saw ryan bergara be interviewed tonight at a college and OMG. IT WAS AMAZING. SO ANYWAY, I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE SOME VERY BRIEF HIGHLIGHTS FROM THAT NIGHT:
- he restated that he believes that shane is a robot in the way that he simply does not process emotion.
- according to ryan: “we [him and shane] actually are friends! … unfortunately! 😭”
- he said that he sees shane the most out of everyone else in his life. second only to maybe his wife.
- he told the story about how he and shane met and become friends! <3
- ryan wants his last words to be “keep rolling!” ? 😟
- ryan wants to be swallowed by aliens ??? 😟
- ryan wants to be killed by an alien in front of all his loved ones ????? 😟
- ryan brings up the fact that shane always says that if aliens exist, they should be smart enough not to let themselves be seen. to that, ryan asks the very awesome question of, “WHY CAN’T THERE BE DIPSHIT ALIENS?” 😭
- his favorite moment with shane is when they almost died! (as they were on a boat in an extremely dangerous situation, they watched a thunderstorm together while staring at the skyline and stars. shane said, “nice night.” and ryan said, “yeah.” and they stood in silence.)
- ryan was asked how shane convinced him to be a guest in puppet history, and ryan said that shane didn’t have to convince him at all. ryan said that he genuinely loves puppet history, even if he has to pretend that he doesn’t! :)
- apparently, shane never actually has the songs done during their recording, so most of the time he’s playing some voice memo rough draft (which is why ryan is so distressed every time a song is played in puppet history) and the actual finished song is added in post 😭
- ryan said that if anything happened to shane, he would probably be the one going to prison because of all the threatening jokes he’s made towards him 😭 he thinks people will just assume it’s him 💀 LMAOOO
anyway the show was great, ryan threw t-shirts into the crowd, was asked about his sneakers, and talked about his dog for a while!
very fun! AND i met a very kind girl who was nice enough to airdrop me some pictures of ryan because mine were trash! (the 2nd photo in this post was taken by her btw so full credit to her for that!) 💛
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Thoughts about Heroes of Olympus and how it could have been better.
Sometimes I think about what would have made HOO a better series. And I'm not talking about the obvious 'too much focus on romantic relationships' and the lack of usage of certain characters or the dumb ending.
I mean the little things that would change so much (mainly character dynamics but also worldbuilding i.e. Camp Jupiter and Gaia's reasoning)
Some of the points are inspired by @crisisreading and their posts. They are the first I saw raise some of my own points so! part 2
Make the ages vary more in the main cast, trust me
Let Percy, Annabeth and Grover get older by 4-5 years. Let them become adults and find themselves outside the godly war. Let them even finish college, I wouldn't get mad. Let them do anything beside being teenagers.
I promise this would make the dynamics more interesting. Percy and Annabeth will be more mentor figures, than fellow comrades. This would create some distance between some of the them, but ultimately create something fun. Piper would come to see some aspiring female figure in Annabeth (I think this would ether be positive or negative, depending how Annabeth changed as a character over the years, but I tend towards negative). Leo would potentially have someone older to exchange ideas with. Jason would possibly feel intimidated by Percy's vastly superior age, prowess and experience, instead of being able to clash heads with him.
Hazel would have not one, but two that people that would play parent to the others' reckless behavior. (go snort your harmful stereotypes up your ass, Riordan.) Frank, when telling Percy and Hazel about his stick, would possibly find in Percy a kind hand (not that he wasn't kind already, let me explain) and Percy would probably share with him this feeling of vulnerability - not dump it on Frank - about having your life tied to a specific thing. I mean his Achilles heel, with which he would have lived for far longer.
And a whole lot more.
2. Add Grover into the series as a perspective character
You have a new trio dynamic introduced in the first book of the series. Let the original trio interact as main characters and let us see how their relationship has changed.
Grover's opinion on the conflict between the gods and Gaia would be important. He is the Lord of the Wild, and Gaia is the literal personification of the Earth. Let us see his struggle between the loyalty he has to the gods and his friends and his powerful feelings towards protecting nature.
Also, he would act as a protector for the demigods. Because while I enjoy Hedge, he is not enough to keep them safe.
3. Throw the bullshit about Gaia getting revenge for Kronos' defeat out of the way
Gaia, as mentioned before, if the personification of the Earth. One of the first gods to emerge from Chaos.
Gaia can, of course, keep her resentment for the gods defeating the son that freed her from her pain (caused by Ouranos initially). But she is a mother goddess. She should want obliterate humanity because humans are slowly killing her. Painfully. She wants to survive and the only way she sees how if by killing all the humans. She wants to save her children, aka animals, insects, nature, and the only way she sees is bloodshed. Gods are not rational in their anger, no one is. So let her be angry and vengeful and out for human blood.
