#crit answers

[helyeahmangocheese]

do you think jason grace ever thinks about how new rome and, as an extension of it, the empire of the US perpetuates the same power imbalances/power hoarding and inequity that the old Roman Empire did and do you think he ever gets angry about how he was raised in that system to the extent that it is impossible to look at Neo-Classical New England buildings without his blood boiling? do you think he and annabeth share haunting feelings about the architecture of government buildings that were designed to emulate temples for gods that are just as fucked up and selfish as humans with too much power and control can be? does it give them chills, knowing the founding fathers were demigods, and that history is a cycle?

[ruegarding]

Wait what's the tea on Wotg makin' Percabeth even worse? /gen /nf

tldr; rick is continuing his trend of having annabeth imply that she thinks her bf is stupid (u can see what i mean by trend here). this is coupled w a lot of ableism: acting like percy is too stupid to function and removing annabeth's disabilities so she can be a girl boss while refusing to address their mental health. this is supposed to make percabeth look cute, somehow, but instead comes off as mean-spirited at best.

first, to establish context, percy's incredibly overworked,

(he's also on the swim team) and bc of this percy is falling asleep in class and waking up in a panic. this is never addressed seriously despite being a series abt disability. as if that wasn't enough, percy also is never shown to enjoy any of his classes and is frequently written to be stuggling w his grades, just in case u forgot he was stupid (he also is written w the ableist stereotype of being lazy abt school work, too, instead of, you know, disabled). his main motivation is that annabeth will be successful with or without him so he better not be a stupid failure.

completely ignoring percy was the one who wanted to go to nru. also, zero mentions for the accommodation percy is receiving for his disabilities (nor annabeth's, but she's written like they don't exist so).

and then percy says that annabeth's friend, hana, doesn't like him bc she doesn't think he's good enough for annabeth, going on to think yeah that's fair. this is never addressed bc it's supposed to be a cute percabeth and #girl boss annabeth moment. then percy makes a joke (?) that annabeth's friends are gossiping abt how annabeth can stand to date him when he's too stupid to understand architecture when percabeth walks away to talk. this is not a percabeth win and i'm genuinely not sure how anyone on rick's team thought it was.

then there's this:

just in case u forgot, percy is the stupid one and annabeth is the smart one. teehee.

and, in relation to ignoring their mental health, annabeth talks abt putting spider webs all over hecate's mansion (bc she wants to make a haunted house), which rick says is ok bc it's not spiders. except part of annabeth's huge traumatic fight w arachne was being covered in spiderwebs that literally pulled her into tartarus. so. weird plotline. similarly, percy has a bit abt having nightmares abt cereberus, which is equally stupid. i talked abt it here. not necessarily percabeth but worth mentioning for context. oh, and percy also bodily-fluid-bends later in the book w no comment except annabeth's shocked expression. correction: while percy does bodily-fluid-bend w no fanfare, annabeth is not there. percy poison-bends in front of annabeth w no comment.

rick then keeps poking fun at how percy and annabeth would make great parents. which. they're seventeen. btw. but yeah anyway percy would make a great dad bc he's got the funny dad jokes (bc he's stupid. haha get it). annabeth would make a great mom bc she's soooooo nurturing what w taking care of a puppy who decides to call her mom and taking care of her stupid idiot useless boyfriend. i wish this was a joke. more on this later.

the line "[annabeth] looked surprised—me comforting her, kind of switching things up" is self explanatory and written specifically to piss me off.

this passage,

which sucks for many reasons, but especially bc this is rick trying to rewrite book canon w show canon despite very easy ways to include this without acting like percy is an idiot who just didn't notice for the past THREE BOOK SERIES (like a war that took place recently where chiron was injured idk just an idea). instead, percy has to take the fall for rick's error and annabeth has to act like her bf is the stupidest person on earth.

btw, did i mention that annabeth is ahead in her classes and percy sucks at school? teehee.

wow, it's like annabeth's dyslexia isn't even there!

now, it may seem that i'm exaggerating percy's incompetence.

this is a real quote from the book.

so is this!

and this.

and—u get the point. rick is acting like percy hasn't outsmarted his opponents bc his personality is stupid and annabeth's personality is reduced down to having the brain cell.

then, percy has a moment where his empathy shines thru and he's allowed to succeed at something (for the first time in the book), except he has to put himself down to make annabeth feel better. bc we can't have percy feeling good abt himself since it makes annabeth look bad. or something. idk.

again, there is no exploration of percy's self-esteem or their myriad of trauma.

