#i like to think Clarisse had some real respect going on for nico when he was at camp they would be cool friends

[ladynicte]

I love the idea of Clarisse who always lands herself on the infirmary for one reason or the other, always with a broken tooth, arm, or something else, and Nico who basically lives at the infirmary because he's always halfway killing himself with his powers.

So eventually with absolutely nothing else to do they just sorta get to talking, and quickly find out that while they have next to nothing in common, they consider each other pretty darn entertaining

And hey if they are gonna be seeing each other every other week they might as well get used to it

[rickriordanfandam]

opinions on riordanverse ; my edition

a lot of people have been doing this so i decided why not right. probably gna lose some followers or smth but anyways. pls respect my opinions! if u disagree, thats fine, but please be polite. unless any of my opinions strikes u as morally wrong then pls point it out to me respectfully. thanks!

- i actually liked drew. im so sorry to everyone who hates her but full offence, why. think about it this way ok, first of all drew became hc because silena died. silena was the traitor, the one who betrayed chb, yet after she died campers celebrated her as a hero? and then drew suddenly has to replace her and live up to idk that legacy she left behind,, when all of a sudden this girl named piper swoops in and takes her place. idk abt u but i wld be salty abt that too. not only that, but as an asian, the chances of drew having faced racism/bullying as a child is pretty high (she studies at brooklyn academy). which means that when she finds out shes a demigod, and arrives at chb where most of the campers are white (this is an assumption btw), she’d obviously be scared of being bullied for her skin color right?? so the first thing she wld do before the campers get to bully her is to bully them before they can do so. (sentence structure here is wack i apologize) ofc this might not even have happened, drew could have had a perfect childhood && was a b1tch for no reason, BUT EVEN THEN HER ROLE AS A BULLY WAS PRETTY VITAL BECAUSE THAT FURTHER SHOWED THE CONTRAST BETWEEN HER AND PIPER,, HIGHLIGHTING PIPER AS A HERO//GOOD CHARACTER,, AND THEREFORE MAKING READERS LIKE PIPER MORE. anyway stop hating on drew please. ALSO WHY IS THIS SO LONGA SDFJHG

- jason isnt bland, the fandom just kinda erased his backstory (thanks to @pjohoo-memes for the phrasing lol)

- reynabeth wouldnt have lasted/would have broken up several times. idk i just see them as two extremely powerful characters who have firm opinions and will definitely clash at some point. in a platonic relationship,, i can see them as really good friends but as lovers? idk i just think theyll break up

- PIPABETH

- i dont really like jercy,, i see them as better friends than lovers. also idt jason and percy were that close..?

- the dam and not my type jokes are srsly cringey and were never funny. ik that seems hypocritical since my username literally makes use of the dam joke but honestly i dont actually like the joke. its not funny to me and has never been funny

- the seven were not best friends. they definitely argued,, and honestly probably werent as close as the fandom makes them seem. like ure dumped with 6 other people, out of which u only know a few. my introverted ass would have jumped off the argo 2 quicker than leo valdez could bomb camp jupiter up. also leo was a dick to frank. so what if frank is bigger sized?? thats not a valid reason to tease him

- the fandom needs to stop hating on octavian while worshipping luke. if u hate luke and u say u hate octavian too, then okay. but if u tell me ure a luke stan but u despise octavian?? imma disagree w u. luke was worse than octavian im sorry. first of all, octavian being a dick was kinda justified. hes been after the praetor position for so long, and everyone keeps saying to “wait for jason” when suddenly this dude, whos a son of NEPTUNE (neptune wasnt liked much by romans), and the camp decides to make him praetor?? dude i would be pissed off big time. and then afterwards, he finds out that greek demigods are real and the dude they made praetor is greek. AND THEN GREEK DEMIGODS COME TO CJ AND ONE OF THEM BOMB IT UP?? octavian has been told all his life that greeks are scum and this dude called leo valdez attacks cj. sure it was an accident, but did octavian know that? no. so it was honestly justified that he was such a salty prick im just saying. also some of yall be hating on octavian for cutting a teddy bear open and thats the funniest shit ive ever heard i swear 

