#the thing that could have made hoo a million times better was Having Grover In It

[callonpeevesie]

Things that bother me about Percabeth

Warning: this is going to be long and I'm not even sure if this will make sense. Also don't read this if you aren't open to criticizms of Percabeth.

Percabeth is a good ship, or at least has potential as one, but it has many legit flaws (this and this go into the flaws. By the way, go check out @takaraphoenix's Riordan crit) and I have some personal grievances. I'll write this out to understand my stance better because I need to get this off my chest.

I believe most people wouldn't agree with me on all this, but this post is entirely self-indulgent and I'm doing this for catharsis, so don't come at me. This isn't an objective analysis, just me trying to clear my thoughts. But feel free to share your opinions if you want.

Evolution in PJO

This is a pretty general point. I love the evolution of their dynamic in pjo. Their bickering, them opening up to each other and becoming so important to each other, the slow and steady buildup, it's great. Heck, I love slow burn. They have some good moments in pjo: Annabeth opening up to Percy on the zoo express, the scene with the sirens, Percy doing everything he did to save Annabeth in ttc, their conversation after Annabeth took the knife for Percy in tlo. (The underwater kiss is not one of my favourite moments, I'll come to that later.)

The romantic evolution, though, I'm not sure. I enjoyed it in ttc, there were small subtle hints like Aphrodite's scarf, or Aphrodite looking like Annabeth to Percy. But it became kind of tiring in botl onwards. Annabeth was extremely possessive and awful to Rachel. And in tlo things became a bit over-the-top.

I think Rick tried to establish them as the Most Important Person to each other. I don't like that. This is more apparent in HoO. I'll come to hoo later, but there is one instance of this in tlo: Percy seeing Annabeth in the Styx. Like one of the posts I've linked above says, it's shippy nonsense. It comes from the idea that one's romantic partner must be the most important. It doesn't make sense. I think Percy should have seen his mother in the Styx. It would make sense for Sally to be Percy's anchor, considering how much she means to him.

In short, their enemies-to-friends evolution was great, their friends-to-lovers evolution started out fine but became too much for me, and their friends-to-Most-Important-Person-to-each-other evolution was unnecessary and forced.

Luke

Luke and Annabeth's romantic subplot didn't need to exist. This isn't exactly Percabeth, but I'll say it here anyway. First of all, there's a seven year age gap, so Luke returning Annabeth's feelings is creepy. And it seems pretty unnecessary to me. It's also a bit of a mess. In tlt Annabeth blushes when Luke is around, and Luke says 'She's like my little sister.' In tlo Luke asks Annabeth if she loved him, and she says 'You were like a brother to me.' This part feels like Rick trying to add last-moment tension to Percabeth by making Luke a potential 'rival' to Percy. In the Staff of Hermes Percy says Annabeth had a crush on Luke, and as she got older, Luke had a crush on her too. Just ... Why?

They and Thalia were each other's first friends. Annabeth looked up to Luke and Luke was fond of Annabeth. That is enough reason for Annabeth to be hurt and for Luke to care about Annabeth. That is enough to set up their post-betrayal dynamic. The romance thing was completely unnecessary.

Rachel

I absolutely hate the way Annabeth treated Rachel. If there is one thing I despise about romantic subplots, it's justifying bitchiness with romantic jealousy. I guess it's okay to feel a little jealous or even possessive, and I can kind of see where Annabeth was coming from, but treating someone like shit because of that, especially in the middle of dangerous quests, is not okay. It's petty and immature. (It could be argued that Annabeth was mad because Rachel got to lead her quest, but let's be honest, she wouldn't have been that mad if it were anyone else. She specifically treated Rachel like that out of jealousy.) It was never called out and Annabeth never seemed to regret it. This bothers me so much. Fanfiction is a good coping mechanism, I suppose, but I'm here to complain about canon, not cope with it.

Speaking of Rachel, Perachel could have been a good ship. A demigod looking for a normal life and a mortal with clear sight. This elaborates on that pretty well. At the end of tlo it really felt like Rick had to get Rachel out of the way to make way for Percabeth.

