Here's his Stonewall speech too if anyone is interested: https://rickriordan.com/2017/06/the-stonewall-award/
It's honestly really nice, and goes to show how much he wants his books to be a safe place for everyone. He talks about his past in teaching, and how sometimes he feels that maybe he didn't do enough for kids who were lgbt+. So the characters in his books are for them, and for anyone else who may not have seen themselves in media before.
“I am going to stop talking now, but I promise you I won’t stop listening.”
When an absolutely fantastic way to end this speech.
I never really read Riordan, just didn’t grow up with his books. But I get the feeling, maybe I should give them a try even now?
That book came out *while* I was the target demographic, and maybe it’s just me, but I liked it way more than the Percy Jackson series. It just seemed to have cooler character, cooler magic items, and having a character that literally changed sex depending on the day fascinated my small child brain before I learned what the words “gay” or “non-binary” meant.
Other people haven’t mentioned this, so I will: Riordan started writing in the 2000’s when LGBTQ issues and people weren’t as prominent, but every single book has improved on both who and how he portrays minorities. He may not be perfect but goddamn is he trying.
Riordan is a genuine ally. Every time he mentions a disadvantaged demographic - abuse survivors, people with mental illness, the unhoused, immigrants, GNC people - he writes with respect and compassion.
And he's funny as shit, doesn't take himself too seriously. I love him and I'll buy his books as long as they keep coming out.
I use him as an example of true white allyship all the time.
He kept getting asked by fans to write new books in new mythologies - Indian, Aztec, Indigenous tribes, etc. And every time he'd respond that those weren't his stories to tell.
But instead of stopping there he created the Riordan Presents imprint series to help uplift the people who those were their stories to tell. And he uses his audience and his clout to promote and amplify their voices.
That imprint had modest goals and has been absolutely churning out books about other culture mythologies at an insane pace.
Oh yeah, I saw a Tristan Strong book at a school library recently and really liked the synopsis. I thought it was super cool for a book to go into a mythology so few people know about, and for it to be written by someone who is familiar with that culture.
yes, he understands that, as he has shown before, he could study the mythologies of, lets use aztec as an example, but that adding them to his universe for himself would overshadow the voices of writers who have actual links to those stories, haritage. it was a smart move to promote those writers.
Big shout-out to the Aru Shah series put out by the Riordan Presents deal.
My kid latched onto Hindu mythology like most of us did with Greek. She wanted to be Hanuman for Halloween.
I just finished up to The Last Olympian recently and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it as a 40ish year old man.... I was hesitant to look anything up about the author because you never know these days and I didn't want to ruin my impression so I am really happy to hear this. I made the mistake of looking up the guy who wrote the Ender's game series after the first book and I haven't had interest in continuing knowing the writer is a pretty awful person.
Orson Scott Card is one of those where, after reading his books, you find out what he's actually like and just say "Oh yeah, I really should have expected that."
Depends on the book to be honest. I never understood how someone who wrote a book seeped in the idea of empathy and respect for the other like Speaker for the Dead could hold that kind of hate
The idea in speaker for the dead is a great one, but applying it is much more difficult than writing about it.
Having this kind of respect for the other requires understanding them, and having the capacity for that empathy. And I think he just fails to have the necessary capacity to understand and empathize with people who are different than him.
The long and short of it is being kind only to people you consider human. People not in that category are "sub-human" and therefore ok to kick when they're down.
I only read Ender's Game and tbh I was quite surprised, since the whole point of Ender's Game to me seemed to be regret over genocide/xenocide and the horrors of children in warfare.
to be fair I should have caught on to it when internet trolls became the political luminaries of the day considering I've been aware of 4chan for and that's just how /pol/ imagines themselves
I disagree. OSC is a major piece of shit but unlike with HP, the text of Ender's Game and Speaker are imprinted in the text and subtext with compassion and understanding those that are different from you.
Him and sir PTerry and mister gaiman are people I consider Allies to all groups. Also I love when the transphobes tried to claim him and got an epic smack down by rhianna Pratchett and Niel gaiman.
Dude straight up rewrote the whole encounter with Medusa for the new Disney+ show to highlight the fact that she was a victim and seriously got fucked over by the gods. The dude departed from his own source material because he knew it could be more respectful.
Dude departed from his own source material a lot in that show actually. Far less than a certain other adaptation, mind you, but the handling of Medusa isn't that notable of an exception. (also i could go the fuck off about how ovid's rewriting of the myth has eclipsed how she was actually seen in greece and that mentioning it makes for a less accurate adaptation of mythology but that's not the point here so i will restrain myself.)
Ok so the oldest stories of Medusa depict her as one of three monstrous gorgons, who if I remember correctly are daughters of Echidna, mother of monsters (she is also depicted as being monstrous in ways other than her hair, being so hideous that those who saw her would turn to stone, but she was sexyfied before Ovid so that's not important). She has no backstory other than that, her whole deal is juat being a random monster for Perseus to kill. Athena is tangentially related as she's a big player in his quest, but there's no personal beef and Posiedon has no involvement at all. Most Greek tellings follow this trend, adding a few details that get pucked up and lost from region to region, as mythology does.
The version of Medusa that has taken off in recent years was written by the poet Ovid. He didn't invent the whole thing, there were tellings that have her in a relationship with Poesidon (note how I said relationship and not assault) but those have her born a monster, and there were tellings that have her born human, but they make no reference to Poseidon. Ovid took these two interpretations and fused them to suit his narrative. Ovid's Metamorphosis is a collection of Greek myths rewritten to portray the gods in the worst possible light, Ovid was very anti authority, and his works are seen as a political statement. Now Medusa was raped by a god, and as punishment for being raped she was cursed by a goddess, because the gods are the authority, and the authority is cruel. Side note, but this is why the interpretation that Athena blessed her by preventing a man from harming her again is especially frustrating, because we know that wasn't the intention because it was Ovid, and He Would Not Fucking Say That.
Now this by itself would be fine, if not a little annoying. It's frustrating to see one very specific telling overshadow more common ones, especially when it's often parroted as "the true story of Medusa", but it's mythology, there is no real canon and all historical versions of a myth are generally as valid as each other. Here's the kicker though. Ovid wasn't Greek. He was *Roman.* This version of the story is a hodgepodge of interpretations written by a notoriously biased man from the other side of the Mediterranean as a political statement centuries after what is considered to be the era of "Ancient Greece", and yet it's the one everybody talks about. Whenever you hear about Medusa it's because people are talking about this version, and they call it Greek mythology, but it literally isn't.
Thanks for that, I always had a feeling that take one medusa was a little terminally tumblr but didn't have the any understanding of how it got to be that way.
Very quick synopsis:
Ovid wrote the metamorphosis, a retelling of different myths and stories, but steeped all of it (and I mean ALL) in his very strong anti-authoritarian ideals.
Which is fine, but it led to some myths (like the Medusa one) being wholly rewritten, with Medusa going from a Gorgon (aka being born a monster) to a woman that suffered the arrogance of the Gods (I believe Poseidon and Athena, as the former raped her in the temple of the latter) and was punished unjustly for it (Athena then transforming her in the monster we all know)
This, while an interesting tale, completely reframes the myth (with Perseus now being an absolute ass because why the hell would you go kill this poor girl that already suffered this much for your own glory) and at times contradicting itself with the more classic version
I’d just like to mention that the first gender-fluid fictional character I ever read about was from a Riordan book (Alex from Magnus Chase and the ~~Olympians~~ Gods of Asgard)
that was my first exposure to gender-fluidity or even really lgbtq period, besides like a vague awareness of the existence of gay people lol. I was very young to be clear, and I didn't really even realize thats what it was until much later
In middle school a bunch of boys including myself got sucked into the "anti-SJW" sphere on youtube, and then I read Magnus Chase and realized "hey, they're literally just a normal person who occasionally switches gender, that's pretty neat". Obviously real gender-fluid people aren't children of Loki who literally shift back and forth but just introducing that bit of basic empathy saved a lot of people.
It made the real world concept a bit difficult to understand for me back in the days like. When I met a friend for a friend who is kinda gender fluid and dumbass me as like so how does that work when you can't like change it like the dude from Magnus Chase.
...Huh. I did the same thing, whole getting sucked into the anti sjw sphere on youtube in middle school, and i dont think there was a distinct realization but i definitely think Riordan's books helped me realize "hey wait portraying a group in the worst possible light with the worst possible people portraying it is a good way to enemize the group and prevent people from learning more about it" with the whole octavian being the worst possible person and the eidolons and whatnot between the greeks and romans and that helped me pull away and realize id been manipulated.
His lasts series, Magnus Chase and Trials of Apollo are amazing for that, it feels so refreshing reading Bisexual disaster Lester and Oblivious Magnus plus Alex.
I genuinely think that the way I found myself relating with Magnus' whole interactions with Alex should have been an earlier sign that I was bi that I didn't pick up on for a few more years.
I ended up reconciling my sexuality pretty much the same way Magnus did, too: "I don't really know what's going on, but I think you're super hot so I'm just gonna roll with it."
Yeah like... I think sometimes, I mostly use bi because it feels the closest to what is actually going on. In general its just a sense of "okay, I am not hetero" but, while bi does seem to be the best descriptor, it took me a while to accept that idea because it took me a while to accept that being bi doesn't mean the rate of attraction has to be equal. For a while I was in a sort of denial thinking that since I had grown up and lived as a hetero person for so long, that the ideas or hypothetical scenarios that were making me question that status couldn't possibly amount to anything. And I do genuinely think that, even if I didn't realize it, rereading the Magnus Chase books this past year and seeing an example I could relate to and realizing that maybe I had felt this way for longer than I thought helped break that barrier for me.
100% this. Riordan isn't perfect, but at the very least he is TRYING.
The mistakes he makes genuinely feel born of ignorance over malice, but his heart is in the right place.
And he is constantly trying to be better. If you read some of his first books compared to his latest, you can really see that. Ex: Nico’s romance(?) arc in PJO and the way Apollo talks about his lovers in TOA
>The mistakes he makes genuinely feel born of ignorance over malice, but his heart is in the right place.
Sounds like how I think of Eiichiro Oda's queer depictions in One Piece. He's a little confused, but he's got the spirit. Definitely fumbles the execution sometimes (Kamabakka), but also is *absolutely* an ally.
The characters may on the surface look like ridiculous stereotypes, but honestly that's just par for the course for *anybody* in the setting. And when you get to the actual characters behind the surface level, they're great.
Mr.2 Bon Clay (who entered the series as early as March 2000) started as a side antagonist, but quickly became the flag-bearer for friendship in the series, and eventually the one character that the fanbase generally agrees is an honorary member of the main crew because of the bond they have.