- luke didnt go to elysium

- travis and connor stoll r way too underrated. the two have been head counselors of the hermes cabin since luke was revealed as a traitor, can u imagine the stress? luke, the person they probably looked up to as a brother, betrayed them. and they didnt even have time to process this when they were  thrown the roles of being hcs. that would have been so stressful and i would probably have broken down if i were them. the stoll brothers taking turns to wake up at ungodly hours because a new camper is crying and homesick and terrified, the stoll brothers having to comfort and take care of new campers, having to deal with the amount of people in that cramped space because not enough campers are being claimed fast enough. having to resolve issues between campers in the hermes cabin all the time. the stolls arent just comedic relief, and we need to stop treating them as such

- tratie shldve been canon idc idc

- demigods of the demeter cabin arent talked about enough and i love the fact that meg was demeters kid. like she isnt the child of one of the big three yet shes so powerful.

- we need to hype clarisse up more her character arc was phucking amazing 

- rachel is overhated. sis found out greek gods exist and regularly come down to earth to fuck around and went “ok cool”. queen shit behavior methinks

- the floor 19 crew of mcga is srsly underrated. like do u even remember halfborn gunderson, mallory keen, tj, etc??? bc i feel like we only remember samirah, magnus, alex, and sometimes blitz and hearthstone

- sadie (tkc) was kinda annoying at first. i like her more now tho but i rmb not liking her for a phat while

- tkc and mcga need more love

- carter kane and jason grace arent boring. theyre just really sweet boys who are too good for this world and yes yes yes 

- hazel and frank (especially frank) need to be hyped up more. i hardly ever see anything about them. also yall seem to forget that frank was literally made praetor and that even hecate admired hazel and was willing to fight beside her because of how powerful she was

- frazels age gap is kinda sketch but i still think theyre really cute

- nico definitely had trauma from going to tartarus on his own

- GROVER IS PERCYS BEST FRIEND

- annabeth isnt smarter than leo but neither is leo smarter than annabeth. ive seen a lot of discussions about who is smarter and heres my hot take on it: neither. theyre equally smart, just in different ways. leos a genius mathematically speaking. he has no issues solving math problems meant for people much, much older than him. annabeth on the otherhand, is great at strategies etc. she can make an army of 1000 more powerful than the enemy, even if theyre outnumbered. so in my opinion, both are equally as smart//u cant compare their intelligence, because their talents lie in two different areas.

- while i do agree rick riordan isnt a god and that hes bound to make mistakes,, AND that hes given us a lot of representation,, if the representation offends the people its sposed to represent, then theres a problem. im talking about piper as a poc and wearing feathers in her hair. im not a poc, so i cant speak for them on whether or not its wrong, because i dont know either. HOWEVER, i have seen multiple posts BY pocs talking about how they didnt really like rick’s representation of piper, and thats an issue. pocs have been and are still oppressed and discriminated against by many. as a white cis man, we cant really blame him for not knowing (tho he could have done a research,, asked some pocs,, idk), but by representing pocs in that manner, hes influencing impressionable kids/teens into thinking “oh pocs wear feathers in their hair all the time” etc, which isnt true. the pjo/hoo series is extremely successful, and kids who read the books will probably start forming inaccurate opinions on pocs. the amount of fan art that depicts piper with feathers in her hair dont help either. “but rick said so in the books, so its canon” yeah well rick isnt a god and he can get some things wrong at times. im not saying we should cancel him, im saying we should start educating ourselves and not spread false info like pocs wearing feathers in their hair all the time. also that snake song shit where she sang Summertime was just- yeah. bc heres the thing you can be racist, and still include minorities, but portray them in a racist way. And even then, ignorance isn't a thing to admire. Getting those facts wrong still has a major impact. It continues to perpetuate racist stereotypes.

