares have a rivalry. A genuine rivalry, based on mutual dislike. Frank described them in Son of Neptune as “two old war buddies talking trash” and Phobos described Percy in “Stolen Chariot” as a “sworn enemy” of Ares. That’s actually insane if you think about it. Those are the immortal god of war, and a sixteen-year-old teenager. Ares would have been fine with Percy becoming a god, because he looked forward to just fight with him or beat him up for eternity.
Percy is the only known male demigod Artemis respects, who won the friendship of not one but two of her lieutenants.
He is the demigod, who challenged Dionysus views on heroes as a whole, and that, as a son of Poseidon, half-brother to Theseus, the hero who betrayed and left Dionysus wife. The hero, who ignited Dionysus hatred of half-bloods in the first place. Still, Dionysus placed his trust in Percy to save both Olympus and Pollux in the Last Olympian.
He and Nico are the only two demigods to ever canonically acknowledge Hestia. Percy even sacrificed hope to her, which was probably the biggest sacrifice and the biggest sign of respect she ever received from a demigod.
Aphrodite takes a special interest in his love life.
Hermes and him are on pretty friendly terms. So far, that Percy even refers to him as a “friend” in the Staff of Hermes. He is also the only demigod to ever completely openly criticize him on how he handled Luke’s situation and doesn’t back down from a rather intense argument. At the end of the last Olympian, Hermes gives Percy a list of his children outside of Camp half-blood and asks him to personally escort them to safety.
Despite Hades trying to imprison him and threatening him with death, Percy is, together with Nico, the reason why Hades and his children are accepted at Camp Half-Blood.
While Hera dislikes him, she still acknowledges Percy’s importance for her plans and describes him for one as “constant as a compass needle” when it comes to his friends, and also as someone who inspires loyalty in “Son of Neptune.”
Poseidon, centuries-old god of the ocean, who probably had thousands of children in his life called Percy his favourite son in Battle of the labyrinth. After a conversation about Antaeus, who, for over three thousand years has sacrificed people and monsters in honor of Poseidon. Still, it is Percy, who is his favourite son.
He is the only modern demigod to get offered godhood but chose instead to use their favor to create a better world for all demigods and to request forgiveness for the gods who fought on Kronos’ side, which changes some of the quintessential rules of their world.
Percy is blunt and not afraid to openly challenge them on their views and actions, but because he is probably the most powerful and accomplished hero to ever live, and because he has saved them and the world on numerous occasions, they can’t just ignore him or kill him off, and even have to listen to him on some rare occasions.
None of the other demigods really have that, at least to this scale.
It’s so interesting to me, how Percy’s relationship to the Olympians, both negative and positive, echoes more the relationship they would have to another god, than to a half-blood.
Not to mention Apollo who canonically likes and respects Percy when got turned into the mortal Lester believes if anyone is worthy of becoming his master and commanding him (a literal god with huge ego) it would be Percy Jackson.
Even Hephaestus personally went to Ogygia to check on Percy and seems to like him well enough as he doesn't even get angry that Percy blew up his forge.
Athena, proud, Poseidon-hating Athena admits she was wrong about Percy to his face and backs up his analysis on how godly neglect led to the Titan War.
Also, to add another note to Hades's section, when Nico is trying to plead Hades to join the fight against Kronos, Hades says this verbatim, "“For demigods! I am immortal, all-powerful! I would not help the
other gods if they begged me if Percy Jackson himself pleaded—”
He puts Percy in the same tier as the other Olympian gods, if not in a tier of his own.
In Crown of Ptolemy, Percy hosts the Egyptian goddess Nekhbeth without having a drop of pharaoh's blood, unlike Carter and Sadie, and Nekhbet comments that Percy is the strongest vessel she has ever inhabited.
Not to mention Kympoleia, a goddess herself sided with Polybotes, a giant that is Poseidon's bane just to capture and kill Percy.
Plus, Percy has canonically overpowered at least 3 river gods all by himself who all treat him differently with more respect than any other Poseidon child.
Even Gaea, the literal primordial earth, took a lot of special interest in Percy and wanted to wake to his blood spilling so much so that she killed one of her own servants over Percy because of his value.
Percy Jackson is either seen as a god, treated like a god, or considered as something more than a god. I swear no other demigod has an aura of power like Percy's. I mean Hazel, who is a child of big three herself thinks Percy is a god when she first meets him. Many characters have drawn similar parallels.
Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.
But... Stochastic Parrots.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.
At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields
technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.
Free Harvard courses.
Free Courses from Stanford.
Free Courses from MIT.
Free courses from Yale.
Free courses from Princeton.
Free courses on Coursera.
Free Courses on EDx
Free Courses on Alison
For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.
When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses."
Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.
I am a public defender and I have posted about this a lot. Here are some of these posts.
How Does Court Work?: An Explanation of WTF is actually going on in the courtroom and the jails.
Part 1: Police Investigations: How do cases start? Why are police so bad at investigations??
Part 2: Bail and Arrest, or: So You've Stumbled On the Philosophical Problems Inherent in Paying Money to Get Out of Jail
Part 3: What is Trial & How?, including preliminary hearings, what makes a jury "grand," and how trials work
Part 4: Punishment, Rehabilitation, Deterrence & Incapacitation: Why Prison
Part 5: Probation and Parole, which is for some reason considered an "act of judicial grace" by the case law
Juvenile Law: I had no idea when I wrote these that any of these posts would be popular but some have proved to perform like absolute bangers on Tumblr. Mind-boggling.
What is funny about being a juvenile defender is that I never really liked children
How to interview children (people really fuckin vibed with this one for some reason)
Western passport holders will never understand. To go anywhere with a third worlder passport like a Filipino one, you need your tax returns, certificate of employment, bank statements, marriage certificates, sometimes a recommendation from a citizen of the country you want to travel to, everything possible to prove that you have a job and a family at home and you're not planning to be an illegal immigrant, JUST to get hit with a rejection because the embassy didn't believe you had enough proof.
Did you have travel plans? Already booked the plane tickets and hotels? Fuck you, better hope they issue refunds (they don't).
Americans and Western Europeans will never understand how insanely hard and bothersome it's to travel anywhere with a weak passport, let alone immigrate.
You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.
You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.
But if you marry one of our first-world citizens, then fine, you can come. Because we can't upset them, after all, they are a real person, unlike you.
EU Advice to people who have friends in places with weak passports- go to your department of foreigners and ask for something that called Formal Letter of Invitation or something similar. It usually is called something similar and costs a few euro/whatever currency you have. It will not be more than a fancy coffee at Starbucks or such place.
You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.
But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.
It's some effort, but if it's for a friend it's worth it. And it's way less costly than the ridiculous loops the friend is being forced to go through and pay for multiple 3rd party services just to get a freaking visa for a month.
I have surprisingly been getting messages from people asking whether I'd do a post about my design notes for the deadly seven sins. Alright then, here goes;
Design Notes; The Seven Deadly Sins
Greed points at everything they want and grasps anything they can. Their true form is unseen. Their own hand partially blinds them. Different eyes puncture their crown, stolen from others. They float, detached from all. Their stick is sharpened at both ends
It is the first and oldest design, dating back to 2023
The stick sharpened at both ends is a reference to Lord of the Flies (in the book, one end of the stick goes into the earth while the other holds a severed head) I wanted it to symbolize violence
Sloth exists in a wrapped cloth that provides comfort but muffles all sensations. Sloth doesnt see, speak nor hear. The cloth overwhelms them. They are bound by a rope whose edge reaches inside their confinement, giving them the ability to free themselves if so desired.
I made an extra effort to put the rope within Sloth's control, to avoid associating inertion from mental illness to laziness
I wrapped my Blajah plushie with a bed sheet and used my robe's belt as rope to get a picture reference for the upper body. Despite eerie origins, my designs come into paper with a lot of silly methods.
Pride exists inside a golden, hollow statue. Their gaze is set upon a cracked book of pages set in stone. Their laurel crown is sharpened to the point of horns. Pride can be set free if they break the outer shell that binds them with the gavel they use to condemn others.
The pose and clothing is a reference to the painting The School of Athens, by Raphael.
Being mettalic, the book only reflects back themselves. Even if you interpret it as stone, it would still work since the pages remain static
I like to imagine the rotten legs dragging their heavy statue shell around. Ever since I was little I have a strange fear of statues moving
Gluttony is a stomach, living and consuming themselves within their confinment. They’re not represented by an underweight or overweight person; it had to be something everyone has. Their scale is purposefully unspecified; because everyones is different.