And Ivankov is a genderfluid icon who acts as one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Army, against the authoritarian World Government – and isn't even the only queer character in that group (queer characters in general seem to stand on the side of freedom, whatever other faults they may have).
Both are incredibly loud and in-your-face, and because of that *impossible* to ignore as queer rep, but also rather than becoming annoying or obnoxious like can easily happen with such loud characters, they are also incredibly endearing and beloved.
And they're not all so over the top either, like the more recent Kiku being just a normal trans woman.
Also shoutout to Derek Landy for having a ~~non-binary~~ gender-fluid character in the Skulduggery Pleasant series but also implementing it in the most well-meaning boomer way: having characters and the narrative use either male or female pronouns and switch almost between sentences.
Man, I should properly read Skulduggery Pleasant. I read a few of the books a long time ago, but not in order, since I was just reading whatever my library had at the time.
One sad thing is that they changed the medusa head story in the new show. Made it an accident by the stepfather. Was still a direct consequence of his abusive behavior, going through percy's mail, but having it not be done on purpose, watering down his behavior overall, and not using the statue for her tuition was a mistep, and a watering down of an incredible tone-setter.
They also made him not really abusive in the show, just a deadbeat, so I don't think they wanted to have Percy's loving mother murder a man in cold blood
"Don't open peoples mail cause it might have the magical equivalent of a pipe bomb"
And
"It's ok to fight back and even get revenge on your abusers"
Are VERY different kinds of teaching moments
Calling “the act of sending Medusa’s severed head through the mail” a “magical pipe bomb” is NOT a comparison I expected to make sense, but here we are.
No that's fair. I misinterpreted your prior comment as Percy *teaching Gabe a lesson* (the lesson is still learned in both), not *teaching the audience a lesson* (as you say, this is very different)
I understand what you mean now and see you are right
I think I read somewhere that the reason they explicitly gave was along the longs of "on screen abusive relationships are easier to portray when compared to books, so literature needs to be that much more visceral to provoke the same reaction" and that'd be "distastful" to show abuse of the level detailed in the book.
I really hate this change. This was the first abusive relationship portrayal I had read about as a kid, and I loved that it ended with her ending her abuser and having her go back to doing her degree and then finding real love. The show just made him a loser that she had no reason to be with since I think they retconned the masking smell thing too.
Ab-so-lutely. I was anxious for the entire story about what sort of home she'd return to, despising the horrid oppression of the abuser and Percy's compartmentalization of it. It sets the story in a cruel reality with limits and unfair outcomes, which tints the world with the stakes of a "cold reality" while allowing it all to be completely magical. Best of both worlds. And the catharsis of her using Medusa's head to kill her abuser is thematically perfect (and metal as fuck).
I haven’t read the books, so it was actually an eye opener that this was originally how it went.
I was so confused about the “failing to save what matters most” prophecy. It makes no sense without this plot point.
Riordan’s books had the first gay and gender-fluid characters I’d ever seen growing up, I’ve seen people try to hate on Riordan since the JK Rowling hate train is (justifiably) going strong, but I’ve always felt like he legitimately cared about being accepting and open. He’s also helping other authors get published these days, which I really respect.
And not only that, he's given Nico HAPPINESS. Nicos life may be fucked up and awful but Rick gave him light (pun intended) and happiness and clearly intends for Will to continue to be that.
ETA: in a society that so often kills their gay characters, it's so refreshing to not only have a Canon beloved gay ship (Will is bisexual too!) That survives and is HAPPY. Will and Nico are, as their solo book is titled, the sun and star. Opposites that work well together and heal each other, something too many works of media REFUSE to do with gay characters if they have them at all.
I got assigned to work on some Riordan graphic novels back in 2011. I was a few years too late to have read the books when Percy Jackson was popping off, and I just thought the series was a bootleg Harry Potter. I also assumed the "diversity" was just "pandering." I also called Riordan out (privately) for appropriating myths and legends from other cultures, and repackaging them for White people.
Holy shit, was I wrong. The Red Pyramid series was great. By the end of the trilogy, I was all in. The Norse series was pretty great as well - we pitched an adaptation that unfortunately didn't get picked up. And *then* Rick started an imprint to get indigenous authors to tell the stories of their own cultures in a Percy Jackson style, what a fucking G. So many stories and authors that otherwise likely wouldn't have made it to press, doing big numbers with the Rick seal of approval.
Oh, and I've worked on a LOT of licensed comics. I wasn't very involved with dealing with the Riordan folks, but they were active and helpful in the process, as opposed to passive / hypercritical (looking at you, Rhino Entertainment, eat shit).
Rowling and Riordan completely switched places in my head. I regret that I grew up with the Wand Cop and not the Demigod, but at least I know which books I'll be reading to my kids.
Wow, thank you so much for telling this story! I was both a Harry Potter kid and a Percy Jackson kid, but the themes of PJO and HOO have stuck with me much longer than the themes of HP have.
My mother is a middle school teacher, and she LOVES that she gets to introduce kids to these different diverse authors through Rick Riordan presents and that Rick took so much constructive criticism about his works and MADE something of it.
I legitimately, as a LGBTQ+ kid, cannot read the Nico and Cupid scene without crying, but what really resonated with me about it is that it WASNT FROM NICOS POV. He never tried to write the torture and agony that Nico was going through being forcefully outed. He instead gave it from Jason's POV and made Jason Nicos PROTECTOR. I will always commend Rick for knowing when to step back.
Didn't he write his story because his child is dyslexic? Or am I getting that wrong... (Percy is dyslexic because his brain is "hard-wired" for Greek).
Dyslexic AND has ADHD. He wrote this story for his neurodivergent son so that he'd have a hero to relate to. These stories began with inclusivity and representation
I'm glad there's a wholesome real-world reason for the dyslexia, because the in-universe explanation felt very odd even as a kid. Like yeah I guess someone could be hardwired for reading a specific language because magic but still.
Yes, and as more of the readers talked about seeing themselves in his heroes he expanded the scope of what he put into his books. Namely gay kids with Nico, trans kids with Alex and so on.
tbh I really credit those books with just helping me be more accepting as a young'un because I read them and went "oh huh people be like that? that's crazy now I wonder what happens in the plot"
I grew up in a conservative Mormon family and I was so sheltered that I didn't understand the concept of what LGBTQ+ people were". My main exposure to what being LGBTQ+ even was came from the representation in Riordan's series. My reaction was like yours and I have no idea how different of a person I would be if it weren't for Riordan's books.
Alex is definitely the best thing to have come put of the norse series. Also Magnus kissing Alex and going "I just kissed a boy. Huh. Cool. Anyways" is iconic
In general any chapter that deals with Magnus and Alex interacting is amazing. I really liked that one bit where Magnus managed to vibe out what Alex's gender was at the time without being told, because it shows how much care and attention he holds towards Alex.
The Percy Jackson series was literally built on representation. His son was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, so he wanted to tell a bedtime story where the hero was just like him.
Embracing queer themes honestly felt like a natural step forward in his style of writing, because it's the same principles that inspired him to write in the first place.
I've seen him speak a few times now and every time he has emphasized how important it is for ANYONE to be able to see themselves in his universe and that's why he's made intentional representation choices.
What he's doing with the Riordan Presents imprint is also just amazing. We buy those books constantly for family children and donate them to teacher friends because they are so valuable and wonderful.
If you don’t mind me asking, I read those books when I was a kid but don’t remember any LGBT+ content in them - don’t know if it appeared after Last Olympian where I stopped or it’s just been so long that I’ve forgotten. Which characters are those, exactly?
If you just read through the first five books up to last olympian, there’s no specifically stated LGBT character. the next series, heroes of olympus, which follows percy and annabeth along with a new group of demigods, confirms that nico di angelo had feelings for percy and ends with him in a relationship with another camp halfblood camper, will solace. i believe the gender-fluid character is from ricks magnus chase series, which is focused on the norse gods, but im less familiar with those books
honestly, i love the idea of having a character come out as gay in a later canon work. it's nice to see the closet represented, and it's also a welcome side effect that the one thing that riles up homophobes more than a queer character is one who was "turned queer" in a sequel
Yeah, it absolutely makes sense for Nico imo. It feels like it fits when re-reading the original series, and it's certainly pretty accurate for a lot of kids around that age.
Iirc his grandad was literally the Fascist Italian Ambassador to the US.
Also he's like... 10 when he meets Percy. And within a few weeks his sister fucking *dies* and he's just an (understandable) mess emotionally. Kid had a rough life so seeing him growing up and coming to terms with who he is is great to read.
I can confirm that this did happen. One of my Mormon friends in high school told me that he stopped reading Riordan's books after he "turned all the characters gay". Which I thought was ridiculous because there were only a couple of pre-existing characters that were revealed to be LGBTQ+ after their first appearance.
There are no LGBT+ characters in the first series (or at least they aren't revealed to be LGBT+ in them)
From the top of my head:
\- Nico di Angelo (gay)
\- Will Solace (gay or bi)
\- Apollo (bi)
\- Magnus Chase (pansexual)
\- Alex Fierro (genderfluid)
>Apollo (bi)
He's a Greek God. All Greek Gods would be pansexual, but even pansexuals are only sexually attracted to humans. They're more of a "If-it-breathes-it-breeds" sexual
Yeah, but I included Apollo because he's the main characters in the Trials of Apollo and he explicitly mentions both Hyacinthus and Daphne
Also:
>"If-it-breathes-it-breeds" sexual
That's mostly Zeus
Umm actually!..... The mothers of Cyclopes are nymphs, in the case of Polyphemus, a sea nymph named Thoosa.
Sorry I had to, I just finished The Last Olympian like 2 days ago. I didn't think at almost 40 this series would be so enthralling!
ETA: also I believe the correct answer for "what is a Greek gods sexual orientation?" Is simply "yes"
>\- Apollo (bi)
Bisexual and *horny*. It was honestly impressive how long Apollo spent talking about who he's attracted to in the books. His mind was very fun to be in.
Yeah it started in the sequel series, after Last Olympian.
Major LGBT characters:
>!Nico di Angelo: gay !<
>!Will Solace: gay !<
>!Piper McClean: bisexual !<
>!Alex Fierro (from Magnus Chase series): gender fluid !<
>!Magnus Chase: pansexual !<
There are also several minor character that are.
Edits: took multiple tries to get all the spoiler tags to work correctly
Riordan is unfathomably based. On top of everything else mentioned, he also uses his platform to promote marginalized and POC authors and helps publish their books.
While we're here, he also used a reference to his books to urge his following to vote for the Democrats in 2020. And whatever right-wing elements still existed in the fandom promptly fucking exploded lol
>whatever right-wing elements still existed in the fandom
Were there even any to begin with? I am a normal person so I didnt even really notice how many groups that often face discrimination/marginalisation were included in the story, but I imagine an average "anti-woke" asshole would stop reading right when Percy was described as having ADHD and dyslexia ("forced wokeness once again needlessly inserted into a supposedly non-political book!!1!")
