#but its tone is different if like

[aparticularbandit]

you know in undertale, how there are the two mirrors, and when the player character looks in the first mirror, it says, it's you! and then what is said in the second mirror depends on which route you take?

i need ryoko looking into a mirror all happy with it's you! and then a second picture beneath that with jumpscare spooky junko and it's me.

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[lucabyte]

"So what's the weirdest possible first (second) impression Loop could make on the party in postcanon?" "Yeah, that, probably."

+ Bonus

theyre just standing there in direct party order while this happens. normal tuesday.

[puppppppppy]

act 4 :(

@chipper-smol and i came to a realization

[shroomerr]

portrait study but its kenny

[ofswordsandpens]

Okay compiling my most critical opinions on the pjo show so far (episodes 1 & 2)

The Gods' Conflict, Foreshadowing, & Big Three Kids

The show has seemingly dropped a lot of the foreshadowing and threat regarding the gods impending war over the theft of the lightning bolt. In the book, Percy remarks about how the weather's been inexplicably weird and extreme. When he gets to camp everyone is on pins and needles about something and they don't want to talk about it but its still very present. By the time he's claimed as a son of Poseidon and everyone's like "oh fuck" and then Chiron finally explains to Percy that the gods think he's the lightning thief, everything clicks into place for the reader. It all makes sense why everything seems so wrong... because things are wrong. Meanwhile in the show, that doesn't carry through as much, so the reveal of the conflict between the gods and why that's a big deal falls flat in comparison imo.

They dropped/stalled the foreshadowing of the fates and the cutting of the string. They could very well include this in future episodes, and probably will, but I think the timing of it - Percy seeing this before he even knew he was a demigod - again carries some hefty significance and helped set the foreboding tone of things being wrong even from the beginning.

They did drop Zeus's attack on Percy in the minotaur battle completely, which does disappoint me. In the book, its lightning that blasts the car off the road. In the show, Sally seemingly loses control of the car. That change is pretty significant, because it's again losing the power of RR's foreshadowing in the book. The attack on Percy outside the camp borders was a duel attack from Zeus and Hades.

Finally, I don't like the changes they made to Percy's claiming scene, namely, the reaction from the rest of CHB. Percy being a son of Poseidon is a huge deal. When Percy's claimed, the attitude is very much begrudging reverence paired with genuine fear of what it means and what he represents. In the book, Percy is claimed. People gasp. Everyone kneels. Annabeth says, "This is really not good." In the show, Percy is claimed. People... stand there? Annabeth smiles - she's going to get her quest. The only person who has the most outright negative reaction is Luke. I won't go so far to say this is out of character for Annabeth, but it is focusing on an entirely different aspect of her character in the moment, and what the audience gets from Percy's claiming scene here, the tone, is now different from the book. Basically, the reverence and fear don't really carry across to the show, which I think is important.

The phrase "forbidden child" slaps tho.

2. Gabe's Characterization, Sally's Characterization, & Why the Changes do Make a Difference

I'm going to say this with great care: The show has absolutely depicted an abusive relationship between Sally and Gabe. The show has shown Sally to be a strong woman who would do anything for her child. The show has shown Gabe to be a controlling, toxic man.

What they have depicted in the show does not read like the characters and dynamic in the books.

Book Gabe is a violent, menacing drunk. He is so disgusting and vile that monsters avoid him. This is overwhelmingly apparent from the second Percy gets home in the book, even before he is aware of the physical abuse Sally has been facing. Percy has already been dealing with physical abuse from him, amongst other things (edit to be more specific: this is including verbal, emotional, & financial abuse). I've already spoke to it here, in-depth, so I'll try to keep it short but all of this has not been translated accurately to the screen. (Is this to say that a person must be overtly abusive to be abusive? No. But does this character on-screen feel like Smelly Gabe? No.) These things have shaped Percy (and Sally) in very specific ways. As others have mentioned: Percy cannot stand alcohol. He meets Dionysus and is reminded of his step-father. He gets to Tartarus and the air reminds him of Gabe.... The character on screen, while abusive, does not share this presence at all, and that makes a difference.