The design resembles the Horseman of Famine because gluttony and famine are connected; the excessive hoarding by some people causes famine to others. They're like two different plates on a scale
While the basic representation is just fat, I never considered drawing an underweight person to counter it and appear subversive. When talking to a friend recovering from an eating disorder they mentioned how cheap and uncomfortable it is when people use extreme thinness just for the sake of horror and I have to agree. I always avoid drawing real bodies for horror
Lust is the only one who tries to disguise itself with a human appearance, tho it has too many hands. One hand to beckon, one to threaten, and one to silence you. It kneels because not all of its victims are adults. It lives undercover and invites you in as well
Many asked about the fourth hand: it's the one you only notice afterwards and are left wondering what it means, whether it's an innocent gesture or not. How it made you feel.
It has 2 other variation designs. While what I made before is beautiful, it is not unsettling enough. It has the artstlye of an angel rather than something human and dangerous
I settled on the design after a passage in the book Second-Hand Time, by Svetlana Alexievitch. It was a passage about a teen abused by a military squad, killed when she got pregnant, and mocked over how underveloped her body was. Because of that my original idea was to have Lust wearing military boots, but that would restrict the concept too much. I thought that drawing would make that passage less haunting to me, but to no avail.
Envy is a slowly burning and constricted heart. It covers its identity with a mirror; the more it seeks to resemble the reflection of others the less it will resemble itself. But even the reflection is broken, inaccurate, and unsatisfactory.
Many have said the concept looks like a chrysalis or a flower bud, unable to flourish. I like when people interpret my drawings, they often find beautiful meanings that escaped me
I pondered whether to paint the mirror in front of them black, to symbolize phone screens, but decided against it because it would blend into the background
Least popular design but one where people have told me ''I cant stop thinking about it'' the most, which made me cherish it a lot
Wrath is not a beast acting ravenous, but a human thing slowly crawling towards you. All of their actions are justified by the halo they claim to be righteous. The closer they get, the more they shed their humane appearance
It was a challenge to make wrath differ from someone being rightfully angry. It applies to all designs; how to portray dangerous excess to very common and not entirely wrong emotions.
Wrath has no legs. Nothing to stand on
''Little by little, it turned into that wild fury in which the eyes camouflage with a black veil, the fists contract with a tremedous force and your very teeth find the enemy'' Roughly translated quote by Nikolai Gumilev that I kept in mind while designing it. Amazing writer
That is all I can remember at the moment. Hopefully it saciates everyone's curiosity and not ruin the magic and mystery. Thank you very much for your interest. I will see you soon, when it's time for the Seven Heavenly Virtues
Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.
Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.
Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.
Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.
American Girl stories have always featured the very harsh realities of America through the years. But they’re always presented honestly, yet in ways that kids can understand. They just go to show that you don’t have to live in a perfect time to be a real American girl.
Dont you fucking dare disrespect the American Girls in my house. ESPECIALLY Addy!! That was my first REAL contact with the horrors of slavery, as I read about her father being whipped and sold and her mother escaping with her to freedom, but also how freedom was still a struggle.
Don’t forget Kirsten, the Swedish immigrant who had to deal with balancing her own culture and learning the english language and customs of her classmates, or Kaya (full name Kaya'aton'my, or She Who Arranges Rocks) , the brave but careless girl from the Nez Perce tribe, or Josefina, the Mexican girl learning to be a healer.
And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.
These books, these characters, are fantastic pictures into life for girls in America throughout the years, they pull no punches with the horrors that these girls had to face in their different time periods, and in many cases I learned more history from these series than social studies at school. And that’s without even mentioning the “girl of the year” series where characters are created in the modern world to help girls deal with issues like friend problems, moving, or bullying. We do NOT disrespect American Girl in this house.
American Girl is probably going to be the only exposure young girls are going to get to history from a female perspective. This is actually kind of important considering that in history classes we dont really get that exposure. We dont hear about what women felt and endured during these time periods cause schools are too busy teaching us about what happened from the male perspective, which is not unimportant, but we need both. Girls need both.
These books were such a crucial part of my childhood and shaped my love of history, which still ensures today. These books can be a young girl’s first lessons in diversity and cultural awareness (hopefully burying that insensitive “we’re all Americans” tripe) and looking at history from more perspectives than just that taught in school. They also are an example of how women have ALWAYS been part of history, which some people would rather us not believe.
I think Kit and Kaya were the newest American Girls when I started “aging out” of the books, but hearing about some of these kinda makes me want to revisit them!
OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.
I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:
And they departed from the norm in Kaya’s doll to fit her culture! The other dolls all show their teeth, and Kaya does not because that is considered rude in the Nez Perce culture!
It is absolutely true that these books covered the stuff in history that was absent from our history books. I still distinctly remember reading about Addy being forced to eat bugs she missed on tobacco plants, and that started me out from a different perspective and made it easier for me to know to reject the sanitized version of the slave trade we’re taught in school. And these books are targeted at ages 8+, which is a pretty critical time for developing your own thinking and morals.
when i was in 3rd grade i was reading the Meet Addy book at school & a couple boys made fun of me for reading a “doll book” - my teacher overheard & started reading Meet Addy to the class after every recess. everyone became extremely invested & by the end of the year we had read the entire collection of Addy books & did a presentation on the civil war at the end of the year that we all presented to the class one by one.
i think back on this & realize that as third graders we were talking about how awful slavery was & because we were simply innocent kids without any societal or institutional influence yet, all of us could kept saying “why would you treat a HUMAN like that ?!” this one girl for her birthday invited all of us for her party & she got the Addy doll - every single one of us (boys included) held her & was in awe of this doll - it was such a touching experience.
i went back home about a year ago & ran into my third grade teacher in the grocery store. she said that year opened up a whole new teaching structure for her. she now reads american girl stories to her students starting day one of class every day to calm them down after recess & she’ll get through maybe four or five sets of books a year. she has the dolls in the room with packets on information from the doll’s time period that her students can “check out” to take home for weekends to care for them.
we oftentimes overlook how powerful toys can be in influencing young children & american girl honestly knew that kids could read intense moments in history & synthesize the issues to learn how to be a better person. my grandma bought me my first doll, molly, when i was only six & the dolls became a huge part of my childhood. when i turned 21 a couple years ago - we were living in minneapolis - she took me to have lunch for my birthday at the american doll place in the mall of america & bought me the Addy doll for my birthday. it was such a powerful moment i hasn’t expected.
i’ve since gotten rid of majority of my childhood toys, but i still have every single one of my dolls & all the books that i plan on gifting to my future children.
I’m white and my first real introduction to slavery and the underground railroad was Addy. She was a young girl like me I could connect to and care about her story. American Girl does a great job of making history relevant to kids.
Also American Girl sells all sorts of books unrelated to the dolls. The Care and Keeping of You books were super important as I started puberty and were the most comprehensive, non judgemental account of what was going to happen.
They also have “the smart girls guide” series which covers topics like crushes, worry, middle school, drama and gossip, sports, friendship, the digital world, communication, money, confidence, etc.
I want to say I think there was an American Girl Doll magazine series that came out, but don’t quote me on that. there were lots of helpful girl guides that used the American girls as examples for doing good or learning lessons or trying to understand why girls did what they did
I learned a lot of my core beliefs from these girls.
I remember being very invested in Molly, Addy, and Kaya. Mostly cuz I look like Molly, and the other two had a lot of information on two of my favorite time periods. But I owe a lot of my personality to these lovvely girls
yo don’t forget my girl Caroline. Her father was captured by the British during the war of 1812 and she basically learned how to sail and rescued him herself.
I can confirm that they really do their research - during the creation of Caroline the company called a museum I was associated with and quizzed them extensively about what sort of food kids would have eaten at the turn of the 19th century.
When i was like ten I wrote a letter to the American Girl magazine saying that the girls in their magazine were all really skinny and it made me, a chonk, really sad because it was showing that I couldn’t wear any of the outfits they suggested, and I got a personal letter back from the editor apologizing for making me feel that way and saying they would work on that. Dunno if they actually did, i can’t remember, but they did promptly personally respond to a letter about something that was not exactly on the radar for girl’s media in fucking 2002. So there’s that.
I’m happy to report that the messages from American Girl have only gotten better in recent years.
These are from one of their latest books, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Body Image:
They got a lot of flak from conservative parents for this and they did. not. back. down.
Their newest historical doll, Claudie, is a black girl growing up in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her story is about Black artists thriving, and making a safe, beautiful place for themselves in a society that tries to reject them. It teaches about the NAACP’s protests against lynchings, in ways kids can understand, but there’s also so much Black joy and creativity showcased in her story.
Another historical doll, Melody, is growing up in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. She faces the struggles and triumphs of attending a newly integrated school, and learns about the bombing of a Black church in Alabama that killed four little girls her age. Her stories show how black people found support and community within the church, as well as music— she loves to sing! If you have a free hour, I highly recommend watching her special on Amazon (free with prime). It stars Caila Marsai Martin from Blackish and it will make you weep.
