#<- i might have to add these in case!!

[asterloid]

i followed k before they blew up

[meamiki]

isat color palette challenge WOO!! these are always fun :D

[ryan-sometimes]

How do I, as a lesbian, tell a straight female friend that I hate her boyfriend, not because I’m in love with her but because he’s fucking stupid????

[littlemissclandestine]

Emergence - Behind each arena

Thought this mission was chaotic af. Didn't expect zombies to be in the campaign since they literally have a separate mode for that but anyways let's take a lil dive into EMERGENCE.

⚠️WARNING: Spoilers for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

-Advanced Combat Research-

For this section, we obtain a grappling hook and need to defeat the director of ACR with the help of some sentries.

I wasn't actually sure about this one since the zombies were just well....zombies that looked like guards. However, that said, the big guy we had to defeat was just a Cerberus/three-headed-dog-like figure.

-Administration-

For this keycard, we have to find the reports and slot them into the holders and this red mannequin comes to life (along with the others...)

Red is an interesting choice. It stands out from the rest and if we think back to Cold War, you'd remember red being used A LOT throughout the campaign.

Anyways, once it's free, the red mannequin goes on the run (a bit like Adler) and we have to chase it, the voice in Case's head saying, "I knew we couldn't trust him," and if we fire at it, the voice mentions, "Bullets are nothing to him," possibly referring to Adler being hardened by his years of service.

He cracks when we reel him in and get too close and then he pushes us away. The cracks remind me of Adler's scars - mental and physical. In fact, the mannequins actually take on the form of Adler mostly as well in this room. A coincidence? I think not.

After the initial phase, the red mannequin transforms into the monster as seen in the third image and again, we get another piece of dialogue - "See? He's a monster, just like the rest of them."

The thing that comes to mind here is Adler's nickname - America's monster.

-Joint Projects-

To acquire this keycard, we play some prop hunt basically! Objects around the room will rattle, signifying the monster's whereabouts and we have to sneak up on it and fire or it will disappear again - kind of alluding to the idea of secrecy, a core theme of Black Ops.

What's interesting to me is the fact that the zombie engages in a prop hunt like game with Case...like being on the move constantly and watching your back when others get too close to the truth perhaps.

We know that Sevati Dumas is the queen of disguise, excelling at being hidden in plain sight so this definitely fits her and that's why we see her in this arena.

-Cognitive Research-

During this phase, we have to drain some water to get the keycard and kill the big guy who's residing in the bathysphere.

The voice in Case's head seems to focus on rage here. I think for this part, there was a mix of Marshall, Sev and Adler zombies.

On escape, we see a Woods horde charging towards us. If we consider the theme of rage, we can certainly see where Woods' anger lies - Hudson and Mason's death especially to Woods' being kneecapped by Menendez and how that's mentally affected him, leading him to suffer. Hence, this is a part of the "cognitive research" bit.

-Biotechnology-

For this phase, we have to defeat a friggin' levitating zombie.

I thought this one was very reminiscent of Case...almost like it's his true form. He's essentially fighting himself for this one, just like looking in a mirror, right?

Troy and Sev zombies can be seen, most likely because this is where the three of them all are in reality.

---------------------

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this mission <3

[egophiliac]

I always though Mal's mom was meant to be like "Eleanor" but they stuck an M at the start honestly, Sobbing Emoji. But "Maleanor" also makes me feel less insane since in that scene where she's just handed egg Malleus to Lilia and went to battle, it sounds more like Lilia is saying "Maleanor" than "Meleanor" (Japanese accent pending). Mayhaps they went more with what it sounded like the characters were saying :0 (we don't talk about Doodle Suit to Paint The Roses)

the transliteration of her name is Marenoa (マレノア), which is what all the voice lines are saying! all the Draconias' names start with マレ (Malleus' grandma is Maleficia/マレフィシア) as a nod to Maleficent. :D it's almost certainly a take on Eleanor, which is Erenoa (エレノア), but her name is written in English at a couple points, and I was pretty surprised to see it was Mel instead of Mal!

and, like, that's fine, it wouldn't be first Twst romanization that's tripped me up (like Keito for Cater, I know that's something to do with the loanword specific to playing cards(?) but it's just not how my brain wants to read it). but now Eng has given us Maleanor! and someone else said it was spelled inconsistently between Maleanor and Maeleanor??????? so WHO KNOWS it's a SPELLING FREE-FOR-ALL

I AM torn on which I want to use, because Mel just sounds so cute to me (and is what I'm used to now), but...the Mal consistency is kinda too good to pass up. alas, alas, truly these are the most difficult conundrums of our times. 😔

