#i am always maze

[probablytree]

the usual

[aurantiumred]

how do you think jason would react if he knew his best friend replaced him twice, once with percy and once with thalia

one grace sibling traded in for another.

[bayetea]

jason and hazel's beef in hoo was always way more interesting than whatever percy and jason had going on sorry. the differences in gravity and intrigue in the jason/hazel beef vs jason/percy are only further compounded by the ways they're connected and the ways that their stories are similar

because 1. they have a HISTORY they knew each other before he went missing!!!!! they were in the fifth cohort together!!!! yes they didn't know each other well but I really think that was a bad writing choice rick made. can you imagine if they used to be friends/if jason had been a big brother figure to hazel only to go missing for months and then they have a very awkward reunion on the argo because he barely remembers her and then she's even more betrayed because he doesn't wanna save nico initially. the drama. we could have had it all man

2. beef between a son of poseidon and a child of zeus/jupiter from the grace family? yeah been there done that why are we doing this again. god I wish we had gotten a big fight between a son of jupiter and a child of pluto instead

3. their beef regarding nico was way more high stakes than the silly alpha male posturing rick was trying to force between jason and percy especially considering how mega nerfed jason is written in hoo because no one's allowed to be on equal footing with percy

4. the tacit layer of betrayal in jason being hazel's ex-centurion/praetor only to end up choosing chb (this is a more interesting conflict between jason/reyna but since hazel is actually on the argo and reyna isn't she can still be an opportunity for this camp jupiter/camp half-blood conflict to be explored with jason)

5. I'm just gonna say it - I think hazel ought to have complicated feelings about white authority figures in a military camp as a black girl from the freaking jim crow era (not that this would have ever been explored satisfactorily in the books because as far as rick is concerned hazel is colorblind and hardly ever thinks about race despite growing up segregated. which is crazy unrealistic but whatever)

6. something something about the parallels that jason and hazel have about making hard choices about their pasts in order to have a more fulfilling future

7. this isn't necessarily interesting in and of itself but I just think it's neat that they're both big three roman kids with greek siblings that they didn't grow up with. what could have been interesting is jason seeing how close hazel and nico are and feeling some type of way about everything he never got to have with thalia and some exploration into how that impacts his feelings about the rescue mission

8. they both have really awkward romantic conflicts in their pasts that intrude upon the present (whether he and reyna were ever even slightly romantically involved or not) because the jason/reyna thing is written as a initial source of conflict/uncertainty for jiper in the same way that hazel/leo (sammy) was a conflict for frazel to grapple with. this is interesting to me because hazel is connected to reyna and jason is connected to leo. like there could have been a moment of connection over letting go of pasts loves to wholeheartedly pursue new ones in the way that both of them are (were) with piper and frank

(unrelated but having no frank or hazel pov in mark of athena sucks So Bad and I hate it. it was the first time they ever have relationship problems and we only see it through someone else's pov. I am going to bring this up forever because I'm still mad about it)

9. they both died. this bullet is a joke but I just thought I should put it here

10. percy is a well-established character and hazel and jason are new in hoo. percy has 50 povs in hoo and hazel has 28. economically speaking it would just be a more effective use of your limited pages to spend more time developing important interactions and conflicts between two new characters (esp new big three kids) who already have a more interesting foundation than the one involving our previous protagonist of 5 entire books

imo hazel and jason are the most weirdly written new additions to the main cast but I strongly feel that rick severely underutilized the way that characters like those two could play off of each other. hazel isn't just a sweet little cinnamon roll she is passionate and contemplative and morose and guilt-ridden and jason isn't just a bland rule-follower he is kind and committed and loyal and conflicted and they're both painfully self-sacrificing and I just think it's such a shame that these two characters with great concepts on paper and so many obvious threads to connect them didn't get as much as attention as.... whatever happened in kansas did

and I mean if you like the jason/percy conflict that's fine, but I think it's worthwhile to compare the merit of them because rick chose to centralize and build up to one more than the other when he had such perfect material to expand on the other instead and I think that says something about his biases. and I think part of the issue is that rick struggles with strengthening tension and applying complexity to conflicts between male/female characters that aren't romantic or onesidedly antagonistic like clarisse/percy. we have several noteworthy conflicts between male characters but when women are involved it's like rick doesn't know how to put them on equal footing and apply platonic depth. imo this is just another reason why big three girls (hazel/thalia/bianca) don't get to be as powerful and transformative in the overall narrative as big three guys (percy/jason/nico)

