So, imagine this: a woman is kidnapped and hit in the head so hard she loses all her memories. But luckily, a neighboring town finds her and takes her to the police station to reunite with her boyfriend. The entierty of the station is there to watch them reunite. When he gets there, he judo flips her to the ground and makes her promise not to do 'it' again - 'it' being getting kidnapped and unvoluntarily losing her memories. She agrees and they kiss.

Everyone would call a therapist, at the least, and someone would probably slap the man across the face. Okay. But when Annabeth does it to Percy, in the almost the exact same circumstances, it suddenly becomes hashtag couple goals? No. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to attack people who ship Percabeth. I've just seen a lot of people being attacked by people online for not shipping Percabeth, so I wanted to try and reason with you guys as to why they might not. That's it. This is just my opinion, and feel free to close this fic and never think about it again.

Now, this isn't to say I don't ship Percy and Annabeth at all. I do. I ship Annabeth with Piper. Annabeth has too much pride, and Piper is scared she's not enough. I think they balance each other well, and that they could help each other grow as would be a nice friends to lovers trope, and a lot of people ship this anyways. But my Percy ship... oh boy.

Yup, I ship Perachel. As in, Percy and Rachel Elizabeth Dare. I think they're a good match, and have always thought that Perachel got an unecessary amount of hate. Percy and Rachel work well together. Another probelm I have with Percabeth is that Percy and Annabeth are contantly compared intelligence wise. Their nicknames for each other (Wise Girl and Seaweed Brain) are the major indicator of this. Annabeth's is praising her intelligence, but Percy's is just insulting him.

But not Percy and Rachel. They're both creative, outgoing people who enjoy being outdoors. Some people say that Annabeth balances out Percy by being the thing that dies him down to earth, so to speak. Well, Rachel does the same thing. Not necessarily in intelligence, but in her bluntness, sarcasm, and common sense. Rachel was treated horribly, simply because she had a cruch on Percy. And another thing - Rachel respects Percy. Annabeth, at least in the beginning of the series, is always surprised when Percy comes up with a useful idea.

I don't know when this sidetracked into a shipping rant. Back on topic. Let's focus on Annabeth's behavior towards Rachel. Now, I know they were just teenagers and that jealousy is common, but Annabeth was downright horrible to Rachel, doubitng her abilities and constantly insulting her. I was amazed that Rachel wrote these off and ignored them. If the Rachel and Annabeth tension happened while Percabeth was dating, I wouldn't have as big of a problem with it. But at this point, they were just friends, as far as Percy was concerned. Annabeth was mean to Rachel simply because she liked Percy, which a lot of people did, and everyone whote this off as cute jealousy.

Now, Annabeth isn't the only one at fault here. Remember in Tartarus, where Annabeth was suddenly all Percy could care about? Not his mother, who put up with Gabe to protect him for literal years. Not Grover, who was his best friend and stuck by him amid bullying for years. No, it was Annabeth, the girl who constantly insults him.

One thing that I've heard is that Annabeth was in a difficult place after Percy went missing, and wasn't thinking clearly. Now, that would hold up slightly if the judo flip had been the only instance of Annabeth hitting/hurting Percy. Remember when Annabeth, Percy, Thalia, and Grover were retrieving the Di Angelos, and when Percy asked who he should dance with, Annabeth literally punched him in the stomach? Reverse the roles again. If a guy had punched a girl in the stomach and asked her to dance with him, everyone would be flipping their lids. But no, it's cute.

I'm not going to the extreme and saying that Annabeth or Percy is abusive, or toxic, or anything like that, and I'm not bashing Percabeth shippers. I'm just tired of being attacked for not thinking Percabeth is the OTP of the century. And I like and respect both characters. I just think they would be better in seperate relatinships, and should remain close friends (on a side note, let's normalize male/female friendships).

Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk, lol. Have a good day or night :D
(Not beta read, please forgive any spelling or grammar errors)