“ With the feather thing, I looked it up myself; it takes less than five minutes to figure out that Cherokees don't braid feathers into their hair. I didn't grow up in the country where my parents are from. I have many other first/second generation American friends who have also been through that, with a bit of a disconnect from their culture. But something that most of us have in common is that when we didn't know something, and when our parents weren't that big of a help, we looked it up. We sought out resources online and through other people from our culture to be able to connect more with where we came from. Some of that took a Google search. So I find it hard to believe that Piper, a girl who Rick's trying to portray as someone who is attempting to connect with her culture and is totally against racist stereotypes, wouldn't know that eagle feathers aren't supposed to be braided into your hair casually. She may be disconnected from her culture, but she's also shown to want to connect back to it. Piper wouldn't be casually braiding feathers into her hair while also telling off people for being racist. It makes no sense.” - reddit thread (down below) 

for those of yall who wanna know more please please read this, it has a lot of things i wanna add in here : https://www.reddit.com/r/camphalfblood/comments/gy3gl2/piper_mcleans_portrayal_is_innacurate/ 

as well as https://finding-my-culture.tumblr.com/post/189422373260/maxie-ratties-and-cattie-finding-my-culture 

i will be posting screenshots of these in future posts so if ure viewing this on ig and u dont have tumblr,, dont worry 

- the fact that most of the strong female characters in the series refuse to be “girly”, and ngl i dont really like that. just because ure girly doesnt mean u cant be strong. 

- piper would have been a great way for him to start making the strong characters act girlier, but instead he went with the “I’m not like other girls” trope which is quite obnoxious to hear constantly, and I don’t think it’s necessarily great for younger girls to read that idea growing up.  the closest we've ever had to a strong female character who was also into "girly" things was Silena. when I was younger I admired Piper's "I'm not like other girls" thing, but then I got older and realized that the whole mentality of "not like other girls" is super obnoxious, and a little bit toxic

i have a heck load more that i cant rmb rn but yeah feel free to add more 

[takaraphoenix]

Thoughts on some of the canon ships in PJO (Percabeth, Franzel, Caleo, ect)?

Uuuuh. Sure. Why not. Positive thoughts above the cut, negative thoughts beneath the cut so people who don’t like negative stuff don’t have to look at it?

(Watch me try to remember what tf is canon anymore anyway... it has been so many years since I discarded canon. *chuckles*)

Tyson/Ella: While I do think this was unnecessary - in the sense that it was very rushed, sudden and seriously, Riordan, this is not Noah’s Ark, you don’t need to pair off LITERALLY EVERYBODY - I do think those two are very adorable and sweet with each other and I like how... innocent and cute they are

Frank/Hazel: They’re cute. A relationship based on friendship and mutual trust. I do have a weakness for the “No, I do not want to fall in love. Oh” kind of ships. I know this hellsite likes to pretend they’re ““toxic”“ because... Frank is two years older than Hazel, but I really do need all of those people to go outside, take a deep breath and then walk to their parents and ask them how old they were when they first met because two years is not an age gap, in neither fiction nor reality is two years an age gap and y’all need to stop throwing around your weird-ass American terms for what grade you’re in and pretend that’s like an indicator for right or wrong. I went to school too and I was in the same class and grade as people two years younger and two years older than myself, because some people are held back, some people start school a bit later and some start it a bit earlier and it is perfectly possible to be in the same grade with two years age difference this is not an age gap. Calm down. (/rant)

Grover/Juniper: I admit, I remember very little of what was between them in canon because it’s been ten years since I read the PJO series and it’s not like Riordan bothered to put them in the sequels, heck he barely remembered to put Grover in there for one scene. But I do remember liking them when I first read the books and thinking they were pretty cute.

Chris/Clarisse: LOVE IT. Clarisse’s soft side. The duality and complexity of the Titan War that Chris represents. The potential there - I know, I know, if we had gotten more than like a few brief moments between them, Riordan would have probably managed to ruin them (which, I assume also goes for Grover/Juniper), but damn, I love that Clarisse got to find love.

