“i want (super popular celebrity) to be in the pjo show!” but like. what if the most weird celebs were in it. imagine there’s a crowd scene and you see fuckin gerard way or somethin
Now that Walker Scobell was cast as Percy, I’m not saying that casting Logan Lerman as Poseidon would make sense… but yeah actually casting Logan would make sense
Come on look at them they could totally be related
okay, this one’s for all of you complaining that having a black annabeth is ‘taking away representation’ from blonde white girls - hi! it’s me! a blonde, white girl pjo fan! hear me out here.
for a quick backstory - i got into pjo during a particularly bad school year, and reading pjo and seeing annabeth chase — a nerdy, smart, neurodivergent athletic badass girl who looked exactly like me, was an absolute godsend.
so, you ask, am i mad that they cast leah sava jeffries as annabeth?
no! absolutely the fuck not!
this casting does not stop me from appreciating and relating to annabeth chase, a nerdy badass adhd girl. but, more importantly:
listen. i’m not trying to say shit about things i know nothing about, but i do know this: some little black girl is gonna watch this show, and she’s gonna see annabeth, and she’s gonna be a nerdy, smart, neurodivergent athletic badass girl who looks exactly likeher. a girl who’s never seen herself onscreen like that before, a girl who really, really needs to see herself like that. and in no world is that anything but a fucking fantastic thing.
in conclusion, white complaining pjo fans: get over yourselves. please.
Leah’s comment on tiktok is golden. that kid really knows how to talk to racist bullies but like she shouldn’t have to? She’s TWELVE. And she’s playing a huge role in a very well loved kids series. No part of her experience should involve the annoying buzz of internet bs. She’s a child and she shouldn’t have to come up with creative ways to respond to cowards on the internet but you just know that this is gonna be a recurring problem because some folks can’t fathom not being a prick. These people are grown ass adults and they’re bullying children? Embarrassing as fuck. Get a life
Annabeth got cast for the Lightning Thief TV show! So in celebration I drew a little thing of Annabeth from the book and Annabeth from the musical cheering her on!
Awww!!!
OK, so…I was this morning old when I found out that:
1) There’s going to be a Percy Jackson and the Olympians TV series…
2) …on Disney+
3) The cast has apparently just been announced (was seeing some stuff on Tumblr but was thinking it was some teen thing like the Dracula thing I don’t really care about don’t @ me) and Annabeth is being portrayed by a BLACK girl!
Someone did a fan art of the new Annabeth being welcomed by the Movie Annabeth and the Stage Annabeth.
(I hope she’s treated better than Amandla Stenberg, the Black actress who played Rue in The Hunger Games.)
All I ask is that they put her hair, perferably in a ponytail, but up and out of her face at all is fine because I’m tired of men In media making girls in movies fight with their hair down. Like no girl fights with their hair down if they can avoid it. Thanks for coming to my ted talk
Annabeth is Annabeth because she faces and fights monsters and she isn’t afraid. In the real world, we have our own demons and monsters. And our New Annabeth has been facing those monsters since she was announced. Already Leah Jeffries has proven when she shouldn’t have had to, that SHE IS ANNABETH.
She is Annabeth and she IS a BOOK ACCURATE Annabeth. Annabeth in the books isn’t Annabeth because she’s blonde, many other characters were blonde too. Her hair and race didn’t make her Annabeth.
Annabeth is Annabeth because she is intelligent, quick footed, a careful thinker, strategist, architect, creative. She is Annabeth because she’s insecure, doesn’t trust easy, lonely, can honestly be as impulsive as Percy at times, prideful. She is confident, sure and unsure, independent, caring.
Annabeth is powerful and strong and I have no doubt that Leah Sava Jeffries is too.
Just found out one of my students is reading Mark of Athena for the first time. They had read up to son of Neptune and had heard from lots of people how good MoA was.
I told them it was one of my favs but I sobbed.