The girl of the year for 2022, Corinne, is Asian, and her story touches on the issues of anti-Asian hate in the wake of covid. When conservative parents threw a fit about this, American Girl went ahead and made the girl of the year for 2023 Asian, too.
Any of their dolls can be customized with assistive devices like hearing aids, service dogs, and wheelchairs. They also have bald dolls, to include stories about girls battling cancer or alopecia. And it’s not just girl dolls— they have boy dolls now, too! And dolls with no gender assigned to them! People complained that they couldn’t find any dolls in the Just Like Me line that looked like them, so they now give people the ability to create their own custom doll, with tons of different options.
I’m not claiming American Girl as a company is perfect, but I am saying they’re important. Girl perspectives, girl stories, and girl communities are IMPORTANT. If there are kids in your life who would benefit from these stories, or if you’d like to read them yourself, you can find any American Girl book for pretty much dirt cheap on eBay, and libraries usually stock tons of them!
During and after Covid, I got a lot of hate for being Chinese. (I should state that I was not born in China in my life, do not have an accent, and people decided to judge me solely off of my looks.) I live somewhere where racism is fairly rare, so it took me off guard when others started avoiding me and even downright insulting my own heritage to my face.
Another detail in Corinne’s story is that someone said that her mom, who owns a restaurant, would cook her dog- a harmful stereotype. I’ve heard people mention how “Chinese people will eat their pets” before in passing, mostly as a joke, but it tended to stick with me.
I read her book in the library, and it resonated really deeply. I am so grateful that there are companies out there willing to address these issues as deeply as they do, and as someone who can personally relate, they did their research. Not just on an academic and cultural level, but one that specifically talks about an individual’s unique experiences.
Reasons why I personally headcanon Percy as a person of color
A post that became way longer than it had any right to be
Warning: this is a really long post. It has close to 8000 words. If you are not interested in reading it, do not click on the keep reading “button” and please just scroll past it. Scrolling past it after accidentally clicking on the "keep reading button" will probably become very annoying very quickly.
You have now officially been warned.
Recently, under a rant that I posted on ao3, someone asked me why I personally headcanon Percy as a person of color (specifically as Syrian) and I wanted to quickly answer that.
I am however a person who is incapable of keeping herself short in her explanations, especially when they concern Percy, so the “quick answer” turned into this 8000-word long post.
I should probably start with the simplest answer:
I’ve personally pictured Percy as Syrian since I first read the books.
When I was like 8, or 9, I was close friends with a classmate in elementary school, who also had the black hair, light eyes combo, and whose family originated in Syria. So, ever since then, I pictured Percy looking like that.
Not much analysis here required, I admit. 9-year old me didn't really think much further than that.
However, that was only the original reason of this headcanon.
As I got older and reread the books more critically, I started realizing that this headcanon actually works for me on more than just a personal level. I genuinely think reading Percy as a person of color adds to his story and fits surprisingly well with the text.
First, I should say that I’m aware that this is purely a headcanon.
I very much think that Rick Riordan always intended for Percy to be read as a white person.
He never explicitly calls him a person of color in the way that he does with his canonically non-white characters like Beckendorf, Ethan, Leo, Piper, Hazel, Carter, etc. In comparison to them, Percy’s ethnicity is left ambiguous, which considering he was created in the early 2000s by a white author, highly likely means that he is supposed to be white.
Additionally, almost every single one of his canon portrayals outside the books is white. That includes most of his actors, not only Logan Lermann and Walker Scobell, but also most of the actors who played Percy in the musical. (Actors like Chris McCarrell or Max Harwood for example), and also both of his official arts by Antonio Caparo and Viria respectively.
So, Rick probably always intended for Percy to be a white person.
However, when I create headcanons or analyse characters, I don’t really care for the author’s intention. I only care about what he included in his books, and I dismiss every piece of information outside of it.
In Percy’s case, that means I’m personally only considering the original five Percy Jackson books, short stories like The Bronze Dragon, Stolen Chariot, Sword of Hades, Staff of Hermes and Singer of Apollo, parts of Heroes of Olympus, and a very little bit of Trials of Apollo.
And the books themselves are far more ambiguous about the subject.
Now, before I continue, I should probably mention that I’m a white woman. Like, pale white. Pale in a way that I look like a Victorian child, who died of tuberculosis.
I feel the need to point this out, because I know it can get very problematic when especially white fans headcanon specific ethnicities onto characters, or just generally headcanon characters as people of color. That can easily reinforce harmful stereotypes, like when making a “smart, nerdy” character Chinese, an “aggressive, male” character arab or the “loud, sassy best friend” Black. I’ve tried my best to be mindful of that here. But I also know that a lack of personal experience can breed ignorance and blind spots, and unfortunately no one is above unconscious bias.
So, if I’ve framed anything poorly or overlooked something important, I’m very open to correction and happy to revise my thinking.
Also, I tried my best to write this post with the necessary tact. Mostly when I write about Percy, I exclusively write about fictional characters and worlds. That is not entirely the case here.
Part of my argumentation will be about how reading Percy as a person of color (specifically Syrian) can add further impact and layers to the treatment he receives in school and from the media. For that, I will be talking about issues and biases that exist in the real world and affect and harm real people. So, this post is a bit more serious than my others, and I hope I treated the subject with the necessary tact and respect.
With that context in mind, there are four main reasons why I personally continue to read Percy as a person of color, specifically, as someone of Syrian descent.
His actual physical description in the books
The way Percy gets treated within the mortal world
Percy’s story and the themes embedded in PJO
Personal preference
1. His actual physical description in the books.
(I think I should mention before I start my argumentation here, that I am aware that Syria is an ethnically very diverse place where a lot of different people live, including people who are pale and dark skinned. This specific part of my argumentation is about how Percy is generally described as being very "tan".. However, I do not mean to generalize and say that all Syrians look the same. In Percy’s specific case, I just personally read him as having a darker complexion, additionally to being Syrian.)
What really helps this headcanon is that Percy has never been explicitly described as white (at least to my knowledge). He has consistently been described as having a “mediterranean complexion” or as being “tan”:
‘Graecus means Greek.’ ‘Is that bad?’ Percy asked. Frank cleared his throat. ‘Maybe not. You’ve got that type of complexion, the dark hair and all. Maybe they think you’re actually Greek.’ (The Son of Neptune, Chapter 3, Percy)
His dark hair was swept to one side, like he’d just come from a walk on the beach. He looked even better than he had six months ago—tanner and taller, leaner and more muscular. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 2, Annabeth)
Granted, that does not necessarily mean Percy is a Person of color. “Mediterranean complexion” and “tan” are vague terms and can include people from a lot of different countries. From European countries like southern Greek and Italy to west Asian countries like Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, to north African countries like Egypt and Morocco. I mean, the book even points out, that Frank thinks Percy’s family might be from Greece.
However, it does at least mean that his canon appearance is (probably) not pale in the way that Logan Lerman, Walker Scobell or his official artworks are.
(No hate to the actors obviously. Both of them are very talented and while I am not a fan of how either of their Percy’s are written, I 100% believe both could perfectly embody Percy with the right script)
Additionally, it is oftentimes stated that Percy looks very much like Poseidon. Apollo himself notices their likeliness in his narration in THO:
“As usual, I was struck by his resemblance to his father, Poseidon. He had the same sea-green eyes, the same dark tousled hair, the same handsome features that could shift from humor to anger so easily.”
In the past, Poseidon has been described as not only having a “Mediterranean complexion”, which, like already stated, could include just slightly darker skin than pale, but he has been described as “deeply tanned”.
His skin was deeply tanned (…) his hair was black, like mine. His face had the same brooding look that had always gotten me branded a rebel. (The Lightning Thief, chapter 21)
And even though the descriptions remain broad, I personally tend to read descriptions like ‘olive skin,’ ‘Mediterranean complexion,’ or ‘deeply tanned’ as very compatible with brown or non-white characters.
In early YA fiction of the 2000s and 2010s especially, authors often used vague descriptors like that to describe characters of color or characters whose ethnicity was left intentionally ambiguous.
Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games is maybe the biggest example of that. She is consistently described as having “olive skin” and “black hair”, which led to many fans thinking she is meant to be a poc. I think the most popular head canon for Katniss within the fandom is that she is native American.
Similar to Percy, Magnus Bane from the shadow hunter series, who is half-indonesian, has been described as tanned in city of bones as well:
"Clary could tell from the curve of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles..."
And in a later book (Clockwork Angel), he has been explicitly described as having brown skin:
"His hair was like rough black silk, so dark it had a bluish sheen to it; his skin was brown, the cast of his features like Jem’s."
