#i know you all agree with me

[natstablook29]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[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!"

[gunsatthaphan]

just bro banter 🤙🏻✌🏻

[sainz100]

2024 Brazilian GP | x

[hood-ex]

I love when it's incredibly obvious that Damian misses Dick.

"...I'm glad you got out of stupid Bludhaven for a while. It... it's not the same without you."

[somerandomcockroach]

"Mistakes on mistakes until" (my speed of reading is that one day where every planet stands in one line)

2 chapter in nutshell

3 chapter in nutshell

[ramblerogue]

See you next year.

[laurents-secret-diary]

oh damen we're really in it now.mp4

[grumpyghostdoodles]

Frisk: "Oh, so you make fun of Asriel for not telling humans apart very well, but then you go and do this? Shame on you"

---------------

The character design for the new kid of "The Fairly OddParents: A New Wish" is so unintentionally hilarious. Hazel looks like a very sweet kid, and retired Cosmo and Wanda was a nice surprise, but holy shit out of all the fandoms they could accidentally reference, im wheezing

[nightlocked-in]

“peeta is bisexual” you guys are losing the vision. peeta isn’t even straight. katniss INVENTED sexuality for him. whatever katniss identifies as, he’s like “yeah, i’ll take that one” no questions asked

[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.

[enbysiriusblack]

james and lily in their friendship stage and james has resigned himself to thinking she only likes him platonically, whilst lily is calling him pretty and stealing sirius' 'potter' shirt to wear at james' quidditch matches and squeezing onto an armchair so she's half in his lap when there's another chair next to them and inviting him to the madame puddifoot's to hang out.

[crescentfool]

orpheus and thanatos 💚

[uselessnbee]

something i can't stop thinking about is the fact that Percy Jackson started as a comfort story for Rick's son to show him that his adhd and dyslexia doesn't have to be just a bad thing and the fandom then took Percy and Leo and made them into these stupid idiots that don't even know basic math or "big" words and wouldn't be able to even tie their shoelaces without someone else's (someone smarter's) help

don't yall see how fucked up that is? a big part of this fandom has adhd and/or dyslexia and/or other learning disabilities/neurodivergence and find comfort in those characters. they are called lazy and stupid all the time and then yall decided to take characters with those disabilities and ignore their inteligence and made them into something they are not just because their adhd is more "visible" (read more stereotypical looking) (even tho that's not true either because the fandom made them into chaotic gremlins but in reality Percy is more just sarcastic and snarky and even that is more just his internal monologue for his own amusment and to cope and Leo just uses humor as a coping mechanism to hide his depression and other issues but that's a discussion for another time)

Percy is canonically very smart and strategic. no he isn't very good at school. it's what happens when you're neurodivergent and have learning disabilities. that doesn't mean he's stupid. no he doesn't know everything about greek mythology and that doesn't make him stupid either. but when Annabeth tells him the myth he is very good at coming up with strategies and how to win a fight. he's not smart as Annabeth because Annabeth is literally a daughter of the goddess of wisdom so stop fucking comparing them. are you also going to call Annabeth weak and incapable because she can't control water? no you won't because that's fucking stupid. and Leo. fucking Leo. is literally canonically a mathematic genius and also genius when it comes building stuff. they're both smart. they're not fucking stupid. they know and understand words that are longer than 5 letters. no they do not struggle with basic knowledge. they're not fucking stupid.

and miss me with the "it's just a joke" bullshit

jokes are supposed to be funny

and it's not just a joke for many of you because the number of fanfics where they are written in exactly this way is too fucking high. it's actually surprising to find a fanfic where they are written right

in conclusion: the way this fandom portrays Percy and Leo is reinforcing the harmful misconception that people with adhd and/or other learning disabilities are stupid and i hate it with a burning passion

call me sensitive all you want i'll gladly accept it i will rather be called sensitive for hating that those characters are being treated this way than follow the fandoms harmful idea about them

thank you for coming to my ted talk <3

[vaguely-concerned]

seeing people claim that lucanis is 'bad representation' is hilarious to me because in so many ways he's really the closest anything has ever gotten to capturing my own personal experience. sorry for being bad real life queer and mental health/neurodiversity representation folks 😔 I'll take time to reflect and do some work on myself and try to do better in the future