Annabeth seems to be too demanding

Annabeth's attitude towards Percy bothers me sometimes. She's a good character and has a strong dynamic with Percy, but she's a bit tiring with regards to Percy (in a romantic sense; she's fine as his friend). I mean look at this quote from tlo:

I can't pretend I hadn't thought about Rachel. She was so much easier to be around than ... Well, than some other girls I knew. I didn't have to work hard, or watch what I said, or wrack my brain trying to figure out what she was thinking.

Percy feeling that way about Annabeth - his best friend of four years - just doesn't sit well with me. Percy straight up admits he's more comfortable with Rachel than with Annabeth.

There's more: Annabeth punching Percy when he asked who he should dance with in ttc, the way she treated Rachel, the way she behaved towards Percy regarding Rachel in botl, judo flipping him in moa. It's pretty tiring in general. Now that I think of it, this wasn't a thing before the romance showed up. Their dynamic was better in the earlier books in general.

Also personally I'm not a fan of Annabeth constantly calling Percy Seaweed Brain. This and this nicely sum up how I feel about that. Annabeth making fun of Percy's intelligence even after getting to know him makes no sense, especially as he was insecure about his intelligence. (And yes, I know she thought he was intelligent, as she said in the Demigod Files, but that doesn't cancel out the million times she called him stupid to his face.)

They became too couple coded

I've seen people say that Percabeth is better as friends than as lovers, and honestly I agree, and I've done some thinking to figure out why. I think it's because of the way they were written after they became a couple. They could have been fine as a couple, if they were written differently.

They started out not being able to stand each other, then gradually, they went through a lot together, got to know each other, learned to work together, and became a team. That was a great evolution, like I said before.

And like I also said before, everything I dislike about Percabeth showed up with the romance. Annabeth became catty and possessive. They became a couple. And it was as if the friendship wasn't there anymore, just the romance. They became like a cliche unreasonable girlfriend and clueless boyfriend. This is especially obvious in the beginning of Percy Jackson and the Staff of Hermes. Where's the friendship? Where's the comfortable bantering? Where's the known-each-other-for-years soundness? Hoo Percabeth just doesn't live up to pjo Percabeth at all.

(Also this is a personal bias of mine, but I'm partially romance repulsed. I can't stand cheesy romantic coded stuff. I only like lovers if they're also friends. So I guess I'm kind of pissed about Percabeth becoming so couple coded after becoming a couple.)

Their HoO dynamic

This is a related point. Like I said, hoo Percabeth doesn't live up to pjo Percabeth. All they care about is each other. They literally don't think about anyone else at all. Percy loses his memory and he remembers Annabeth. Why? Does Hera ship Percabeth? If he remembered anyone, it should have been his mom, like in the Styx. The only reason Percy remembered Annabeth, i.e Annabeth was made out to be more important to Percy than everyone else (including Grover and Tyson and Sally 'best person in the world' Jackson) is that she was his romantic partner. Again, it's shippy nonsense.

And there's this reveal that Annabeth had a crush on Percy all along. Are you kidding me? It completely retcons the enemies-to-friends development. Are you telling me that the Percabeth evolution in pjo where they learned not to hate each other was a lie? That Annabeth gradually opening up to Percy and coming to appreciate him was her acting out of a crush? I'm not believing that, no way.

I'm probably not making any sense, but my point is that Percabeth in hoo in cheesy and can't go one day without each other and people love it but I don't. It kind of messes up their previous dynamic, which is a shame because I liked pre-hoo Percabeth.

Rick seems to go overboard sometimes

I'm about to get a little controversial here. Many of the Percabeth posts in those tumblr screenshots going around social media are about the campers shipping Percabeth, or Arachne making Percabeth fanart, things like that. My theory is that part of the reason Percabeth is so popular is that the characters ship it. And Rick kind of goes overboard with that - not just with the in-universe shipping, with the ship itself.

Prime examples of going overboard are Percy seeing Annabeth in the Styx and remembering Annabeth when Hera took his memory, which imply that Annabeth was objectively the Most Important Person to Percy. I've already ranted about these above so moving on to the part about the in-universe shipping. Like I said, I'm not a fan of the underwater kiss. It's because of the situation involved. The campers just won a war and lost their friends and siblings, Clarisse just lost Silena, you'd think they'd have other things to care about than Percy and Annabeth kissing, at least for one day. And why did Arachne make fanart of that? How did she even know? There was also the matter of moving to New Rome - them wanting to move halfway across country to live together, away from New York, doesn't really make sense to me. This post elaborates on that and suggests better alternatives.

