#tkc crit

[percabeth4life]

In general, I find the writing for TKC lackluster compared to the PJO series. They introduce a lot of new characters and it feels like the author expects us to just like them without giving us a reason to like them. I definitely think it's the difference between 5 and 3 books but even in 3 books, there are pacing issues present in TKC.

The two most glaring issues I have with TKC is the romance and the cultural issues.

1) Romance

It's the forced romance that bugs me. Sadie is 12-13 getting in relationship with Walt and Anubis and then the author fixed the love triangle by making Walt the host of Anubis which for me was too convenient. It's Schrodinger's age gap! To be fair, I think that this aspect is really due to amatonormativity not being written well.

Zia and Carter are cute though I wish Zia, the only actual Egyptian that's a main character, appeared more in the books and had more personality.

2) Cultural issues

This stems from 1 moment in the first book that really stuck with me. Walt and Sadie were talking about a sign they saw and it said Cold Bebsi. Then they explain how there's no p in Arabic and how Pepsi becomes Bebsi and so you need Bebsi with your bizza//Brobably as dialogue.

I know it's supposed to be humorous but as someone who has been made fun of for speaking foreign languages as a tween, I guess this struck me as culturally insensitive. It may just be me though.

I still like TKC it's just not as good as PJO to me and this isn't meant to be hate or anything!

Would you be interested in writing fics where PJO characters meet their Egyptian counterparts?

I haven't written anything strictly for TKC yet, the closest I have is Pearl in the Nile which is a crossover with PJO. I think Rick did a decent job introducing Sadie and Carter, we got a nice build up to them. But the characters in book 2 were a bit jarring. Honestly, I get what you mean on the 5 vs 3 book series because I think an extra book to introduce the new members of the Nome would've been good.

Yeah the romance is wild, though first poly ship technically lol. I think he lowkey forgot how young he made Sadie, he definitely forgot Walt's age since he changed it in the same book Walt was introduced (from 14 to 16).

Zia NEEDED more page time oh my Gods.

I think the language thing was him trying to introduce the differences in languages with different letters. Ironically, this could have also been done in the Greek books with how the Greeks used hard K sounds instead of soft C sounds for many works (Kyklopes vs Cyclopes for example). Shame it wasn't, but I think he outright doesn't know that.

Anyways, I dunno if I'd be interested in such a fic outright but I do have Pearl in the Nile where Percy will eventually interact with the Egyptian side.

[mahoushojoe]

hmmmmmm thinking about zia rashid

first of all...holy shit, why is her name zia? there is not a single person in egypt named zia. zia is supposedly a girl born in a rural village in upper egypt. zia is just. not a name she would have. it's not egyptian. as far as i know it's not even middle eastern. like, sometimes people really nitpick stuff when criticizing these things online but this really isn't a nitpick, like. just common sense! common sense and respect for the culture and heritage you're exploiting for your cash cow franchise. the bare minimum. you didn't even have to deeply research Common Girl Names In Upper Egypt. You could have just named her, like, Sara or something, and it would have worked just fine.

like the reason the name is such a big deal is that zia is one of like, two egyptians in a series ABOUT egypt, and yet she's just...not. she doesn't feel egyptian. through her we know nothing about egyptian culture. her name is a Not Like Other Girls name. we don't know whether she's muslim or coptic. she's the Egyptian Rep but she's just Not Egyptian, and the fact that she has the personality of a piece of cardboard doesn't help. it feels like egyptian characters are often purposely distanced from being egyptian in media like this because a) the writers don't want to put in the effort to research and b) it would force them to confront the colonial implications of the media they're writing.

her village is like, comically orientalist- rick could have looked at a map of egypt and known that absolutely nowhere in egypt do they have places named in formal arabic like that. it's called village of the red sand, right? it's given this long mysterious sounding formal arabic name as a result, and just... it's not how egyptian place names works and it's also not how any place name would work, period. a more realistic thing would be if rick had put in the work to at least get an IDEA of the egyptian dialect of arabic -better yet, the UPPER egyptian dialect. Like if the village was called Raml Ahmar it would have been like. Believable. Grounded. And like, in Zia's childhood, supposedly this entire village gets like eaten by sand or something, and... there. Nobody notices. Like if something like that happened in the US it would be a huge deal and everyone would know about it, but since egypt is this like, Desert Of Mystery, things like this just happen and nobody cares I guess.

