#Sweeps week

[podcastwizard]

despite popular belief i'm perfactly fine

[suntails]

toot toot!

[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.

[math-is-math]

I was ranting to my sister @sharpie-arpi about Sidlink and she made this connection 🥸

[wallys-rambledump]

Ralph!!!

I love him so muchhh,, I considered giving him a flannel but i was almost finished, so maybe next time! I love himmmmmmmm,,,,<3<3

[hothammies]

night cap

[fazgoo-connoiseur-1987]

everybody (me) loves Ralph !!!!!

[sarabethsilver]

An excellent post by @not-with-you-but-of-you got me thinking:

GIF by not-with-you-but-of-you

Rory's wearing the coat she wore to Honor's wedding. The same coat she gives to Doyle as she's struggling with whether or not Logan technically cheated on her. Is she having the same kinds of thoughts now?

Lorelai IMMEDIATELY assumes something is ongoing with Jess. It's not "I didn't know you saw Jess" or "I didn't know you went to Philadelphia." It's "I didn't know you were seeing Jess."

Jess and Rory are officially friends now!

Except Rory can't even look at Lorelai while she's saying it.

Rory lies, unprompted, about kissing Jess ("I swear, nothing happened there").

It's so striking that Rory never discusses this kiss with anyone. She doesn't tell Logan, she doesn't tell Lane, she specifically lies to Lorelai. There's zero indication that she even thinks about telling Logan; no meaningful pause or guilty look for the audience to interpret. It's just... gone. She shoves this kiss so far down that she wants to pretend it didn't even happen.

And I think the only reason she can do this is because Jess isn't anywhere in her vicinity. We see in S3 that Rory instantly falls apart once she's standing 20 feet away from Jess; the secret comes flying out of her mouth and she tells Lorelai they kissed.

In my version of S7, Rory sees Jess by happenstance and just... flies apart. All her feelings come rushing back, she's tripping over her words to apologize, it's a big mess, and she can no longer deny her obvious connection to him. And where does that leave Logan? Now THAT'S the S7 drama I would have loved to see!

[cuoredimuschio]

okay, but where's my steddie AU where steve wants to learn to play guitar to impress a girl he's infatuated with and he remembers that munson kid was always hanging up posters for his weird band at school, so he hikes out to eddie's usual dealing spot behind the track and asks (with far less groveling than he really should have) if eddie will teach him how to play, and obviously eddie says no because why would he want to help king steve, but of course, steve offers to pay him, $20 a week, and well, that's the kind of get-the-hell-out-of-this-shithole-town cash eddie really can't afford to refuse, so fine, he'll teach steve to play and they'll spend inordinate amounts of time together tucked away in eddie's room and they'll start to see that they have more in common than they thought and that they kind of had each other all wrong, and eddie will put his hand over steve's to help him get the placement for a tricky chord and it totally won't awaken anything in either of them?? where is it??

edit: i started writing it

[jui-imouto-chan-art]

I LOVE SUOSAKU

[khalisahmy]

#sansxyouweek2023

Day 1: Fallen King

It's the day that he wins the sexy tumblr man. How excited and grateful I am to see him won 1st place.

I'm very self-conscious about joining this, but here's day one, a simple start.

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Bonus:

-> Day 2

[cherrywhite]

Congratulations hayward and carpenter for doing absolutely nothing this episode. I think it's high time THEY get to be silly while other characters get to go through the worst experience of their lives. You know, as a treat

[yandere-daydreams]

Grazer is winning for fattest bear rn

as she should be. i usually don't stan a specific bear (besides otis but who doesn't), but grazer honestly deserves the win. correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think she had a litter this year and you can really see how much weight she puts on in comparison to the other bears. look at her. that's a fucking unit right there. 747 could never.

[halfa-ghost]

everyone watching me lose my fucking MARBLES at super danny being bumped down to 6th place

[mixtercandy]

Love Potion 31 is a white chocolate and raspberry flavored ice cream, perfect ship name for this pair imo!

[izzy-prizzy]

you know you are down bad when you get giddy over them just standing in the corner, sitting somewhere in the corner of the panel and like you look for them in every panel like...