on the one hand this is probably useful for camouflage, on the other hand it’s still fucking hilarious that from the perspective of moss, sloths are apparently indistinguishable from small immobile boulders

I think Riordan is a guy with an incredibly enflated sense of entitlement that feels like he’s the mightiest of the mighty whities and white saviors because he once won a stonewall award. 

his intentions might have been good when he first wrote hoo, but you know… we’re well beyond that point, it’s been years since the series was finished, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. there are many things that people forget when they mention riordan’s “well-meaning representation:” 

• in percy jackson and the olympians, every character of color is either a monster (medusa, kelly the empusai) or dies (ethan, beckendorf, zoe nightshade, arguably michael yew) with the exception of chris rodriguez (who i’m assuming is latino on the basis of his name and what little we know of his looks). this does not show any “well-meaning-ness” on his part, even in the beginning.
• despite his poor choices when writing heroes of olympus, he still stands by them, as he says in his essay defending his writing of piper. 
• despite claiming that he didn’t know about sensitivity readers, or that they weren’t a thing in the early 2010s when he wrote hoo, the issues continue with his current works, as seen in TOA, where piper  is still sexualised (this time, by apollo), and riordan uses reyna as a mouthpice to make fun of those who hc reyna as a lesbian and those who thought apollo/reyna was going to be a thing, as was foreshadowed in hoo (despite how objectively bad that would’ve been, considering caleo and sadie/anubis it wouldn’t have been that out there for riordan to write it, no?).
• his acknowledgement of criticism, plus what happened with the big lesbian reyna fiasco of 2017, when he deleted his tumblr, shows that the criticism is reaching his ears, and that he’s choosing to ignore it. 
• he’s only ever acknowledged three points of criticism: why he didn’t make reyna a lesbian, why he doesn’t think piper is not written in a racist way, and why he thinks samirah (from magnus chase) wasn’t written in a racist and islamophobic way (more on that by a muslim iraqi american). in all three of them he refuses to see where he went wrong. 
• he accuses his fanbase, mostly teenagers and middleschoolers, of “bullying” him when they point out why his writing is problematic: 

• If he knows about sensitivity readers, why didn’t he consult one when writing lavinia, who was introduced in 2019, just last year? if he knows about the piper criticism, why did he still sexualise her in the burning maze? if he knows about the particular way in which readers have imagined reyna, why did he shit all over that and made fun of them in the meanwhile? he could’ve had her join the hunters, if that’s what she truly wanted (show me a 17 year old that would willingly spend eternity with a bunch of preteens….) without even MENTIONING thalia (thalia/reyna has its own problems, but i digress) or ““shipping””.
• if he’s got “good intentions” why did he do all that? 
• if he’s got “good intentions” why does he imply his fans of color are only fixating in his works and not reading own voices? 
• if he’s got “good intentions” why does he call criticism “bullying” and escentially throw his fans of color under the bus?
• what about everything he hasn’t acknowledged? 
• what about fatphobia and racism when depicting frank? 
• what about his antiblack depiction of hazel (light hair and golden eyes)? 
• what about his “edgy” age gaps (frank/hazel, sadie/anubis, calypso/leo - incidentally, all between at least one poc)? 
• what about his lesbophobia in the dark prophecy? 
• what about his racist depiction of leo?
• what about his xenophobic depiction of irish people?
• what about him hiring an artist for his official art that used to have a public blog where she drew child porn? (@viriasecrets, which has gone private after it was FINALLY called out a few months ago, despite being up for years)
• the same artist that draws annabeth, a white girl, darker than (or at least just as dark as) some of the characters of color? 
• what about having the holocaust and the american civil war be conflicts between demigods, and having those same “sides” be alies and heroes? and not acknowledging it ever other than hazel being like “oh, that’s not cool”? 
• hades is literally said to look like hitler in the lightning thief, because of the heavy implication that hitler was a son of hades. how is that “well-intentioned”? 

If you had sent this ask about his good intentions in oh, 2016 / early 2017, maybe it would stand on its own a little bit more. Even if his depictions were problematic, only hoo was out, and that had been his first* “inclusive” series, and we knew toa was coming along, so some of it could’ve been fixed. He still had a chance to fix it and show growth, show that he truly cared about the people he’s representing, despite being sloppy about how he did it the first time.

 Now, however, having seen how Riordan has turned out to be… not so much. His attitude doesn’t show caring, it shows entitlement and a steadfast refusal to listen to his fans, listen to constructive criticism, and grow as a writer. 

*this is not counting tkc, which was posted at around the same time as hoo but was never as big as pjo or hoo, and which, as far as i know and taking away some issues, like sadie’s romantic relationships, was not as problematic or controversial. ~mod ara.

why? what have you heard? WHO HAVE YOU BEEN TALKING TO?!

it is definitely about the age gap anon! and it’s bad for calypso x leo, apollo x reyna, and anubis x sadie in the kane chronicles. they are all equally bad. 

immortal/mortal pairings already have some complications re: power imbalances (especially when it’s a god/demon/whatever x human), even if the mortal part is an adult, but -as should be obvious- it’s even worse when the mortal is a teen. 

So far Apollo has spent the previous books bemoaning his previous love interests -  Hyacinthus, Daphne, Commodus, etc… all of them mortal adults. he flirts with another adult guy. hello, he spends time with all of his literal chindren, most of whom are the same age as reyna. nevermind the ones we don’t know of, who are older than her, all the ones that lived and died before she was born, etc. 

Riordan completely infantilised him (and added meg, i guess) to sell the books as middle grade, but that doesn’t mean that he’s actually 16 years old. hell, he was made to look 16 because zeus wanted to humilliate him. I honest to god wasn’t expecting that he’d get a love interest in the book for this very reason: “adult relationships” aren’t expanded too much in chb chronicles, as it should be for its category.

The absolute same thing happens with Calypso. As a matter of fact, Riordan completely backpedaled on it, but in Battle of the Labyrinth, when Percy is in Ogygia, he says something along the lines of “she could be 16 or 30″. Meaning that she doesn’t even look 16. She even acted more like an adult in PJO than she did in HOO/TOA, which goes to show that Riordan completely changed his mind about her.

As for Anubis, just because he’s possesing the body of a teenager doesn’t mean that he is one. He’s still like, what, six thousand years old? more? Sadie is THIRTEEN. Do I have to say that again? Sadie Kane is THIRTEEN. Thirteen year old girls are having their first kisses, not dating immortal gods. 

Listen, this doesn’t get called out, hardly ever, even though it should. I think it happened now because of the ammount of people that headcanon Reyna as a lesbian, and how Riordan shut them down and now made her -apparently-  straight, but it SHOULD. It’s wrong for him to write this, and it’s worse that he’s selling it to kids (not even teens, kids). 

It’s never alright to pair up adults with teenagers, anon. Never. Not even fictional ones who are written as “childish”. ~mod ara.