This other kid who over heard was like, SAME!
The best part of my job is nerding out with my kids.
I honestly don’t even come on this website much anymore but I am breaking my silence to shout this from the rooftops. I don’t care what the reaction to this is, I stand by it 10000000000% and you’re not changing my mind.
Is it okay to be excited about the casting? Yes!!! Of course!! Is it also okay to wish there had been a different outcome? ALSO YES.
(And for those of you who are ready to click away, or turn into a furious keyboard warrior before going any further, I sincerely challenge you to read till the end. A weak-minded person refuses to examine things from anything other than their own perspective. Prove me wrong!!!!)
Here’s the real talk most of you aren’t ready to hear. If Rick Riordan collaborated with Disney+ to develop an original show with original characters, with a totally new plot and story and everything, and this girl was cast as the main female lead and people said “Ugh, this is so disappointing, why is she black????” THAT WOULD BE RACIST. If, in our current scenario someone said “I really wish she wasn’t black, black people are ugly/stupid/bad actors/etc.” THAT WOULD BE RACIST. Saying “Annabeth was a white girl with blonde hair in the books so I wish she was being portrayed as a white girl with blonde hair in the show” IS NOT RACIST.
We live in a society that preys on the majority of the population’s desire to be good. And I really and truly do believe that–most people are GOOD!! No normal sane person wants to be labeled as a racist. Unfortunately, people with nefarious intentions know this and have begun using this word as a weapon. Don’t agree with me?? You’re a racist!!!!!! In that person’s eyes, they are on superior moral ground, therefore they have already won the “argument”. All productive conversation is shut down. This word has become so normalized that it downplays actual REAL HARMFUL racism that is hurting people around the world on a daily basis. RACISM IS REAL. It exists anywhere that humans look different from each other. It can have devastating consequences. And I find it incredibly disrespectful to the victims of it to throw this word around as loosely as we do now.
All it takes is about five seconds of critical thinking to realize that maybe the majority of people who are expressing disappointment about this are not all evil white supremacists. Guys. Annabeth Chase is one of the most well-known middle grade/YA literary characters of all time. She has been a main character and/or featured in The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, The Last Olympian, The Lost Hero, The Mark of Athena, The House of Hades, The Blood of Olympus, The Sword of Summer, The Hammer of Thor, The Ship of the Dead, The Tower of Nero, and several short stories and novellas: The Demigod Diaries, The Demigod Files, The Staff of Serapis, The Crown of Ptolemy. Her first appearance was in The Lightning Thief, which was published in 2005. This is a character who has been living in people’s minds for damn near twenty years. She has been depicted by both fan artists AND professional artists alike for that entire time as a white girl with blonde hair. She is smack dab in the middle of the cover of House of Hades as a white girl with blonde hair. We have been staring at her in beloved fan arts as a white girl with blonde hair for YEARS (those of you as ancient as I am will remember the heyday of Burdge and Viria. Shout out to both of them, I LIVED for their work back in the day!). Saying that someone is racist for wanting a beloved and well-known character they have been visualizing for seventeen years to look the way they were DEPICTED for seventeen years RACISTS for doing so is just SILLY.
Saying a character’s physical appearance means nothing is equally as silly. Apparently everyone is too young to remember or has conveniently forgotten the uproar that was heard and felt when Alexandra Daddario portrayed Annabeth as a brunette. If you talked to a PJO fan about the movie back in 2010, I can ASSURE you, one of the first things out of their mouths was: “Annabeth is supposed to have blonde hair!!!!!!!” People did not like that choice of actress and it was simply because she did not resemble the physical description of Annabeth in the books. Anyone else remember the fuss that was made over Daniel Radcliffe not having green eyes as Harry Potter?? Or the bad dye job they gave Josh Hutcherson to play Peeta?? None of those things involved race. Book fans STILL complained about them. The bottom line is this: die-hard fans want the actors on screen to look like the characters they imagined in their minds. AND THAT IS OKAY!!!!!!!
