Rick Riordanβs switch up on Percy is so funny to me. In older books itβs painfully obvious that Riordan preferred him, with his constant insistence that Percy is the strongest despite severely under-exploring everyone elseβs powers, every character speaking highly of him, and his insane feats. In recent books, Percy is both demonised and flanderised. He has been dumbed down to the point of being unable to do anything without Annabeth, heβs being called out and blamed for things he didnβt do, and heβs just being bashed at every opportunity. Literally what happened???
The fandom happened.
Authors genuinely shouldn't be close to their fans because they start to consider their "headcanons" as canon in favor of pleasing them. Fanon view β canon view; there is a reason these two need to be separated because otherwise it creates this mess.
Percy being stupid and needing Annabeth for everything was born from Percy/Percabeth's headcanons that some fans had of him and their relationships. Stereotypes and tropes also added weight to this: the "dumb boyfriend Γ smart girlfriend" trope is very common,and since Annabeth is book smart (a lot of people view this as the only type of valuable intelligence) they dumb Percy down,forgetting that he is intelligent too but just in a different way. They also rely on the multiple moments where Percy is "slow" in the books,when in reality he just doesn't know what's going on half of the time because people around him don't talk clearly,or explain things to him only after they happen. It's not his fault he's clueless most of the time when Chiron doesn't do his job properly.
Riordan got too close to those headcanons and these are the results. And it's not even just Percy,other characters are undergoing the flanderization too. He lost the plot to headcanons that most of the time just mischaracterize his characters and now he's following the trend. I don't even like his heavy favoritism towards Percy,especially in HoO because other characters with a lot of potential to rival him or go beyond his levels are stranded,but I genuinely hate seeing him reduced like this after years of showing how capable he is,and can be,even without Annabeth around.
