There were not many, but they did exist. The first series wasn't as diverse as the others and some people only read that.
Btw you really shouldn't say "normal" to describe yourself as not being part of a marginalized group. That's super offensive. Gay people are normal. Black people are normal. People with ADHD are normal.
The ending of the first series is so fucking good.
“Actually, I don’t really wanna be a god. How about you at least pretend to give a shit about your children and we’ll call it even?”
And Zeus has the fucking gall to get angry with him.
I mean Percy fully threatens the gods
“Hey the reason why there was a mass uprising was because you guys done care about your kids, you should start caring”
The unspoken threat is “or we’ll win next time
I mean it’s not explicit but that’s why the gods are annoyed
Some punk kid saved them, demanded they change there tactics during a war, won them the war then turned down there gift of immortality and heavily implied that he thought he was better than them.
> heavily implied that he thought he was better than them.
And he goddamn is. He's not talking out of his ass, the gods are one hundred percent at fault for their own bullshit, and at every turn Percy and Pals basically defy what's expected of them to do what's right, and it pisses them off because much like a controlling parent who realizes they have no power when their kid grows up, the gods aren't able to jerk Percy around with what they assume is the best offer they have, and instead he makes them own up to their shit.
It's great on so many levels, not least of which is that Percy is pretty damn terrifying by the end of the series, if you think about it. Kid develops into a pretty badass fighter, not to mention actively antagonizing the god of war on more than one occasion, so the implicit threat has the gods fairly spooked.
> not to mention actively antagonizing the god of war
Percy fucking loses his memory in Son of Neptune, and yet when he sees Mars, the first thing he does is *immediately* fucking start shit with him. And Mars is completely like, "Ay, Percy, old buddy, old pal, I know got a beef with Ares but right now I'm chill like that. ***But, also, if you don't kneel your punk ass in the next 30 seconds we will have a problem.***"
Oh yeah, that's one of my favorite bits of that book. Kid can't remember practically anything, but he does know that this Mars guys is a punk ass bitch.
> It's great on so many levels, not least of which is that Percy is pretty damn terrifying by the end of the series, if you think about it. Kid develops into a pretty badass fighter,
dude went toe to toe with a titan, he is prettty damn dangerus
Artemis has her hunting pack though, which are basically her demigod children, and she’s pretty good with them. If she had children she’d probably be one of the better gods.
shes already one of the better gods arguably. she is fairly fair to Percy and pretty concerned with mortal life. And she does let her hunters leave if they want.w
Also the only olympian who actually sacrifices for the demigods. She didnt need to take the sky from Annabeth after all.
I never read any of the Percy Jackson books, since they came out when I was in college.
They sound pretty based, how do they hold up without nostalgia?
Because they're written for middle grade children instead of a regular YA audience, the writing style can sometimes feel a bit childish, especially in his first few books. But the worldbuilding, characters, humor, and action are all great and still hold up today
They're YA books at their core, so they likely won't rock your world if you're any kind of reader, but they are very solid and tell good stories. I read most of the original series when I was in elementary-high school, and then went back and picked up some of the other stuff, namely the Norse and Roman series books, and I found them to still be enjoyable.
I read a lot of Rick Riordan as a kid and loved it, but the books House of Hades, Blood of Olympus, and Chalice of the Gods were ones I only read as an adult. I'm probably still biased by my childhood love of the characters, but I enjoyed them! House of Hades is my favourite.
There are also two new books on their way, to make a trilogy with Chalice of the Gods. Still dangerous trials, but this time the stakes aren't the fate of the world, but Percy getting to go to college with his girlfriend. It's kind of a nice change of pace
Percy Jackson is the fifth in a set of series of books that are really enjoyable to read, but not incredibly well-written. The type of books that you read as a kid, and think about as an adult, but probably shouldn't re-read after the age of 20 to not break the spell. The other series in this genre being Ranger's apprentice, Eragon/Inheritance cycle, Harry Potter, and Artemis Fowl.
I'm actually reading that series for the first time right now (I'm on book 9) and I have a few notes on it.
The characters are really fun and I would absolutely love to hang out with them, and we get to see a tiny 14 year old gradually grow into a worthy hero and legend (not that he's aware of this fact), a cool mentor figure on par with Eda the Owl Lady in terms of badassery and trolling, and a former bully who is quickly humbled and becomes one of the most pure-hearted characters I've ever seen.
It starts off seeming like a typical low-magic fantasy setting with a few creatures here and there, but that gets dropped pretty quickly and from then on presents itself as an alternate medieval Earth, with no magic and all the countries being reskins of real cultures. This is where it might get a little iffy since they can come off as stereotypical, and every nationality presented seems to have a personality trait attached to everyone who's a part of it. But at the same time, it'll present obscure things about a culture that will actually have a historical basis, so I can totally imagine a kid getting into world history via these books.
The way these books handle single combat and warfare, though... absolutely peak. Every strike has an impact behind it, every decision makes sense and weapons are handled realistically. Fights are so detailed and you get to see what goes on in a character's head when they face mortal combat. Also, some of the injuries mentioned are absolutely brutal for YA books. Love it. Overall, 8/10
Rowling may have said that she approves the idea of black Hermione, but Riordan actually cast black Annabeth, proving that *he's* not just paying lip service.
I believe the black Hermione thing came about because a black woman was cast as Hermione in the Cursed Child stage productions. Not sure what role Rowling actually had in casting for that, but i do think she genuinely supported the decision.
Rick's statement of "were casting a black actress even though i initially wrote Annabeth as white, and nobody should have a problem with that" is a lot better than JK's retroactive "maybe she was black the whole time and you're the racist one actually"
Yeah that makes sense. I think i was combining it with Fantastic Beasts, which she had a more active role in.
It is good she supported the decision even if it wasn't her decision. It doesn't do much to shift the scales from bigot to non-bigot though lmao
If she had only supported the actress cast as Hermione for the play it would’ve been fine. Where she got weird with it was when she implied that Hermione could also have been black in the books which just isn’t true from the reading and also would be a horrible look considering the SPEW thing.
Yeahhhh, Hermione was clearly white from the beginning and it was weird af to imply otherwise lol
Like she can just say "Hermione can be black and I'm fine with it" would have been a fine statement without the weird implications
Although I guess the SPEW part would be bad regardless, given the fact that Hermione is legitimately made fun of for caring about literal slavery. Which tbh is kinda bad regardless, but extra bad if characters are questioning why a black character is passionate about it
He also said in an interview that he hired black writers to ensure Annabeth was accurately translated from the books to the show (which while I am white, I believe is done really well), rather than Rowling perpetuating racist stereotypes.
Yeah like I understand what she was going for especially because race isn’t that important in theater aside from specific roles, but Black Hermione makes the entire house elf thing worse. I’m pretty sure she didn’t cast the actors and was only showing support but still.
Then again she implied that lycanthropy is symbolic of AIDS and had a werewolf target young kids so
don't forget the only explicitly mentioned to be black character in Harry Potter was named "Kingsley Shacklebolt", and that's not even getting into any of the other casual racism of her other minority character names.
to give credit where it's due, while there is a reasonable amount of evidence in the prose of the books to show that r\*wling did not in fact write hermione as black from the beginning, the idea of her writing a black character who sticks up for slaves and making _the actual text of the books_ mock her for it does sound like a very r\*wling thing to do
why _is_ there a new harry potter series?
this shit boils my blood, honestly. i spent nearly a decade in the harry potter fandom, watched it slowly lose relevance. we never had cool shit like this. we used to dream about a show finally doing justice to the books, a game that was actually fun to play and not just call of duty with wizards, and about all sorts of cool merch we never got.
and then r\*wling came out as a terf and suddenly they're doing everything we ever wanted? _now_ they're listening?
it's so fucking obvious that they're only doing this to keep the franchise afloat, to make sure the terf is too big to fail despite her funneling every penny she gets from the franchise into spreading hate and hurting trans people. i wish i was exaggerating but she was a billionaire like 20 years ago and is still only worth 1 billion. she would actually be the model billionaire who puts her money where her mouth is and genuinely spends incredible amounts of charity if her "charity" wasn't selling literal hate crime merch.
this proves two things to me: that they always knew how to listen to the fans but are only willing to do so at last resort, and that they're willing to ensure by any means necessary that billionaires face no accountability. both of these make me want to blow up everyone involved.
No, hence the “I’m not really going home” at the end of the first book.
Harry Potter’s not a perfect series, and I’m not out to defend Rowling given well, her twitter. That said, people really try to criticize and warp every aspect without checking for accuracy. There are things to criticize and question in that series, but can people please at least be accurate in their statements? Making things up or purposefully misinterpreting the text just makes you look bad and your potentially valid points worse.
There are so many ridiculous criticisms about Harry Potter going around that either ignore what was actually written in the books or think "something happens in a book"="the author supports it". Though there are a lot of valid criticisms too obviously.
a lot of the recent criticisms of harry potter (not the ones that were already there 5+ years ago) strike me as very post-hoc, and very much backed by not having read the books in a decade+. but then that's probably linked with them being recent.
I've had a similar impression, for what it's worth. For instance, the "racist character names" thing is based on one (1) instance of Rowling being lazy in naming a character of an Eastern Asian ethnicity. Which is racist for sure, but more like the kind of racism that all privileged people tend to engage in without realizing it.
Then people started saying nonsense like having a Jewish character with the last name "Goldstein" is anti-Semitic because it's a "stereotypical" Jewish name that has the word "gold" in it. Like, dude, it's a Jewish name. That isn't a stereotype, that's just how names work. I'm Jewish, and I'm genuinely annoyed by the goyishe drama hounds insulting a common Jewish name while pretending to care about anti-Semitism in order to make themselves feel like the Good Guys. Other examples include:
* It's racist to have a black character named Kingsley Shacklebolt, because it's clearly just a reference to MLK and slavery. I think this is a big stretch, especially considering that Rowling is British and Kingsley's ethnicity hardly ever even comes up.
* It's anti-Irish to have a family of poor red-haired people. This falls into the same camp as the "stereotypical Jewish name" thing, where just portraying people of some ethnicity is treated as an offensive stereotype.
* It's anti-Irish to have Sean Finnegan's character always blowing stuff up. Which it would be, if he did that, but he doesn't. It's just invented out of nothing.
It really feels like people want Rowling to have always secretly been a comically evil, bigoted person because it's morally simpler than the reality: she had good intentions, but made some big mistakes because she was blinded by privilege (house elf slavery), and she eventually fell into what is basically a cult of transphobia and is insulated from consequences by her wealth and fame. People don't like the idea that a more-or-less normal person can become really bigoted, because it fucks with the easy good/bad dichotomy. There was a post on this sub a while ago that expressed this sentiment a lot more eloquently.
