#I dont have a twitter so

[hyugakojiro]

[class-jester]

I think Transformers one should have ended like this honestly

[gunstellations]

encounter (1/?)

next page

cont. of unfamiliar side

[bacchuschucklefuck]

they licensed his ass

my finished piece of the FWMS (official name definitely 100%) thing we started a few days ago! I had fun I hope folks had and/or continue to have fun with the sketch as well.

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[gunsatthaphan]

their little jubi jubs 🥺🫶🏻💫

[rusticfurnace]

STARTIDE ⭐️🌊 // they love floating around and being gay.

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

wear headphones :)

Transcript:

As much as I'd love to witness more of your prowess, I'd very much like to have that body of yours.

Is that a strap-on?

Machine, I'll cover you in more than blood.

Fuck. *exhale* Shit. Fuck-God! mmmm-ohohoho. fuck. fuck. h-Harder, Machine. Mph! *whimper* Hah... Come on!

End transcription

Sorry for this. I promise this is the worst thing I'll ever post. Unless he somehow manages to do something worse.

I can't really provide the audio sources in a neat way because this is 6 clips stuck together.

[heartorbit]

CONGRATS EMUKASA ON THE MARRIAGE

[humans-are-tasty]

[krazieka2]

I've played the Fire Emblem Husbando Dating Simulator Games

[sasseebeee]

who was gonna tell me about this tweet

[demadogs]

“there were nooo good movies in 2024!!” we had a polyamorous homoerotic tennis match, a goth curly haired icon who did bottom surgery for her undead lover, and 100 minutes of the most gut wrenchingly beautiful scifi/horror that made the words “there is still time” change me forever as a human being and i honest to god see the world differently now

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.