[cloudysarts]

this show would be good if literally everything about it was different

[averycutesalamander]

btw Boothill LOVES sexting you while he's away from home. maybe not even sexting - he just loves the response he gets from you whenever you receive one of his little gifts, whether that be photos or videos or audios, or sometimes even calls.

admittedly, he does sometimes time them quite cruelly. once, you tell him that you have to get off the phone because you're about to meet with a friend for dinner; thirty minutes later, he sends you a photo of the length of his body, stretched out in a lascivious lounge with his free hand gripped tightly around his cock - and paired with it is a text so foul and detailed that you actually think you might collapse in the restaurant.

you rapidly type a borderline incoherent reply under the table, your face so hot that you feel like you're burning alive. the smug little bastard only replies with a heart emoji - and then, five minutes later, with a photo of his come splattered on the plates of his abdomen.

an hour and a half later, though, you take your revenge. without a word, you send him a photo of your body lying tauntingly against the sheets, your breasts looking perfectly soft in the gentle lighting - and just in front of your open mouth is one of his spare prosthetic cocks, soaked thoroughly with your slick.

and just like that, the two of you are in a WAR.

the trouble is that you actually DO sometimes send him innocent videos and audios and whatnot, so he can never QUITE be sure if they're going to be innocent before he plays them. you're always careful to frame the beginnings of the sexual videos in a way that looks innocuous, so it's always a gamble, even when the thumbnails look normal.

it becomes a competition to see who can send the raunchiest messages, the most mouthwatering pictures, the most irresistible audios, the hottest videos. he barely had a sex drive before he met you, and he only very rarely feels the urge when he's gone from you - but now he feels like a rabid dog, frothing at the mouth and straining at his muzzle, desperate to get a taste of you.

it all comes to a head one day when you just so happen to send him an audio while he's in the middle of a fucking shootout, and he's so focused that he doesn't even realize he's instinctually started to play it through his neurochip and your sweet little moans ring through his head, deafening the roar of gunfire. he's so caught up in it all that he can't fucking concentrate for long enough to turn it off, so he's forced to listen to it all; the slick noises of you fucking yourself interspersed with the sound of shots being fired; the gasps that wrench from your lips mingling with the dying breaths of IPC scumbags; the sweet little sound of you calling the name you've given him- "fuck, fuck, bee... oh, please, honeybee... need you so fucking bad- need to feel you inside me..." broken only by the barked orders of the people he's mowing down, his whole body shivering as he fights to stop himself from falling apart right then and there.

he's never ended a fight so quickly and ruthlessly as he does when he hears that telltale hitch of your breath, the pitch of your voice rising as you get closer to the edge. in a frenzy, he barges into one of the docked ships - mercifully empty - and falls to his knees, his cock damn near busting out the front of his jeans.

your voice heightens further and further as he fists his length, and he can hear the obscene noise of the toy you're using hitting your lower lips, and he fucks his fist in time with the sound, and-

he manages to come just as you do, moaning raggedly in sync with you as his come spills onto the floor, smearing messily across his fingers.

once he's recovered enough to hold his phone without shattering it, he opens up your messages. "you don't have a clue what ya just put me through, ya lil' brat," he growls into his mic, and he's certain he sounds just as animalistic as he feels in the audio message.

"oh, sorry. bad time?" you reply in a text. a beat later, you add, "i just saw something about some handsome cyborg raiding an IPC warehouse on the news, and it made me think of you. crazy coincidence ;)"

you little fucking minx.

in his next audio message, his voice is so dark that it's comparable to ink, to the darkest hour of the night, to the deepest points of the ocean. "you're gonna regret this, doll."

when you reply with a heart emoji, he's certain that you have no idea just how soon that vengeance will be coming.

he breaks quite a few zoning laws as he speeds home, his body still rattling with barely restrained arousal. he had other things he should've taken care of before heading back, but frankly, the only thing he's able to take care of right now is the heat muddling his brain. he lands on your planet in record time, abandoning the stolen vessel and calling an automatic taxi to get him to your doorstep as quickly as possible.

thirty minutes after your text, he damn near busts the front door open in his haste, and he's pretty sure the doorframe splinters with how hard he slams it shut. he strides right toward your bedroom, pushing open the door with a stern, determined look on his face.

and there you are, in all your glory, your hair mussed and your skin bare; he can tell you must've dozed off after sending that text, but you obviously didn't bother to get dressed after. you're partially standing with one knee braced on the bed, your emergency baseball bat clenched in your fist.

you stare at him, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, frozen like a deer in headlights. "wha- honey? why are you-?"