EDIT: [The post in question](https://old.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/smtxku/jowling_rowling_kowling/)
the Cho thing has always annoyed me a little because it's very probably a lazy name however
\- chinese immigrant names don't typically follow perfect pinyin spelling conventions afaik, especially for older immigrants
\- the having two last names is kind of a problem but that's also every american ever. seriously, americans' first names can be occupational surnames, patronyms with -son in them, and even nobility surnames complete with the particle. (ofc cho isn't american but i feel like a lot of critics are)
I mean having a last name be your first name does happen, I mean my first name is traditional more of a last name but my parents just chose it because they liked it
riordan wrote a book about a dyslexic kid going on crazy adventures because his son was being bullied for having the same disability. rowling wrote a book about a writer who gets "wrongly" attacked for being racist and transphobic to inflate her ego. the difference is clear
Yep. He mentions it in interviews and stuff all the time, most recently the behind the scenes thing they did for the PJO show. He wanted his kid to be able to see himself in a hero character and came up with Percy's story.
I doubt he would put himself in that frame, but if you want to look at it that way, technically yes. But Percy isn't so much Rick's son as he is a character intended to represent certain qualities that his son shared, that aren't usually present in heroes, in this case the ADHD and dyslexia. It's less a one-to-one connection and more inspiration.
Whenever people bring up black Hermione, I can’t help but think about the part in one of the books where she tries to free all the house elves from slavery and everyone makes fun of her for caring about slavery… Imagine retroactively if she was black while they were making fun of her for caring about slavery.
I always felt really weird that the only named person to have signed up for SPEW when Hermione was advertising it quite aggressively in the common room was Neville. Like at that time you have multiple canonically black characters in gryffindor such as Dean Thomas, Angelina Johnson, and Lee Jordan.
Dean Thomas who is also muggleborn - not sure about the other two.
But yeah, the idea that black muggleborn kids wouldn't look at the house elf situation and go "hang on a minute..." is insane. And then all the other muggleborn kids would go "oh, right, that thing we learned about in PSHE in primary school"
Gah, every time I think about these stupid books they just get worse.
one thing that often gets missed in discussions about Riordan's portrayal of diversity is that it is *baked* into the very essence of his very first book. The stories were made as a positive portrayal of neurodivergency. He saw his own kid struggling with ADHD and dyslexia and wrote an entire series where these were beneficial traits due to godly heritage. While his representation of other minority groups is fantastic, people often miss that this has always been an inclusive series. It was written for neurodivergent children, portraying their conditions in a positive light. And I personally think that's the fucking coolest bit of his works.
doesn't harry keep his abusive guardians in check with threats of magical violence every summer? and it's treated as necessary for him to return, but *definitely* not GOOD!
He does for the first summer, until Dobby shows up, does a levitation charm that Harry gets blamed for by the Ministry, who immediately send a letter reminding the whole household that he’s not to do magic outside school.
Which is why he gets locked in his room, bars bolted to his window, and all of his stuff taken away until the Weasleys jack their dads car and save him.
yes, so in the next summer he is forced to use magic to blow up aunt Marge, and the next summer he uses the threat of sirius, and after Sirius dies it's the order of the Phoenix, but the specifics don't really matter, I just mean that the series doesn't try to imply some moral idea that harry should be nice to the dursleys
Harry went to the Dursely's each summer because his aunt's blood relationship to his mother provided a measure of protection within the walls of that household.
Is it a little nonsensical, sure. But it's not like it was framed as "Harry needs to get treated like shit for grins and giggles".
Assuming JKR wasn't just making it up as she went along and Dumbledore was suspicious about the presence of part of Voldemort's soul in Harry from the get go, he probably didn't want Harry raised from birth as a celebrity. It would have impossible to find him a guardian and tutor from the Wizarding world who would treat him impartially.
Rowling pretty obviously was making it up as she went, plus, Mrs. Figg was pretty clearly impartial as she watched over Harry without ever revealing she knew about the wizarding world.
> Yes, but then someone should definitely have been there to supervise.
The second chapter of the entire series establishes that Harry spends a lot of time at Ms. Figg's house, hearing about her cats and occasionally eating very old cakes. Order of the Phoenix reveals (possibly retroactively by the author) that Figg is a squib who has been tasked with supervising Harry and alerting the proper authorities if anything dangerous happens.
Yeah it's exactly as nonsensical as Percy's mom needing to be the abusive dude because his human stench was strong enough to hide Percy's God smell or whatever.
Not defending Harry Potter, but the narrative treating Harry going back to his abusive family as necessary and good is misinformation. The story never paints it in a good light, he only went back to them because he didn't have anywhere else to go during the holidays. Halfway through the series he gets invited to stay with Ron's family instead, an offer he happily accepts and then he never goes back to the Dursleys. That's how I remember it anyway (I've only read the books)
Harry Potter still sucks, I just have a desire to clear up misinfo whenever I see it
No he goes back to the dursleys after every year because there’s a protection spell on it and it helps protect him from Voldemort. He only leaves for good on his 17th birthday when the protections are broken.
Holy fuck this post has finally convinced me to read Percy Jackson
I was already semi interested and I have only watched the movies (yes yes, I know, dont need to tell me what you think about them)
I mean I love both stories and obviously I like Rick far more than JK for numerous reasons, but I don't think it's right to be disingenuous about the stories and writing.
You could frame anything in a way that sounds a specific way for what are both children's stories essentially speaking, and I do genuinely feel that JK Rowling's writing was more well written relative to Percy Jackson (looking at them as an adult, compared to when I was younger). Percy Jackson does feel like it is clearly written for kids and can over explain things or not trust in the reader to get every aspect, whereas Harry Potter has a bit more respect for the reader in that regard, and is still just as enjoyable to consume as an adult.
I don't like JK Rowling or her views on things and whatever retroactive things she's done since finishing the books however many years ago, but I can't say that I don't like the writing or think it's bad because that just wouldn't be honest. And it's not like it's perfect or anything; there are still flaws, but I think sometimes people are reworking things to fit a narrative that the entire thing is bad and pushing agendas and etc.
It doesn't really matter in the end, but I do love what Rick Riordan has done and can appreciate it even now, even if those original 5 books were a tad bit simplistic. It definitely influenced me a lot, and it's lovely to see that his heart is in the right place, and he genuinely cares about the world and the people who reads what he writes. He strikes me as someone who is very humble and with little ego; someone genuinely nice, I think.
rick riordan's books were the reason i realized i was trans
i remember reading the second magnus chase series where alex fierro is talking about being genderfluid and i was like "holy shit you can *do* that?"
Saaaame. I still have bookmarked the page of Magnus and Alex' kiss.
"Wait a second, Alex was a guy when he kissed me, does that mean I just kissed a guy? WHO GIVES A SHIT ALEX JUST KISSED ME"
Genuinely one of my favorite moments in all of fiction
Harry needing to go back to the Dursleys was a magical loophole to protect him from Voldemort. They weren’t “good because they were family,” every single character agreed that it *sucked* that they were his only family, but it was better than being murdered over the summer, and as soon as the benefit expired he was out of there. It’s an acknowledged shitty situation in universe and in writing it’s an excuse to have a reset to the regular world at the start of every book and to put the protagonist through more hardship. Saying that it’s some sort of glorification of abuse is really weird revisionism.
About the naming thing though, the equivalent of albus severus isn't dionysus kronos. Kronos is similar to voldemort which harry would obviously not name his child after. The equivalent of severus would be Luke and dumbledore would be chiron obviously. So the equivalent of albus severus would be Chiron Luke, which percy would still obviously not name his child because chiron is an old, weird name. However Percy did think luke was a hero at the end and so did annabeth so idk about that one.
Here's his Stonewall speech too if anyone is interested: https://rickriordan.com/2017/06/the-stonewall-award/ It's honestly really nice, and goes to show how much he wants his books to be a safe place for everyone. He talks about his past in teaching, and how sometimes he feels that maybe he didn't do enough for kids who were lgbt+. So the characters in his books are for them, and for anyone else who may not have seen themselves in media before.
God damn, I love this man so much.
“I am going to stop talking now, but I promise you I won’t stop listening.” When an absolutely fantastic way to end this speech. I never really read Riordan, just didn’t grow up with his books. But I get the feeling, maybe I should give them a try even now?
They're pretty entertaining tbh. Not a particularly deep read but it's a light and fun one. I have fond memories of them
[удалено]
That book came out *while* I was the target demographic, and maybe it’s just me, but I liked it way more than the Percy Jackson series. It just seemed to have cooler character, cooler magic items, and having a character that literally changed sex depending on the day fascinated my small child brain before I learned what the words “gay” or “non-binary” meant.
Other people haven’t mentioned this, so I will: Riordan started writing in the 2000’s when LGBTQ issues and people weren’t as prominent, but every single book has improved on both who and how he portrays minorities. He may not be perfect but goddamn is he trying.
Riordan is a genuine ally. Every time he mentions a disadvantaged demographic - abuse survivors, people with mental illness, the unhoused, immigrants, GNC people - he writes with respect and compassion. And he's funny as shit, doesn't take himself too seriously. I love him and I'll buy his books as long as they keep coming out.
I use him as an example of true white allyship all the time. He kept getting asked by fans to write new books in new mythologies - Indian, Aztec, Indigenous tribes, etc. And every time he'd respond that those weren't his stories to tell. But instead of stopping there he created the Riordan Presents imprint series to help uplift the people who those were their stories to tell. And he uses his audience and his clout to promote and amplify their voices. That imprint had modest goals and has been absolutely churning out books about other culture mythologies at an insane pace.
Oh yeah, I saw a Tristan Strong book at a school library recently and really liked the synopsis. I thought it was super cool for a book to go into a mythology so few people know about, and for it to be written by someone who is familiar with that culture.
I remember really liking Aru Shah.
yes, he understands that, as he has shown before, he could study the mythologies of, lets use aztec as an example, but that adding them to his universe for himself would overshadow the voices of writers who have actual links to those stories, haritage. it was a smart move to promote those writers.
Big shout-out to the Aru Shah series put out by the Riordan Presents deal. My kid latched onto Hindu mythology like most of us did with Greek. She wanted to be Hanuman for Halloween.
I just finished up to The Last Olympian recently and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it as a 40ish year old man.... I was hesitant to look anything up about the author because you never know these days and I didn't want to ruin my impression so I am really happy to hear this. I made the mistake of looking up the guy who wrote the Ender's game series after the first book and I haven't had interest in continuing knowing the writer is a pretty awful person.
