#and with the ending it’s gonna be interesting to see how they might have to go against each other

[eir-trixa]

Okay I have one final thought about wottg. I think I forgot one crucial factor about these books: Its in Percy’s pov. Percy is an incredibly unreliable narrator when it comes to himself.

I think were experiencing a whiplash because last we saw of him was from different perspectives in HoO.

Alright, more under the cut. Might have spoilers for WOTTG ❗️

Okay first of all, this is not a retraction of my earlier critiques. I stand by all of them. Just check my prev post(s) about it, I wrote a lot because I was frustrated a lot by the dumb!Percy perception. Anyway. This is me, trying to find a possible reason why Im so pissed.

The difference between HoO and the new books is visible, largely because of the change of POV. Were back in Percy’s pov and yes, Rick probably forgot how to write him without including his girlfriend after every other thought. But also, were back to oblivious!Percy’s narration.

Like I said Percy’s incredibly perceptive and empathic to every other people and beings that is not himself. This guy still does not get why Annabeth likes him, he thinks everyone thinks he’s dumb, it takes a while for him to notice if someone is interested in him, he doesnt think he’s powerful at all, he thinks he’s a loser in all fronts, hell he thinks he deserves to die sometimes. Thats just how he is, he’s self deprecating even in the og PJO.

Which is a stark, stARK contrast to EVERYONE ELSE’S perspective of him in Heroes of Olympus:

Exhibit A: His entrance in Camp Jupiter wherein Hazel actually thought he’s a god in disguise. Then he created whirlpools that destroyed the gorgons and terrified the everloving shit from the Romans. Then he just proceeds to be this regular, lost, anguished guy in his own perspective while Hazel and Frank are literally so moved and an awe of him. Reyna and Kinzie both found him attractive at some point. He made PRAETOR in a week, most of it he wasnt even at CJ. Thats highly indicative of how people see him.

Exhibit B: Annabeth’s description of seeing him again in MoA. Im gonna get back to this later but do recall that he became taller and had put on muscle according to Annabeth herself. Strange of Rick to contradict himself SIKE

Piper called him unimpressive, which is interestingly the only instance he got called that but then again Piper was also under Hera’s heavy enchantments to have feelings for Jason so Im not gonna blame her at all.

We have more Im sure but were gonna stop there lest I never get to the point. So we basically see Percy in all other angles in HoO, and everyone respected him Until the end of BoO: When Rick had him say “lets fight stuff” in contrast to Jason’s war cry; When Reyna made that paperbag comment which I still havent forgotten nor forgiven. There was essentially no question of Percy’s importance or power until the end of Blood of Olympus.

Then. We get to the new books where Percy is once again in charge of the narration. He cant help but see himself as dumb, especially when he’s struggling to finish his senior year when his girlfriend is a shoe in to graduate. He’s insecure. He’s cut off from his new friends, that I think, is something so sad because what he, Hazel and Frank had was so special. He probably hasnt been to camp at all since the quest ended because of all the paperwork he had to do to get into a new school and start catching up so he can graduate on time. On top of that- those recommendation letters that still do not make sense at all.

Add all of that to the trauma and all the schoolworks he’s doing just to catch up, his self esteem took a hard dive and this affects the narration.

I think we got used to seeing Percy from an outside POV that we got a hard time adjusting when we got back to his little self deprecating self.

I’ll be clear: This doesnt absolve Rick’s writing from liability. How Wottg was writen was still a choice- but it leaves me this shallow hope that it can still be resolved better in the next instalment(s). I want this addressed because why does every other character get to have peace except Percy? But I digress. Thats a post for later.

So we can look at the new books and not take the descriptions of himself not too hard, because this kid is truly struggling with seeing worth in himself. We can also blame Rick, because while Im trying to defend this Im also pissed at Percy’s situation. Some characters do not add up at all.