Edit: To emphasize once more, I am not saying that the show has not depicted a realistic portrayal of abuse. It has (verbal, emotional, & financial so far). It has also distinctly changed the tone and Gabe's presence from the book, to the extent that it no longer feels like the same character and that does have a rippling effect on the dynamics he shares with both Sally and Percy.

3. The Lack of Annabeth

Annabeth in the show is just like... really not as present as she is in the book so far, and I'm just kinda like, why lol?

Annabeth in the books is already way more involved in Percy's life. She was in the infirmary feeding Percy ambrosia after the attack (ulterior quest motives lol), she's the one who lead Percy around camp and re-explained godly parentage to him - and its a moment where she's very sincere with him, and even trying to help him! Instead these moments are given to Chiron and Luke, which I do get the merit of, but still, these were her moments!

Annabeth in the books had already surmised that the gods were fighting, something was stolen, and the something bad was going to happen, all before Percy had even been claimed. And she shared that with him! Again, the loss of foreshadowing and little bonding moments has me :(

I'm a little worried how they're going to deal with her crush on Luke because its pretty central to her character in the books! It helps Luke to manipulate her and also keeps her from admitting he's done something wrong. Also, it was very sweet and funny reading her get flustered - It drove home the point that she was just a kid with a crush that she didn't know how to handle. But in the show Luke spoke to her and I was expecting there to be some sort of reaction to it and there just... wasn't? (This is not something I'm laying at Leah's feet btw! Only the writers/directors!) We're only two episodes in tho so maybe we'll see it some more moving forward.

4. The Minotaur Battle

Again, I've already spoken about this in depth here but !!

The lack of Zeus's lightning strike, them all coming to a standstill and just chatting instead of running for their lives, Grover being awake and just sort of off to the side watching the fight, Sally being like "Promise Me Grover Swear it"... it all just doesn't ring right to me

I wanted more panic, more terror, more urgency. Higher stakes. I wanted Grover unconscious, I wanted to see Percy drag him into camp, and I wanted to see more of Percy's grief alongside his rage. Like the book did.

The pacing in the show here, and just overall, is weird

5. Other Stuff

Mrs. Dodds fight kind of fell flat too. It was honestly too sudden and Percy killing her in the show seemed even more accidental than in the book lol. Like, accidental impalement vs intentional swing of the sword.

They really had show Grover throw Percy to the wolves and not just gaslight him, but low-key have a part in getting him expelled? Not sure how I feel about it tbh.

More New York. I wish we had gotten the part of Percy taking the bus home with Grover included cause like? Him ditching Grover was funny, but it would have been the perfect opportunity to show Percy traveling through New York and establish it has his home. Shots of him looking at the city, walking the streets, interacting with people near his building.. yeah.

More Montauk too tbh. Like more shots of him and Sally on the beach rather than just the cabin.

Nectar and Ambrosia! Unless I missed it, which I might have, why have we still not gotten an onscreen depiction of it yet lmao.

[skywing206]

Exploring different concepts with Pharaoh Man

[deathberi]

FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH (2024)

[nydescynt]

Thematic Analysis of Hades II: Why You Can Never Go Home

(At some point I might make a video on this, but for now sharing my thoughts via textpost. Spoilers ahead!)

So the text of the story of Hades and Hades 2 are Zagreus breaking out of the House, and Melinoë breaking in.

But the wild thing (and the reason Hades 2 is much more interesting to me) is that both games actually have almost inverted themes from that text. Zagreus is intent on uniting a household; Melinoë is discovering the home she's fought to return to is rotten to the core.