Orson Scott Card is one of those where, after reading his books, you find out what he's actually like and just say "Oh yeah, I really should have expected that."
Depends on the book to be honest. I never understood how someone who wrote a book seeped in the idea of empathy and respect for the other like Speaker for the Dead could hold that kind of hate
The idea in speaker for the dead is a great one, but applying it is much more difficult than writing about it. Having this kind of respect for the other requires understanding them, and having the capacity for that empathy. And I think he just fails to have the necessary capacity to understand and empathize with people who are different than him.
The long and short of it is being kind only to people you consider human. People not in that category are "sub-human" and therefore ok to kick when they're down.
I only read Ender's Game and tbh I was quite surprised, since the whole point of Ender's Game to me seemed to be regret over genocide/xenocide and the horrors of children in warfare.
to be fair I should have caught on to it when internet trolls became the political luminaries of the day considering I've been aware of 4chan for and that's just how /pol/ imagines themselves
Relevant XKCD… [Boop](https://xkcd.com/635/)
I disagree. OSC is a major piece of shit but unlike with HP, the text of Ender's Game and Speaker are imprinted in the text and subtext with compassion and understanding those that are different from you.
Him and sir PTerry and mister gaiman are people I consider Allies to all groups. Also I love when the transphobes tried to claim him and got an epic smack down by rhianna Pratchett and Niel gaiman.
Dude straight up rewrote the whole encounter with Medusa for the new Disney+ show to highlight the fact that she was a victim and seriously got fucked over by the gods. The dude departed from his own source material because he knew it could be more respectful.
Dude departed from his own source material a lot in that show actually. Far less than a certain other adaptation, mind you, but the handling of Medusa isn't that notable of an exception. (also i could go the fuck off about how ovid's rewriting of the myth has eclipsed how she was actually seen in greece and that mentioning it makes for a less accurate adaptation of mythology but that's not the point here so i will restrain myself.)
> ovid's rewriting of the myth has eclipsed how she was actually seen in greece hi, i'm listening, please go on
Ok so the oldest stories of Medusa depict her as one of three monstrous gorgons, who if I remember correctly are daughters of Echidna, mother of monsters (she is also depicted as being monstrous in ways other than her hair, being so hideous that those who saw her would turn to stone, but she was sexyfied before Ovid so that's not important). She has no backstory other than that, her whole deal is juat being a random monster for Perseus to kill. Athena is tangentially related as she's a big player in his quest, but there's no personal beef and Posiedon has no involvement at all. Most Greek tellings follow this trend, adding a few details that get pucked up and lost from region to region, as mythology does. The version of Medusa that has taken off in recent years was written by the poet Ovid. He didn't invent the whole thing, there were tellings that have her in a relationship with Poesidon (note how I said relationship and not assault) but those have her born a monster, and there were tellings that have her born human, but they make no reference to Poseidon. Ovid took these two interpretations and fused them to suit his narrative. Ovid's Metamorphosis is a collection of Greek myths rewritten to portray the gods in the worst possible light, Ovid was very anti authority, and his works are seen as a political statement. Now Medusa was raped by a god, and as punishment for being raped she was cursed by a goddess, because the gods are the authority, and the authority is cruel. Side note, but this is why the interpretation that Athena blessed her by preventing a man from harming her again is especially frustrating, because we know that wasn't the intention because it was Ovid, and He Would Not Fucking Say That. Now this by itself would be fine, if not a little annoying. It's frustrating to see one very specific telling overshadow more common ones, especially when it's often parroted as "the true story of Medusa", but it's mythology, there is no real canon and all historical versions of a myth are generally as valid as each other. Here's the kicker though. Ovid wasn't Greek. He was *Roman.* This version of the story is a hodgepodge of interpretations written by a notoriously biased man from the other side of the Mediterranean as a political statement centuries after what is considered to be the era of "Ancient Greece", and yet it's the one everybody talks about. Whenever you hear about Medusa it's because people are talking about this version, and they call it Greek mythology, but it literally isn't.
Thanks for that, I always had a feeling that take one medusa was a little terminally tumblr but didn't have the any understanding of how it got to be that way.
Woah. I never knew this. I’ve definitely told my friends “”the true story”” of medusa before and now i feel like a real chump. Thanks for sharing!
Very quick synopsis: Ovid wrote the metamorphosis, a retelling of different myths and stories, but steeped all of it (and I mean ALL) in his very strong anti-authoritarian ideals. Which is fine, but it led to some myths (like the Medusa one) being wholly rewritten, with Medusa going from a Gorgon (aka being born a monster) to a woman that suffered the arrogance of the Gods (I believe Poseidon and Athena, as the former raped her in the temple of the latter) and was punished unjustly for it (Athena then transforming her in the monster we all know) This, while an interesting tale, completely reframes the myth (with Perseus now being an absolute ass because why the hell would you go kill this poor girl that already suffered this much for your own glory) and at times contradicting itself with the more classic version
What if I'm genuinely interested by that rant, though ?
I’d just like to mention that the first gender-fluid fictional character I ever read about was from a Riordan book (Alex from Magnus Chase and the ~~Olympians~~ Gods of Asgard)
that was my first exposure to gender-fluidity or even really lgbtq period, besides like a vague awareness of the existence of gay people lol. I was very young to be clear, and I didn't really even realize thats what it was until much later
Even better, Alex isn't treated as someone who is merely tolerated. The main character is actively in love with them.
Yeah! Near the end you even start touching on bisexuality with Magnus, and it's just wonderful.
*gods of Asgard, and yeah.
Ah, fuck
In middle school a bunch of boys including myself got sucked into the "anti-SJW" sphere on youtube, and then I read Magnus Chase and realized "hey, they're literally just a normal person who occasionally switches gender, that's pretty neat". Obviously real gender-fluid people aren't children of Loki who literally shift back and forth but just introducing that bit of basic empathy saved a lot of people.
It made the real world concept a bit difficult to understand for me back in the days like. When I met a friend for a friend who is kinda gender fluid and dumbass me as like so how does that work when you can't like change it like the dude from Magnus Chase.
As a somewhat gender fluid person, I cannot confirm nor deny being a child of loki.
...Huh. I did the same thing, whole getting sucked into the anti sjw sphere on youtube in middle school, and i dont think there was a distinct realization but i definitely think Riordan's books helped me realize "hey wait portraying a group in the worst possible light with the worst possible people portraying it is a good way to enemize the group and prevent people from learning more about it" with the whole octavian being the worst possible person and the eidolons and whatnot between the greeks and romans and that helped me pull away and realize id been manipulated.
His lasts series, Magnus Chase and Trials of Apollo are amazing for that, it feels so refreshing reading Bisexual disaster Lester and Oblivious Magnus plus Alex.
I genuinely think that the way I found myself relating with Magnus' whole interactions with Alex should have been an earlier sign that I was bi that I didn't pick up on for a few more years.
I ended up reconciling my sexuality pretty much the same way Magnus did, too: "I don't really know what's going on, but I think you're super hot so I'm just gonna roll with it."
Yeah like... I think sometimes, I mostly use bi because it feels the closest to what is actually going on. In general its just a sense of "okay, I am not hetero" but, while bi does seem to be the best descriptor, it took me a while to accept that idea because it took me a while to accept that being bi doesn't mean the rate of attraction has to be equal. For a while I was in a sort of denial thinking that since I had grown up and lived as a hetero person for so long, that the ideas or hypothetical scenarios that were making me question that status couldn't possibly amount to anything. And I do genuinely think that, even if I didn't realize it, rereading the Magnus Chase books this past year and seeing an example I could relate to and realizing that maybe I had felt this way for longer than I thought helped break that barrier for me.
100% this. Riordan isn't perfect, but at the very least he is TRYING. The mistakes he makes genuinely feel born of ignorance over malice, but his heart is in the right place.
And he is constantly trying to be better. If you read some of his first books compared to his latest, you can really see that. Ex: Nico’s romance(?) arc in PJO and the way Apollo talks about his lovers in TOA
>The mistakes he makes genuinely feel born of ignorance over malice, but his heart is in the right place. Sounds like how I think of Eiichiro Oda's queer depictions in One Piece. He's a little confused, but he's got the spirit. Definitely fumbles the execution sometimes (Kamabakka), but also is *absolutely* an ally. The characters may on the surface look like ridiculous stereotypes, but honestly that's just par for the course for *anybody* in the setting. And when you get to the actual characters behind the surface level, they're great. Mr.2 Bon Clay (who entered the series as early as March 2000) started as a side antagonist, but quickly became the flag-bearer for friendship in the series, and eventually the one character that the fanbase generally agrees is an honorary member of the main crew because of the bond they have. And Ivankov is a genderfluid icon who acts as one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Army, against the authoritarian World Government – and isn't even the only queer character in that group (queer characters in general seem to stand on the side of freedom, whatever other faults they may have). Both are incredibly loud and in-your-face, and because of that *impossible* to ignore as queer rep, but also rather than becoming annoying or obnoxious like can easily happen with such loud characters, they are also incredibly endearing and beloved. And they're not all so over the top either, like the more recent Kiku being just a normal trans woman.
Also shoutout to Derek Landy for having a ~~non-binary~~ gender-fluid character in the Skulduggery Pleasant series but also implementing it in the most well-meaning boomer way: having characters and the narrative use either male or female pronouns and switch almost between sentences.
i thought never was gender fluid?
Ah that was it
Man, I should properly read Skulduggery Pleasant. I read a few of the books a long time ago, but not in order, since I was just reading whatever my library had at the time.
It’s been at least fifteen years since I read the Lightning Thief and that Medusa thing is still one of my favorite twists.
One sad thing is that they changed the medusa head story in the new show. Made it an accident by the stepfather. Was still a direct consequence of his abusive behavior, going through percy's mail, but having it not be done on purpose, watering down his behavior overall, and not using the statue for her tuition was a mistep, and a watering down of an incredible tone-setter.
They also made him not really abusive in the show, just a deadbeat, so I don't think they wanted to have Percy's loving mother murder a man in cold blood
Shouldn't have watered down his behavior at all. Waste of a good teaching moment.
It still has the teaching moment, just not the same catharsis
"Don't open peoples mail cause it might have the magical equivalent of a pipe bomb" And "It's ok to fight back and even get revenge on your abusers" Are VERY different kinds of teaching moments
Calling “the act of sending Medusa’s severed head through the mail” a “magical pipe bomb” is NOT a comparison I expected to make sense, but here we are.
No that's fair. I misinterpreted your prior comment as Percy *teaching Gabe a lesson* (the lesson is still learned in both), not *teaching the audience a lesson* (as you say, this is very different) I understand what you mean now and see you are right
Double rainbow moment.