DO NOT MAKE HER A FUCKING VILLAIN, MAN! Make her an antagonist, but someone's whose ideals are worth taking in and adapting. Kinda like Luke about the demigod and minor god recognition. Where have the themes of the original series gone? Remember, an important theme in BOTL was protecting the environment. It was one of the most important moments when Pan faded. Do not let that go to fucking waste. Especially not now, in the world we live in.
4. Show the effects the war had on Camp Half-Blood. Hint it at Camp Jupiter, when Percy does not have the memories to corelate it with
We've had years since the end of the Second Titan War. How did the gods change the course of events ? (the victors write the histories) How much of Luke's reasoning for starting the war was erased. (hint, all of it.) Show us how much the perspectives were shifted and how much the people that fought in it were made into martyrs and villain, basically becoming caricatures.
Let us feel how much this hurts Percy, Grover and Annabeth. How it had impacted and impacts their trauma, grief and utter horror. The younger, newer campers see them as wonderful, all-just and loyal heroes of the gods. The way they hate it.
Good moment to implement the new cabins for the gods and let the new ones forget that it wasn't always this way. Let Percy's demand to the gods be forgotten, shoved under the rug. The tragedy unfolds, use it.
Since in Camp Jupiter none of the main characters have fought, let us see the subtility. Let the older legionnaires be ragged, scarred. Older and weary, with eyes glassy and suspicious. Have younger recruits have this heavy air around them. They know what happened, what killed most of the older people in the legion.
Have Jason, Hazel and Frank see these things in Annabeth, Grover and Percy too. They realise that oh. oh. these three have fought in the war, of course they would. Show them gain respect for the trio. The same kind of respect they have for the veterans back home.
5. Cut one of the Seven from the prophecy.
I know this seems radical, but it is a symbolism thing, which I think would be more interesting in a world based on Greek mythology.
It is established in PJO that three (3) is an important number: 3 Olympian sisters (Hera, Demeter, Hestia), 3 Olympian brothers (Hades, Poseidon, Zeus), 3 Fates, 3 quest members, 3 Furies, 3 godly realms (the Underworld, Olympus + the sky, the seas). Use this.
Give us six (6) prophesized heroes. It is, after all, the second most used number in the series and a multiple of 3.
I suggest Annabeth. Why? because she has her quest from Athena. Let that be her top priority, while hanging out on the Argo II to get to Rome. Let her bond with the younger demigods and have her possible death be always on her mind. Bring her hubris into play and she would think herself the chosen one, the one demigod child of Athena to survive. This would make her falling into Tartarus with Percy not letting her go more taxing on her psyche.
Show us how she hates herself because she took one of the principal quest members to certain death. She feels like she'd jeopardized the whole saving the world thing.
Cut the Seven to Six and let Annabeth die in Tartarus. Show us why a single-man quest is a death sentence. Why three (3) is such a valuable number.
6. CONSEQUENCES!!!
Jumping straight off the last point.
Change why Annabeth would end up in Tartarus. Make her ignore the string around her ankle because she thing that nothing bad can happen to her now. After all, Arachne is gone, right.
Let this be her undoing. I do not care how she dies, but make her choices, her hubris, be her undoing. Do not let her death up to a chance, a mistake or miscalculation. Show how toxic Tartarus is, because we do not see it enough, but make it Annabeth's idea, the plan by which she dies.
Do not make it Percy's fault. Let him try to do everything to keep her alive, but still failing. Attack his sense of loyalty, his self-esteem. Show how the experiences and her death affect him.
Bring the trauma from the last war back in those chapters, in a place where demigods leave something behind.
To less drastic things - let the others get hurt. Permanently. Show how this life affects and damages people physically, too.
Have one lose an eye, another get horrific scars. Lose a limb, a part of themselves. Do not make it seem like any other could have gotten the same wound.
Tailor them to their character, their pride and their skill. Hit them where it hurts most and let us see how it changes them.
Also, about Leo. Kill him too. The fact that he ended up alive is a deux ex machina. He should have suffered the consequences.
Also also, bring back the fatal flaws. They are missing from the series. Play with them, show why they are important parts of their characters. Bring back ancient Greek fatal flaws, and new ones that make sense in a modern world.
Hurt them because what hurts them is part of who they are. Show us why the Greeks invented tragedy.
7. Age up the target age. Go more young/new adult
I understand that PJO was made for middle schoolers. But the target audience had grown up alongside the characters, and as such they have matured.
