Chase or Dare? Annabeth Chase versus Rachel Elizabeth Dare

            If you’re looking to debate who is a better partner in crime—in both quests and romance—for Percy Jackson, this is not the post for you.  If you hold any doubt on that front, I would honestly be surprised.  I have never doubted from page one who Percy was fated to be with.

            When Rachel Elizabeth Dare was introduced in The Titan’s Curse, I won’t deny that I was intrigued.  As the books proceed, these two characters, arguably the two most important (teenage) females in Percy’s life, are compared and contrasted increasingly more often.  When I originally read the series a few years ago, I hadn’t paid much attention to this.  The second time around I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the questions Riordan was raising:  not just who’s better for Percy, but who is the better girl?

            When I first heard Rachel’s name mentioned on my second read through, all I could remember from years previous was that I liked her, and that I was excited for her to come into play.  The instant we met a girl with crazy red hair, I was ecstatic.  And then I kept reading. 

As time went on, I feared Rachel was doomed to follow in the footsteps of so many redheads gone by.  Much like Amy Pond, Rachel has a tendency to fall in to the cliché of the Fronting Feisty Female (FFF for short).  The FFF is a character who talks a good act—very brave, very forceful, indefinitely right—but when forced to walk this talk, they struggle.  They are often in peril and very rarely manage to get themselves out of these situations.  The FFF instead relies on their typically male protagonist to save them.  There were several instances in which I thought Rachel may be going down this path.  For instance, in The Last Olympian, Rachel’s in a crashing helicopter and Annabeth, being the amazingly generous demigod that she is, goes to her rescue.  But, upon reflection after finishing The Last Olympian, I realized I was being a bit biased towards Rachel.  For goodness sakes, she was in a crashing helicopter!  I kept yelling at the book for her to get up and do something about it.  But, thinking a little more logically, I tried to take a step back and realize how terrifying that situation must’ve been.

            It was then that I had a realization about Annabeth.  She’s such an excellent warrior and fighter that, in the narrative of the series, you can’t help but think all women should be that marvelous.  And most of them are—Clarisse, Katie, even Silena are all very strong, all worthy of their own posts.  Rachel, as excellent as she is for a mortal, she is, in fact, just that—a mortal.  She’s very straightforward, very helpful and resourceful, brave and demanding.  All of these are good things, especially when it means she can successfully throw a hairbrush at Kronos and manage to incapacitate him in some form.

            Unfortunately for Rachel, Annabeth is just a little bit better, at just about everything.  I recently read an article about the Exceptional Woman, which was fascinating.  But, at the same time, it shattered the illusion surrounding a lot of my favorite female characters.  Annabeth is one such example.  While there are several other girls at Camp Half-Blood, for a majority of the early books you get the sense that it is Annabeth alone, playing at the boys game of being a hero.  She waits and waits for her first quest, something she doesn’t truly receive until The Battle of the Labyrinth, might I add.  In the meantime, she works to keep Percy and Grover alive, all the while doing things far better than either of those two can put together. While I don’t think Annabeth is solely an Exceptional Woman, she certainly has some aspects of the trope. 

            Annabeth’s saving grace from fully receiving the Exceptional Woman title is that she mourns, she cries, she isn’t perfect 100% of the time.  She lingers far too long on the Luke issue, which makes her far more human than the Exceptional Woman is allowed to be.  She feels genuine betrayal and guilt over what has happened to Luke.  While this is the biggest struggle the character goes through, it’s what I like best about her.  Not all girls fall for a demigod who turns evil and is, therefore, forbidden territory; girls do, however, fall for boys who turn out to be meaner than they were originally thought to be.  It’s very realistic and it’s written to be very believable.  It humanizes her.

            Contrastingly, while Rachel appears to feel pain over her father and her confusion towards her feelings for Percy, she suffers in a far less believable way.  We see her suffer about her father, but this story doesn’t have the closure the Annabeth/Luke saga does.  This takes weight off of her suffering and makes it seem shallow in some way.  She proves that she is willing to go to the end of the world for Percy and his cause, but she takes little effort to get to know the others at camp, (at least in the first series, that is) making her motivations appear to be nothing but feelings for a boy, or ambitions to be anything but mortal part of the “in crowd” that is the demigods. 