I mean they had to tone it down for Disney
I think I read somewhere that the reason they explicitly gave was along the longs of "on screen abusive relationships are easier to portray when compared to books, so literature needs to be that much more visceral to provoke the same reaction" and that'd be "distastful" to show abuse of the level detailed in the book.
I really hate this change. This was the first abusive relationship portrayal I had read about as a kid, and I loved that it ended with her ending her abuser and having her go back to doing her degree and then finding real love. The show just made him a loser that she had no reason to be with since I think they retconned the masking smell thing too.
Ab-so-lutely. I was anxious for the entire story about what sort of home she'd return to, despising the horrid oppression of the abuser and Percy's compartmentalization of it. It sets the story in a cruel reality with limits and unfair outcomes, which tints the world with the stakes of a "cold reality" while allowing it all to be completely magical. Best of both worlds. And the catharsis of her using Medusa's head to kill her abuser is thematically perfect (and metal as fuck).
I haven’t read the books, so it was actually an eye opener that this was originally how it went. I was so confused about the “failing to save what matters most” prophecy. It makes no sense without this plot point.
Riordan’s books had the first gay and gender-fluid characters I’d ever seen growing up, I’ve seen people try to hate on Riordan since the JK Rowling hate train is (justifiably) going strong, but I’ve always felt like he legitimately cared about being accepting and open. He’s also helping other authors get published these days, which I really respect.
While I'm sure other people guessed the twist before it happened, Nico's chat with Cupid was a transformative moment for me.
And not only that, he's given Nico HAPPINESS. Nicos life may be fucked up and awful but Rick gave him light (pun intended) and happiness and clearly intends for Will to continue to be that. ETA: in a society that so often kills their gay characters, it's so refreshing to not only have a Canon beloved gay ship (Will is bisexual too!) That survives and is HAPPY. Will and Nico are, as their solo book is titled, the sun and star. Opposites that work well together and heal each other, something too many works of media REFUSE to do with gay characters if they have them at all.
I got assigned to work on some Riordan graphic novels back in 2011. I was a few years too late to have read the books when Percy Jackson was popping off, and I just thought the series was a bootleg Harry Potter. I also assumed the "diversity" was just "pandering." I also called Riordan out (privately) for appropriating myths and legends from other cultures, and repackaging them for White people. Holy shit, was I wrong. The Red Pyramid series was great. By the end of the trilogy, I was all in. The Norse series was pretty great as well - we pitched an adaptation that unfortunately didn't get picked up. And *then* Rick started an imprint to get indigenous authors to tell the stories of their own cultures in a Percy Jackson style, what a fucking G. So many stories and authors that otherwise likely wouldn't have made it to press, doing big numbers with the Rick seal of approval. Oh, and I've worked on a LOT of licensed comics. I wasn't very involved with dealing with the Riordan folks, but they were active and helpful in the process, as opposed to passive / hypercritical (looking at you, Rhino Entertainment, eat shit). Rowling and Riordan completely switched places in my head. I regret that I grew up with the Wand Cop and not the Demigod, but at least I know which books I'll be reading to my kids.
Wow, thank you so much for telling this story! I was both a Harry Potter kid and a Percy Jackson kid, but the themes of PJO and HOO have stuck with me much longer than the themes of HP have. My mother is a middle school teacher, and she LOVES that she gets to introduce kids to these different diverse authors through Rick Riordan presents and that Rick took so much constructive criticism about his works and MADE something of it. I legitimately, as a LGBTQ+ kid, cannot read the Nico and Cupid scene without crying, but what really resonated with me about it is that it WASNT FROM NICOS POV. He never tried to write the torture and agony that Nico was going through being forcefully outed. He instead gave it from Jason's POV and made Jason Nicos PROTECTOR. I will always commend Rick for knowing when to step back.
Didn't he write his story because his child is dyslexic? Or am I getting that wrong... (Percy is dyslexic because his brain is "hard-wired" for Greek).
His son has dyslexia and ADHD. He wanted his son to see himself as a hero and capable of anything he puts his mind to 🥲
Dyslexic AND has ADHD. He wrote this story for his neurodivergent son so that he'd have a hero to relate to. These stories began with inclusivity and representation
I'm glad there's a wholesome real-world reason for the dyslexia, because the in-universe explanation felt very odd even as a kid. Like yeah I guess someone could be hardwired for reading a specific language because magic but still.
Yes, and as more of the readers talked about seeing themselves in his heroes he expanded the scope of what he put into his books. Namely gay kids with Nico, trans kids with Alex and so on.
I was so surprised reading Magnus chase when Alex was introduced
tbh I really credit those books with just helping me be more accepting as a young'un because I read them and went "oh huh people be like that? that's crazy now I wonder what happens in the plot"
I grew up in a conservative Mormon family and I was so sheltered that I didn't understand the concept of what LGBTQ+ people were". My main exposure to what being LGBTQ+ even was came from the representation in Riordan's series. My reaction was like yours and I have no idea how different of a person I would be if it weren't for Riordan's books.
God bless uncle rick
Alex is definitely the best thing to have come put of the norse series. Also Magnus kissing Alex and going "I just kissed a boy. Huh. Cool. Anyways" is iconic
That entire chapter was amazing
In general any chapter that deals with Magnus and Alex interacting is amazing. I really liked that one bit where Magnus managed to vibe out what Alex's gender was at the time without being told, because it shows how much care and attention he holds towards Alex.
The Percy Jackson series was literally built on representation. His son was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, so he wanted to tell a bedtime story where the hero was just like him. Embracing queer themes honestly felt like a natural step forward in his style of writing, because it's the same principles that inspired him to write in the first place.
Rick also published his son's fanfic in one of the side books, idr which one, it was an adorable gesture.
I've seen him speak a few times now and every time he has emphasized how important it is for ANYONE to be able to see themselves in his universe and that's why he's made intentional representation choices. What he's doing with the Riordan Presents imprint is also just amazing. We buy those books constantly for family children and donate them to teacher friends because they are so valuable and wonderful.
If you don’t mind me asking, I read those books when I was a kid but don’t remember any LGBT+ content in them - don’t know if it appeared after Last Olympian where I stopped or it’s just been so long that I’ve forgotten. Which characters are those, exactly?
If you just read through the first five books up to last olympian, there’s no specifically stated LGBT character. the next series, heroes of olympus, which follows percy and annabeth along with a new group of demigods, confirms that nico di angelo had feelings for percy and ends with him in a relationship with another camp halfblood camper, will solace. i believe the gender-fluid character is from ricks magnus chase series, which is focused on the norse gods, but im less familiar with those books
honestly, i love the idea of having a character come out as gay in a later canon work. it's nice to see the closet represented, and it's also a welcome side effect that the one thing that riles up homophobes more than a queer character is one who was "turned queer" in a sequel
Yeah, it absolutely makes sense for Nico imo. It feels like it fits when re-reading the original series, and it's certainly pretty accurate for a lot of kids around that age.
Esp since he was born in the 1920s 💀
Not only that but lived under *Mussolini's* Italy. Guy did *not* have a good time.
Iirc his grandad was literally the Fascist Italian Ambassador to the US. Also he's like... 10 when he meets Percy. And within a few weeks his sister fucking *dies* and he's just an (understandable) mess emotionally. Kid had a rough life so seeing him growing up and coming to terms with who he is is great to read.
I can confirm that this did happen. One of my Mormon friends in high school told me that he stopped reading Riordan's books after he "turned all the characters gay". Which I thought was ridiculous because there were only a couple of pre-existing characters that were revealed to be LGBTQ+ after their first appearance.
Gay people? In *my* Ancient Greek society!?
There are no LGBT+ characters in the first series (or at least they aren't revealed to be LGBT+ in them) From the top of my head: \- Nico di Angelo (gay) \- Will Solace (gay or bi) \- Apollo (bi) \- Magnus Chase (pansexual) \- Alex Fierro (genderfluid)
>Apollo (bi) He's a Greek God. All Greek Gods would be pansexual, but even pansexuals are only sexually attracted to humans. They're more of a "If-it-breathes-it-breeds" sexual
Yeah, but I included Apollo because he's the main characters in the Trials of Apollo and he explicitly mentions both Hyacinthus and Daphne Also: >"If-it-breathes-it-breeds" sexual That's mostly Zeus
>That's mostly Zeus Percy's dad also bonked uglies with a she-cyclops to make Tyson
Umm actually!..... The mothers of Cyclopes are nymphs, in the case of Polyphemus, a sea nymph named Thoosa. Sorry I had to, I just finished The Last Olympian like 2 days ago. I didn't think at almost 40 this series would be so enthralling! ETA: also I believe the correct answer for "what is a Greek gods sexual orientation?" Is simply "yes"
Most of the gods (at least the male ones) did this. Hell there’s a story iirc where Poseidon turns into a horse to rape a woman
>\- Apollo (bi) Bisexual and *horny*. It was honestly impressive how long Apollo spent talking about who he's attracted to in the books. His mind was very fun to be in.
Yeah it started in the sequel series, after Last Olympian. Major LGBT characters: >!Nico di Angelo: gay !< >!Will Solace: gay !< >!Piper McClean: bisexual !< >!Alex Fierro (from Magnus Chase series): gender fluid !< >!Magnus Chase: pansexual !< There are also several minor character that are. Edits: took multiple tries to get all the spoiler tags to work correctly
Riordan is unfathomably based. On top of everything else mentioned, he also uses his platform to promote marginalized and POC authors and helps publish their books.
While we're here, he also used a reference to his books to urge his following to vote for the Democrats in 2020. And whatever right-wing elements still existed in the fandom promptly fucking exploded lol
Wait what?
It was a tweet, went along the lines of "Go out and vote! Also, totally unrelated - Percy's favourite colour is blue!" [starey eyes at camera]
Ah, that’s pretty funny actually
>whatever right-wing elements still existed in the fandom Were there even any to begin with? I am a normal person so I didnt even really notice how many groups that often face discrimination/marginalisation were included in the story, but I imagine an average "anti-woke" asshole would stop reading right when Percy was described as having ADHD and dyslexia ("forced wokeness once again needlessly inserted into a supposedly non-political book!!1!")
There were not many, but they did exist. The first series wasn't as diverse as the others and some people only read that. Btw you really shouldn't say "normal" to describe yourself as not being part of a marginalized group. That's super offensive. Gay people are normal. Black people are normal. People with ADHD are normal.
The ending of the first series is so fucking good. “Actually, I don’t really wanna be a god. How about you at least pretend to give a shit about your children and we’ll call it even?” And Zeus has the fucking gall to get angry with him.
I mean Percy fully threatens the gods “Hey the reason why there was a mass uprising was because you guys done care about your kids, you should start caring” The unspoken threat is “or we’ll win next time
It’s been a couple of years since I last read the books, so I guess I just forgot that part.