Meaning that while these types of descriptions don’t necessarily have to mean that the character they are describing is a person of color or has brown skin, they certainly can and have been used in the past to describe such characters.
One of the reasons why I personally headcanon Percy as Syrian, rather than as another ethnicity, is simply because his general physical description is very much compatible with many people from the Levant, including Syria. Syria has historically been a crossroad of cultures, migration, and exchange, and, because of that, Percy’s canonical features of dark hair and “mediterranean complexion, especially in combination with his green eyes, is more common in west asia, than in many other parts of the world.
But aside from his physical description, another reason, why I think this headcanon can be plausible and even add layers to Percy’s characterization, is because of the amount of bullshit he has to deal with in the mortal world.
He is constantly getting unfairly judged or blamed for things that are not his fault. Some of the ways Percy gets treated could be read, if one chooses to headcanon him as a person of color, as potentially intensified by racial bias.
2. The way Percy gets treated in the mortal world
There are three areas I want to focus on here:
How he gets treated within the school system
How the media treats him in “The Lightning Thief”
And two other singular instances, that are not part of a broader pattern, but, I think, still worth mentioning
School System:
It is unfortunately well documented that students of color in the United States are often treated unfairly and get disciplined more harshly than their white peers for similar behavior.
Research from the American Psychological Association, the Government Accountability Office, and other educational institutions has repeatedly found that Black students, in particular, are punished more frequently and more severely for minor infractions than white students in similar positions.
Ming-te Wang, professor for psychology at the university of Pittsburgh for example stated in her co-authored paper “The Roles of Suspensions for Minor Infractions and School Climate in Predicting Academic Performance Among Adolescents” :
“Unfortunately, we were not surprised by the findings, considering what we know about the role of racial bias in painting school adults’ views of African American youth as less innocent, older and more aggressive than their white peers. Regardless of the behavior that African American youth engage in, that behavior is viewed by educators as more worthy of harsh school discipline like a suspension.”
There is less large-scale data on Arab American students specifically (mostly because students of West Asian and North African descent have historically been categorized as “white” on demographic forms) but educational institutions like the Arab American Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Education have also documented clear evidence of bias and discrimination toward Arab, Muslim, and Muslim-perceived students in schools, especially after political events like 9/11, or the genocide against the people of Palestine.
None of this means Percy’s treatment in canon has to be read through a racial lens. His poverty, school reputation, and neurodivergence can already explain it on their own. But if one chooses to read Percy as Syrian or otherwise Arab (or of course, as whatever you personally headcanon him as) some of his repeated experiences of being singled out, unfairly blamed, and punished in school in comparison to his peers can fit this larger pattern.
We see two examples of Percy’s school life throughout Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus and both follow a very similar pattern. One is in the lightning Thief, and the other is in Sea of monsters and in both instances, Percy has troubles with bullies, who instigate a confrontation with him, and as soon as that trouble escalates, the bullies get away scot free, while Percy is the one that gets in trouble.
At Yancy Academy, the bully is Nancy Bobofit.
Nancy is the obvious aggressor between the two of them and doesn’t try to hide it at all. She openly throws bits of her sandwich unprovoked at Grover, tries to steal a woman’s purse in a public location, and dumps her entire meal onto Grover’s lap on this one fieldtrip alone.
Yet, we don’t see her suffer any consequence for this pattern of repetitive behavior. Percy even states, that the only teacher in the entirety of Yancy Academy, who ever reprimands Nancy for her actions is Chiron:
At least Nancy got packed too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. (The Lightning Thief, Chapter 1)
None of the other teachers or the principal seem to ever criticize her behavior.
Percy meanwhile only engages with Nancy when he defends either himself or Grover from Nancy’s bullying. It is clearly stated in the text that that’s the main reason he gets into fights with her:
I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends (…) All year long, I’d gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. (The Lightning Thief, Chapter 2)
Yet, he is the one, who gets punished for it. Not only does his headmaster warn him not to cause any trouble at the field trip (while not doing the same towards Nancy):
Anyway, Nacy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich (…) and she knew I couldn’t do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster threatened me with death by in school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip. (The Lightning Thief, Chapter 1)
But he also expelled him from Yancy, partly because of these fights:
The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy. (The Lightning Thief, Chapter 2)
It speaks of at least some sort of double standard between Percy and other students.
It is similar in Sea of monsters with Matt Sloan.
Matt Sloan is portrayed as a rich teenager, who takes everything he has for granted and is the biggest bully at school.
He, for example, starts a wedgie contest between the seventh and eight graders, two pebble fights and a full tackle basketball game:
What happened was a massive wedgie contest between the seventh and eight graders, two pebble fights and a full-tackle basketball game. The school bully, matt sloan, led most of those activities. (Sea of Monsters, Chapter 2)
He also openly bullies Tyson, going so far as to loudly calling him the r-word, and later steals one of Percy’s notebooks during class. Like Nancy Bobofit, he doesn’t seem to attempt to hide what he is doing, yet he never gets reprimanded for it.
Percy meanwhile doesn’t seem to partake in any of the aforementioned activities, only engaged Matt Sloan when he actively bullied Tyson, and as far as we know, didn’t disturb the school in any way.
However, he still gets immediately blamed for burning down the gym, based purely on Matt Sloan’s testimony, and the agreement of a p.e. teacher, who has been deeply focused on a magazine only seconds prior:
“Percy Jackson?” Mr. Bonsai said. “What … how …” Over by the broken wall, Tyson groaned and stood up from the pile of cinder blocks. “Head hurts.” Matt Sloan was coming around, too. He focused on me with a look of terror. “Percy did it, Mr. Bonsai! He set the whole building on fire. Coach Nunley will tell you! He saw it all!” Coach Nunley had been dutifully reading his magazine, but just my luck-he chose that moment to look up when Sloan said his name. “Eh? Yeah. Mm-hmm.” The other adults turned toward me. I knew they would never believe me, even if I could tell them the truth. (Sea of Monsters, Chapter 2)
And even after Chiron manages to make the mortals believe the gym exploded because of furnace explosion and that Percy is completely innocent in the matter, the school still expelled Percy, because he has, and I quote, “an un-groovy karma that disrupted the school’s educational aura”. (Sea of monsters, chapter 20)
Mind you, again, we have not seen a single instance of Percy disrupting the classes in any way.
Again, this does not mean Percy’s treatment is canonically racialized. His ADHD, poverty, and reputation as a “problem student” already explain much of it. Both Nancy Bobofit and Matt Sloan are also explicitly portrayed as the children of very rich parents, which could obviously also explain why they are held to a different standard than Percy who comes from a poor background:
They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives or ambassadors or celebrities. (The Lightning Thief, Chapter 2)
He always dressed in expensive but sloppy clothes, like he wanted everybody to know how little he cared about his family’s money. One of his front teeth was chipped from the time he’d taken his daddy’s Porsche for a joyride and ran into a PLEASE SLOW DOWN FOR CHILDREN sign. (Sea of Monsters chapter 2)
However, if one reads Percy as Syrian (or, generally as a person of color), these repeated moments of adults assuming the worst about him can begin to feel like part of a broader pattern and can seem reflective of real-life treatment of students of color.
A similar bias exists in media narratives.
Media
There is a high double standard in the us media between the way white perpetrators and victims are framed and talked about and how criminals and victims, who are people of color get talked about.
Scott Duxbury, Laura Frizell and Sadé Lindsay, three sociology doctoral students at Ohio state, published for example in July 2018 a study in the Journal of Research in crime and delinquency, called “Mental Illness, the Media, and the Moral Politics of Mass Violence: The Role of Race in Mass Shootings Coverage.”
Their study found that white shooters were 95 percent more likely to be described as “mentally ill” than black shooters, and even when black shooters were given that description, the coverage was still harsher on them. When shooters were framed as mentally ill, 78% of white attackers were described as victims of society, while the same narrative was used for only 17% of black attackers.
They explicitly say that white shooters are often framed as sympathetic characters who were suffering from extreme life circumstances, while black shooters are usually described as “dangerous” and a “menace to society”.
Similarly, in collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative, the Global Strategy Group, a leading research, communications, and public affairs firm in the us, published a report on the role of racial bias in the media, called , Innocent Until Proven Guilty? A look at media coverage of criminal defendants in the U.S.. This report used data from several criminal cases to analyze how differently black defendants and white defendants are portrayed.
The study found huge disparity in 20 different topics, including the use of imagery, language choices, etc.