Charles/Silena: I love them so very much. So tragic, so soft, so poetic - Aphrodite and Hephaestus. The beauty and the mechanic. I love everything we got about them and I am still upset about their deaths.

Percy/Annabeth: Oh hey, look! My biggest NOTP in this fandom! For an elaborate answer, look here, but the short of it; they’re in a relationship, in canon, and still Annabeth abuses Percy and I just... am really not down for watching a character be put into a romantic relationship with some who is actively abusive?? I just? No?

Jason/Piper: I mean, it’s lazy af. “Oh look, we have fake memories of dating. Let’s just keep dating, despite not actually knowing each other yet”. So much so that Riordan had to retcon on his hint of Jason/Reyna because that could possibly not be a thing if Jason now has Piper, because as we know you meet your one, true and only love when you are like 15 and never-ever love someone else. lol Also, just, what he did with Piper for this ship? I... genuinely did not like her when she threatened Drew about Jason, it was very gross and very much like “Jason is a possession and he is Piper’s possession”. Also, much like Annabeth, her character was just severely reduced to revolve all around her feelings for him. And then, as I hear, Riordan backtracked on that in the sequel-sequels? Because of course he did since he wanted to kill off Jason and we all know in the Riordanverse you are expendable if you do not have a love-interest since shipping is just everything to him at this point. I mean, just, yikes about everything how he handled this ship.

Leo/Calypso: I am not for ship hate, but I am just completely baffled by the masses of nasty people in this fandom who hate loudly and vocally on Frank/Hazel and Percy/Nico for a two years “”age gap”” respectively, but... there is complete quiet about this 2000+ year old immortal repeatedly preying on teenage boys?? And I admit, I used to like Percy/Calypso in PJO, but ever since I did the math and realized this ass-old immortal was with fourteen year old Percy back then and now took fifteen year old Leo? That’s gross, ya know, like that makes me uncomfortable, so I’ll Hard Pass on it. Also, the whole part where she treats him like shit all the time, I mean she insults him, she belittles him, she has not a single nice word to say to him - a boy who has been abused and pushed around all his fucking life and now he’s stuck with an endgame romance with someone who treats him like shit, that’s not what Leo deserves, man.

Nico/Will: I don’t like it. It was completely rushed and forced in BoO where Riordan just REALLY needed everyone to be paired up like on Noah’s Ark so Nico walked away with ““skeleton butterflies”“ in his stomach after knowing Will for three fucking days, like he just... unloved Percy after having been in love with Percy for three fucking years. I just--damn, that’s bad writing. Also, Will was uncomfortably pushy all throughout their few, brief interactions in BoO. But, I admit, the majority of my dislike does root in the fandom - it’s not all of its shippers, but there are so many S0langelo shippers who got real nasty about people shipping Nico/Percy and... nasty people in fandom do tend to band together behind that one ship that somehow unites them, it seems this new wave of nasty people in this fandom band together behind this one, so that just... doesn’t help endear me to it, you know.

[takaraphoenix]

Let’s talk about character death for a moment.

Because I’ve been thinking about One Piece all day long. And for me, personally, One Piece will always be king of character death.

But before we go into that, let me clarify some things about character death.

I’m not a fan of character death. I don’t want to see characters I love die. That being said, The Thing (show/movie/book/whatever) does not exist to please and make every viewer happy and feel fuzzy. Especially when it features heavy action elements, character death is kind of a very important element and tool.

Nowadays, character death is kind of... a joke.

No one stays dead anymore. When a character dies, the viewer very often isn’t even under the illusion that this character might be dead in the sense of “gone forever”, which death kind of should imply. Instead it’s more of a “Well, how/when are they going to bring them back?”.