Guess what??? I would be JUST as pissed if they cast Percy as a redhead (and for those of you saying he was cast as a blonde, mark my words…they’ll still dye his hair black. And if they don’t at this point, it’ll just be to try and prove a point). I would be JUST as pissed if, down the road, they cast Hazel as a white girl, Leo as a blonde white kid, Piper and Frank as ANYTHING other than Cherokee and Chinese. What they are in the book is what I want to see on the screen. I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH BLACK PEOPLE. I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THIS GIRL AS A HUMAN BEING OR AN ACTRESS. DIVERSITY SHOULD BE CELEBRATED. I JUST WANT ANNABETH TO LOOK LIKE SHE LOOKS IN THE BOOKS. THAT’S REALLY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s honestly not that deep!!!!!!!!!!!
It has nothing to do with white people vs black people, it just simply has to do with book fans wanting to see what they saw in their minds for nearly two decades play out on a screen in front of them. That’s it!!!!!!!!!
Calling people racists over this is immature and cheap, you guys. People on this site (and in life in general) really need to learn how to disagree without becoming hostile and dramatic. If you’re happy and excited about the casting, that’s great! I’m happy you’re happy. There is so much negative bad shit in the world, anything you can find to be happy about is great. Leah Sava Jeffries is a beautiful little girl. I’m sure she’s sweet and intelligent and an extremely talented actress. I would never ever want to see her bullied or harassed for any of this and anyone who does so should be condemned. (Honestly though, 99.9% of internet “haters” have the intellectual and emotional maturity of the mountain troll from the first Harry Potter so trying to explain to them that this is not only pointless, but morally wrong, is a waste of time and effort). I can say all of this AND also say that she is not who I would have liked to see play Annabeth. That does not make me a racist. It makes me a book purist. Learn to recognize the difference, guys.
SAYING THAT YOU’RE “DISAPPOINTED SHE ISN’T WHITE LIKE SHE IS IN THE BOOKS” IS JUST AS RACIST AS SAYING “DISAPPOINTED THAT ANNABETH IS BLACK”
JUST CUZ YOU AREN’T USING THE WORD BLACK IN YOUR SENTENCE DOESNT MEAN YOU AREN’T BEING RACIST.
I can literally picture this girl telling Walker Scobell that he drools in his sleep and that’s all I care about. I took one look at her face and I JUST KNOW that she is gonna be capable of pulling off every witty line from Annabeth. Like I’m ready.
The kids are state testing and they get to pick a book to read if they finish early. At least one of the Percy Jackson books/Heroes of Olympus was in the hands of the kids. So like about half of them were treading Percy Jackson and I find that amazing
I’ve seen a lot of people say that The Percy Jackson fandom is all just a bunch of adults and let me just tell you. I can PROMISE you. That there are a bunch of 9-12 year olds currently OBSESSED with Percy Jackson. And I spend my entire day with a bunch of 9-12 year olds as an educator. Believe me— They are OBSESSED with Percy Jackson and I mean it. They ask me every single day for a PJO tv series update. We get into Percy Jackson conversations all the time.
But here’s the thing, like we all started out, most of them are not allowed to have social media yet so you don’t see a lot of them on places like tumblr and Twitter but I can promise you there is already an ENTIRE Generation of young little Demigods in this fandom.
They were ecstatic when I told them today that they had finally cast Percy Jackson and since they don’t have social media and don’t know who Walker Scobell is they asked me if I thought he’d be a good Percy.
I promised them that they wouldn’t be disappointed.
Trust me this fandom has a whole wave of Demigods that are too young to meet y’all yet. But they are there.
— an OG adult fan who had to wait for the books to come out who spends her days with the younger generation of demigods
I only have time for a quick doodle cuz finals stuff but i can absolutely see these kids fake crying on television and giving out gabes phone number to fuck with him, I absolutely can
