#ask me questions about him!

[honeyxmonkey]

“Yo-ho, yo-ho a pirate’s life for me.”

Douxie in the potc fic! That's a pirate lad if I've ever seen one

[s0fter-sin]

thinking about the way ghost doesn't hesitate to start killing shadows when graves betrays them but soap only takes one hostage

you can almost hear the voice in his head telling him it doesn't have to be this way; they can still talk it out

"i'm calling shepherd"

his first instinct when confronted with betrayal is to play it by the books: to go up the chain. that goes against everything we've seen him do. he bucks authority at every chance except for the one time he's confronted with the barrels of his allies' guns

he wants a peaceful resolution; for the first time we've ever seen, he doesn't want violence to be the answer. there has to be another fix, a solution that doesn't end with him killing the same men he's been working with; his friends

nothing's happened yet

it doesn't have to go this way

but ghost has been betrayed before. he knows the way this ends; either with him six feet under or his enemy

he doesn't hesitate

it's only when they knock alejandro out that soap shoots; when they spill the first blood and cross a line they can never come back from

only when ghost orders him to run and he has to cover his retreat

and somewhere along the line, between civilians’ screams and taunting voices, between his shaking breath and ghost steady in his ear, that naivety is stripped away; his trust turned to teeth that he uses to sink into throats of men he'd have given his life for

"be careful who you trust, sergeant; people you know can hurt you the most"

he's learned the price of trust

just like ghost did

but unlike ghost, he has someone to guide him through the aftermath

"good advice, It"

[wild0moon]

i bring you: my casual clothes tankman design (and steve too) i am so normal about found family tankdad

happy pride month lol

[essenceofarda]

Sometimes a family is an elf, a dwarf, and the human orphan infant they find amongst the rubble after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields,, whom they decide to raise together,, 🥹

Anyway, yeah! Introducing Gigolas' daughter 👧🏻

(I still need to figure out her name--I want something that is a blend of dwarven and elvish, so suggestions from those more knowledgable about tolkien's languages/etc would be super appreciated! Also I have SO many fanart ideas for this lil' family, idk, let me know if you wanna see more art of them 🤩🥰)

[merverelli]

"you just feel yourself let go."

still thinking about this episode. man. 💪💥

[ratatatastic]

maffhew who refuses to say runebergin torttu because he knows hes gonna butcher it so bad he might be kicked out of the country the second he tries and staunchly avoids that by going "the one dessert that barky is going to have to explain 😃"

sasha who gets faced with the most generic description of everything hes ever eaten in his life so far because of maffhew and going "???... oh you mean runebergin torttu!"

"he did good he liked the food and he likes the finland so far so its good" sasha says with so much pride now that all the anxiety has left his system that his husband teammate is enjoying his country and doesnt hate it

media availability | 10.29.24 (x)(x)

the smile of a man who knowlingly doomed his husband and said husband using all his brain power to context clues his way to whatever the fuck he just got asked that his brain is running hotter than a mid 2012 macbook air thats somehow still alive in the year of the lord 2024 but girl does she chug along shes louder than a fighter jet

[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.

[introspectivememories]

street interviewer: what's your type?

tim who's just trying to get to work: i have a boyfriend

street interviewer: so what's your type then?

tim: my boyfriend

street interviewer: and what does he look like?

tim who will absolutely gatekeep bernard from the general public: he looks like my boyfriend

street interviewer: so what would you rate me out of 10?

tim: um i can't do that

street interviewer: can't rate me at all?

tim: i can't rate you at all

street interviewer finally realizing that this is going absolutely nowhere: what would you rate your boyfriend out of 10?

tim smiling stupidly: he broke my scale cause he's so beautiful

[fatedroses]

More than just the Demon.

[serpentface]

Meet cute

[At this point Brakul is a prisoner of war, speaks very little Wardi, and understands just enough to get that Janeys is A) asking for him to expand on his given name and B) being mad annoying. So he’s listing off his entire ancestry.]

[TEXT]

Janeys: You must have a name. Mine is Haidamane. "jay-nees hai-dah-mah-nay". You might have heard of it? My father funds the entire Yellowtail route.

Brakul: ...Ok.

Janeys: So you haven't. Well I guess that's to be expected. What's your name then? Your name?

Brakul: Brakul.

Janeys: Brakul what?

Brakul: ...Brakul?

Janeys: What's after that? Don't tell me you don't have a surname.

Brakul: I have.

Janeys: So what is it?

Brakul: Brakul virsum Kuligan, et Dirunys et Fetken et Brakul et Gornaid et Ultarnaith et Bril et Finntaigr et Kulsagh et Guimír et Magdenarch et Ailahstaigr et Fírudai et Borunil

Janeys: Ok.

