nightowl asked Rick Riordan:

Please feel free to ignore this question if you want— I was just curious about your personal stance on fanart depictions of Annabeth. Some fans believe that Annabeth should only be drawn as a black girl from now on, and that people who continue to draw “whiteabeth” are contributing to racist responses about Leah’s casting. What are your thoughts on this?

Rick Riordan Look, my opinion is not the ultimate authority on this, and people are allowed to have different feelings about fan art representation. I get the concern. Personally, one of the things I love about fans making the Percy Jackson world their own is that they can explore many different representations of the characters. Annabeth, Percy and the rest have always appealed to many kinds of people. Book Annabeth was originally conceived of as white. That is true. Leah Jeffries is an INCREDIBLE Annabeth -- in my opinion the absolute epitome of Annabeth's character -- and she is Black. The many Lightning Thief musical productions that we've seen staged around the U.S. and beyond have cast actors of all races and genders and body types playing Percy, Annabeth and Grover. I love that. The whole point of Percy Jackson is that anyone can be a hero, and heroes can look like anyone in the world. It's not what you look like that makes you Annabeth or Percy. It's what you do when you face a critical moment, whether or not you step up, and whether you have the character of a hero. Because of that, I don't feel like we should be laying down a law that Annabeth fan art must look one way only, and every other type is wrong. I've seen some incredible fan art of Desi Percy Jackson, Latino Percy Jackson, Black Percy Jackson, and on and on. Why not? It's wonderful that all kinds of kids can imagine themselves as Percy, whether or not it is a 'canon' description in the books or whether it matches the casting on screen. As for Annabeth, absolutely, Leah deserves respect as Annabeth. She IS Annabeth in the TV show, chosen by me, and I am confident that once the show is out, she is how most people will imagine Annabeth from then on. I don't think drawing Annabeth fan art in different ways is automatically or inherently disrespectful of her in the role of Annabeth, however. Could it become a problem or be done with problematic intent? Sure. In which case, it's wrong. But most of what I have seen is just people imagining/head-canoning Annabeth in different ways for their own enjoyment and artistic expression, often based on how they imagined her while they read the books. As long as it's not done with any negative intention, I don't have a problem with that. The big reason I prefer books to TV or movies is that books allow space for your imagination to create the way you see the characters. If I wanted to show you a picture that said, 'This is exactly the way Annabeth looks and she cannot look like anything else,' I wouldn't write novels. I'd have to be a visual artist, and I'm a terrible visual artist. Again, this is all just my two cents! The only thing I can say for sure is that I do not have all the answers and I am always learning.

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