Aaron Warner This, Aaron Warner That How About You Aaron Warn Me Before I Accidentally Stay Up Till 4

Aaron Warner this, Aaron Warner that— how about you Aaron Warn me before I accidentally stay up till 4 am reading.

guys, guess what!! i have a crush and he's not fictional !!!!

i know, shocker.

Medusa & Middle Eastern Representation

Hello! I’m Moon and I am Angry About Things, so I’m going to dive down a rabbit hole into one topic so I don’t cry! That topic is racism & islamophobia in PJO and I’m talking about Middle Eastern rep!

If you didn’t know, I’m Middle Eastern and I live in the Middle East and have lived here since birth. This means that I know first hand what people here are like and I can make fun of the stereotypes western media has made of us all I want. 

Where does Medusa come in? Well, in Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief, the gang crosses paths with Medusa. All fine and dandy, it’s just Medusa, the mythological monster that turns people into stone when you look at her that was killed by Perseus. 

But wait. It gets bad. 

Medusa is described to be Middle Eastern. Big yikes for being the only character in this book series to be somewhat Middle Eastern (Not counting Magnus Chase since I’m talking about Percy Jackson and the Olympians specifically). 

I’m going to paste in some direct quotes and talk y’all through them

–

Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle Eastern woman – at least, I assumed she was Middle Eastern, because she wore a long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was completely veiled. Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was about all I could make out. Her coffee-coloured hands looked old, but wellmanicured and elegant, so I imagined she was a grandmother who had once been a beautiful lady. (page 179, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

That black gown is called a burka (Or burqa) and it’s a viel like a hijab but it covers the entire body including the hands, so that’s factually incorrect. The thing is, using religious garments like a burka for the monster is not,, good. It’s taking something sacred and using it as a plot device. 

also can I add that you shouldn’t describe black or brown people’s skin colour with food?? Please???

Her accent sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, too. (page 179, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

Personal thing, but I read these books when I was like 10 and this part confused me so fucking much because I had no idea what a Middle Eastern accent is. I go to school with people from all around the Middle east and everyone has a unique accent and it’s impossible to classify one as a ‘middle eastern accent’, but I guess if you didn’t know much abotu the different accents that I’m around every day, you could just group them as one (Even though they sound WILDLY different).

this one is just a personal pet peeve, back to the actual complaints. 

She hadn’t taken off her head-dress, even to cook (page 182, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

This one might be Rick writing Percy knowing almost nothing about muslim tradition, but really. was this line necessary? I don’t think so. I don’t like it, you can say what you want with it. 

“Wrong?” Aunty Em said, reaching up to undo the wrap around her head. (Page 186, Percy jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

Wrap?????? What??????? It isn’t a Hijab??? It’s a literal veil?? Look at this picture and tell me if you see a wrap:

it’s literally a viel that gets put on by a fitted area at the top that holds it in place, there is no wrapping involved, Russel. 

My eyes rose to Aunty Em’s hands, which had turned gnarled and warty, with sharp bronze talons for fingernails (Page 186, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief pdf)

So anyways, she turns into a literal monster! Isn’t that an amazing way to have the only Middle Eastern-esque character in your books turn out! Please take my advice on this: Don’t make a race that is frequently stereotyped as bombers, terrorists and villians into a literal monster. That shit’s bad, don’t do it.

That’s all the quotes, but I still have more to say!

The whole thing about the Middle Eastern woman putting them under a trance and trying to make them stay is really, really racist (for lack of a better word). It’s making the only Middle Eastern character in the series (I know I’m repeating this a lot, but I need to emphasise this) a racist portrayl of an entire race of people. 

It was not fun for me, reading that part of the book and going “Oh hey! It’s someone like me!” and then continuing and finding that it’s a monster who tried to kill them. And it won’t be fun for other Middle Eastern kids who go and readthe book too. I know that I can’t change what’s already written and published, but I can yell my thoughts into the void and hope that it helps another author writing a Middle Eastern character. 

My final words are a few things that I can tell you as a native that you should keep in mind when writing a Middle Eastern character:

-Not every female wears a hijab (or some other variation)

-The Arab World includes nothern Africa, while the Middle East ends at Egypt. They are two separate things that intersect. 

-Middle Easterns don’t have a fixed look. Not every Middle Eastern has ‘coffee coloured skin’ and ‘dark mocha hair’ or whatever the fuck it is. Some of us have blonde-brown hair (my best friend), some of us have lighter skin (Me. not light enough to be white but lighter than what people imagine when they think Middle East), some of us could pass for East/South-East Asian (my other best friend), etc etc. Try not to make your middle eastern character a stereotype of what we look like. 

-Don’t make them the villian/a monster if there are no other Middle Eastern characters on the good side. If you make the only character from a region that already gets stereotyped as evil and evil character, that’s racist. 

-Don’t use Islam or Islamic phrases willy nilly. A Middle Eastern character throwing in a phrase like ‘Bismillah’ or ‘Allahuakbar’ in wrong situations basically tells me you have no clue what you’re doing. Don’t be Rick. Reading the Quran a few times means nothing if you don’t consult someone who’s experienced in this topic. (Not me. Please, I’m not google. Go find stuff yourself.)

-Finally, Do your research. This goes towards any ethnicity or race or gender or sexuality or anything that you are not. Learn about them, talk to people, get educated. Then go back and write your story. 

james “and ill be in denial for at least a little while, what about the plans we made?” potter

"I'll just take the couch—"

NO YOU FUCKING WON'T???

You better get in that bed right this second, young man.

“who hurt you?”

crooked kingdom bro.

:(