Brakul: et Kulniad et Brinsaid et Ullyos et Bruníl

Janeys: Ok I get it.

Brakul: et Áibethil et Findelaithe et Bratuvhed

Janeys: Ok yeah you're-. You're fucking with me. That's hilarious.

Brakul: et Maebra

Janeys: You're so funny. You're-. Uh.

Brakul: et Damaekul et Bisheldir

Janeys: STOP.

Brakul: et Ludseig

[show-us-kaidenshenandoah]

every time i watch anything with him in it (admittingly, predominantly from the Dropout app), i am reminded that Lou Wilson is the most handsome man to have ever lived. like, objectively. he just is. i will hear no arguments for any other person to be ranked higher. Lou Wilson: whose face single-handedly shows humanity can go no higher in beauty. he is THE most attractive man in the world. argue with the wall lmao

[plumpybread]

Revisited weight distribution amongst the male characters in the AU of what I'm feeling right now

[racke7]

De-aged and injured Danny

Danny is found out by his parents. They don't take it well.

Clockwork is very upset about this, because he'd gambled on almost-certain odds of them being chill about it. So now he has to run damage-control before this very unlikely time-line goes even further off the deep end.

Unfortunately, Danny needs to be in the living world, not the Infinite Realms. Which means that Clockwork needs to put Danny somewhere safe. Somewhere where nobody will find him.

And double-unfortunately, the only place that remotely fits this bill is to contact Lady Gotham.

City-spirits aren't... super-reliable. They're Neverborns who very very rarely consider "humanoid shapes" worth figuring out. So they just kind of... exist. An ectoplasmic presence that's undeniable, but also extremely difficult to have a conversation with.

Thankfully, Lady Gotham is (for all of her... quirks) generally very hero-aligned. Which is why she's the best one to ask for sanctuary for Danny.

Danny who Clockwork de-aged as a way to "limit his injuries" of being vivisected.

Lady Gotham agrees, but she only has one "safe place" to put him. And her Knight is a little bit too paranoid for her to just dump an injured child in his lair, without causing more trouble than it's worth.

But it's hardly a difficult thing, to arrange a few things, and place Danny in a spot where his injuries will cause her Knight to hurry to his aid.

Such as... in a room filled with medical equipment, right next door to where Joker has just lost a fight with Batman.

Things escalate somewhat when Batman finds him and makes some assumptions about what Joker has been up to. Tempers run a bit high, someone loses a few extra teeth, someone else has to physically drag Bruce off Joker's body before he beats him to death, and the Joker considers the whole thing a grand old laugh (he has no idea what's going on, but it sure pissed off Batty, and that's always a treat).

Of course, the Batfam has to actually investigate the scene, evacuate Danny, give Danny medical aid, and then also ask Danny about what happened.

Danny wakes up and is very confused about a lot of things.

He's no longer being vivisected. Great. Love that part.

He's somewhere he doesn't recognize (the Batcave). Could be good, could be bad. At least the bed is pretty nice?

He's very small. This feels like a personal attack. He might not have gotten a good growth-spurt yet, but taking away what he had is cruel and unusual.

And there's a weirdo in an... armored bat-costume? Who isn't setting off his ghost-sense? What the hell kind of "normal" person wears something like that?

Still, Danny does answer the questions that Batman asks him, because... well, there's a green post-it-note in his pocket that says he shouldn't lie.

So Danny tells Batman about his parents cutting him up "for science". And Batman hears that the Joker somehow managed to hire two mad scientists who (upon the tiniest bit of suggestion from the Joker, who'd definitely seen the similarities between Danny and Jason and thought it would be a "funny prank") had leapt at the opportunity to vivisect their own son.

This is definitely worrying, because from the phrasing, they'd been "wanting to do it for a long time". And considering Danny's slow heartbeat and low body-temperature? They'd been wanting to do it because he was a meta.

So, somewhere out there (the Bats had found no trace of the two) were two deranged lunatics who wanted to cut open metas to "see how they worked".

Batman does the very reasonable thing and actually contacts the rest of the Justice League with their descriptions, just in case they'd managed to leave Gotham before the Bats had tracked them down.

[lorebird]

In which Ford struggles so badly to relate to other people that he wonders if he’s really human at all. The more isolated he becomes, the harder it is to reconcile with his own humanity.

[buboplague]

ok,

I keep meaning to do a Zinru lore dump because people have expressed interest over the years, but I've realized I'm really bad at giving information without guidance, I don't know what you guys want to know or are interested in specifically. So please leave me asks/comment on this with questions and I'll try to do a post with answers to those, or use them as prompts, instead of fumbling around trying to figure out what to share

thanks

TLDR: Zinru AMA

[shootingstarrfish]

some silly guys!! the silliest guys around!!!!!! :)