genuine question: how is percy transfem-coded? its been a few years since i last reread the books but i never personally picked up on anything like that so im curious what makes u read them as 🥚 (and if i’d agree lol (i probably would))
Her transfem-coding more or less explains itself as you soon read her canon character through lenses of her being transfeminine but unaware of it(not meant to sound insultive or anything,i state this in a genuine tone!)while still effected by her surroundings and places she's put in positive,negative and neutral.Transfem Percy has pretty much the whole saga to go off of at least a little bit regardless of where she's actually at at that point but i'll be doing a bullet points list so you get the jist and where it comes in
Seen as pathologically evil and secretly manipulating everyone she comes into contact with for longer than she remembers and treated accordingly and then you see what she's actually like and she's just not what boys and men are expected/'supposed' to be while leaning towards gender neutrality as much as she can manage without landing herself in danger.This was intended as a literal metaphor for mental disorders but it would be hella gross and also just incorrect to act like there's no overlap between neurodivergence and transfemininity.She specifically reads as a neurodivergent tfem who's also mentally ill from the trauma she experienced caused by transmisogyny amongst the other kinds too,including not allowing her egg to crack due to it
And she's textually transmisogynized,in mortal world context and metaphorically in mythos world context.See above but also take note of how Percy's specifically criminalized and abused on interpersonal manners.She was an internationally wanted criminal at twelve because her stepdad told lies weaponizing her past struggles in school and with socialization despite having a worse track record himself and almost nobody believed her except her mom no matter how hard she tried to prove she's harmless and trying her best and dosen't need to be 'fixed' out of who she is.She literally gets profiled on her apperance and is implied to not really look masculine compared to actual male characters.And a good chunk of the gods' grooming of her is forcing her to take on explicitly male required roles they want from her she's fundamentally not built for and even more explicitly dosen't want to partake in so she'll be useful to them and eventually 'relent' and 'become' one of them while Luke's exploitation of her reflects how irl trans girls are used by men and so does their dynamic after(and during!)his betrayal and he's everything she's been made to feel she is and fears changing into yet they as people and their experiences couldn't be less alike but they're falsely equated anyway yet she gets more demonized and less credit than him too.And she's treated like she's 'an oblivious and dense boy who'll never understand girls or be as cool as them' despite overabundant evidence the opposite is true and it boils down to her not performing or getting how and why gender essentialism and cisheteronormativity function in practice while finding them useless and nonsensical in theory
She tends to do and apply to things associated with masculinity and manhood she dosen't associate with masculinity and manhood and neither do the characters she's mutually important to when it comes to her and this is significant keeping in mind she was on born in 1993 and the series debuted in 2005,where sexism and compulsory gender roles were even more rampant than they are now,especially onto children and stories meant for them so they'd get them programmed in on it as early as possible.An extremely hard-hitting example is her color is blue aka the default 'boy symbolism' color yet her love of and coding to it came from Sally aka her mom,something she started to rebel against her abusive husband and represents the solidarity and a safe haven between her and her daughter who she fullheartedly supports zero exceptions and defends against those persecuting and targeting her even if she dosen't always understand her and shoves all her effort onto proving to her she dosen't love her less just because she's 'special'.That's commentary on ableism and Sally combating so i won't turn it into something else,i just wanted to remind everyone Sally's the goat🥰
Her relationship to womanhood and femininity both as concepts and the intentionally female characters hit like she wants to counted in on them and already does but hesitates to even consider she might be as little as close on the same level as them(she screams 'i can't be a woman because the world needs good men and i'm no different from other guys Except Worse At It')and another case of solidarity between girls and women she's involved in quite often and even instigates commonly enough.Her adoration,respect and insecurities for her female love interests combined with her own individual queerness makes her attraction to women read as sapphic and her platonic connections to and journeys with her female friends and the goddesses narratively flow better at angles where they're both/all girls
I mean,her name?Gender neutral nickname of a male birthname where she's only refered to by it by people who plan on hurting her?
Hoo simplified her characterization by masculinizing her when she always had an unconventional relathionship to gender,within and distinctively different approaches to her not made with other male presenting/identifying characters and in fact she's closer to how the books write their FEMALE characters.Current timeline Percy crashed out major time when the books were at their strongest at forcing her into 'loserishly relatable guy' positions i.e it's taking it's toll on her mental health and the quality of her writing to be trapped inside them
And she'd be infinitely happier and healed if she discovered she can be a woman and unlock what type of woman she wants to be and abandon all those innacurate labels and obligations she suffered under an identity she never wanted or asked for and begged to stop happening to her so she could be 'Just Percy'.All she wanted at her beginnings was to feel normal without having to change parts of her she can't and what would be a better conclusion to her arc than ending up transitioning?
Oh and queer non-transfem Pjo/Percyverse fans act like she's enacting a personal betrayal on them and the community as a whole by not showing interest in or babying men she's got every reason to hate yet brush off her gender issues as nothing except it's to mock or objectify her🙂↕️