As a final note, here Im gonna address Percy and Grover describing Percy as scrawny in wottg. Which directly contradicts everyone else’s description of him in HoO. Three ways to look in this scenario:

1. Tartarus had affected his physical well being badly.

2. This is Percy being an unreliable narrator again and Grover being a little shit at the wrong time

3. And the one Im subscribing to the most- this was influenced by Walker and Aryan’s dynamic. Again, I will die on the hill that the pjotv main trio was perfectly cast and they can do no wrong. But that dialogue was probably more appropriate coming from Aryan, not Grover. I did notice that Walker and Aryan both kind of look up to the actors they see as “ripped” (theres that one hilarious interview that they were gushing on Charlie being “jacked”- their words, while Leah was weirded out). So Grover’s comments about Percy’s physique was probably Rick trying to fit Walker and Aryan’s dynamic into their characters. Which, in my opinion, is unnecessary. Because those actors embody their characters already so well, theres no need for adjustments, no need to incorporate what Walker and Aryan are like irl into the books because they already do their jobs so well. Whatever dynamic Grover and Percy will have to portray in any future books, I have no doubt that these two can and will deliver an incredible performance so why need to incorporate in their irl personalities between Grover and Percy? Idk, Rick may be doing this subconsciously, maybe intentionally but eh, I just think theres no need. Let Grover and Percy stand as they are and Walker and Aryan (and Leah) stand as they are. The merging just makes Rick contradict himself. Percy is literally on the swim team so it doesnt quite track?

So dont take it too hard, its probably just Grover messing with him and Percy taking it harder because of his poor mental state.

Lmao its been days and Im still at the restaurant. Anyway, feel free to discuss.

[l3ominor]

Hey you should talk about your blorbos :)

YIPEEE

hkdfjhgksfjgh okok i don't know where to start hmmmmmmmmm

okok so I'll start with my Twilight cause I've been working on his part of Recalled for the last long time XD CURRENTLY I've been working on his wolf form and how he communicates with other animals, cause like; animals don't communicate like people do, so working out how to illustrate an almost alien form of communication has been really fun! I've been using a lot of imagery to convey meaning/expression/intent, and trying to let the pictures and colors speak just as much, if not more than the actual words I'm writing. it's fun!

another blorbo I've been brainrotting over lately is Captain, just thinking a lot about his emotional/mental state, and how he interacts with people/situations. he keeps surprising me, not gonna lie XD, boi is good at being predictably unpredictable. he's a very quick thinker, and good at rapidly exploring all his options, and the more tense the situation, the faster he can think/act. he's a very clever boi, and he tries very hard to make sure people don't pick up on it XD.

lastly, I've been thinking a lot about Time. the way that I characterize him is pretty different from most other Time's I've seen, and I think that's fun XD. he's pretty stable over all, and was able to resolve most of the trauma he went through when he was younger, so he doesn't have much that bothers him these days. he's pretty chill, a little awkward, and fairly forgetful (lots of memory loss from using the Fierce Deity mask so much during the War of Eras). he's very much a social chameleon, generally mimicking the people around him, just cause he's still trying to figure out how to human correctly XD. one interesting thing about him though, is his desire for independence. he doesn't like being told what to do, how to live his life, etc. he doesn't like asking permission to do things. if he cares about you, he'll take what you say into consideration, but in the end, he's always going to do what he thinks is right, and he has a hard time seeing how that might affect others. he knows he's a hero, he knows he was destined to keep people safe and preserve the peace, so he's going to do what it takes to keep the people he loves safe, and he's going to do it his way. (this definitely doesn't cause problems later XD)

but yeeeeee thanku for asking about my blorbo's :333

[saline-coelacanth]

I had a dream last night about Jay and his arc so now I wanna talk about Jay (Spoilers under the cut)

So in my dream, my one major worries ended up happening which was Jay's whole amnesia/villain arc was resolved super quickly. I don't even remember how it went down exactly in my dream, but I remember feeling dread watching the episode and knowing that they were going the quick route with this. And I really hope that doesn't end up happening in the actual show.