In Shadowhunters, for example, Jace dies for a full three minutes of screen-time before being brought back from death. They could have milked this for some suspense and feelings by killing him off in a cliffhanger for the season - not EVERYBODY has read the books before watching the show, you know. You could have pretended that he stays dead by killing him off in the season finale and waiting with the “Oh, I’d like to have him back, please” for episode one of the next season, to keep the viewers on their toes as to how and when the character will be brought back.

Sebastian. Killed off, immediately summons his mom who promises to bring him back.

And even on the slim off-chance that a character is killed and actually stays dead - Jocelyn Fray - it is not really... handled.

She’s been dead for a little more than a month now. That is no time at all. Yet when Clary had the angel summoned, bringing back her mother and only good relative doesn’t even cross her mind. It’s not like Jocelyn’s death has been years ago and she is well-settled with never seeing her again. It’s only been a handful of weeks now. I find it highly unrealistic that she got over losing her mother that quickly.

Luke too. The supposed love of his life died a bit over a month ago but he’s already flirting up the next woman. Like. Where’s the grief-period...? I’m not saying he ought to wear black and mourn for the rest of his life, but... more than two months, maybe?? You spent twenty years loving this woman. Somehow, I feel like that should have a longer grief-period and a harder impact than chatting up a woman after not even two months.

Not to mention the part where the show just opted to completely ellipse the grief-sharing between father and daughter. Luke and Clary addressed Jocelyn’s death in passing.

And it was mainly just used to fuel a tiny bit of Alec angst - but really only a tiny bit because he literally completely stopped being guilty about it right after he tried to kill himself over it. And while the suicide attempt was mainly the demon, it still rooted from his deeply seated guilt for having killed Jocelyn. But after that, it was kind of just... done.

Jocelyn’s death was all in all completely horrendously handled.

And horrendously handled death is kind of what brought me to this topic, as I had just recently ranted about Kevin Can Wait and how they just fridged the female lead because they didn’t know how to further the plotline but also added a time-skip of a year to assure no grieving will happen and we can move on to the “fun part” again.

That’s the two big bad Hollywood ways of handling character death.

Either you avoid handling it by just... bringing the character back to life.

Or you avoid handling it by simply not having the characters grief and deal with the death.

Both of those are awful options.

Look at Marvel. Avengers was kind of a movie you walked into expecting no real major stakes - there was just NO WAY they would actually kill off an Avenger during the very first team-up movie.

But they killed off a secondary character very effectively.

And by Coulson not actually being a character anyone was close to, you got to avoid the grieving process. Yet still the movie made that death impactful, gave it meaning and an appropriate reaction.

...I am still intensely salty that they fucking retconned it out of existence by whatever the fuck they did to justify that TV show. Like. I genuinely don’t care for it and it absolutely ruins the rewatchability of the movie for me because now when Fury goes drama queen over Coulson’s death, I just shrug and go “Meh”, knowing full-well he is still alive.

Prior to the retconning bullshit, it was a really good and effective way of adding stakes and feelings.

And that is what character death should be.

It adds stakes to a situation. Knowing that your protagonists are not invincible. That something can actually happen to them. The “no one is safe”-principle.

It’s why I absolutely adore the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.

It had stakes. I spent hours crying over the final book, because Rick Riordan put the effort into making you grow attached to characters like Ethan, Charles, Silena and Luke. You cared about them, their deaths were not throwaway lines, they were impactful on the reader, the story and the characters in the universe.

He gained a shit-ton of respect from me for that book. Genuinely.

Granted, he lost all that respect with the sequel-series where he did the literal opposite and just did not kill anyone. Oh, yeah, nameless, never-before-appeared characters in throwaway line-mentions, a failed comic-relief death for Octavian and the “No worries, we spent the whole entire fucking book setting up the Death Cure”-death of Leo. It was pathetic and insanely boring.

There was absolute emotional detachment toward the final battle, while in the original series, I could not put that book down reaching with bated breath as some of my favorite characters died or risked their lives respectively.