zia herself isn't even in the books like 60% of the time. like she's either a puppet or like, in a magical coma or something, and when she IS there she's this like Quiet Strong Girl Of Few Words so she doesn't really have a personality beyond being a #girlboss. she is very open to going on dates with a boy and KISSING him at some point even though a girl from upper egypt wouldn't be caught DEAD publically doing those kinds of things, culturally speaking. on that note, zia doesn't know what a mall is. egypt has malls. zia lives in cairo iirc and cairo does, in fact, have several LARGE malls. so all this converges to show zia as this Mysterious Girl From The Third World(tm) and again, as mentioned before, to distance her from her being egyptian.

so like these all seem like nitpicky details, but they all converge to send a message: rick does not care about egyptian culture enough to research it. since the people of modern egypt are poor and brown and all the cool ancient stuff can be conveniently stolen and whitewashed, egypt has no value to him besides being an occasional setting. and it rubs salt in the already gaping colonial wound left by the british and the french and the ottomans and whoever else took a chunk out of us and left us to bleed- which is: exploit egypt for the artifacts and degrade and disrespect the rest.

i'm gonna be honest- i wasn't expecting perfect egyptian rep from a white american man and i wasn't looking for it from him either. but what grates on me is disrespect. what grates on me is laziness. tkc is probably gonna be a lot of kids' introduction to egypt and this is the message it leaves in their head; this is the mindset, that egypt is worthless and only the ancient artifacts are worth taking seriously. and then that devolves into the way tourists and expats arrive here asking to be treated like royalty and treating the locals like shit and paying them pennies. it devolves into museums refusing to give us OUR artifacts that they LOOTED during imperialism. it devolves into the microaggressions i face on the internet every day, where I cannot talk about the serious problems this country faces every day without some annoying american making a king tut reference or whatever. tkc isn't the reason behind all of this, it's far from the only media that has ever done this, it's not even the worst offender. but it feels bad to constantly see the blatant disrespect people have for you and your heritage and it feels bad to constantlyq have it relegated to a joke pop culture reference and it feels bad to be constantly spoken over.

again: im not waiting for representation from riordan or his ilk. i don't need his crumbs. but the disappointment i felt when reading about zia was real, and so was my irritation at her characterization and the way it's supposed to represent me.

tl;dr when you write a book about a colonized and exploited country and people, please afford them a little fucking respect. the bare fucking minimum. this is why i'm not at all excited for the upcoming tkc adaptation and for my own sake i won't be engaging in it, although i dread the upcoming pop culture wave that will happen as a result.

[a-mysteriouys-batsrard]

maybe it’s just me but there’s something about a white author describing a black boy’s hair as “nappy” that doesn’t sit right w me

[hueninqkais]

rr crit. masterpost

seen rick riordan criticism and ever wondered what the big deal was? maybe you saw some people talking about how much they disliked a certain aspect of his books and just thought that at least he gave us this diversity in the first place. 

either way, this post is for you! i’ve compiled a list of meta and explanations from across tumblr that actually come from people who are able to speak on his representation in novels and this will help shed some light on why specific parts of rick riordan’s books are criticised!

preface: i’ll clarify that i am not trying to hate on rick riordan and i’m not making this as a post to start drama or to complain! i’ve always loved his books since i was young and read pretty much all his series! but there is really no excuse for a privileged white man to mess up this badly :/

but as humans in an everchanging society, we’re witnesses to change and to growth!! and our perception of media can affect how we empathise and treat the plight of others who are less fortunate in mainstream society. even if you don’t seen the problem in these criticisms or aren’t affected, please do not speak over those who are!! i’ll put the list under the tag <3

poc representation

medusa + middle eastern representation by @moontheapollocamper ↳ you might remember medusa from the first book in the percy jackson series, this piece covers what was problematic about how she was written and what stereotypes she enforced.

