Hi! In this post I will be talking about Annabeth. I’ll use the points I see that people use to say why she is a bad character, and counter them
1.She was rude to Rachel.
Imagine this. You were best friends with someone, and you secretly have a crush on them. You grow very close, then you find out your best friend is almost certainly going to die next summer. You want to spend all the time you can with your best friend, because you think they’re going to die soon. Then your best friend meets someone else. They become close friends and start spending more time with each other. Your best friend/crush starts showing hints that they could like the other person romantically. You’re going to be very upset, aren’t you? It’s probably your friend’s last summer, and it seems that they would rather spend it with someone they’ve known for only a few months than you. They way Annabeth treated Rachel, and sometimes Percy, can’t be justified. But Annabeth was a young teenager that had a huge crush, her feelings of jealousy are very normal. Also no one talks about the way Percy felt jealous towards Luke and Thalia for being Annabeth’s friend, or when he wasn’t that nice to Thalia again for being Annabeth’s friend.
2. She is ‘abusive’
Annabeth is not abusive.
The main reason I hear people say she’s abusive is the judo-flip, and I’m not going to go into detail here because I already have a post on it.
But basically, she lost it for a few seconds because of all the trauma she endured over the last 8 months, and she thought Percy still had the Achilles’ heal so it wouldn’t hurt. There’s a high chance she apologised off screen. It only happened once, while actual abuse is repeated. I’m not justifying it btw. But she had valid reasons for it, and it's shown throughout the series she is not good at expressing her emotions.
Another reason I see is because she calls Percy ‘Seaweed Brain.’ Having nicknames for each other is just normal for 2 young best friends. It’d almost be unrealistic if they didn’t. My best friend calls me stupid, dumb and all that all the time, but it doesn’t hurt because it’s coming from her. If, let’s say someone I wasn’t familiar with called me that, then I would feel hurt. This is probably the same for Percy, as he stopped Thalia and Alex from calling him that.
3.She didn’t like Tyson
I see people hate on her for this, and they don’t mention that Percy and Grover didn’t like him solely because he was a cyclops, and Percy at one point was even ashamed to call him his brother, while Annabeth had real childhood trauma associated with cyclopes. Honestly, if I were her, I would be scared of them too.
4.She thinks everyone else is dumb and she is the smartest/She thinks Percy is dumb
There is nothing in any canon text in PJO or HoO that even implies this. She does not consider everyone else as dumb, and she is aware of her intelligence, which is a good thing.
She has said herself that she recognises that Percy is intelligent, just because she has a nickname for him (which he knows is not serious), doesn’t mean she actually thinks that.
In the end, Annabeth has a fatal flaw of pride, and the fact that she recognised it at such a young age, and was even able to admit it is incredible, and I see many more people talk about her flaws rather than her good side, because some people choose to ignore it. She is a good person, don’t let some of her worst traits overshadow her great ones.
Yeah, that’s all I can think of. If you have any more, let me know. I guess it’s just a matter of opinion, but I think some people make her out as a lot worse than she actually is - she is a human, she has flaws, and if she lacked these flaws she would be a ‘Mary Sue,’ and no one would be able to connect with her. Thanks for reading!