Unfortunately, the thing I love most about Rachel is what makes her less relatable as a character—she’s beautifully straightforward, going so far as to essentially ask Percy what a girl has to do to get him to kiss her.  While I love this about her and I wish more women were like this, I fear they aren’t, even after exiting the dreadful teenage years.  It takes a lot of courage to lay things out on the line like that, and it’s an attribute not many people actually have. 

            Annabeth, while not as straightforward as Rachel, has a different and distinct sort of directness about her.  Instead of asking Percy what it takes to get him to kiss her, she just decides to kiss him herself.  That clearly takes even more courage than Rachel’s question and answer process.  However, the factor of a life and death situation in Mt. St. Helen’s should be considered as well.  The cause of Annabeth’s directness is what is possibly even more crucial than the honesty itself.  Annabeth is, of course, very wise.  She knows the weight of words; once something is said, it can never be taken back.  Part of the reason I think she waits so long to give an answer to Percy’s questions about Luke is that she is still processing.  That being said, once Annabeth is done processing and has come to an answer, you can rely on that answer to be the sole truth, without any hesitation.  I don’t know if it makes her more relatable, but it certainly makes her more reliable. 

From Bella to Katniss:  Are Annabeth and Rachel good role models?  Let’s start with Annabeth.  Annabeth is perhaps the best young adult role model to come along since Hermione Granger.  She’s intelligent.  She may or may not be pretty—she doesn’t really care, but she knows that she’s got her brains and that she can use those to do whatever she wants, whether it be defeating monsters or building the new Olympus.  She struggles with love, but she doesn’t let it run her life.  How could she?  She’s got monsters to beat and a world to save.  The only hindrance I can see with Annabeth is, despite the fact that she claims to never be anybody’s sidekick, she really is almost always second in command to Percy.  It isn’t until the Heroes of Olympus series that this becomes less true.  When Percy is gone, all the campers immediately turn to Annabeth as their authority.  That says a lot about her character. 

Role Model Rating:  8/10

Rachel certainly has some redeeming role model characteristics.  She’s brave and loyal.  She’s artistic and fights for the causes she believes in with all her heart.  Honesty is high on her list of priorities; if she has a thought in her head, it’s coming out of mouth—not necessarily in a rude manner, she’s actually really rather nice.  This is possibly her best quality, the quality that almost makes her a better role model than Annabeth.  But I just can’t quite bring myself to rate her higher, as there’s some ambiguous quality to Miss Dare that leaves her just automatically ranking below Annabeth in my book.

Role Model Rating:  6/10

From Lorelai to Wonder Woman:  Are Annabeth and Rachel relatable?  Once again, we’ll start with Annabeth.  Annabeth’s immense struggle with what has happened to Luke makes her a very relatable character.  Notice, I did not say her struggle with what has happened to Luke and what that means in terms of her potential feelings for Percy.  For me, the truth she reveals to Luke at the end of The Last Olympian implies that those things were never truly connected to her.  She didn’t have lingering feelings for Luke that were preventing her from liking Percy; she had lingering guilt over what she could’ve done to help Luke that prevented her from pursuing anything romantic until she could sort him out.  This takes Percy out of the equation entirely, which actually makes her struggle with Luke far more authentic.  It’s driven by her own guilt, not her feelings for some outside party that didn’t really know the Luke she knew.  Add the fact that she feels personally responsible, and you’ve got a heap load of relatable factors.  On the other hand, she’s so brilliant at, well, everything that she can sometimes be difficult to connect with. 

Relatability Rating:  7/10

Unfortunately for Rachel, the quality that makes her almost the better role model of the two hits her harder when it comes to being relatable.  While I adore her straightforward attitude, it is something seen very infrequently in the real world.  She does, however, stand by her convictions and her causes.  There is also the added factor that she is the only Mortal to do several things—enter Camp Half-Blood, ascend to a position of power in their world and fight in the battle, amongst other things.  This has the audience rooting for her, as she gives us mere mortals an opportunity to join the world as well. 

