annabeth saying zeus will never let percy leave olympus alive and percy replying "I'm done running from monsters" like the line between gods and monsters is completely blurred
Jokes aside. That look? That anger? Percy finally having enough and being pissed off with a God who doesn’t care about his children, insulted his friends, ruined their quest and wants to start an unnecessary war where he has nothing to lose? But most importantly… Percy literally QUAKING with unchecked rage for a God who came in the way of him saving his mom?
"Impertinent isn't a 12 year old word" TO YOU. It's not a typical word in a 12 year old's vocabulary.
But Percy isn't an average 12 years old. He's smart. He's beyond average smart. The only reason why he sucks at school is because they don't accommodate his dyslexia and ADHD, and even then he managed to get good enough grades to be accepted into a university after missing most of his 11th grade.
And to really nail down this point, please look at this quote:
Percy has a superior vocabulary, one that includes big words like impertinent. And it's all thanks to one Sally Jackson, who nutured her son's education when the system failed him.
The main reason why a huge part of the fandom thinks Percy is stupid is because some characters (cleary not our queen Sally Jackson) talk down to him, call him stupid, encourage others to make jokes about him being stupid etc. We should recognize that those dialogues are not a reflection of Percy, but of what those characters think about Percy and Percy's non-existant self esteem.
Watching the new Percy Jackson episode, and while by no means is the show perfect, I do love how they updated the blending of Greek mythology and the American Gothic for social commentary.
What I mean is Echidna, the mother of monsters, is some respectable-looking vaguely southern white woman who is able to convince the police on the train that three kids shattered a train window and used those institutions to isolate the kids so she can target them and scare them for the chimera's hunt. The way that the police especially treat Annabeth. Now, as a young black girl, she has to know how to ask if they're getting arrested, and gets called out by the police for her tone.
And then, at the St. Louis Arch, we see Grover upset because of the museum, which is basically a monument to Manifest Destiny (literally, there's a shot where the words are in full display in the background). And while they say, "Grover is upset because he doesn't like it when people hurt animals," they explicitly depict America's colonization and destruction of indigenous communities as The Bad Thing. It adds another layer of flavor for the whole "Pan is missing" - it's not just about Climate Change. It's about the extermination of indigenous groups (the centaurs they saw on the train, the reminder that there used to be more of them until humans started killing them). They say "humans" are bad, but they're showing us Western/American colonizers.
Also, a rare yet interesting moment of conflict between Annabeth as a daughter of Athena and Grover as a Satyr. Annabeth insists that the museum's commodifying and glorifying of American colonization is "not what the arch is actually about, it's about architecture and math," but Athena is the goddess who protects social institutions and a patron goddess of the state, law, order, industry, and war. The Industrial Revolution and Western social institutions definitely contributed to colonialism; just saying. We also see in this episode that Athena can be arrogant and cruel - letting a monster go after her own daughter because she was embarrassed.
Anyway, idk. Maybe I'm overthinking this but these were the things that popped out to me on first watch, and now that I think about them more, I would love a continuation of these kinds of themes and tropes in future seasons, if we get them.
Seeing this kind of bullying in tv (actual realistic bullying, most people won’t like, push you and hit you or anything, since that way they’ll get caught, so they keep it simple and nobody does anything because they don’t see it as bullying) just took me back to school and holy shit. The way Nancy Bobofit pronounces the word special, like if it was disgusting, I think that’s very important representation. Because we know Percy has adhd, of course we know, but in the later books this fact has been pushed aside. Rick doesn’t really add much adhd traits and struggles in his books compared to in his first book. And meanwhile I knew about Percy’s time in school, seeing it is so so different and it’s not often bullying is shown this way and seeing a story of a bullied character, who’s deemed weird and “special” who then goes and saves the world and has lots of friends and a romantic partner, that’s really important for kids. For kids and for me. I’ll shut up I’m sorry I just have lots of feelings about it like I get it percy, I get it.
because coffee is said to actually help adhd people relax and focus and gabe frequently gambled the jackson’s money away, whenever sally couldn’t afford percy’s adhd meds she would let him have coffee. therefore, percy has been a coffee snob since the ripe age of six
I did not realize that once you take out all of Percys witty thoughts, he is just the one kid in the corner who is silently side-eyeing everyone. Dude in the second episode was just like "sure, why not, at this point it really is whatever" and I respect that. 😂
annabeth and percy being smitten with each other in the twelve year old way: bickering, name-calling, awkward hugging and not confronting their feelings for five years
'Annabeth fell first. Percy fell harder' 'no Percy fell first and-' NO. SHHH. you're both so wrong. You don't get it. The beauty of percabeth is that they did it together. they both knew and were scared of it and reacted to that at different times but when they actually fell they fell TOGETHER. It's literally their whole thing.