It found, for example, that
Mugshots were used in coverage of 45% of cases involving Black people accused of crimes compared to only 8% of cases involving white defendants
White victims were nearly four times more likely to be presented in photos with friends and family than Black people victimized by crime, which reinforces existing tendencies to dehumanize black pain and suffering
Media coverage was 50% more likely to refer to white defendants by name as compared to Black defendants
The three words most used in characterizing white defendants were “father”, “son” and “man”, while the three words most used in characterizing black defendants were “murder”, “accused” and “arrested”
Quotes from family and friends were nearly twice as likely to appear in articles about white defendants than articles about Black defendants.
Although much of the strongest empirical research focuses on anti-Black bias, scholars have documented similar patterns of dehumanization, suspicion, and criminalization affecting Arab and Muslim communities, especially post-9/11.
For example, the report “Equal Treatment? Measuring the Legal and Media Responses to Ideologically Motivated Violence in the United States, released by the Washington-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding stated that among perpetrators of ideologically motivated violent attacks, those who were perceived to be Muslim received sentences that were four times longer than non-Muslims involved in similar cases.
A double standard, that carried over into the court of public opinion, too: Cases of attempted violence by Muslims received 7 1/2 times more coverage from major media outlets, while successful plots were covered twice as much.
Nancy Heitzeg, a professor of sociology and critical studies of race and ethnicity at Saint Catherine University in Minnesota, also notes there is a “double standard” when it comes to white people versus people of colour when they commit the same crime:
“When a white individual is committing a crime, there is always a life story that gives characteristics to the accused. However, when a minority individual is committing the crime, there are no backgrounds, no excuses and no side stories.”
Similarly, Professor Leila Nadya Sadat, former Commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, once pointed out that there has been “a disturbing tendency in U.S. government’s public discourse to consider Arabs and Muslims as less deserving of normal courtesies than other ethnic or religious groups.”18
Given, this background of dehumanization, lack of excuses, assumed guilt and unfair media treatment of People of color, please picture the following:
A mother and her 12-year-old son are in a car accident. The police find the car they were in completely destroyed and the mother and son are nowhere to be found. There is no other evidence to what happened to them. No witness statements, no video footage, no nothing. Only the wrecked car, and a few drops of blood near the scene of the accident. The stepfather of the son then tells the police and media his stepson is a troubled child, who has expressed violent tendencies in the past.
And then, based on nothing but hearsay from the stepfather, the New York Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the united states, portrays this 12 year old as violent and as a potential suspect for his mother’s disappearance without bothering to censor his name and without the slightest shred of evidence that their disappearance was his fault:
Ms. Jackson’s husband, Gabe Ugliano, claims that his stepson, Percy Jackson, is a troubled child who has been kicked out of numerous boarding schools and has expressed violent tendencies in the past. Police would not say whether son Percy is a suspect in his mother’s disappearance, but they have not ruled out foul play. (The Lightning Thief, Chapter 9)
Mind you, this line of journalism goes directly against the New York Times Ethical Journalism Handbook.
This handbook says, for example:
“Accuracy is the foundation of our credibility, so carefully checking facts is a fundamental responsibility of every staff member. A staff member who knowingly or recklessly provides false information for publication betrays our readers’ trust. We will not tolerate such behavior.”
Hearsay, from someone’s stepfather does certainly not count as credible evidence.
It also states that:
Staff members should consult our lawyers on any potential legal issue that arises in the course of their work.
Some potential legal concerns before publication:
• Stories that include accusations of illegal behavior or other potentially damaging allegations, especially if there are no formal criminal charges.
Implying that a 12-year-old missing child might be a potential suspect for his mother’s disappearance (again, with no evidence) would, in my opinion at least, count as “stories that include potentially damaging accusations, especially if there are no formal charges”.
And the problematic media coverage does not end there.
Two weeks later, after Percy, Annabeth and Grover manage to defeat the furies, a picture is taken of Percy as he is leaving the destroyed bus, and this news article is published in the (fictional) Trenton Register News:
The Trenton Register-News showed a photo taken by a tourist as I got off the Greyhound bus. I had a wild look in my eyes. My sword was a metallic blur in my hands. It might’ve been a baseball bat or a lacrosse stick. The picture’s caption read: Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson, wanted for questioning in the Long Island disappearance of his mother two weeks ago, is shown here fleeing from the bus where he accosted several elderly female passengers. The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after Jackson fled the scene. Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the boy may be traveling with two teenage accomplices. His stepfather, Gabe Ugliano, has offered a cash reward for information leading to his capture. (The lightning Thief chapter 13)
Granted, the bus explosion, the fact that he was seen alive while his mom is still missing and the fact that the mist apparently made it seem as if he accosted three elderly ladies, (even if it is weird that this is the picture that was painted here, since the furies first approached them, but okay) does raise points for suspicion, but it still doesn’t warrant the one-sided way the media continues to talk about him.
There is, again, no real evidence to prove that it was Percy’s fault that the bus exploded.
In fact, from the mortal perspective, there is more evidence to say the bus exploded because of mechanical or technical errors or because of the bus driver’s behavior. After all, while invisible, Percy jerked the bus’s wheel to the left, and then hit the emergency break, actions which would make it seem as if the bus didn’t function right or as if the driver lost control of it. There is no evidence at all to connect Percy to this sequence of events.
And, in the end, the bus exploded, because Zeus zapped it with lightning:
Thunder shook the bus. The hair rose on the back of my neck. “Get out!” Annabeth yelled at me. “Now(…) “Our bags!” Grover realized. “We left our-“ BOOOOOM! The windows of the bus exploded as the passengers ran for cover. Lightning shredded a huge crater in the roof, but an angry wail from inside told me Mrs. Dodds was not yet dead. (The Lightning Thief, chapter 10)
I doubt the mist needed to disguise that.
While highly unusual, it can happen that lightning strikes hit objects, even when the sky is clear and the actual storm miles away in the form of so called “Bolts from the Blue”.
(A "Bolt from the Blue" is a cloud to ground lightning flash which typically comes out of the back side of the thunderstorm cloud, travels a relatively large distance in clear air away from the storm cloud, and then angles down and strikes the ground. It’s one of the most dangerous types of cloud to ground lightning)
Yet, instead of considering a mechanical error in the bus, the weird driving of the bus driver or the possibility of a “bolt from the blue”, the news article immediately blames Percy for the bus explosion without exploring other options. So, it did not simply report facts. It selected the most incriminating interpretation available, the one interpretation of this incident which makes Percy look the worst. (Something which is far more common for how the media treats people of color, in comparison to white people)
The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after Jackson fled the scene. (The lightning Thief chapter 13)
Also, Percy is no longer treated in this article as a potential victim. The police no longer want to find him, because he might be in danger, but only because he is wanted for questioning for his mother’s disappearance, highly implying that he is a suspect:
“Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson, wanted for questioning in the long island disappearance of his mother” (The lightning Thief chapter 13)
And Grover and Annabeth are not described as potential friends, or companions, but immediately as “accomplices”, which certainly implies a crime, and paints the one-sided (mainly unfounded) picture of Percy as a criminal:
Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the boy may be traveling with two teenage accomplices. (The lightning Thief chapter 13)
(The use of teenage is also weird, considering that they were both around 13 years old)
Plus, maybe the most disturbing part of this article is that it openly says hat Gabe “offered a cash reward for information leading to his capture.” (The lightning Thief chapter 13)
Since when is it okay, for a grown ass man to offer a cash reward for the capture of a 12-year-old child on national news? That’s just messed up on a different level and makes Percy seem more like a dangerous and violent threat, and less as a potential victim of a violent crime, and a 12-year-old child.
Then it gets even worse with what happened at the Gateway Arch.
Here, the media actually has footage for once:
“Channel Five has learned that surveillance cameras show an adolescent boy going wild on the observation deck, somehow setting off this freak explosion.” (The Lightning thief, Chapter 14)
However, the news coverage still needs more nuance. “Going wild” and “somehow setting off” are very vague descriptions for what happened and the witnesses they do have, the family and the ranger, who were with Percy on top of the arch when Echidna attacked, don’t seem to blame Percy for what happened, at least from the little bit that we have seen:
The crowd parted, and a couple of paramedics hustled out, rolling a woman on a stretcher. I recognized her immediately as the mother of the little boy who’d been on the observation deck. She was saying, “And then this huge dog, this huge fire-breathing Chihuahua-“ “Okay, ma’am,” the paramedic said. “Just calm down. Your family is fine. The medication is starting to kick in.” “I’m not crazy! This boy jumped out of the hole and the monster disappeared.” (The Lightning thief, Chapter 14)
So, again, while the sequence of the events, the car crash, the bus explosion and the explosion at the gateway arch does imply a connection to Percy, it doesn’t warrant this extremely one-sided narrative of him:
“Percy Jackson. That’s right, Dan. Channel Twelve has learned that the boy who may have caused this explosion fits the description of a young man wanted by authorities for a serious New Jersey bus accident three days ago.” (The Lightning thief, Chapter 14)
Here, again, the authorities and the news completely blame Percy for the bus explosion, without even considering alternative reasons. In their minds, there is no doubt that he is responsible, despite the lack of real evidence against him. It is simply assumed guilt.