he stops at the edge of the mattress, his eyes pinning you down.

your mouth snaps shut when he takes a slow, ominous step forward, his spurs jangling like the toll of a bell. he watches with no small amount of delight as you start to back away, your heart pounding so loudly that he can hear it thumping in his ears. your bat drops to the floor with a clatter as you're forced to climb further into the bed to escape him. he devours you with his eyes as he prowls closer and closer, drinking in the sight of your body, your breasts shifting as you push yourself further and further backwards. he reaches down, slowly unbuckling his belt, the metal clinking far too loudly in the silence. your cunt is still shining with slick, dribbling past your lower lips as you move, leaving a tempting trail for him to follow.

and then, faster than you can blink-

he leaps.

you barely have the time to gasp before he has his hand clenched around your throat, pushing you to the bed without any hope of escape. you squirm anyway, fighting to keep your legs closed as he presses between them. without a drop of effort, he pries one of your thighs apart with his free hand, exposing you to him, completely and utterly.

with a hard, ruthless motion, he thrusts inside of you, right to the base.

you moan raggedly, your walls still tender and slick from your earlier play. the prosthetic he has on now is far thicker than the one you borrowed, and he stretches you mercilessly, growling under his breath at the way you flutter and squirm.

he doesn't give you any time to adjust before he starts to fuck you in earnest, looming over you with all-consuming eyes. he leans in close, his voice thick and dark, and he rumbles, "ya really thought ya could get away with that, baby? thought i wouldn't make ya pay?"

all you can do is moan and gasp beneath him, muzzled by the pleasure, and he laughs in open mockery.

"stupid girl," he purrs, his eyes shining in the dim. "you should've known better. should've known your place."

don't worry, though. he'll remind you before the night is over - many, many times.

[nikolas-ghostbusters-fixation]

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how everyone thought Egon had gone insane. What Happened that made them think that. They've fought a gigantic Stay Puft Marshmellow Man TWICE (counting the 2009 video game because iirc it's canon? Correct me if I'm wrong), fought an interdimensional god, fought a blood thirsty ruler that killed thousands and was hated by all that was trapped in a painting (and managed to get in to beat him by making THE STATUE OF LIBERTY start walking down the street with slime that reacted purely based on vibes), found an underground abandoned transit system full of the moodslime, had a bathtub try to eat Dana and her baby, fought a giant murderous black widow lady, fought the fisherman ghost who turned an entire hotel floor into the bottom of a ocean, and that's not even mentioning them getting trapped on an island that randomly raised up from underwater that had been abandoned for decades created by Ivor Shandor who worshipped Gozer. So what did he do or say that made everyone else think he'd gone insane?? All I can think is maybe he was acting strange / eratic before, but he's always been like that to some degree.

I don't know. It's something that I've been thinking about. The correct answer is 'it's not that deep and they needed a reason that the others weren't together anymore and weren't aware of Egons death or know what was going on,' but also. What Was He Saying that prompted everyone, including Ray, to think he lost his mind when he'd been right almost every time before that.

I'm genuinely so curious as to what he was up to before this. What was he doing. What insane idea was working on prior to this or was he even working on anything at all??

Also want to clarify this post isn't negative 😭 I really love the newer movies and their lore / the newer storyline / characters, I just like thinking about small stupid things like this. Gives me something to think about / speculate about / figure out an answer to.

[crystallinemoonlight]

sometimes i'll think about how, at the start of episode four, pete offers to help porsche guess who he might have kissed at the pier the night before, and i imagine a crackfic where porsche goes on a quest to find out who it was by kissing his colleagues one by one - starting with pete of course that man was ready to sacrifice himself for the cause when porsche had questions about casual hookups later in the episode, offering himself up without hesitation

he visits them one by one; pol is confused... but intrigued, it's like one of tankhun's series! arm already knows it wasn't him but insists they check it anyway... just to be sure, right? you never know. ken says he'll break his face if he tries anything (very suspicious, porsche makes sure to highlight his name). big doesn't know whether to be angry or confused, he wasn't even there??? no he and ken didn't sneak in halfway through because of a secret crush, this isn't one of tankhun's series! tankhun asks what they're doing and if he can join but porsche isn't about to open that can of worms.

maybe at some point kinn catches on and realizes porsche doesn't remember but is rating the others based on if they kiss better or worse than the ~mystery person~, which is giving him an ego boost up until porsche declares that one of his friends is actually a better kisser and therefore can't possibly have been involved (said friend is very confused about why khun kinn is giving him death glares for the rest of the week)

you can even throw in some chan or vegas or anyone else if you want to, just go crazy with it, i think that'd be really funny especially if porsche just casually blasts vegas after they make out for a solid minute saying "no you're good but the other guy was just less desperate you feel me, sorry bro".