to make up for all the times percy was treated like an idiot, annabeth says percy is "a pretty smart guy,"

which is a surprise to her despite them having known each other for five years.

furthermore, rick is writing percy w a sort of incompetence towards household tasks that is, quite frankly, sexist. here is a good post on how it mirrors weaponized incompetence and here is another one abt the disturbing nature of mom-ifying annabeth. i should make it clear annabeth provides percy food in multiple scenes while percy does adjacent to nothing. she also tucks him into bed like a child in one scene and gets nicknamed "mom" by a dog that pees on her (AND she cleans up the pee while percy does nothing).

so, wottg is essentially 300 pages of mean-spirited bullying from all sides. none of the humor shines through these jokes, none of the facetiousness, like hey isn't it funny that percy is really smart but sometimes completely oblivious, is there. there is no comedic disparity between percy's power and skill and his ability to trip over his feet bc there are no impressive feats of power and skill (anything that would count are immediately brushed off). comments abt percy learning to tie his own shoes w his newfound octopus tentacles don't land in a book where he's acting like he cannot have thoughts without annabeth. and there's no grace to be given bc at no point in any of this handled as a serious exploration of percy's insecurities despite the ample opportunity to do so.

then, when percy isn't being hounded w vitriol, annabeth is being reduced to a sexist caricature of a woman. it does not make percabeth look good in any way.

finally, i need to make it clear that however bad this breakdown makes the books seem, it is worse. i summarized and skipped over a ton of stuff for my own sanity.

[percabeth4life]

I feel like I'd have fewer problems with the show if rick had been honest about the fact that he was going to change things.

Even if all he did was say, "There are differences that we will make in an attempt to make the show more relevant to new viewers." I would have fewer problems.

Instead, he acted like he was trying to be completely faithful to the book until everything started coming out.

My biggest issue isn't the fact that he wanted to change things. It's that he lied about it.

No fr just say upfront it's a rewrite and people wouldn't be so mad. Like they'd still be generally upset but this is not what he promised us.

[that-guy-in-the-chiton]

what's your opinion on how rick riordan handled ww2 in the pjo books ? personally, i want to bash his head against a wall

Personally, I thought it was incredibly brain-dead and one of the, if not the, most insensitive crap he ever wrote. Writing a fictional war/battle is one thing, but watering down one of the most horrific and brutal conflicts in human history where millions of people died and still suffer the consequences from to a petty squabble between the demigod children of the big three is...a choice, to say the least.

He also did a very shoddy job on the American civil war, including naming the son of a slave after a literal slave owner (Thomas Jefferson), but that's a complaint for another time.

[overthinkingmoth]

I feel like genshin's design philosophy has changed a lot in the last 1-2 years and not for the better. like you could tell me the entire character design department got fired and replaced in between Fontaine and natlan and i would believe you.

[undead-knick-knack]

Jester: Is it the dead woman?

Ashton: ........... no...

Me:

Ashton why was that such a long pause 😭👀😭👀 🖤💜

[dax-enfinity]

Keep hating on Solangelo (thumbs up emoji here) :D

Hell yeah !!

It’s just… Solangelo sucks SO MUCH, you’ve probably already seen my other posts on here ranting about this ships existence.

And I just HATE Will Solace as a whole too, a minor background character with a max of only 5 lines in the entire series pre-TOA… and this is why I don’t even consider TOA to be canon in my eyes

Don’t even get me started on Nico’s characters assasination, him getting reduced to ‘Will’s Goth/Emo soft boyfriend that needs to be protected’ YUCK.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

okay I'm this is a tall order but I am so confused about Taika. Does he support Israel? I've seen so many posts about people spreading rumors about him and other people saying he does support Israel, so what's the haps??

so the rumor that taika supports israel comes from the fact that he (and like 200 other hollywood ppl including some very famous names like mark hamill or jack black but for some reason ppl only are talking abt taika) signed a letter thanking biden for working to release hostages and fight hamas. the language in the letter does not acknowledge that israel is a settler colonial state and that hamas exists as a direct result of settler colonial violence.

the letter is bad but it’s bad in the way that someone who is not informed about the conflict probably would not pick up on. it’s a letter that on its surface just looks like concern for civilian hostages, which is a good and normal thing to be concerned about. the letter was also probably about as effective as when all those celebrities sang “imagine” during covid lockdowns, which is to say that it most likely did nothing. i doubt biden is making global decisions based on what 200 rich people in hollywood think (if anything he’s probably making decisions based on what 200 oil executives think ahaha)

ppl have also connected taika signing this letter to guz khan getting fired from ofmd. there was a rumor that he was fired bc he supports palestine, which is almost certainly not true. guz was fired bc the show got a 40% budget cut for s2 and his character was the easiest to write off. guz has said he wouldn’t compromise his morals for a job but that this wasn’t the job where he had to do that, and he has blocked the person who started that rumor. ALSO several actors in ofmd have since posted supporting palestine so like?? this one is pure antisemetic conspiracy theory. if taika had a problem with guz supporting palestine why was guz even hired in the first place.