Also, the phrasing of “young man” is very interesting to me in this context.
Percy is a 12-year-old child during the lightning thief, far from someone who could reasonably be considered old enough to be a “young man.”
While “young man” can of course potentially be used for any child, it is a fact that children of color, especially boys, are disproportionately framed in older, less innocent terms when it comes to media portrayal.
This is a process called “Adultification.”
“Adultification” is a term which originated in the US in about 2008. Dr Jahnine Davis, the National Kinship Care Ambassador of the Uk and Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel member, says it can mean that children of colour are not seen as “innocent”, as their white peers would be.
The cofounder of the Center for policing Equity, Phillip Atiba Geoff released research called “The essence of innocence: consequences of dehumanizing Black children” in which he and his co-authors found that especially black boys are seen as older and less innocent.
One outcome of that is that especially black children are routinely held to adult standards with the country’s criminal legal systems. In March 2022, a Washington state intermediate-level appellate court even issued a published opinion acknowledging frankly that “adultification is real and can lead to harsher sentences for children of color if care is not taken to consciously avoid biased outcomes.”
So, yeah, referring to 12-year-old Percy as a “young man” instead of a child, can be seen as part of a larger pattern of adultifying children of color, if you choose to read him as such.
Then, the last scene I want to talk about regarding this topic is this scene from chapter 17:
I froze in front of an appliance-store window because a television was playing an interview with somebody who looked very familiar-my stepdad, Smelly Gabe. He was talking to Barbara Walters-I mean, as if he were some kind of huge celebrity. She was interviewing him in our apartment, in the middle of a poker game, and there was a young blond lady sitting next to him, patting his hand. A fake tear glistened on his cheek. He was saying, “Honest, Ms. Walters, if it wasn’t for Sugar here, my grief counselor, I’d be a wreck. My stepson took everything I cared about. My wife … my Camaro … I-I’m sorry. I have trouble talking about it.” “There you have it, America.” Barbara Walters turned to the camera. “A man torn apart. An adolescent boy with serious issues. Let me show you, again, the last known photo of this troubled young fugitive, taken a week ago in Denver.” The screen cut to a grainy shot of me, Annabeth, and Grover standing outside the Colorado diner, talking to Ares. “Who are the other children in this photo?” Barbara Walters asked dramatically. “Who is the man with them? Is Percy Jackson a delinquent, a terrorist, or perhaps the brainwashed victim of a frightening new cult? When we come back, we chat with a leading child psychologist. Stay tuned, America.”
So, to sum this situation up, Gabe Ugliano, the adult man, who
is the husband of a missing woman, and the stepfather of a boy on the run,
didn’t hesitate to call his 12-year-old stepson dangerous and violent on national Tv and has offered a cash reward for information leading to his capture,
is seen on national tv playing a poker game only like three weeks after his wife disappeared, while a young blond woman, with the name sugar, is said to help him “grieve”
openly puts equal importance on his wife’s disappearance and potential death and on his destroyed car
still gets called “a man torn apart”, with no suspicion raised against him, while Percy, the twelve-year-old, gets called “an adolescent boy with serious issues”, who could potentially be “a delinquent” and a “terrorist”?
And, I mean, especially calling him a terrorist is a wild accusation to just throw around.
Additionally to Percy’s unfair treatment in media and school, there are two other moments that happen in the mortal world that I would like to shortly focus on.
Two additional moments
These two examples are admittedly much smaller and more interpretive than the earlier ones. They are not evidence of a broader pattern on their own, but they are small moments that, for me at least, make the reding of Percy as a person of color resonate more strongly.
For one, there is this small line in The Lightning Thief that has always stood out to me:
“A gang of kids had circled us. Six of them in all—white kids with expensive clothes and mean faces. Like the kids at Yancy Academy” (The Lightning Thief, Chapter 17)
On its own, this doesn’t have to mean anything. White narrators can and do describe other characters as white all the time, especially when combined with mentioning their social status. But I do find it interesting that Percy explicitly marks them as white here. It at least suggests that race is something he consciously notices and registers, rather than something that remains invisible or defaulted in his narration, which would be more common for white narrators (at least in my experience). That doesn’t mean Percy must be non-white, but it is one of those tiny moments that makes the reading of him as a person of color resonate with me more.
Another small point is the way Rachel’s dad treats him.
He, the rich CEO of Dare enterprises, who has consistently been characterized as a very unpleasant personality, is recorded to refuse to even call Percy by name:
“So…I take it your friend isn’t coming to St. Thomas?” That’s what Mr. Dare called me. Never Percy. Just your friend. Or young man if he was talking to me, which he rarely did. (The last Olympian, chapter 4)
Now, again, this and every single point I mentioned could admittedly be a result from socio-economic differences, and Percy’s status as a poor, neurodivergent kid, who has been thrown out of all of his schools. And, again, I’m not saying it’s impossible for a white kid to receive this kind of treatment in the mortal world. But, personally, I do think that Percy’s story becomes more layered if he is read as a person of color. And I think there are enough points in the story to make this headcanon plausible.
However, I do not read Percy as a person of color simply because it is textually plausible, or because I like the headcanon (though I really do). I read him that way because I think it makes his story also thematically richer.
3. Percy's story and the themes embedded in PJO
Percy Jackson is fundamentally a story about marginalized children. Kids who have been failed by schools, rejected by adults, forced out of homes, labeled as “problem children” and then also failed by the systems in place in the mythological world.
And Percy, specifically, is a character whose story is deeply shaped by unfair treatment, both in the mortal, but also in the mythological world.
He is repeatedly misread by authority figures. He is scapegoated. He is constantly unfairly judged. He is treated as dangerous before he has done anything to deserve it and he constantly has to prove himself against established biases.
He is excluded and ostracized at Camp Half-Blood because of his parentage and because of his relationship to Tyson.
He is falsely accused of stealing the lightning bolt and the Helm of Darkness, and forced to clear his own name only two weeks after finding out about the mythological world’s existence.
During sea of monsters, he is singled out by the only two authority figures, Tantalus and Dionysus and treated badly because of it.
In Titan’s Curse, he is denied a quest he is objectively extremely qualified for simply because he is a boy, and he gets treated objectively really shitty by both Zoe and Thalia at the beginning of that book. He first has to prove himself before they start to treat him decently.
The gods themselves debate whether he should be killed or not with Athena actively saying he is too dangerous to be left alive.
Dionysus initially hates him and makes his life actively worse, not because of anything Percy did, but simply because he reminds him of Theseus.
And I could go on and on and on.
Let me be clear here.
I am not arguing that Percy’s experiences are canonically about race, or that his marginalization stems from racial prejudice in the text.
My argument here is that because his story is already so deeply intertwined with themes of ostracism, institutional bias, scapegoating, breaking stereotypes and structural inequality, reading him as a person of color adds an additional emotional and thematic layer to it. It certainly doesn’t replace any existing themes, but it does intensify them in a way.
But that is not the most important part of this headcanon for me.
The main reason why I think that reading Percy as a person of color makes the books more impactful is not because he personally is a victim of injustice.
The main reason is because Percy’s story, at its core, is a story about actively fighting against systematic injustice and inequality.
His story literally culminates in creating structural changes to an established thousands-year-old system, which allow for more equality within his society.
His greatest success is not the defeat of Kronos.
His greatest success is the gods promising to agree to his demands, claim their kids, build cabins for the “minor” gods and Hades, and show amnesty towards the gods who, at one point or another, fought on Kronos’ side.
Percy consistently, throughout every single book, challenges either systems or biases that fail people, fights against bullies, who abuse their power, or actively chooses to side with people and beings who their society considers abnormal. His fight against injustice happens both on a larger and smaller scale and is inseparably bound to his narrative.