[puppppppppy]

man

[moonshinesonic-moonstarslight]

Back to oc Peak Lords for a bit!

Some of them *eyes the fifth peak lord* went and added themselves to a small story I have been working on the side, so Notes!

WARNING! If you are reading my story Secrets Hidden in Red Smoke on Ao3 and want to avoid spoilers for future chapters please pass along. (Will be hiding spoilers under Read More just in case.)

So where are the Other Three Peaks/Lords during PIDW/Svsss? Well...

Ming Qingyue (12th peak: agriculture/horticulture)- off working with the mortal world with the vast majority of her peak. Very little contact with the sect.

Yun Qingfeixing (11th peak: falconry)- peak mostly closed from the outside world, only heads out for mandatory missions or whichever ones take them north and far from the sect.

Min Qinghe (5th peak: An Ding's sister peak/Turks)- Dead... And the turning point of a lot of things pre-canon.

Okay so, the Airplane in my head isn't the type of person to just have one of his villains be evil simply because of being overworked and underappreciated. (Although those are perfectly fine reasons for villainy. (^^)) Especially when he can make it tragic~.

Thus, why would Shang Qinghua be willing to burn the whole sect to the ground? He first joined Mobei Jun because of the treatment of An Ding and of himself, sure. But he had plans regarding that alliance and wasn't completely sold on slaughtering the whole sect (from elder to child). So what would make him not resist Luo Binghe's command to destroy Cang Qiong and even hand over the information needed to have it succeed?

Feeling betrayed by the sect. But how would he be betrayed? The more reasonable the feeling the better. It's the tipping point after all. Make it dramatic!

The death and abandonment of his dearest person. That would be a dramatic turning point. (And a point of irony/contention in Svsss)

So Min Qinghe was crafted in Airplane's head as an answer to who and how while filling out the other peak lords. (He was working backwards from Shang Qinghua is a Peak Lord with demon connections so can be the spy. So didn't figure out all the details on how both Min Qinghe and Shang Qinghua became peak lords until long passed the destruction of Cang Qiong. So he just kept it in his head as fun background knowledge.) She's Shang Qinghua's single confidant and the only person he would bring himself to call friend and family. His other half. (Not necessarily romantic or anything like that. More like a co-dependant relationship that has no true boundaries or definition but makes them happy.)

(Airplane tried not to get attached. He knew what would happen to her... But it is really hard not to get attached to the person who is made to be everything you need and you are everything they need in return. It doesn't help that he is questioning if she isn't another transmigrator with how she talks and acts at times. He always ends up attached and closes his heart even more than the Og after her death.)

Now how is she the turning point? Well, her death for one. While on a mission with Yun Qingfeixing they run into a Black Moon Rhinoeros-Python. Now know that these two are out with a small group of disciples so even if they thought they could fight this beast they can't without risking the students. So they focus on getting away more than fighting. But this is a demonic beast currently furious and lashing out.

So, in desperation to save her friend and their disciples Min Qinghe takes a stand. Aiming to distract and lure the beast away from the group of fleeing disciples. Yun Qingfeixing goes with the disciples but lends her falcon, Hayabusa, to act as a second pair of eyes and as backup.

Min Qinghe ends up dying in this fight. She and Hayabusa were about to retreat as the beast was far enough from the others that they might be able to slip away now and everything would be fine.

But Hayabusa accidentally caught the beast's eye. And Min Qinghe who knows how precious the familiar is to her friend immediately jumps in to save the bird.

Hayabusa lives. But Ming Qinghe is speared through by the beast's horn.

Yun Qingfeixing gets her bird back with the report on what happened. Is devastated that her best friend is dead but ultimately makes the call as a peak lord to get the disciples back to the sect before reporting what happened so they can have the others come to help fight the beast.

Yue Qingyuan leaves to fight this beast along with Yun Qingfeixing, Liu Qingge, and Zhen Qingxun (Ku Xing). By the time they get to where the beast is it is slipping away into the Abyss via portal. So it is no longer a threat.

Yue Qingyuan makes the decision that they would not be searching for Min Qinghe's remains. As he believes that it is very possible the woman was pulled into the Abyss if there is any at all. Thus he wishes to keep his martial siblings from going on a wild goose chase and only get hurt. Never mind the fact they might run into the Black Moon Rhinoerous-Python and they would have another dead on their hands.

