So I don't have the words to explain this, but I will try to make my point somehow here.
Can we talk about how Rick Riordan read about demigods and inmediately chose to call them half-bloods?
First of all, it's not a word that ancient Greeks used: those who were considered "superior to mankind, but inferior to the gods", to say it somehow, were called demigods or heroes. Pretty sure it started being used during the Middle Ages, as... literally, as a term, to call those who were of "mixed race" during the colonization of America. It originated from that, and it many negative connotations: pretty sure it could be considered a slur. And he KNOWS this. At least, I want to think he does. I mean, explain this:
Yeah, Rick, it's good that you wanna point out the discrimination Indigenous and African people suffer, but I think Piper' and Carter's discomfort with that name could be erased by simply not calling them that. It is really unnecessry. Sure, you could add a scene in which someone calls demigods that, be it with ill intentions or just as a misconception, but both ways could serve to show the characters' upsetness before such name.
Don't you think, Rick, I don't know, it comes to my mind... that there are better ways to call the children of gods? I believe that throwing this word around like it's nothing in a children's book is... questionable, to say the least. It minimizes what the word half-blood meant. What it was used and is still used for.
"Oh, but he does call them heroes and demigods!" Oh, so he IS able to not use a racial slur for his literal childrens book, huh? Not to mention, he STILL called it "Half-Blood Camp" and the term that is used the most is still that one.
I've counted just The Lightning Thief, but the word half-blood is said like 60 times, the word hero is said like 50 and the word demigod is said only 6 times.
I really wanna just become an editor in that fuckass book and change all the half-bloods for demigods.