For example, when he chooses to help Clarisse in Stolen Chariot:
Now I’ve got to tell you, I’ve met a lot of godlings and monsters I didn’t like, but Phobos took the prize. I don’t like bullies. I’d never been in the “A” crowd at school, so I’d spent most of my life standing up to punks who tried to frighten me and my friends. The way Phobos laughed at me and made Clarisse collapse just by looking at her… I wanted to teach this guy a lesson. (The Demigod Files: The Stolen Chariot)
Or when he defends Tyson, even when Annabeth talks badly about him:
As they walked away laughing, Annabeth grumbled, “Just ignore them, Percy. It isn’t your fault you have a monster for a brother.” “He’s not my brother!” I snapped. “And he’s not a monster, either!” Annabeth raised her eyebrows. “Hey, don’t get mad at me! And technically, he is a monster.” (…) Cyclopes are the most deceitful, treacherous-“ “He is not! What have you got against Cyclopes, any-way? Annabeth’s ears turned pink. I got the feeling there was something she wasn’t telling me-something bad. “Just forget it,” she said. “Now, the axle for this chariot-“ “You’re treating him like he’s this horrible thing,” I said. “He saved my life.” (The Sea of Monsters, Chapter 6)
Or when he actively defends Nico, when Hera tries to imply that he does not belong:
I balled my fists. I couldn’t believe she was saying this. “You’re the one who paid Geryon to let us through the ranch, weren’t you?” Hera shrugged. Her dress shimmered in rainbow colors. “I wanted to speed you on your way.” “But you didn’t care about Nico. You were happy to see him turned over to the Titans.” “Oh, please.” Hera waved her hand dismissively. “The son of Hades said it himself. No one wants him around. He does not belong.” “Hephaestus was right,” I growled. “You only care about your perfect family, not real people.” (Battle of the Labyrinth, Chapter 20)
Or when he argues against killing Bessie in front of the entire Olympian council:
"Well," Zeus grumbled. "Perhaps. But the monster at least must be destroyed. We have agreement on that?" A lot of nodding heads. It took me a second to realize what they were saying. Then my heart turned to lead. "Bessie? You want to destroy Bessie?" "Mooooooo!" Bessie protested. My father frowned. "You have named the Ophiotaurus Bessie?" "Dad," I said, "he's just a sea creature. A really nice sea creature. You can't destroy him." Poseidon shifted uncomfortably. "Percy, the monster's power is considerable. If the Titans were to steal it, or—" "You can't," I insisted. I looked at Zeus. I probably should have been afraid of him, but I stared him right in the eye. "Controlling the prophecies never works. Isn't that true? Besides, Bess— the Ophiotaurus is innocent. Killing something like that is wrong. It's just as wrong as… as Kronos eating his children, just because of something they might do. It's wrong!" Zeus seemed to consider this. (Titan’s curse, chapter 19)
Or dozens of other examples I could name.
The fight against injustice is one of Percy’s defining narrative traits and, I think, him being a person of color just adds to that story, especially with the historical context of the fight against inequality within the United States.
Personal preference
There are other reasons why I specifically headcanon Percy as Syrian, but these really boil down to only personal preference.
Admittedly, this entire post is about personal preference. It’s a headcanon, after all, and like I stated at the beginning, probably not Rick Riordan’s intention when he wrote these books.
But, specifically this part of my explanation is not supported by quotations from either the books or published papers at all, and really only about what I think.
I think my post was more about why I generally like the headcanon of Percy being a POC, and not why I headcanon him specifically as Syrian.
Now, I would love to be able to write a longer text where I connect Percy to values often associated with many Syrian and broader Levantine communities, such as hospitality, community, resistance and the importance of family, or where I perhaps delve into historical and mythological narratives that echo his story.
However, I think to accurately and respectfully write about a country’s culture, and to explain why a fictional character could potentially be part of it, you need to have more than surface level knowledge about that culture.
Knowledge, which I sadly do not have,
To be completely honest, I am not qualified enough to write a text like.
So, instead of writing a surface level explanation, which has the potential to be full of stereotypes, half-truths and inaccurate information, and which generalizes the culture of a country as beautifully diverse as Syria, I’m going to be honest and say that this headcanon exists mainly because of a personal preference.
It probably boils down to three main aspects:
Like I said, the main reason why I always pictured Percy as specifically Syrian in the first place is because of an elementary school classmate, who happened to vaguely look like Percy and whose family originated in Syria. That headcanon just stuck with me since then.
As someone living in Germany, I naturally have more contact with people of Syrian descent than other communities, since Syrians are now one of the largest immigrant groups in the country. So, approximately 1.2 million Germans are also Syrian
I also think Arabic is a beautiful language, and I like imagining my favorite characters speaking languages I love.
Admittedly, weaker arguments, but they’re the truth.
Additionally, I just think it’d be cool, simply representation wise.
Especially since the first Percy Jackson book came out in 2005, where anti-muslim and anti-arab narratives were still very high mainly because of 9/11 and where a lot of racist stereotypes dominated arab characters and stories in the us media (mainly portraying arab people as violent and aggressive), I like the idea of the protagonist of one of the most popular fantasy books aimed at children to be Syrian.
Especially since Percy as a character is so much defined by his compassion, kindness, bravery and empathy.
So, yeah, that’s why I personally headcanon Percy as a person of color, and specifically as Syrian.
I hope this post was enjoyable to read and that I made my reasoning clear.
My brother saved this document and everytime he gets angry at our neighbours for being loud he prints it to their wireless printer and you can hear the wife shout “Why the fuck would you print this AGAIN?!” to her son.
1. If you were wondering, you can type the numbers in the works cited into google and they appear to be medical journal articles about using medical imaging to detect and diagnose a rare form of Gastritis.
2. Please enjoy the offical powerpoint presentation of this paper at an academic conference by the original author, complete with Q&A:
When I saw this cross my dash tonight, I smiled and thought “yess, the chicken chicken chicken post, I get to reblog it again and inflict it on all of the people that have followed me since last time”, and then I scrolled down more and to my utter delight there was A VIDEO, needless to say my night has been made
What hapoened after 2005 with clothing quality? (Your comment a out Old Navy etc)
This is around when you start seeing spandex infest everything - spandex blends are prone to wonky shrinkage in the dryer, and the fabric just kind of shreds in a short period of time.
You also see more and more companies skipping steps like pre-washing fabric, so even previously "safe" options like 100% cotton shirts bleed and shrink a ton in the wash. (See a bog-standard 100% cotton shirt these days with dry cleaning instructions? Yeah, that thing will bleed everywhere, shrink in the dryer because the fabric hasn't been pre-shrunk, and the seams will also start bursting due to shitty construction.)
You also see print quality take a dive -- yarn-dyed fabric and screenprinting getting replaced with sublimation work. (I have 25 year old screen printed t-shirts that look better than anything modern that has gone through only 2 washes.)
We had a very brief, sweet-spot period in time where washing machines & detergent stopped being brutal on clothes, and fabric + construction was high quality, but affordable. 2005 is not an exact date for the end of this short era, but it's around there somewhere, imo. I would personally never thrift for anything post 2005, as a general rule of thumb. (Based on my experiences as older Gen X.)
Clothes also used to cost us more money, or at least a higher percentage of our income. People had smaller wardrobes to reflect that.
The rise of fast fashion thanks to internet retailers like Zara (often sourced as the originator of the trend), H&M, and Primark in the 90s and 00s realizing global supply and labor chains being shifted around in the wake of NAFTA and other international agreements, meant that they could debut new clothing year-round instead of just Fall and Spring. The links between designer, approval, production, and sales were growing shorter while markets were getting bigger with the rise of internet shopping. To maximize profits and minimize costs, materials were made thinner and stretchier across the board.
When you have a stretch poplin shirt or a pair of spandex blend leggings, it can fit more people in a generalized size range (S, M, L). It will also wear out quicker and be resistant to mending (once the intermixed stretchy fibers are severed, it's incredibly difficult to get it to stop degrading- like a run in a pair of stockings). Ever try to repair a hole in the inner thighs of a pair of stretch jeans? It's a pain in the ass to get it to stay that way.
The decline in union-made clothing also resulted in a loss of quality. Instead of being guaranteed a minimum wage, garment workers are paid by each finished piece, which incentivizes speed over quality. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of garment workers out there who are quick and accurate, but when factories push more styles and ridiculous quotas, corners WILL be cut.
Shoppers have also become accustomed to this year-round release schedule, which encourages manufacturers to embrace cheaper materials and labor practices to cover any losses. Did last month's turtleneck sweaters absolutely bomb in sales? No problem, they were mostly acrylic and sewn cheaply! On to the next microtrend...
Of course, shittier clothes also mean that people need to buy more often...
I think it's very important to point out that "Fast Fashion" is not another way to say, "low price, low quality clothing". It usually ends up that way, but that is not what the term means.
Fast Fashion is the rapid, consistent cycling of micro trends, which requires an acceleration of the design > manufacturing > sales chain. That's it.
(You can also have year-round garments like plain, white t-shirts that have also tanked in quality over the years -- this is not a Fast Fashion problem, but related to general cost cutting in fabric production.)
Yes, this disproportionately affects low income populations, but you have *got* to understand how this is a business model that goes beyond clothing and crosses income brackets.