This is not a decision taken well. Yun Qingfeixing wanting to immediately go find her friend and lay her to rest. Liu Qingge understanding the logic (not that Yue Qingyuan actually explained his reasoning) but feeling honor-bound to at least look and see if they could find something to bury. Zhen Qingxun remaining neutral on the matter but does inquire if Yue Qingyuan realizes what he has done with this decision.

Because Yue Qingyuan had just made himself a massive target for Shang Qinghua to lash out at.

Yue Qingyuan acknowledges that and says he will handle it.

Little does he know Shang Qinghua's anger is a quiet thing that is hidden behind lies of acceptance, sad smiles, and An Ding's assistance being slowly pulled from the other peaks. Under the excuse that Shang Qinghua had to run two peaks now. When in truth he has been making the sect forced to learn how to do their basic chores themselves and started shuffling his disciples and Min Qinghe's disciples into a single unit with plans to break from the sect.

After all, if they don't care for the people in charge of the little things, the caretakers of the sect (their so-called servants), then why should they give them anything more than the bare minimum? This is part of the reason Shen Qingqiu's abuse towards Luo Binghe wasn't talked about much besides Yue Qingyuan being an enabler. The other peaks did not know the full extent of it without An Ding and Qian Jiu gossiping about it.

Liu Qingge begins to train even more and ignoring his limits in his desperation to get stronger.

Yun Qingfeixing feels a deep never-ending guilt and ends up being locked away on her peak for a while in an attempt to keep her from disobeying Yue Qingyuan's order.

Ming Qingyue starts following Shang Qinghua's example and begins distancing her peak from the sect.

There is no funeral. There is no memorial. Those closest to Min Qinghe are furious but keep silent as they do not believe they would be heard or that their sect leader cares.

The outside world wonders what happened to one of the Lords, but no answer is ever given.

(Airplane is furious and laughing at the fact that of course, they would do anything for Shen Qingqiu. Cucumber-bro or not that man was always meant more to the sect. The hypocrisy is never called upon in Svsss [Because facing Luo Binghe was far more dangerous than searching the countryside for a dead body or facing a Black Moon Rhinoerous-Python.] and Airplane just stews in his grief before shoving it into a box and forcing himself to move on with this 'happy ending'.)

I did not mean for this silly side character (who ended up being a second Airplane at times) to be such a big deal in my worldbuilding/headcanons. ¯\(ツ)/¯ But here you go! ~(^^~)

[captain-space-kin]

”But Llorumi is basically incest-” Y’all would not have survived Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), the show with actual incest in it.

[whattraintracks]

Hi it's me again 🤗

I noticed that you're the only (afaik) blog posting about HPI and its US remake High Potential, so I was very curious to hear your thoughts on comparing both versions? Have you noticed impactful differences (could be either plot, characterization, dynamics...) or is the second one a copycat of the first? Is there one more enjoyable to watch than the other? Also is the US version good? I'm considering watching it, mostly because I miss HPI's early seasons' spirit SO BAD, but also to me Daniel Sunjata = Paul Briggs, which would make an, um... interesting Karadec young!era but wait that's not the point! 😂

Anyway, thoughts? 👀👀

Hello!!

Not me aggressively hunting down HPI and High Potential posts to feed my new obsession 🤣

Yessssss, I would love to share my thoughts on this, let's go!

Let me first say, I only recently watched both of these shows. I first saw the pilot and second episode of High Potential, then I binged S1-3 of HPI, and I've now rewatched High Potential and am keeping up with the new episodes.

Obviously, the setting is one of the most significant differences, but as far as I understand, Major Crimes is a fair equivalent to the DIPJ. It's nice to watch a US crime procedural not set in New York lol. I'll be interested to see how High Potential plays with the geographical aspects of some of the HPI cases.

The pilots are almost exact copies, with one significant difference. The second episode is an entirely different case! Then, the third episode is a remake of HPI 1.02. It sounds like High Potential S1 will have somewhere around 13 episodes, so I'm hopeful it'll continue this back-and-forth of new and copied cases.

I'm thrilled that they've already used this extra episode to expand the plot and characters, and I hope that continues. Minor points that were glossed over in HPI, like Morgane getting her car back, are given a little more time, and we're getting to see more of the footwork done to investigate Roman's disappearance. High Potential is also taking more time to explore Morgan's dynamic with her family, and I love the little ways Roman's absence haunts her.

HPI does a decent job of not presenting the rest of the team as stupid to emphasise Morgane's intelligence, and High Potential is leaning into that. There are some great scenes of Daphne, Oz (Gilles), and Karadec picking up on tiny details, especially ones Morgan misses! Morgan is undoubtedly an asset to the team, but these are seasoned career detectives who're never more than a couple of steps behind her.