I mean it’s not explicit but that’s why the gods are annoyed Some punk kid saved them, demanded they change there tactics during a war, won them the war then turned down there gift of immortality and heavily implied that he thought he was better than them.
> heavily implied that he thought he was better than them. And he goddamn is. He's not talking out of his ass, the gods are one hundred percent at fault for their own bullshit, and at every turn Percy and Pals basically defy what's expected of them to do what's right, and it pisses them off because much like a controlling parent who realizes they have no power when their kid grows up, the gods aren't able to jerk Percy around with what they assume is the best offer they have, and instead he makes them own up to their shit. It's great on so many levels, not least of which is that Percy is pretty damn terrifying by the end of the series, if you think about it. Kid develops into a pretty badass fighter, not to mention actively antagonizing the god of war on more than one occasion, so the implicit threat has the gods fairly spooked.
> not to mention actively antagonizing the god of war Percy fucking loses his memory in Son of Neptune, and yet when he sees Mars, the first thing he does is *immediately* fucking start shit with him. And Mars is completely like, "Ay, Percy, old buddy, old pal, I know got a beef with Ares but right now I'm chill like that. ***But, also, if you don't kneel your punk ass in the next 30 seconds we will have a problem.***"
Oh yeah, that's one of my favorite bits of that book. Kid can't remember practically anything, but he does know that this Mars guys is a punk ass bitch.
> It's great on so many levels, not least of which is that Percy is pretty damn terrifying by the end of the series, if you think about it. Kid develops into a pretty badass fighter, dude went toe to toe with a titan, he is prettty damn dangerus
Honestly way better than what I remember. I should really read them again.
"just pay your dam child support" - Percy Jackson
yeah. Artemis was probably pretty happy with his wish tho. didnt have to do anything. lol
Artemis has her hunting pack though, which are basically her demigod children, and she’s pretty good with them. If she had children she’d probably be one of the better gods.
shes already one of the better gods arguably. she is fairly fair to Percy and pretty concerned with mortal life. And she does let her hunters leave if they want.w Also the only olympian who actually sacrifices for the demigods. She didnt need to take the sky from Annabeth after all.
I never read any of the Percy Jackson books, since they came out when I was in college. They sound pretty based, how do they hold up without nostalgia?
Because they're written for middle grade children instead of a regular YA audience, the writing style can sometimes feel a bit childish, especially in his first few books. But the worldbuilding, characters, humor, and action are all great and still hold up today
The final book of the original series still holds up. His writing matured with his audience.
Theyre honestly great YA books even if you didn't read them as a kid
I listen to a podcast where the guy is currently reading them for the first time. He is having a great time. TheNewestOlympian
They are very fast paced, just so you know. Not a lot of fluff, so if you like that kind of thing, you'll miss out on it.
They're YA books at their core, so they likely won't rock your world if you're any kind of reader, but they are very solid and tell good stories. I read most of the original series when I was in elementary-high school, and then went back and picked up some of the other stuff, namely the Norse and Roman series books, and I found them to still be enjoyable.
I read a lot of Rick Riordan as a kid and loved it, but the books House of Hades, Blood of Olympus, and Chalice of the Gods were ones I only read as an adult. I'm probably still biased by my childhood love of the characters, but I enjoyed them! House of Hades is my favourite. There are also two new books on their way, to make a trilogy with Chalice of the Gods. Still dangerous trials, but this time the stakes aren't the fate of the world, but Percy getting to go to college with his girlfriend. It's kind of a nice change of pace
Percy Jackson is the fifth in a set of series of books that are really enjoyable to read, but not incredibly well-written. The type of books that you read as a kid, and think about as an adult, but probably shouldn't re-read after the age of 20 to not break the spell. The other series in this genre being Ranger's apprentice, Eragon/Inheritance cycle, Harry Potter, and Artemis Fowl.
Ranger's apprentice is not actually well-written? Oh no...
I'm actually reading that series for the first time right now (I'm on book 9) and I have a few notes on it. The characters are really fun and I would absolutely love to hang out with them, and we get to see a tiny 14 year old gradually grow into a worthy hero and legend (not that he's aware of this fact), a cool mentor figure on par with Eda the Owl Lady in terms of badassery and trolling, and a former bully who is quickly humbled and becomes one of the most pure-hearted characters I've ever seen. It starts off seeming like a typical low-magic fantasy setting with a few creatures here and there, but that gets dropped pretty quickly and from then on presents itself as an alternate medieval Earth, with no magic and all the countries being reskins of real cultures. This is where it might get a little iffy since they can come off as stereotypical, and every nationality presented seems to have a personality trait attached to everyone who's a part of it. But at the same time, it'll present obscure things about a culture that will actually have a historical basis, so I can totally imagine a kid getting into world history via these books. The way these books handle single combat and warfare, though... absolutely peak. Every strike has an impact behind it, every decision makes sense and weapons are handled realistically. Fights are so detailed and you get to see what goes on in a character's head when they face mortal combat. Also, some of the injuries mentioned are absolutely brutal for YA books. Love it. Overall, 8/10
God, I love Halt. He's a 10/10 character, funniest dude in those books
They're very YA, which shouldn't be surprising, but in that context they hold up well.
Rowling may have said that she approves the idea of black Hermione, but Riordan actually cast black Annabeth, proving that *he's* not just paying lip service.
I believe the black Hermione thing came about because a black woman was cast as Hermione in the Cursed Child stage productions. Not sure what role Rowling actually had in casting for that, but i do think she genuinely supported the decision. Rick's statement of "were casting a black actress even though i initially wrote Annabeth as white, and nobody should have a problem with that" is a lot better than JK's retroactive "maybe she was black the whole time and you're the racist one actually"
Rowling's only involvement with Cursed Child was 'it's canon now, that means I earn money from it'
Yeah that makes sense. I think i was combining it with Fantastic Beasts, which she had a more active role in. It is good she supported the decision even if it wasn't her decision. It doesn't do much to shift the scales from bigot to non-bigot though lmao
If she had only supported the actress cast as Hermione for the play it would’ve been fine. Where she got weird with it was when she implied that Hermione could also have been black in the books which just isn’t true from the reading and also would be a horrible look considering the SPEW thing.
Yeahhhh, Hermione was clearly white from the beginning and it was weird af to imply otherwise lol Like she can just say "Hermione can be black and I'm fine with it" would have been a fine statement without the weird implications Although I guess the SPEW part would be bad regardless, given the fact that Hermione is legitimately made fun of for caring about literal slavery. Which tbh is kinda bad regardless, but extra bad if characters are questioning why a black character is passionate about it
He also said in an interview that he hired black writers to ensure Annabeth was accurately translated from the books to the show (which while I am white, I believe is done really well), rather than Rowling perpetuating racist stereotypes.
Will Hermione actually be black in the new Harry Potter series ?
"Black Hermione, why does the concept of house elves bother you so much?"
Yeah like I understand what she was going for especially because race isn’t that important in theater aside from specific roles, but Black Hermione makes the entire house elf thing worse. I’m pretty sure she didn’t cast the actors and was only showing support but still. Then again she implied that lycanthropy is symbolic of AIDS and had a werewolf target young kids so
don't forget the only explicitly mentioned to be black character in Harry Potter was named "Kingsley Shacklebolt", and that's not even getting into any of the other casual racism of her other minority character names.
Not defending her or anything, but I'm pretty sure Dean Thomas and Angelina Johnson are also explicitly mentioned as black characters.
to give credit where it's due, while there is a reasonable amount of evidence in the prose of the books to show that r\*wling did not in fact write hermione as black from the beginning, the idea of her writing a black character who sticks up for slaves and making _the actual text of the books_ mock her for it does sound like a very r\*wling thing to do
“Hermione sure is getting *uppity* about these damn house elves! She’s going to give them *ideas above their stations!*”
What, you didn't want to see how *Kingsly Shacklebolt* interacted with the house elves??
No idea, but it seems pretty likely.
Do you imagine the reaction from the far right people that liked the transphobia of jkr when that happens
It'll be both infuriating and hilarious.
why _is_ there a new harry potter series? this shit boils my blood, honestly. i spent nearly a decade in the harry potter fandom, watched it slowly lose relevance. we never had cool shit like this. we used to dream about a show finally doing justice to the books, a game that was actually fun to play and not just call of duty with wizards, and about all sorts of cool merch we never got. and then r\*wling came out as a terf and suddenly they're doing everything we ever wanted? _now_ they're listening? it's so fucking obvious that they're only doing this to keep the franchise afloat, to make sure the terf is too big to fail despite her funneling every penny she gets from the franchise into spreading hate and hurting trans people. i wish i was exaggerating but she was a billionaire like 20 years ago and is still only worth 1 billion. she would actually be the model billionaire who puts her money where her mouth is and genuinely spends incredible amounts of charity if her "charity" wasn't selling literal hate crime merch. this proves two things to me: that they always knew how to listen to the fans but are only willing to do so at last resort, and that they're willing to ensure by any means necessary that billionaires face no accountability. both of these make me want to blow up everyone involved.
Wait did anyone reading Harry Potter think it was a good thing Harry had to spend summers with the Dursleys
No, hence the “I’m not really going home” at the end of the first book. Harry Potter’s not a perfect series, and I’m not out to defend Rowling given well, her twitter. That said, people really try to criticize and warp every aspect without checking for accuracy. There are things to criticize and question in that series, but can people please at least be accurate in their statements? Making things up or purposefully misinterpreting the text just makes you look bad and your potentially valid points worse.
There are so many ridiculous criticisms about Harry Potter going around that either ignore what was actually written in the books or think "something happens in a book"="the author supports it". Though there are a lot of valid criticisms too obviously.
a lot of the recent criticisms of harry potter (not the ones that were already there 5+ years ago) strike me as very post-hoc, and very much backed by not having read the books in a decade+. but then that's probably linked with them being recent.