Since Jay is my favorite character, I have a lot of thoughts about him and his arc in DR. Personally, I hope that either his amnesia lasts for a while and doesn't get resolved super quickly, OR if he does get his memories back relatively quickly, then he still has to deal with the lasting impact of Shatterspin. I think I made a post about this before about how it would be interesting if Jay got his memories back but still had his personality altered from the Shatterspin due to not being able to fix that yet, but yeah my point still stands.

I want Jay to have at least one season where he gets to be an antagonist for the WHOLE SEASON, not just one episode, but an actual threat for a substantial amount of screen time. Because if the ninja get him back super quickly, then it's gonna feel like all this build up was for nothing. And one more thing that I wanted to talk about, but there's two characters that I think would be interesting if they were included in Jay's arc somehow.

Starting off with what I think is least likely to be a major player, but it's Frak. Just like Jay, Frak was tricked by Ras and was on his side during the tournament. Except Frak realized Ras was evil and never used Shatterspin unlike Jay who did. And Frak is also established to be a huge fan of the ninja, so he'd know who Jay really is. I think it would be interesting if either Frak has more info about the lies Ras told Jay that he can then tell the other ninja about, or if he actually tries to reason with Jay and get him on their side since he was in a similar scenario. But in all honesty, I think Frak is probably gonna be sticking close to Cole's side like how Wyldfyre was basically always with Kai when she first joined the team.

Going into the second character, this was something I only realized after other people had made posts about it, but bringing Arrakore into Jay's arc would be a really cool idea. For one, he's a djinn and Jay has history with a certain djinn. He doesn't remember it, but still, thematically it would make sense. Arrakore has also already met Nya so we also have a link there. And ultimately, if it comes down to it, I think Arrakore might actually end up being the solution to the Jay problem. They can probably just wish for Jay to get his memories back and to undo the Shatterspin. And as long as they don't come to that conclusion super fast and we build up to it, I think I'd be ok with that.

So yeah, those are my Jay thoughts for now. I crave more of him from DR and I hope he gets more attention next season. I truly believe and hope that the writers are building up to something big with him, but we just have to wait and see.

[vampirenicotine]

look beauty and the beast has definitely had me in a chokehold since childhood because why was i really out here shipping noa and mae??? MAYBE tim burton was onto something with the 2001 movie. iykyk.

[mic-check-stims]

Walkshipping board for that one anon from forever ago who asked about my ships

X-X X-X X-X

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[psalmsofpsychosis]

Some Batman: Telltale thoughts

[this is a Batman Telltale critical post, ye be warned.]

So. There are perhaps no words in the english language to describe with how stupid i feel right now.

I started Telltale Batman because i thought that it's one of the more distinct unconventional Batman narratives that would let you have a more interesting, complex and nuanced relationship between Bruce and Joker— the game even lets you bring all of Bruce's sincere hypocrisy and sentimental selfishness to the surface and have him admit that yes, he can fight the rogues gallery because it takes a madman to know a madman; to love a madman. For a moment i geniunely thought that i can escape the everpresent shadow of DC hays code in the freakshow funhouse that is Batman comics, i thought Telltale had done something different.

But telltale's approach to The Enemy Within is so flaky and flimsy and timid at best— such noncommittal twist on themes of pain and grief. They take on a hefty plotline, "what does it take to actually fight through evil and be surrounded by it? How long does it take before your resolve and your selfhood cracks? When you lose the mask, which one did you truly lose— The ideal persona, the superhero, the crusader, or the person underneath, the casket that holds all your humanity and your heart and your hopes? How long can you stare onto the abyss before it stares onto you?" It's indeed a very Nietzsche approach to Batman— except that a good Nietzsche narrative takes a lot of intentional plot points and honesty of thought and of heart. And Telltale doesn't commit, not to Bruce's characterization, and not to any other character, and definitely not to Joker's journey in any variation of it. The existence of the Vigilante route is useless on every front; Joker is going to turn into a villain anyway, just with a different hello kitty eyeshadow palette and an extra bland consolation lollipop. No good choice Bruce makes on Joker's behalf affects anything whatsoever, and i particularly love the "community and friendship and sympathy do not help the mentally ill and all that ever works is punishment and shock therapy and confinement and loneliness" message the vigillante route puts on the table, charming charming status quo commandments from DC as always.