I do have a few complaints about the characterisations. First, the show seems to have already lost track of Karadec's cleanliness/hand sanitiser compulsion. Second, Olson's Morgan is not quite as silly goofy as Fleurot's Morgane. I miss my over-the-top ridiculous, no-respect-for-social-conventions lady. Third, Sunjata's portrayal of Karadec comes across as much bolder and—idk how to say it—larger than Nebbou's. He takes up more space, and I miss my dorky, unassuming guy. These are pretty nitpicky, though. Naturally, all of the US actors play their characters a little differently than the original actors. I don't hate it, but I'm still deciding which interpretations I do or don't love. Even so, I'm very much enjoying Morgan's dynamic with Karadec and the other detectives/cops.

I miss the spirit of the early seasons, too 😭 So far, I think it's balancing copycat and reinvention/expansion very well. I'm excited for the rest of it!

At the end of the day, this is a genre I love, and I enjoy watching adaptations simply for the fun of comparing and contrasting them with the original media. But even before I watched HPI, I got drawn into High Potential, so I do recommend checking it out.

Thanks for sticking around for this whole thing! Of course, all of this is based on my reading of HPI and High Potential. If you get around to watching the remake, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[demigod-shenanigans]

"I can go into why i dislike ToA (especially Tyrant's Tomb is. a book that exists) but box of pandora. Once open good luck shutting me up" (source: your tags)

Now that you said that, i'm geniunely curious. Open the box. I dare you

This should be obvious but @ the people who really enjoyed ToA, this post is not for you. I’m not sure I’ll even tag it because this is mostly me venting into the void because two people asked and not me wanting to ruin other people’s fun. These are just my personal opinions.

I also apologize if I get any details wrong, I did recheck a lot of the things mentioned but it’s been a minute since I read ToA and might not remember everything 100% correctly. Also, obvious spoiler warning.

*claps hands together* Okay, you asked for this but heads up, it’s going to be long. Maybe grab a snack and a glass of water beforehand.

My beef with ToA can be summarized into a few key points that I’ll elaborate on below but basically:

-It tries to wrap up character arcs for some of the seven (and Reyna) but does this through the eyes of someone with zero context and also treats these characters arcs as unimportant footnotes in the larger story

-Jason’s death and everything surrounding it was handled extremely poorly.

-I cannot remember any demigods staying mad at Apollo. Redemption arcs should not mean everyone has to forgive this character for all the shit they’ve done in the past.

-The death toll. This is not helped by the fact that a lot of the deaths feel like they exist solely for the purpose of making Apollo learn death sucks over and over again (Jason is the worst example of this, but there are others)

More grievances I have but don’t have enough to say about to justify a longer explanation:

-There are a whole bunch of new minor characters on top of the old ones already struggling for screen time. I don’t remember much about any of them, which is a shame because the idea behind some of them is really compelling.

-The story is centered around the Triumvirate as antagonists, with Python as a final boss, but book four just dumps an additional antagonist on you out of nowhere? Why?

-Reyna rejecting Apollo is nice and all but I still had to put up with him crushing on her and was very uncomfortable the whole time.

-Chiron sends a bunch of new demigods into what’s potentially a death battle and tells them it’s a fun field trip (what the fuck)

-This is a personal grievance more than anything but it took me ages (book five) until I really got attached to Meg. I feel like that could have been fixed if she at least got a few POV chapters.

-Dishonorable mention to the punch line joke. Two whole camps of people lining up to hit the canonically abused kid that saved them is not funny.

Details under the cut (Pandora’s box, I did warn you)

Character arcs:

The books really do try to tell meaningful stories for people whose arcs weren’t finished in Heroes of Olympus. With some of them, you can even tell the ideas behind wrapping up those arcs were solid. But the books also tells those stories through the eyes of a character who doesn’t know these people’s pasts and quite frankly doesn’t care a lot of the time. People will voice/do something that is huge for their character and instead of going into that it’s followed up with some random Apollo anecdote that’s only tangentially related at best.

Taking Leo as an example: Apollo has no idea why Leo settling down and finding a home somewhere after everything he’s been through is meaningful. That’s a story that could have been the focus of an entire book of its own, but instead it’s just a side plot to a completely different story. And that story really should have been told through Leo’s eyes, or at least through the eyes of someone like Jason or Piper who realize why this is huge for him.

Apollo also does not care why Leo and Calypso are fighting, so it’s not something that’s properly explored. Leo’s fights with Calypso are mainly mentioned/witnessed. You get some guesses as to how they started but they never mention the exact reasons. They both say they care about each other, but only to Apollo, when the other person isn’t present. When they sort things out it happens largely off-screen. I was also not a fan of the way many of their issues ended up being pinned on Leo being sexist when it was actually way more than that.