Relatability Rating:  6/10

Amelia Pond--Bit Fairy Tale

Amelia Pond—Bit Fairy Tale

Amelia Pond—the girl who waited, impatiently, for over a decade, for a raggedy man to reappear and sweep her back off her feet.  There’s always been a bit of a mysticism surrounding Amy Pond.  She’s yet another a fiery redhead who holds no qualms about bossing the Doctor around.  She tells him when he’s wrong and when he’s right, holds his hand when he needs it, but, more often than not, screams when she needs him to come rescue her. 

            I tried to like Amy Pond.  I really did.  Those first few episodes were pretty good, before Rory became a factor.  Personally, I think Rory so outshines his fiancé that he inadvertently ends up making me hate her.  But, even before Rory made his grand premiere trip on the TARDIS in Vampires in Venice, I had some beef to raise with the redheaded Pond. 

            She’s fiery and feisty—almost to the point where it feels forced.  Donna’s temper felt forced at times, but we discovered it was due to deep-seated insecurities.  She was, therefore, vindicated.  If Amy Pond feels any form of anxiety fueling her feist, she certainly doesn’t hint at it.  Some could argue that she worries constantly that the Doctor will always keep her waiting.  She certainly doesn’t seem to have that fear in A Good Man Goes to War.  The God Complex also reveals that she has nothing but complete faith in her Doctor.  She knows beyond a shadow of doubt that not just one, but both “her boys” will be coming to her rescue.  It is only a matter of time. 

            This brings me to another aspect of Amy Pond that I have particular issue with.  There is no denying that companions aren’t always the brightest of characters on Doctor Who.  They infamously wander off and get taken hostage.  Most of the time, however, on New Who, if and when a companion gets taken they spend their time trying to escape or, at the very least, get some information out of their captors (I’m looking at you, Rose Tyler).  Amy, on the other hand, particularly in series six, simply seems to reside herself to the fact that the Doctor or Rory or, better yet, both will come and rescue her.  Why bother trying to escape?  They will come to her. 

            In series five this was the case less often.  She tried to escape from the Silurians, even employing some wit as she did so.  There were several other occasions of this.  But, what outweighs that in pure number are the sheer amount of times she’s taken.  I haven’t memorized the episodes, by any means, but it feels like there is very rarely an episode where Amy isn’t taken hostage or relying on the Doctor to save her.  Even in The Lodger, she’s safe in the TARDIS, but she’s still screaming out for the Doctor to save her.  In fact, it wasn’t until my mother pointed out the annoyance and frequency of the screaming that I realized just how awful it was.  Unfortunately, with that realization the illusion shattered and now I can’t stop noticing it.  It’s tragic, really. 

            Above I also referenced another thing Amy—and some girls similar to Amy in real life—actually do.  She refers to the Doctor and Rory as “her boys.”  This particular endearment, for whatever reason, has always grated on my nerves.  I would not wish to be clumped together and be referred to as “my girls” by some dude.  Therefore, why would I demean my guy friends by calling them “my boys?”  It’s the same attitude that allows women to slap men when they say something cheeky—yet another thing Amy does, might I add—but the second a man raises a hand it is, beyond a shadow of doubt, wrong.  It is, of course, wrong for anyone to slap anyone.  If you are above the age of five and are off the school playground, you should’ve found better ways of expressing yourself than by slapping someone or patronizing them with a clichéd nickname.  This just seems, to me, to be a sort of logic that should be…well, logical.  If you wish to be respected, treat them with respect.  This is something I think Amy tends to forget from time to time. 

I’m conflicted as to whom to blame for my developed dislike of Amy.  I’m not sure if it’s how the character is presented or how the character is written that made my dislike grow.  Honestly, whenever an opportunity to blame Satan Moffat arises, I feel inclined to do so.  Amy introduces concepts to the show I’m not a fan of—the most prevalent of which is love triangles and various other dramas involving love that haven’t been evident since the dreaded days of Martha.  She’s blind to Rory’s love for quite a bit of time, going so far as to assume he’s gay.  Repeatedly and frequently she treats him as if he’s below her.  I’m still convinced that, despite what she said in Asylum of the Dalek’s, she’s never loved him as much as he loved her.  Several times she let’s Rory think she loves the Doctor and not him; sure she corrects the error when they are reunited, but that’s got to be damaging in some shape or form.  She just seems cavalier at best and cruel at worst.

