Basically every USA phandom member
person: you come across really chill
me: yeah i suppose i am
my constant, unending, internal monologue: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
“why do people think percy is so dumb?”
because of Annabeth and her narrow perception of intelligence as being just “book smarts”. one of her biggest flaws as a character wasn’t just her pride, it was also her own ignorance to different forms of intelligence and her tendency to get pissed off when people didn’t understand her complex explanations/the science or engineering skills that she had already honed
most kids reading the original series would relate to annabeth. after all, they were readers too! they could understand the perception of “im smart because i read and they’re dumb because they don’t”, so when annabeth calls percy “seaweed brain”, affectionately or not, and pseudo calls him stupid throughout the series, it has specific implications of percy’s intelligence that the reader ends up mirroring, regardless of the lack of truth.
i’m not going to go into why percy was smart because posts like that exist but in general, he’s analytical, he’s crafty, and he has a way with words (siren blood lmao). however, in the demigod files she was like “idk if he’s dumb or not” and everytime percy doesn’t understand that maybe a girl might like him (because hey he hasn’t been bullied every day of his school life by guys and girls alike or anything) he was teased, eye-rolled at, or outright called stupid.
like i love annabeth but just because you’re not good at science/math/school/memorizing/etc. doesn’t mean your dumb?? i find it a little strange that rick would have made the daughter of the goddess of wisdom so focused on book smarts rather than actual honest wisdom