ToA does this a lot. It gives arcs to characters who honestly deserved to be explored more, but those arcs are barely footnotes in a larger story where these characters just cameo for a hundred or so pages.

The cameo stuff works okay for Percy and Solangelo because the books are very aware they’re cameos and they get to have fun but this is not their story. But the characters the series tries to give proper plots to are all over the place.

It’s said that Jason and Thalia are really close but they never interact in the books. Jason had a bit of a chance at a normal life finally but that’s barely gone into. (More on Jason later because my god did how the books handled him piss me off massively)

Piper’s struggles with her queerness get the random Apollo anecdote treatment. There’s some stuff about her reconnecting with her dad and her heritage but that’s not explored a ton either.

Frank’s firewood burns up and he’s fine, which is just sort of hand-waved and doesn’t feel meaningful, especially because I think the fireproof pouch was already a fine solution? Congrats on being free of this, now you can get stabbed to death like all the other characters, I guess.

Reyna gets a sort of arc but it feels really weird because it happens almost entirely off-screen. She spends a large fraction of the book chiding Lavinia for leaving her post, then gets her leg broken, is off-screen for a while and then just DIPS with the Hunters after her home suffered huge casualties.

I also think her joining the Hunters is a super lame way to resolve her arc in general (she just lays down one responsibility to sign up for the next, and a character not wanting romance/not wanting romance right now should be allowed to exist without having to join the eternal maiden’s club, but that problem isn’t isolated to Reyna and could honestly be a whole post of its own)

This also comes down to the fact that I’m here mainly for the demigods. I care about these kids having good arcs and good lives. I care significantly less about Apollo having to learn really obvious shit like “murdering my pregnant girlfriend was perhaps a little messed up”

Jason’s death and everything surrounding it

Killing off a major character (especially one whose arc isn’t finished) can be a plot twist that works at times. But it has to be handled well. Doing it to a character that’s suffered horrifically and is starting to heal is also a hugely shitty move, but I understand you want meaningful deaths for the plot sometimes.

But you cannot do it the way Rick did it with Jason’s death. If he was going to kill off one of the seven, he should have done it in Heroes of Olympus, with that character narrating and their friends getting to deal with the aftermath and grieve.

Instead, Jason dies in a book that he appears in for like. A hundred pages iirc? Two-hundred at most? You get Apollo narration on it, and sure, he’s big sad about it, but he also knew this guy for two days.

Piper gets a few pages to deal with his death, then disappears from the book and comes back for a heroic rescue later. Leo gets like two pages to deal with the fact that his best friend is dead. They then proceed to fuck off to Oklahoma instead of going to the funeral. For what reason? No idea. The book doesn’t bother to explain it.

Jason gets a Camp Jupiter funeral, with none of his Camp Half-Blood friends present, because fuck the fact that him belonging to both camps was a huge part of his arc, right?

Piper and Leo know Jason is dead but they cannot be there because they’d already used up their time as ToA side characters, I guess. Percy and Annabeth can’t come, they don’t find out due to demigod communication issues until the end of the series. Thalia also doesn’t get to go to her brother’s funeral. She doesn’t find out until the funeral is already over. We don’t even really get to see her grieving, her finding out Jason died happens off-screen too.

Because this is the Apollo show, Apollo is the guy who leads the funeral procession instead of, like, Reyna, who knew Jason for years.

Also, for some reason, the person avenging Jason is Frank? Absolutely no offense to Frank, he’s a great guy and I’m sure he cared about Jason, but that choice still feels deeply comedic considering I can remember exactly one meaningful interaction him and Jason had in HoO (Jason giving Frank praetor position at the end of HoH) and not a single conversation they had beyond that. If Rick had to write Leo and Piper out of the plot, why not at least have Reyna avenge him?

Jason dies specifically because Apollo broke a stupid oath he made on the River Styx. We’re told that people around him will keep dying because of this. He dies as a chess piece in a stupid game between gods, for the sake of Apollo’s character development. He dies so he can be brought up every hundred pages for Apollo to waffle about how sad his death was but how he’d also definitely not want to be brought back (I get it, we cannot revive people constantly, but having Apollo make this point when, again, he knew the guy for two days, is still really stupid. Nico also gets to make the same point at the end just in case the reader didn’t understand before that we’re not bringing Jason back)

Apollo is forgiven by everyone

Related to the above point. Like I said, we’re outright told that Jason dying is a direct consequence of Apollo’s oath. Apollo also knew taking them along on the mission would get Jason or Piper killed and he did it anyway.