Of course, the author has complete control over the narrative, and the author wants you to believe they are making sense. And when the characters believe that too, it becomes harder for readers not to. When all the campers ship Percabeth, it's enough to convince half the readers to ship it too. (And of course, the pjo fandom has an unhealthy thing with canon ships.)

It's pretty much kept up by the fans

While we're at it, let's talk about the out-of-universe shipping. The fandom has always shipped Percabeth, partly just because they are the male lead and female lead of a series. Percabeth was set up to happen, so when Rick introduced Rachel, who actually made Percy feel good about himself and let him be himself around her, and whom Percy was interested in, he had to get her out of the way. I'm not sure I can explain it, but the Percabeth ending in the first series feels very fan service-y to me.

Platonic Percabeth vs romantic Percabeth

I think everything I've said above just explains why Percabeth worked better as friends. The had a great friendship arc and became two friends who know each other inside out, butt heads a lot but love and respect each other deeply. And then when the romance happened, Annabeth began to show these romanticized but actually toxic girlfriend stereotypes - being jealous and possessive, expecting Percy to read her mind and getting pissed when he can't, etc.

The fandom thinks those traits are okay, because they are normalised in society. People think that's how couples should work (it's not). And so the reasons I don't like Percabeth are the same reasons many people do. The date in the beginning of Staff of Hermes makes me cringe, because they were friends first and friends don't work like that. But no doubt there are many people who find it cute because society loves to romanticise the unreasonable girlfriend and clueless boyfriend trope. There are plenty of people who romanticise Annabeth judo flipping Percy or treating Rachel like shit, because things like that are normalised but I personally can't stomach them at all.

Anyway, those toxic traits come with the Percabeth romance as a package deal and there's no getting rid of them. That's why Percy and Annabeth worked better as friends, and why I feel things would be better if they just stayed friends. There was none of that tiring crap pre-romance. I can't stress this enough, I really loved their friendship in tlt or som. But when their dynamic evolved to romance, it messed up their friendship. There was a specific moment in botl when Percabeth began to feel off for me.

'She will calm down,' Chiron promised. 'She's jealous, my boy.'

'That's stupid. She's not... it's not like...'

Chiron chuckled. 'It hardly matters. Annabeth is very territorial about her friends, in case you haven't noticed. ...'

I don't know why this moment specifically, but this kind of marked a change for me. This is where Percabeth became seriously romantic, and I didn't like the related developments. This was the beginning of Annabeth's jealousy.

So what would I prefer?

I'll be honest, I shipped Percabeth for a while, probably because I love some friends-to-lovers. So I was going to make a list of things I'd change about Percabeth. I wanted to make some self-indulgent UAs (universe alterations) to fix the things I don't like. But then I started writing this thing and read up on other posts and stuff and I realised the list of things that bother me is huge and I could never make Percabeth work for me without messing everything up. So I just gave up shipping it entirely.

What I would prefer is an AU where Percabeth stays platonic forever (@elf-loving-dragon has been encouraging that idea as well). They were great as friends and I want that back. It would be so refreshing to have the male lead and female lead not end up together. Annabeth could end up alone, and still get her something permanent with her friends and camp. It would be so beautiful if something completely romance-free was specifically stated as permanent, because friendships in media deserve as much love as romance.

As for Percy, he could end up either alone or with Rachel. I don't ship him with anyone else rn. While I have made it obvious that I like Perachel, I still don't know if I actually ship it, and the idea of Percy ending up alone is not too bad either. (Update: I stan platonic Percabeth and qpp Perachel now.)

I promise I'm done now. Whew. If you've made it to the end of this long repetitive introspection, congratulations. If you agree, feel free to tell me, and if you want to argue, go ahead, I wouldn't mind listening to others' opinions. If you read this and hate me because of this just keep that to yourself. I have no patience for people who attack those who don't agree with their ship. K thanks, bye.

#pjo #heroes of olympus #hoo #tagging as #anti percabeth #so shippers can avoid this #percy jackson #platonic Percabeth ftw #rr critical #perachel #sally jackson #rachel elizabeth dare #peevesie writes #original content #annabeth bashing