anyway signing the letter was a bad thing that taika should not have done but it is impossible to determine his stance on israel based solely on the fact that he signed that letter. he has also liked posts about freeing palestine so like, who knows. i personally have much better things to be doing than scrutinizing everything a famous poc does to try and prove if he’s a good or bad person

tl;dr there is no hard evidence that taika supports israel ppl just hate him for being a wildly successful brown jewish man

[bayetea]

inflammatory prompts I'll never post on demigodpolls lol

[ruegarding]

You know, if they’re going to show us Percy killing himself to get into college, can they at least tell us what he’s going to study, and let us see him feeling somewhat excited about it?

yeah, as far as i can tell the general consensus that percy is going for marine biology is bc of annabeth's throwaway line. if percy's major has been confirmed somewhere, i'd love to see it.

it's weird that rick hasn't written percy actually liking any of his classes since...mr brunner's??? which percy didn't even find the specific material interesting as much as he found mr brunner to be engaging. the lack of focus makes sense, at least, in pjo and hoo bc their focus is less on school, so percy's classes are on the backburner after tlt (outside of acknowledging he's not experiencing straight-up ableism and is therefore doing better), but w the focus on college in the new marketing trilogy, percy's lack of interest stands out. it would be so easy to have percy say that he really enjoyed x class or lecture or assignment and wanted to study it more/focus on it in college. instead, rick has written percy to be slacking off in class, as if that was his problem and not, you know, the ableism he was experiencing (which is why mr brunner was the exception) and the fact that he had to miss a year of school bc of hoo. also, i'm unsure what accommodations (if any) alternative high is making for percy...considering he says he can quote sparknotes instead of shakespeare makes me doubt they're giving him audiobooks for his dyslexia...but the fact that percy is written to be struggling in his senior year bc he's lazy and not disabled is literally just ableism.

it makes it difficult to see college as a "good ending" when percy 1) has never showed an interest in pursuing a specific field of study (outside of him technically being a published author in-universe, which i'm not sure counts bc it's not referenced in the series...? is the implication percy writes the books after going to college? idk.), 2) is working himself incredibly hard to the point where's he's falling asleep in class, and 3) has to leave his mother/family behind to live across the country. rick also changed it so that demigods don't really have to worry abt monsters once they're 18 (which is coding for their disabilities...) and retconned nru so it requires good sat scores and isn't a full college (it's a satellite campus w uc berkeley and annabeth goes to classes at berkeley bc they don't have what she wants at nru???), so there's really no unique incentive for percy to be going to college at all, let alone in new rome. it's a series of very strange writing choices. to say the least.

[percabeth4life]

I don't get Nico in HoO. I just don't. If he isn't feeling welcome in CHB, why did the curse stop working? What happened to circumstances screwing Percy and Nico's relationship over constantly only for them to still look out for each other. Idk, do you think it's a retcon, or am I misreading PJO?

*shrugs* Rick doesn't tend to remember his own books and has admitted that he doesn't reread them. It shows in how he writes the characters, especially with Nico. He forgot a lot of details about Nico between PJO and HOO. So yeah, retcon.

[where-are-the-spooky-gays-2]

"Where are the spooky gays" this and "where are the spooky gays" that

WHERE ARE THEY ALL AT???? WHERE DID THEY GO?? WILL THEY EVER RETURN???

APPARENTLY ITS BEEN 4 YEARS SINCE THE WEDDING EPISODE??? AKA THE LAST SIGNIFICANT PLOT POINT??