Piper gets to be mad at him very briefly, but when he tries to apologize at the end of the book, she interrupts him and tells him “it’s fine” (her voice is described as “no anger, just natural heat”)

Thalia doesn’t get to be mad at him at all. Her baby brother died and she just pats Apollo on the back and tells him “it’s fine, Jason made his own choices. That’s what heroes do.” And then it’s made about how Artemis lost Apollo when he got transformed into a human instead of. Like. The fact that Thalia just lost her baby brother for the second time in her life.

IT’S FINE?? THAT’S ALL ANYONE HAS TO SAY ABOUT THIS??

Hell, Apollo even has a sort of dream hallucination of Jason’s ghost so that ghost can forgive him too.

Was that really necessary? Why do people think that a character learning to be better means absolutely everyone has to forgive them? Wouldn’t it have been a better sticking point for a god to learn people are allowed to stay mad at you?

The death toll

A lot of people die in these books. People dying in pjo books has always been a thing, but it’s never felt this pointless or this much like it was solely happening for a single person’s character development.

Jason is the most pointed example of this, but there are more. Starting with the fact that two of Apollo’s kids almost get torched in front of his face in the first book (Austin and Kayla) and somehow that is not a sticking point. I don’t think it’s ever brought up again afterwards.

Other characters that die so Apollo can learn death sucks:

-Several Dryads die saving the grove of Dodonna

-Heloise the Griffin

-One random unnamed demigod in Dark Prophecy (mentioning them because that’s where it occurs to Apollo demigod deaths also suck)

-Money Maker (Dryad)

-Crest

-Harpocrates and the Sybil of Cumae

The death toll in Tyrant’s Tomb is completely ridiculous. Like, “feels worse than Last Olympian despite not even being the final battle”-ridiculous. And unlike how Percy at least gets to use that tragic battle to change things in a fundamental way, the Camp Jupiter demigods don’t win anything significant. Their home is only almost completely destroyed. Some of them aren’t dead. That’s it.

If you remember the name of any side character Camp Jupiter demigod from HoO, there’s a very high chance they die in this book.

We don’t get exact numbers for how many people die. The book actually explicitly refuses to give numbers, stating “We didn’t count the dead. They weren’t numbers. They were people we had know, friends we had fought with.” (Which gets even more ironic due to the fact that, again, we barely have any named CJ demigods to begin with)

The closest thing we get to numbers are that 25 demigod members of the legion died in the battle before the book started, and towards the end there are fourteen total demigods still standing of the first to third cohort combined. Even if half the missing demigods are “just” so severely wounded that they can’t fight anymore, that’s still 60 dead kids! The pre-book battle was mentioned to have been hardest on the civilians. We don’t know how many of them died, and losses among the fourth and fifth cohort are also unknown, but that is a ridiculous amount of losses. Why are there so many dead kids in this book and why are we all just supposed to be okay with this?

Jupiter explicitly forbids the other gods to intervene. The only one who does is Diana, after an offering, and she takes her sweet time to get there. That camp is named after the guy! That’s people’s kids down there! I know the gods not helping their kids isn’t exactly new, but this is on a whole other level.

There are funerals but those are largely skipped over, and Frank announces that they’ll resolve this by asking Lupa to bring in more demigods so they’ll come back stronger, which. Baffling statement. Let’s just fix the dead people by replacing them.

TL;DR: Good on Apollo for learning to be better, but I really didn’t like how it was done. There were a handful of things I liked in almost all the books, not including Tyrant’s Tomb which wins the award for rrverse book I most wanted to chuck out of a window. Some of the ideas were good. I think the first and last book are mostly solid (largely due to the fact that those don’t try to shove in entire side character arcs). But the things I did enjoy just get very heavily outweighed by everything that annoyed and upset me.

I really wish ToA had been mostly new characters with maybe some minor cameos, and other people’s arcs had been saved for different books. I also think splitting the perspective between Apollo, Meg and maybe the HoO character who was trying to have an arc in that specific book would have helped.

[telesodalite]

I need to be weirder about the scavengers and cannibalism...

[cathodic-clairvoyant]

Oh hi there transfem discussing her experience in the trans community i just had a quick question about your post

What does tme mean?

Oh okay i see i understand, thank you.

What does transmisogyny mean?

Ah I see, I get it.

What's a trans woman?

Oof scary. One last question.

What's a woman?

Thank you for being my own personal google (not like you had anything better to do right?) and derailing the point of your post for my own personal education. I will now add nothing of value to this post in return. Bye bye!