I want to point out 2 things that often get left out of this conversation:
1) To dislike fast fashion is not to say "fuck you for wearing the only clothes you can afford". It is to dislike a very modern and unsustainable production model that is the realization of the "endless growth" model of late-stage capitalism.
2) Garment (and other production) workers are consistently left out in the "how dare you piss on the poor" hot takes. We have *got* to encourage liveable wages for everyone.
"The $10 shirt is all some people can afford" and "a new shirt should never be $10" are both unfortunately true.
In a similar vein, I am getting increasingly frustrated at the "it's a privilege to be able to thrift" discourse.
Thrifting as a hobby and thrifting to be able to clothe yourself are two different practices that are increasingly getting conflated. And the existence of the former is being used to discourage the latter.
I will continue to recommend thrifting for both fashion and needs-based clothing, with the suggestion that one check the fabric content label and try to get something with as low a spandex content as possible. (And if you can, learn a couple of other earmarks for longevity or suitability for alterations.) You may not luck out every time, and some days you may not have the time to inspect everything on the rack, but a little knowledge here could score you a garment that you won't have to replace so soon.
Same thing with learning how to care for your clothing. Got things prone to shrinkage because of spandex or it was never pre-shrunk? If you can spare the day, let it air dry vs running through a machine. You can't always avoid shitty garments, but you can try to eke more life out of them, and it helps to know *why* they are shitty to begin with.
And that is really the point of these conversations when you, yourself are part of the worst impacted class of people. A little knowledge that can tip the balance when confronted with what you thought were 2 identical purchases. A little reassurance that, no, you didn't fuck up washing these clothes, they ripped or shrank because the quality is worse than what you grew up with.
I am getting so frustrated with people who are determined to turn conversations about clothing into opportunities to create increasingly minute class distinctions to encourage either fighting or nihilism. It is important to be able to describe what is going on with capitalism without that being perceived as a personal attack. And likewise understand that solutions range from the personal to the systemic, and sometimes the personal is all you can try at the moment.
A few tips for trying to find good quality clothes:
1. Look at what the garment is made of. There are garments that can be made of synthetic fibers and there are others that can't. Sweaters for example, with the exception of chenille, can't be made with synthetic fibers without them pilling and becoming an awful texture after a couple washes.
2. 100% doesn't always mean 100%. It's legal to say that if there's only a tiny bit of another fiber in the fabric, it shouldn't be because it allows companies to lie about their garment but having synthetics.
3. Look at the wash instructions. You should never be able to put a good wool in the washing machine, for example. It has to be hand wash or dry clean only. If it says it's 100% wool and you can put it in the washing machine, they're lying to you about the fiber content.
4. Look at the brand tag. Is it vintage? Is it a brand that's known for being well made? Look it up if you have the time and you're not sure.
5. Check the seams, make sure there aren't any loose threads, make sure the seams are straight, know how to spot good workmanship.
6. Make sure you can tailor the item if needed. Most modern garments are meant to fit a small group of people correctly and you most likely will have to tailor some of your garments to fit. look for where and how the pockets are placed and if it fits in the shoulders.
7. Learn how to do burn tests with garments you take home. Snip off a little bit of excess fabric and light that sucker. It's a great way to figure out if the fabric content is what the trash says it is and how to more accurately care for the garment.
Here's some really good videos by Bernadette Banner that explain how to look for good quality clothes.
Laundry labels are very important, and I can understand they can be confusing when they're just the icons (I still have to look some up).
If I (or someone else) have the spoons, there is an entire post to be made about how to care for your garments, *especially* how to eke out as much life as possible out of the low quality stuff.
(In fact, I have to fix some of my lower end shoes, and will make a post with how I do quick sole repair.)
I really debated sticking my oar in on this. I’m in a bit of bind because of my size. Thrifting is truly, in my area, not possible. There is little to no chance to find clothes my size. I’m a 5x I have and am sewing to make my own. Spandex while the bane of existence literally saves my ass (and everyone else from not having to see my exposed ass). I dislike it, always have, but any port in a storm.
The quality of good plus size is …. Well it’s not good. They have a captive audience and they know it. I often find myself reading comments about the quality of clothes and thinking “hasn’t it always been that way?” then I realized. It hit plus size clothes first then moved to mainstream. Paying more for shitty quality has always been my norm.
So has not being able to find things. I made a special club at my University it required wearing a white dress. Thank every god they gave enough notice because it took three fucking months and a special order. I live in the biggest town in my state. It was a plain white dress, not a wedding dress just a simple plain white dress and it took forever. At that time I didn’t sew, but damn if I had found fabric, bought a machine and done it myself it would have been less painful.
A lot of the boutique brands for new clothing of higher quality... they *know* they have a plus-sized market willing to pay, but choose not to engage.
This is a huge problem in the new vintage world, where it feels like a deliberate attempt to discourage plus-sized people from ever being associated with the brand. It is distinctly malicious.
And while this thread was moreso about fabric, you kind of need patterns to even try to make do with what currently is available.
The "fat tax" for asking a pattern be graded to anything above a size L is absurd, not to mention finding someone who will *properly* grade the pattern to begin with.
You can't just resize it in Photoshop and call it a day -- not a lot of people know this and I feel it important to draw attention to. Whenever people tell my (plus-sized) partner they are lucky they can make "whatever they want," my partner just grits their teeth.
The problems of declining quality in the fashion world disproportionately impact plus-sized people and we should be encouraging more sizes as a norm, in both finished clothing and in pattern work for home sewists.
(honestly, ALL OF YOUR CLOTHES will last longer if you do those things. obviously some things should be washed on warm; it does get remove stains better; and I wash towels on hot. obviously there are life situations where you have to put shit in the dryer. but it's just a fact: dryers destroy clothes. all that stuff in the lint trap, other than pet hair!, is your clothes wearing out.)
In my experience, you gotta avoid polyester/cotton blends like the plague. It's ROUGH because that's what 90% of clothes are, but poly/cotton blends get horrible, scratchy pills on them that make them feel terrible to wear.
Wool seriously needs to make a comeback.
I'll never stop talking about how life-changing it was to get rid of all my plastic bullshit and switch (almost) entirely to wool, linen, and cotton. Polyester is impossible to properly thermoregulate in.
Dave Brandt was so much more than a meme. He partnered with universities to experiment with and expand soil conservation and cover crop techniques, worked to educate other farmers through worldwide conventions and direct mentorship, founded the Soil Health Academy, and was called the "Obi-Wan Kenobi of soil health" by the chief of the USDA's conservation department.
There is no healthy planet without healthy ag practices, and this guy was a legend.
Most modern Ag operations don’t even have a proper A-Horizon. They’re too busy turning the earth every time they replant. The A-horizon is the Black Gold that makes Soil Soil. It’s a structurally complex soil horizon that must be built in place by the interactions of Plants and Fungi and Insects. It is The Thing that soaks up rain and holds onto it for plants. The A-Horizon is The Thing that builds up when you let a field sit fallow. The act of tilling creates fecundity by breaking up the A-horizon. On a really good Organic no-till farm you might find an A-horizon between 3-6 inches.
His A-horizon was 4 feet deep. 50 inches.
I-
I have no context. His farm was covered in a living skin thick enough for a child to stand in.
Gives me hope for what we could accomplish if we got our collective heads on straight, you know? Like. This was one guy. A brilliant man, who knew what he was up to, but. The thing about brilliant ideas is they can be shared.
Humus, or Humic Compounds, are a cryptic and poorly understood set of organic substances. As the final metabolic result of once-living things being digested first by macroscopic organisms, and then by microorganisms, they resist most forms of analysis, and have cryptic structures. A few that we have managed to isolate and study are the Humic & Fulvic Acids.
Humus has a number of remarkable tendencies. It is capable of retaining water far better than any raw mineral clay; it also retains electrically charged clay granules, which themselves retain mineral ions, all of which is essential to make a soil a high-quality resource for Plants to grow in.
A composter is a box that contains an environment that is conducive to the production of Humus, but the best way to produce it is in-place, by laying layers of organic material down over an unbroken earth and growing things out of that. The interaction of the plants rooting, the fungus weaving itself through everything, the bacteria and archaea metabolizing as they do, and inorganic weathering forces all combine to gradually build up the microscopic equivalent of a complex megastructure capable of retaining far more water, and containing far more nutrients, than any inorganic substrate.
This stuff is black gold. This is the stuff that determines whether or not a plot of land is going to be “productive.” The knowledge of how to make it, how to care for it, is an essential piece of wisdom that our civilization needs to remember.
Fortunately, folks seem to have the right response:
Farmers are more important to the continuity of civilization than administrators, no matter what the elitists say. This knowledge is important.
