Issues with Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan

The Good of Rick's LGBTQ+ Representation

 This book will be referring to Alex by she/her pronouns, sorry if you have a problem with that. Alex has specified that when she is not there to tell you her pronouns, she should be referred to by she/her pronouns, I'm pretty sure, and she prefers not to use they/them.

 The next chapter will be a chapter discussing the bad of Rick's representation of LGBTQ+ people, but despite the purpose of this book, I felt the need to write this chapter beforehand, because there were good parts to his representation of queer characters.

 When you think of LGBT+ characters (I'm too lazy to add the 'Q' every time okay, the plus is still there) in Rick Riordan's books, I'm sure the first characters to come to mind will be Nico di Angelo and Alex Fierro, and maybe Apollo.

 I'm actually really happy that major characters in his books are gay, and trans and genderfluid because despite me not actually being gay, trans or genderfluid, it still managed to make me feel seen.

 Nico was actually the reason I started researching different sexualities, and the reason I later realised that I'm pansexual. I hadn't even thought about what a sexuality was before him, but when I later started actually experiencing attraction if Nico wasn't there I probably would have felt a lot less comfortable with myself.

 Alex really helped me in figuring out that I'm a demigirl, too. I was aware of non-binary and transgender as identities and was trying to figure out whether I was non-binary, because I knew I wasn't fully a different gender, if that makes sense. Alex opened up my eyes to gender identities that are under the non-binary umbrella but aren't the same thing as non-binary.

 So Alex and Nico really helped me figure out my identity, and though I still haven't come out to anyone in real life (as demiromantic and demigirl at least, my friends know I'm pan) online I usually prefer they/them pronouns and it's actually helped me out a lot.

 The existence of Alex and Nico have probably helped a lot of people, including myself, feel more represented and more comfortable with themselves, because LGBT+ people deserve to feel represented.

 LGBT+ characters were so much rarer ten, five or even three years ago, and we're still not represented very often- and even if we are present in books, movies or TV series, they're either the gay best friend or the generic trans girl who has two lines and fades into the background a page later who could be replaced by a plant or a shoe without affecting the story.

 Other LGBT+ characters include characters like Piper, Emmie, Josephine, Lavinia, Shel, Will, Magnus and Reyna (note that I'm not including gods and goddesses like Apollo, Aphrodite, Ganymede etc. because Rick didn't have a choice in those).

 There's much more than the average children's book series, and that's a good thing.