brazilian representation by @ellakay69 ↳ this is a very detailed and easy to understand post on why paolo’s character in trials of apollo is a terrible example of brazilian representation

on samirah’s arranged engagement in the books by @kubo ↳ perpetuating a harmful stereotype when many have been harmed is incredibly problematic

on the dehumanisation of poc and the dismissal of their experiences by @mustwealwaysbepredictable ↳ an important post to read as it breaks down the issues with riordan’s casual and problematic depiction of certain poc

paolo’s character in trials of apollo by @fan-dot ↳ another good post to help understand why paolo was thoughtlessly characterised just to fill a representation slot

poc characters and their families by @ellakay69 ↳ op made some excellent points here on how the poc families and their experiences are treated

adultification of black girls by @literateleah there have been many professional studies done on how black girls are always portrayed as more mature, and ‘adult’ and hazel fell into this category

physical appearance 

riordan’s portrayal of acne by @skatersuki ↳ a quick summary on why rick’s descriptions of acne were hurtful especially since his books are meant to cater to young teenagers who might be going through the same experiences

the depictions of piper and hazel by @howelljenkins ↳ would definitely recommend if you want to understand how piper and hazel’s coloured eyes (something glorified in fanarts) is problematic

on mixed race sadie by @goth-hazel ↳ this is an incredibly broad issue but it should be understood and this post is a good start!

lgtbq+ representation

riordan’s portrayal of reyna as an ace woman by @michaelyew ↳ breaks down the stereotypes that riordan made reyna’s character enforce and why this representation of asexuality is problematic nico’s coming out by @earthlyruins a brief but important take on why nico’s coming out was probably one of the worst ways to portray the coming out of a character onto impressionable young people

there’s a lot more to unpack here and i’ll continue to edit this post and add links!

problematic plotlines

why rick riordan’s ‘world war two was caused by the big three’ is a terrible storyline by @jewishpercy ↳ this was a well written and an eye opening text post for me because it was something i had never considered before and it definitely helped me understand why this particular point was actually quite gross :/ on the topic of rr saying that children of hades were nazis by @luke-x-percy ↳ good points are made here and this post points out the disgusting insensitivity that riordan portrayed when he brought the holocaust into mythology

serious events brushed by riordan by @hazellpjo ↳ you can see how serious issues were used for plot points by riordan when they really shouldn’t have been

how mallory’s death was incredibly insensitive by @sapphic-ace-reyna ↳ again, another piece that helped me understand something that i had never thought about and well written!

other opinions to give you something to think about

stereotypes pushed by riordan’s books by @canarhys on the topic of poc names and nicknames by @rowansdamisch the problems with riordan’s characters in heroes of olympus by @housemartius what to consider when these criticisms are brought up by @knuffled on the portrayal of mixed race sadie by @howelljenkins a overall criticism of the mythology in the pjo books by the @theatomicboom on buff girls in media by @macsi sadie and uh the age difference by @spoopy-elliot

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Maybe it wasn’t best to read Kane Chronicles and Heroes of Olympus at the same time- all I got is that I wanna fight Rick now.

[shrimpgendercore]

Also you can absolutely tell that Sadie isn’t white by the fact that R*ck gave her an immortal 3000+ year old boyfriend when she was at the ripe old age of 14

[a-mysteriouys-batsrard]

it’s so interesting bc sadie is never described as white and yet it’s so clear that rick was envisioning her as a white girl when he commissioned the official art and boy oh boy does it make me angry.

the first description we get is from carter who says “she takes after our mom, who was white, so sadies skin is much lighter than mine,”

for reference, carter’s skin is first described when he references it in a description of his dad “he has dark brown skin like mine”

skin much lighter than dark brown doesn’t mean white. in my mind it doesn’t even mean light enough to be white-passing as sadie makes it clear later on that her classmates immediately recognize that she’s mixed. it’s fucking ricks fault this shit happens especially bc he continues to only promote art with her having white skin

pspsps please check notes bc i elaborated a bit since i wasn’t very eloquent here