[athetos]

I’m going to be real, reading house of leaves i was fascinated but incapable of fully understanding. The solutions were just out of my reach. I needed to know what x meant, what y symbolized. It made my head hurt but I was desperate for answers. It was beyond frustrating. I was trawling house of leaves forums from 2002 looking for any type of theory that unified the experience.

Within hours of officially declaring the book finished, having exhausted all of the appendices and footnotes, I got the phone call that my brother died. Needless to say, my search for answers was on hold. Later, I’d learn that one of the main catalysts for the book was the death of Danielsewski’s father. Reading that, it just clicked. I no longer feel any need to find answers. Theories are meaningless. It’s grief. That’s it. This is what grieving is like, this book, and you will never find something that makes it make sense (either the book or grief).

[maze-mind]

Making one of these because I won't be consistent without it. I know this.

Fanfiction edition

[Also means TMR edition bc hahaha...]

--

— 10 notes and I will write Maze Runner headcanons for new obsession ships 🥰

— 50 notes and I shall write a short story about picnic fluff. [Bc I always say I will write fluff but won't]

— 100 notes and I will make a text fanfic

— 200 notes and I shall write a 5+ chapter, multiship thingy (probably in an AU idk we make these when we get to it guys)

— 350 notes and I shall make a majority of moodboards (don't ask why this is so up, it's personal)

— 500 notes and I shall.. idk. Make a most-voted story with 20+ chapters and major character and stuff??? Probably also in AU.

Didn't add more because even 500 is a stretch LMAO

[iniziare]

Tag drop: Jingliu

[godsopenwound]

the labyrinth/maze/spiral as a metaphor for the mother’s womb and the underworld, the one being the microcosm of the other. a metaphor of the earth as mother and of burial as a re-entry....of the grave as a return to the mother for rebirth.....“The object of the tomb-builder would have been to make the tomb as much like the body of the mother as he was able, since to enter the next world, the spirit would have to be re-born.”.......“Into the womb for rebirth.”

[theskeletoninthegarden]

I'm in one of those weird creative ruts where I have an idea, and some threads of what could happen, but I have no idea how to start it

[newtdoods]

Don‘t you love it when you have a comfort character and just copy and paste their personality to be like them? Yeah me too

[measuresderepo]

*Watching Death Cure*

My friend: Gally?! He’s alive?

Me: Brandon?! From high school?

[cottageivy]

trying to decide if i should go ahead and read the sun and the star now despite not having read the last two trials of apollo books or to just go ahead

[timbourinedrake]

Caught up with the current Batman run....Is somebody going to help this man. um yikes. poor bruce is all i can say

[frogagucci]

tag dump.

[garak]

i’m sick rn but yesterday i had to go to class because the professor only accepts physical copies of our papers (understandable since he’s old as balls) and the downtown 6 was so packed it was unbelievable. wtf is going on at 6pm in lower manhattan on a tuesday that would require my train to be so full the doors had to try to close at least 3 times at every stop before we could go. but the moral of the story is to anyone who was on that train with me i hope you didn’t catch my horrible illness and maybe next time take the express instead of the local

[asterdeer]

nothing like blazing through the cazador fight with almost 0 damage taken, not even on baby mode, perfect party dynamics for once, and then immediately picking the wrong astarion dialogue so i have to do the damn fight over again. love that. thanks fangs, love that for me, i have nothing but time and energy to baby you out of your homicidal impulses, please let's do this five more times, it's so much fun

[softceleste]

Okay so 👀 curiosity question for my fellow giffers:

Bonus points in the tags if you tell me when picking between footage variations, what file size you like to actually go with for comparison.