I miss them

I feel like im in my Steven Universe era where the show was in a everlasting hiatus. Where are they, Mr sanders??? What have you done with them/lighthearted

-🐀

They're all trapped in the secret Beach episode /joking No but controversial take that will absolutely get an angry mob at me but I don't give a shit at this point and this is not directed to you at all 🐀 Anon I've just been in this fandom for 7 years and I'm tired of biting my tongue /genuine But y'all need to understand that if we didn't have the Asides/Short vids, The Incorrect Quotes, The Photoshoots, Bloops, etc. then we would have not seen the Sides at all in the span of 4 years (That's 1,475 days) and even through said 4 years there was a pandemic, a hurricane that quite literally flooded the shit out of Thomas' old office, and a stress related condition that quite literally made this man not even wanna look at himself (If you think this is 'babying' him actually touch a dictionary) I know this might come as a surprise especially with the old memes I used to make on this blog and with how most countdown blogs are now but I'm probably the only one in this fandom who honestly doesn't care for the wait due to watching literally everything he makes. He's juggling different projects, he's preforming in more theater stuff, he's making a lot of music for a 4 part season finale along with a possible prologue, he's trying to get back into the swing of things and getting over his intimidation of doing main series characterization of the Sides and all we can do is wait and continue making more beautiful content for the fandom to enjoy and gush about the characters and ships we love. I'd rather watch something that was written with time and patience than rushed and hear more bitching from the fandom for something they wanted.

[teacupsandcyanide]

it feels like every major black character rtd writes gets overshadowed by or treated like shit by ten or his favourite blonde in some way. mickey, martha, rose noble, now fifteen. like, come on

I get where you’re coming from. I prefer to look more at how the narrative treats these characters and how the writer makes choices that make little sense or are weakly justified, just personally, because otherwise I just find myself getting mad at fictional characters when the problem is how they were written. A decent amount of time the narrative framed the way Ten and Rose treated Martha and Mickey as bad. My problem is that RTD kept circling around that drain instead of moving on, and if nothing else it became wearisome to watch Ten dunk on Mickey yet again when he learned in the Aliens of London two parter that Mickey is very intelligent and worthwhile.

It is painful as a poc to watch your favourite show and see characters of colour go through being repeatedly told they will never measure up to their white counterparts, in-universe, and never have the impact this might have on them as poc examined - because even when the people doing this to you aren’t being racist, when the whole world is telling you that you’ll never be as good as your white peers it hurts a certain kind of way when something reinforces that. I had plenty of experiences of things like unrequited love when I was younger where the desirability of white people over poc and my “rivals” for lack of a better word, being white, were parts of why it hurt so much. I love the line in Utopia “oh of course she was blonde” even though it could be interpreted as sexist, because I hear “oh of course she was a picture of Eurocentric beauty standards”. Tbh though this is a difficult topic to write and I’m glad RTD never tried to tackle it, as I doubt he would done it well.

And yeah, Rose Noble wasn’t mistreated but it’s always been a strange choice to have her name herself after Rose rather than Martha, who Donna was actually friends with. It’s making the mistake as a writer of assuming that your character feels the same way you do even when it makes no sense for them to.

[my-pjo-stuff]

And another horrible representation of a country is about my home country, Brasil, Paolo Montes. I don't know if it's a joke or anything but it states that he can understand fluently English but only speaks Brasilian, which it's pretty dumb, because why a character that goes to the USA and expects that he will only speak Portuguese.

And how it's a pun how his unlucky, to the point it almost kills him, more times that it's comical, it just becomes a bad joke. And his mother being Hebe, it's a reference to an actress named Hebe Camargo, but it's not a good reference, as Hebe Camargo had made a lot of racist speeches and jokes along her career.

I am genuinley SO sorry you have to see this cause???? What. The. FUCK. Like holy shit this genuinely makes me angry, like HUH???? WTF???

RICK WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???? The Brazillian pun was bad enough- BUT TO NOT EVEN DO BASIC RESEARCH ON THE ACTRESS YOU NAMED YOUR CHARACTER AFTER???? The bar already was in hell, but holy SHIT does Rick like to limbo dance with Satan. Genuinly this baffles me and I cannot believe I'm saying this...but considering his track record maybe it was good he just white washed and Americanized everything Greek in PJO. 'Cause considering his track record I HIGHLY doubt anything good would have come of it had he actually tried to dig into greek culture. I'm kinda glad the only mention he gave Germany way "Hitler was a son of Hades" now ngl, I do not want to know what kind of weird stereotype he would have done. And again, I am SO sorry and that must suck SO hard to have your country insulted like that. Fuck Rick omfg.

[lunatriense]

Do you think it would've been more interesting to write a love triangle between Weiss, Blake and Yang, wherein Yang & Blake had mutual feelings but in the end stayed best friends with their issues sorted out, whilst Freezerburn became endgame?

Oh yeah, absolutely, Weiss and Yang just have much more chemistry and development towards actual relationship beats, and much more naturally too. Bees could've worked but it needed to be genuinely developed, and what mkek actually wrote was them being really toxic, so. Yeah. Freezerburn would've been much better.