After Beckendorf blew up, when Silena sacrificed her life, all bets were off. I could not stop reading. I had to know. Had to know if Nico and Clarisse and Thalia and Percy would make it out alive of this series. What other twists would come. It was incredibly engaging, both plot-wise and emotional.

That is what character death should do. Make a situation feel real. Make it feel emotional.

It’s one of the many, many reasons why I love and always will love Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Oh yeah, sure, this show is like the OG sinner of “Oopsie daisy, brought back from the death”-protagonist and it was ridiculous on that behalf.

But even Buffy’s death had impact.

Dawn, who started stealing and acting up because she did not know how to deal with her feelings and her frustrations. The utter... loss.

Spike fucking a robot, because the woman he loved was gone. But also Spike working with the Scoobies, Spike being an anchor for Dawn and being there for Buffy’s orphaned sister.

The utter despair of Willow trying to bring Buffy back.

Literally the only plotline of an entire season is them dealing with Buffy’s death. Buffy included. It’s not just “Oops, dead - aaand we’re back online!”. There is grief, heartbreak, confusion, the... “What now?”.

Even as real consequences as how to pay the fucking rent with the “woman of the house” dead.

And it’s not even just this “We will literally dedicate a whole entire season to this character death and it will ACTUALLY work and be brilliant”.

The Body remains one of the best episodes in TV history to me, as it deals with the death of Buffy’s mother, because it is... mundane. It’s a normal, human death and it’s... normal, human griefing.

Or... even smaller things. Kendra. She was only in literally three episodes. She wasn’t a big character. Yet even seasons later, Buffy still had Kendra’s stake, the stake that meant so much to Kendra and you were reminded that Buffy is still thinking of this dead friend. It wasn’t just a one-off character who was shrugged off and discarded.

That’s how you should handle character death. That’s how you make it work.

And now back to where all of this started.

One Piece.

Because there is actually a third option available on the “Death doesn’t matter” scale, aside from bringing them back from the dead and just not having characters deal with the death.

Simply not killing anyone off to begin with.

It’s usually the anime go-to thing, but also typical for cartoons. Generally, the animated medium where violence is hilarious and did you see how this Normal Human just walked straight through a wall and should technically now be dead? Hahaha.

Yeah. That.

One Piece used to be one of those.

In fact, One Piece went out of its way to show you just how ridiculously many characters survive ridiculously deadly situations in the Impel Down arc. We were reunited with so many characters that I genuinely had thought had just died an off-screen death in conclusion to the prior battles.

And then my favorite character died.

Died and stayed dead.

In conclusion to a story-arc that literally reintroduced a handful of characters I thought had died, making me feel even surer that this all would be fine. That Luffy would be on time to save his brother’s life, that they would leave, together, reunited.

And then they killed Ace off. Actually, on-screen, fully. Dead.

I cried for months over this death. It was intensely impactful.

For one, due to the world-building so far that has set it up that no one really dies. All actual character deaths laid in the past - being shown in flashbacks. But no one ever actually died from a battle-wound. Crushed by an entire fucking building? Shrug it off, dude.

This... inversion of an “avoiding death”-trope can make a character death intensely effective, because it really does hit you out of left field then.

But it wasn’t just that.

Luffy’s reaction to it was so intense and real and deep and argh, I cried so much. So, so much. And I was so angry about this. Stopped watching/reading for a solid two years of grieving period for myself.

I’m not good when you kill off my favorite character.

And I gotta admit, I have never really managed to get back into it since Ace’s death. I think that’s less due to the death and more due to the time-skip. I didn’t like that at all.

But yeah, it was hella effective and well-written.

So, in overall conclusion, what I want is for them to stop with the cop-out deaths.

If you don’t have the balls to actually kill your characters off, then don’t fake it either, because it’s uncreative, uneffective, boring and annoying.

Kill them off or don’t, there can’t be an in-between, the in-between has become an overused trope at this point.

And when you kill them off, fucking deal with it and have your characters deal with it too.