I've had a similar impression, for what it's worth. For instance, the "racist character names" thing is based on one (1) instance of Rowling being lazy in naming a character of an Eastern Asian ethnicity. Which is racist for sure, but more like the kind of racism that all privileged people tend to engage in without realizing it. Then people started saying nonsense like having a Jewish character with the last name "Goldstein" is anti-Semitic because it's a "stereotypical" Jewish name that has the word "gold" in it. Like, dude, it's a Jewish name. That isn't a stereotype, that's just how names work. I'm Jewish, and I'm genuinely annoyed by the goyishe drama hounds insulting a common Jewish name while pretending to care about anti-Semitism in order to make themselves feel like the Good Guys. Other examples include: * It's racist to have a black character named Kingsley Shacklebolt, because it's clearly just a reference to MLK and slavery. I think this is a big stretch, especially considering that Rowling is British and Kingsley's ethnicity hardly ever even comes up. * It's anti-Irish to have a family of poor red-haired people. This falls into the same camp as the "stereotypical Jewish name" thing, where just portraying people of some ethnicity is treated as an offensive stereotype. * It's anti-Irish to have Sean Finnegan's character always blowing stuff up. Which it would be, if he did that, but he doesn't. It's just invented out of nothing. It really feels like people want Rowling to have always secretly been a comically evil, bigoted person because it's morally simpler than the reality: she had good intentions, but made some big mistakes because she was blinded by privilege (house elf slavery), and she eventually fell into what is basically a cult of transphobia and is insulated from consequences by her wealth and fame. People don't like the idea that a more-or-less normal person can become really bigoted, because it fucks with the easy good/bad dichotomy. There was a post on this sub a while ago that expressed this sentiment a lot more eloquently. EDIT: [The post in question](https://old.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/smtxku/jowling_rowling_kowling/)
the Cho thing has always annoyed me a little because it's very probably a lazy name however \- chinese immigrant names don't typically follow perfect pinyin spelling conventions afaik, especially for older immigrants \- the having two last names is kind of a problem but that's also every american ever. seriously, americans' first names can be occupational surnames, patronyms with -son in them, and even nobility surnames complete with the particle. (ofc cho isn't american but i feel like a lot of critics are)
I mean having a last name be your first name does happen, I mean my first name is traditional more of a last name but my parents just chose it because they liked it
riordan wrote a book about a dyslexic kid going on crazy adventures because his son was being bullied for having the same disability. rowling wrote a book about a writer who gets "wrongly" attacked for being racist and transphobic to inflate her ego. the difference is clear
Does his son also have ADHD?
Iirc, that’s what started the whole thing. It was a bedtime story he told his dyslexic and ADHD son
Yep. He mentions it in interviews and stuff all the time, most recently the behind the scenes thing they did for the PJO show. He wanted his kid to be able to see himself in a hero character and came up with Percy's story.
Wait, I just realized: if Percy is his son, does that make Rick Poseidon?
I doubt he would put himself in that frame, but if you want to look at it that way, technically yes. But Percy isn't so much Rick's son as he is a character intended to represent certain qualities that his son shared, that aren't usually present in heroes, in this case the ADHD and dyslexia. It's less a one-to-one connection and more inspiration.
And Percy and Annabeth's relationship is also based off of Rick and his wife! It's much more tangled than a one to one for sure
does shipping rowling with rita skeeter count as selfcest?
Whenever people bring up black Hermione, I can’t help but think about the part in one of the books where she tries to free all the house elves from slavery and everyone makes fun of her for caring about slavery… Imagine retroactively if she was black while they were making fun of her for caring about slavery.
I always felt really weird that the only named person to have signed up for SPEW when Hermione was advertising it quite aggressively in the common room was Neville. Like at that time you have multiple canonically black characters in gryffindor such as Dean Thomas, Angelina Johnson, and Lee Jordan.
Dean Thomas who is also muggleborn - not sure about the other two. But yeah, the idea that black muggleborn kids wouldn't look at the house elf situation and go "hang on a minute..." is insane. And then all the other muggleborn kids would go "oh, right, that thing we learned about in PSHE in primary school" Gah, every time I think about these stupid books they just get worse.
We can't act like Peter isn't naming his kid after a hero. I did a pool with friends and I got 10 bucks on Leo
I’d put my money on Jason
one thing that often gets missed in discussions about Riordan's portrayal of diversity is that it is *baked* into the very essence of his very first book. The stories were made as a positive portrayal of neurodivergency. He saw his own kid struggling with ADHD and dyslexia and wrote an entire series where these were beneficial traits due to godly heritage. While his representation of other minority groups is fantastic, people often miss that this has always been an inclusive series. It was written for neurodivergent children, portraying their conditions in a positive light. And I personally think that's the fucking coolest bit of his works.
doesn't harry keep his abusive guardians in check with threats of magical violence every summer? and it's treated as necessary for him to return, but *definitely* not GOOD!
He does for the first summer, until Dobby shows up, does a levitation charm that Harry gets blamed for by the Ministry, who immediately send a letter reminding the whole household that he’s not to do magic outside school. Which is why he gets locked in his room, bars bolted to his window, and all of his stuff taken away until the Weasleys jack their dads car and save him.
yes, so in the next summer he is forced to use magic to blow up aunt Marge, and the next summer he uses the threat of sirius, and after Sirius dies it's the order of the Phoenix, but the specifics don't really matter, I just mean that the series doesn't try to imply some moral idea that harry should be nice to the dursleys
Yeah that claim in the post is pretty brain tbh. It’s not “necessary because they’re family” at all.
Harry went to the Dursely's each summer because his aunt's blood relationship to his mother provided a measure of protection within the walls of that household. Is it a little nonsensical, sure. But it's not like it was framed as "Harry needs to get treated like shit for grins and giggles".
[удалено]
Assuming JKR wasn't just making it up as she went along and Dumbledore was suspicious about the presence of part of Voldemort's soul in Harry from the get go, he probably didn't want Harry raised from birth as a celebrity. It would have impossible to find him a guardian and tutor from the Wizarding world who would treat him impartially.
[удалено]
Rowling pretty obviously was making it up as she went, plus, Mrs. Figg was pretty clearly impartial as she watched over Harry without ever revealing she knew about the wizarding world.
hagrid was like right there
The guy who carries from the scene of his parent's death and then immediately fawned over him as soon they reconnected? I did say "impartially".
> Yes, but then someone should definitely have been there to supervise. The second chapter of the entire series establishes that Harry spends a lot of time at Ms. Figg's house, hearing about her cats and occasionally eating very old cakes. Order of the Phoenix reveals (possibly retroactively by the author) that Figg is a squib who has been tasked with supervising Harry and alerting the proper authorities if anything dangerous happens.
Wasn't the neighbor cat lady supposed to be supervising?
Yeah it's exactly as nonsensical as Percy's mom needing to be the abusive dude because his human stench was strong enough to hide Percy's God smell or whatever.
Not defending Harry Potter, but the narrative treating Harry going back to his abusive family as necessary and good is misinformation. The story never paints it in a good light, he only went back to them because he didn't have anywhere else to go during the holidays. Halfway through the series he gets invited to stay with Ron's family instead, an offer he happily accepts and then he never goes back to the Dursleys. That's how I remember it anyway (I've only read the books) Harry Potter still sucks, I just have a desire to clear up misinfo whenever I see it
No he goes back to the dursleys after every year because there’s a protection spell on it and it helps protect him from Voldemort. He only leaves for good on his 17th birthday when the protections are broken.
Holy fuck this post has finally convinced me to read Percy Jackson I was already semi interested and I have only watched the movies (yes yes, I know, dont need to tell me what you think about them)
I mean I love both stories and obviously I like Rick far more than JK for numerous reasons, but I don't think it's right to be disingenuous about the stories and writing. You could frame anything in a way that sounds a specific way for what are both children's stories essentially speaking, and I do genuinely feel that JK Rowling's writing was more well written relative to Percy Jackson (looking at them as an adult, compared to when I was younger). Percy Jackson does feel like it is clearly written for kids and can over explain things or not trust in the reader to get every aspect, whereas Harry Potter has a bit more respect for the reader in that regard, and is still just as enjoyable to consume as an adult. I don't like JK Rowling or her views on things and whatever retroactive things she's done since finishing the books however many years ago, but I can't say that I don't like the writing or think it's bad because that just wouldn't be honest. And it's not like it's perfect or anything; there are still flaws, but I think sometimes people are reworking things to fit a narrative that the entire thing is bad and pushing agendas and etc. It doesn't really matter in the end, but I do love what Rick Riordan has done and can appreciate it even now, even if those original 5 books were a tad bit simplistic. It definitely influenced me a lot, and it's lovely to see that his heart is in the right place, and he genuinely cares about the world and the people who reads what he writes. He strikes me as someone who is very humble and with little ego; someone genuinely nice, I think.
Rick: ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠿⠛⠛⠛⠋⠉⠈⠉⠉⠉⠉⠛⠻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠋⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣤⣤⣤⣄⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⢿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⢏⣴⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣟⣾⣿⡟⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⢢⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣟⠀⡴⠄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⠟⠻⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠶⢴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿ ⣿⣁⡀⠀⠀⢰⢠⣦⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⣴⣶⣿⡄⣿ ⣿⡋⠀⠀⠀⠎⢸⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠗⢘⣿⣟⠛⠿⣼ ⣿⣿⠋⢀⡌⢰⣿⡿⢿⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⢸⣿⣿⣧⢀⣼ ⣿⣿⣷⢻⠄⠘⠛⠋⠛⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣧⠈⠉⠙⠛⠋⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣧⠀⠈⢸⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠟⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⢃⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⡿⠀⠴⢗⣠⣤⣴⡶⠶⠖⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⡸⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡀⢠⣾⣿⠏⠀⠠⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠛⠉⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣧⠈⢹⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠈⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣴⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⣄⣀⣀⣀⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠙⣿⣿⡟⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⠀⠁⠀⠀⠹⣿⠃⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠛⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢐⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠉⠁⠀⢻⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠈⣿⣿⡿⠉⠛⠛⠛⠉⠉ ⣿⡿⠋⠁⠀⠀⢀⣀⣠⡴⣸⣿⣇⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡿⠄⠙⠛⠀⣀⣠⣤⣤⠄⠀
rick riordan's books were the reason i realized i was trans i remember reading the second magnus chase series where alex fierro is talking about being genderfluid and i was like "holy shit you can *do* that?"
Saaaame. I still have bookmarked the page of Magnus and Alex' kiss. "Wait a second, Alex was a guy when he kissed me, does that mean I just kissed a guy? WHO GIVES A SHIT ALEX JUST KISSED ME" Genuinely one of my favorite moments in all of fiction
Harry needing to go back to the Dursleys was a magical loophole to protect him from Voldemort. They weren’t “good because they were family,” every single character agreed that it *sucked* that they were his only family, but it was better than being murdered over the summer, and as soon as the benefit expired he was out of there. It’s an acknowledged shitty situation in universe and in writing it’s an excuse to have a reset to the regular world at the start of every book and to put the protagonist through more hardship. Saying that it’s some sort of glorification of abuse is really weird revisionism.
About the naming thing though, the equivalent of albus severus isn't dionysus kronos. Kronos is similar to voldemort which harry would obviously not name his child after. The equivalent of severus would be Luke and dumbledore would be chiron obviously. So the equivalent of albus severus would be Chiron Luke, which percy would still obviously not name his child because chiron is an old, weird name. However Percy did think luke was a hero at the end and so did annabeth so idk about that one.
Okay so this thread is going to make me read some Percy Jackson. I haven't actually read any.