Telltale Batman could only be revolutionary if it had dared to break comic convention and let the vigillante route play out like Selina and Bruce's relationship always does; very grey morality, irrational, full of tension and trust, unstable, intriguing, inexcusable, irreversible, unavoidable and heartfelt, human. But we can't have nice things in batmanverse, so both Joker routes run on stuck gears and topple and fall into a predictable narrative hole that neither Bruce nor Joker can claim out of.

And on the predictable front? this story is too lukewarm to be a good time for me personally. When you get 84 Batman comics per minute every other Tuesday, all ending the same way no matter whatever the fickity happens inbetween, you have to pull no punches. This is my 53368532th Batman-with-tragic-batjokes-implications read of the week, say something new or forever hold your blue-balling silence, i dont care.

[orcelito]

Having a Saturday like "most people I've dated have only really liked me for my body and/or a fake personality I've presented, so when they know the true me it's not enough to keep them around. Anyways let's have some ramen for my 2 pm breakfast."

[plexippusangel]

I either need to accept that I am just a way stronger person than this friend and can handle way more while still being able to engage with the world as a person, or recognize excuses as excuses, accept that I am not valued and be done or. Maybe both. Idk. It might be somewhere between the two. I am just sick of regular life stuff rendering him unable to spend any time with me, and of him being unable to bear any of the details of my life, when I would move mountains to rekindle our friendship. Though I'm starting to wonder if I still would.

[pyrriax]

hi tumblr im a normal individual that writes extremely normal fics. [through tears.]

[mmriesoftvat]

I think I am going to make some temporary changes to this blog, mostly due to low muse/what people prefer and create a tier list so people know what to expect. This doesn't effect current drafts, only new threads going forward.

Main muses: Cyno, Kazuha, Albedo, Kami

Secondary: All yakshas, Yelan, Layla, Collei.

Request only: Childe, Andrius, Sucrose

[theheadlessgroom]

https://beatingheart-bride.tumblr.com/post/711277155093495808/theheadlessgroom-beatingheart-bride

@beatingheart-bride

Although they had joked about sharing (and stealing) sweets just last night, Randall felt his heart skip when she asked him this: Sharing alone was an alien concept to him (the carnies used to tease him, saying they wanted to share something with him, only to yank it out of his hand at the last second), but when had anyone ever remembered that something was his favorite? He could feel his heart ache at the notion that she thought of him first to share them with-not her friends in the ballet corps, but him.

“I-I would love to,” he managed to reply, trying not to let his voice crack with emotion as he moved to sit beside her, peering at the little bon-bons, little balls of chocolate and strawberry crème, one of the most decadent treats in all the city. His eyes were as big as dinner plates as he settled in next to her, reaching a spidery hand down to pluck one up from its little cup and pop into his mouth, his tongue happily greeted by milky chocolate and smooth strawberry. It was nothing short of bliss for his tastebuds.

“Thank you,” he managed to say with a smile to her, cheeks pink behind the mask-what a curious thing, to be...known. It was kind of strange and embarrassing, to have these little things (inconsequential though they were) known by her, but it was also...gratifying, at the same time, to know that Emily knew him so well, and didn’t think twice about sharing with him. It was touching to be seen; perhaps it wasn’t the most intimate thing to know about him, but to have this fondness be remembered by her...it meant more to him than he could say.

[whomturgled]

u know what i should actually make some sorta new years resolution or goals or predictions or smthn. rachel my therapist from 2017 if you're out there this ones for you girl<3

[thethingything]

today's Ant System nonsense is: waking up, going downstairs, and almost immeduately having to explain to our mum that her boyfriend is probably a system. we've been awake for 3 hours and most of that has been spent describing system experiences while our mum goes "oh my god he experiences that constantly" or "that explains so many things"

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...