Zagreus, despite his entire textual goal being to leave his home and family, is narratively & thematically working to bring the family and household together. His mother comes back and is reunited not just with him but her husband, mother, and entire extended family. Achilles and Patrocles, Orpheus and Eurydice, Asterion and Theseus: Hades is a story of people metaphorically coming home and making peace with where they are (Sisyphus, Thanatos, Orpheus). Everyone basically gets a happy ending, credits roll, problems all resolved or en route to be solved. Everyone is home.

(Important to note: we never see a human in the first game. We see shades, and gods, and monsters, and the closest you get to a mortal living thing is the satyrs. This is a story concerned with the realm of the gods.)

In contrast, Melinoë has no home - besides being estranged from her childhood home, she literally lives in a tent. In case the theme was too subtle, presumably.

Now, she has been fighting her entire life to become powerful enough to return home and reclaim her family - that seems Zagreus-adjacent on its face. However, there isn't a home to return to- Hades is in shackles, the rest of her family trapped in time. At this point in Early Access, on both a metatextual & diegetic level she quite literally can neither make it to Mt Olympus or into Zagreus' room - she cannot go home, she cannot meet her family.

Consider the others: Odysseus' presence seems to tie into the idea of a long journey home, but this is an Odysseus who lived and died and now has other (inhuman) priorities. He loves them, but has no interest in reuniting with Penelope and Telemachus at this point. Nemesis dislikes her siblings, and is more concerned with the equal application of "justice" than whether it has any reforming effect. Narcissus and Echo eventually talk and part more amicably, but that's the best that can be said about their relationship.

Hecate refuses to be called Melinoë's mother: she will not distract from the "true" family that Melinoë has no memory of ever meeting.

Instead of Ares and Dionysus (enjoyers of chaos and least affected by the toxicity of the family in Hades 1) we have Hestia and Hephaestaus- a goddess who helped murder her father and a god constantly belittled by his own family. Their tense and frequently bitter interactions with the other Olympians are evocative of the central theme being explored: what if there isn't a home to go back to? What if your family is unforgivable? (What if you want to forgive them anyways? What if you need to?)

This theme is why Arachne is in the game, and Athena is not: likeable, first-helper-of-Zagreus Athena turned Arachne into a spider out of petty anger. How do you reconcile that?

Moros (lovely, kind Moros, who gushes at Odysseus like a fanboy) and his sisters the Fates did horrible things to mortals out of boredom. The same mortals whose bodies you can see stacked up like cordwood in Ephyra, who you repeatedly claim you are fighting to protect from Chronos. Moros can neither confirm nor deny that the current events could have been set in motion by the Fates. How do you reconcile that?

Polyphemus raises sheep. He genuinely loves and cares for them, is protective of them. He also eats them, and is confused when Melinoë implies a contradiction.

How can you love someone and be willing to kill them? For survival? For fleeting satisfaction? For vengeance?

Is Chronos' willingness to eat his children so morally heinous that it makes him worse than every cruelty the gods have wrought? Worse for who?

[greatgoddyke]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[umblrspectrum]

still thinking about it so heres a bunch of stuff

[zytes]

9.16.24 / 9.17.24 - september supermoon

[knifearo]

reminder to everyone that trauma IS a valid reason to use aspec labels. "i don't know if i'm aspec or just traumatized—" protip!!! you can be both!!!! the thing about labels is that they're not immutable states of being that you're born as. they're literally just words that we use to describe our lived experiences, and if asexual or aromantic or any related label feel relevant to the way that you experience attraction, whether it's a result of trauma or not, they're there for you to use. having trauma as a cause does not invalidate the fact that someone is experiencing lesser or no attraction. that's still the aspec experience babey. use the label if you want it's there for you <3

[todayisafridaynight]

[mitamicah]

More Blonde!Jere practice :3

[griem]

ijbol idk man releasing screenshots of very polarizing things said in a private discord server between friends in a public "callout" post is #the most #tumblrific thing ive ever seen LOL.

#opinion 😱 in tags