She also introduces a clichéd concept that I struggle to get behind anywhere I see it.  Amy is what I like to call the Fronting Feisty Female.  The Fronting Feisty Female (Let’s call it FFF, shall we?) has just enough feistiness to catch a man’s attention and keep it.  She’s spunky and sassy and says rude things when they need to be said.  But, at the end of the day, they get taken hostage and end up waiting on someone to come rescue them.  Sure, the FFF will say some snarky things to their captures while they wait.  They may even attempt to escape on their own.  But they are very rarely, if ever, successful.  After all, their function is not to succeed on their own.  It is to give a good show while they wait.  This is Amy to the core.  She is snarky and sassy and all those other things that we are supposed to adore.  But, as the episode carries on, she will undeniably end up waiting on her Doctor once more. 

From Bella to Katniss:  Is Amy a good role model?  She certainly isn’t a Bella, but she is by no means a Katniss either.  She doesn’t necessarily show any signs of requiring a man to feel “whole” or “complete,” although she does seem pretty quick to jump on the Doctor when it comes time to do so (well, time to do so in her mind), losing all thoughts of Rory at the drop of a hat in the process.  She knows what she wants, but, unlike Donna who sought the Doctor out, she simply waits for over a decade for the Doctor to come back, begging the question as to whether she is willing to go after what she wants.  In general, she isn’t proactive.  She doesn’t seem particularly clever, despite a few clever ideas.  What Amy really provides, is, for lack of a better word, companionship.  She comforts the Eleventh Doctor in a way that hasn’t been successful since the loss of Rose.  For that alone, she earns her keep on the TARDIS. 

Role Model Rating:  6/10

From Lorelai to Wonder Woman:  Is Amy relatable?  My main issue with Amy’s relatability as a character, especially coming off of Donna Noble, is that she’s just so…well, not to sound shallow, but she’s so beautiful.  I mean, she becomes a model for Pete’s sake.  The beauty behind (most) of the actors on Doctor Who is that they are attractive, but in a realistic way—they’re attractive enough that, if you were just to see them out and about, you would do a double take, but they’re not so attractive that you look at them and think they’re just too attractive to exist.  Amy is one of very few exceptions to this previously established rule.  It’s also almost as if she’s written to be just too awesome.  She’s the ultimate feisty girl, fulfilling every guy’s definition of “the feisty girl.”  It’s just too clichéd to be relatable. 

Relatability Rating:  3/10

Hello from the Scratched Camera!

As my introduction says, I'm K.A. Saylor.  English teacher, aspiring author, and nerd enthusiast.  Sarcastic, snarky, snarcastic, smart-ass, straightforward and straight silly.    

The concept of this blog only occurred to me recently.  While discussing several characters from a certain television show in-depthly, I found myself having questions that I wanted answered.  Does everyone hate River Song, or is it just me?  Do people actually like Angel over Spike?  Who's a better character--Veronica Mars or Buffy Summers?  

When I set about to find these answers, I had shockingly little luck.  There were a few blogs that discussed the type of material I craved, but nothing on the large scale that I hoped to find.  

Therefore, I decided on creating this.  This blog will choose various characters from a variety of platforms (television, books, movies) and seek to analyze them:  the good, the bad, the ugly.  Is that character a good role model?  Are they realistic?  Can you relate to them?  

The analysis will, of course, be done with as little bias as possible.  But, I feel it's almost impossible to keep all opinion out of an analysis.  Hence, Scratched Camera.  We all look at things through a bit of a scratched camera--we bring our own biases and baggage to the table and apply those things to a character, perhaps more than we intend to.  This allows us a little leeway on this blog--if you disagree with my opinion, you are free to bring your own to the comments.  As my introduction also indicates, I'm always eager for a debate.  

So welcome to Scratched Camera, come for the analysis and stay for the absurdity!

For information on how I got to be this crazy, check out my story.  
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To submit post topic suggestions, email character name and source material to scratched.camera@yahoo.com