This is why I said to age Percy, Grover and Annabeth up further. Leave some distance for the old and new readers to get up and personal with the new main characters. Have them find common ground with the new demigods but have their anchor in the old ones.
Make the readers work to understand and refamiliarize themselves wit the older demigods. Because they've changed.
Targeting a more mature audience allows exploring n. 6. The realistic consequences of living with the fear that something will come and eat you. How just a little mishap could change you for life. (or what has been left of it)
Please do not go grim dark. Show that despite this all, their purpose has not stopped existing. A life exists outside of your appearance or disability still exist, and while it would be hard, do not lose hope.
8. Hope, or lack of its importance in the Heroes of Olympus series
Alongside other callbacks and reinforcements of PJO's lore, where is Elpis (hope)? Why doesn't she appear as a larger theme in the books? I don't know.
Elpis is still in the jar, having been used as a threat of defeat. But now Kronos is gone. Have Gaia use it as s symbol for her own cause.
Make hope Gaia's argument. The most important part of why her cause stands. Gaia is waking now because there is no hope for the betterment of the planet while in human - and therefore godly - grasp. She wants to save the planet, but they, the destroyers, are opposing her.
Hope is what she wants to bring back. The hope that death will not be the end of life, but further evolvement and betterment of all species.
This argument is what the counterargument should unravel. All species? Why are humans considered irredeemable, unworthy of becoming something greater?
Why can't they not coexist and why can't humans learn how to care about the world surrounding them.
Make hope for humanity and for the environment not a question of if they are capable to coexist, but how we can manage that. Humanity and nature are not mutually exclusive, but two halves of the same whole that need each other to sustain their longevity. Yes, nature can exist without humans, but humans can't.
This does not mean that the best way forward is to kill all humans.
There is no need for hope in HOO because there are no greater questions being asked about topics that require hope, because otherwise we would descend into nihilism and fatalism.
9. Give the gods reason to act the way they act, or a look at a greater narrative problem in the series
I may be generalizing, but the gods act erratically and make choices convenient for the plot, as it is, to happen.
Hera: how, specifically, does she know that Gaia is rising and what her plans are. Why is she against Gaia, when the older goddess has a track record of helping the Olympians on different occasions in the myths. Why does she decide to act when she does, how she knows that the king of the giants (whatever his name may be) is coming after her right then.
We don't know.
Athena: we understand why she wants the Athena Parthenos back. Why not force the Romans to give it back. After all, she is a goddess, even if the Romans don't respect her as the Greeks did, she has power and sway over them. Why send her children, a supposedly important part of what brings her glory, to a near-certain death. Is it misguided vengeance, an obsession to get the statue back at all cost, or simple cruelty. These reasons could apply very well to sending the Romans, yet she doesn't.
Zeus: why lock down Olympus? Paranoia, which fair, but you are a King, why wouldn't you look after your subjects? (bc Riordan chose to ignore part of his characterization in the myths and part of his godly domain) (I know kings aren't perfect, but after the last war, one would think he would do everything in his power to stop another one before it begins) Why not seek justice for Octavian's lies, that affect their ability to win the war, and kill/imprison him? Justice is part of his domain, as Zeus Nomius.
I know that we wouldn't necessarily need these answers, but without some of them, some choices left hanging seem to be there only to add to the drama and danger of it all.
All in all, I have many problems with the 'Heroes of Olympus' series. Some of them are nitpicks and personal preference as a high fantasy reader in my free time. Some of them would really add to the story and continue the themes of PJO.
Please ask me if something wasn't clear to you. I'll happily explain further.
If you find something you don't agree with, let's discuss. I'm open to changing my opinions.
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sits up in bed. so lana and ema definitely thought they were responsible for edgeworth "choosing death", right?
(the rest of this post was supposed to go in the tags, because it's not very well organised or written, but it got too long so. here are the slightly edited tags for your reading pleasure (or otherwise)):
i was going to make this solely about ema because she's the obvious one with her open adoration of edgeworth, but the thing about rfta is that it goes to great lengths to emphasise the connection between lana and edgeworth as well.
the sl-9 incident showed that lana grows attached to people deeply, hence angel starr's comment on how, when neil marshall died, 'she (lana) felt like her own brother had died.' with edgeworth, i think it was similar but worse. because he's not just a coworker or subordinate who's dear to her. he saved her life. and it cost him his own.
at the beginning of the case, edgeworth says he was mistaken for thinking that lana was always looking out for him post sl-9 (a statement interesting on its own because that's when everyone else says she grew distant), and, later on, he brings ema fingerprinting powder because lana asked him to. then, of course, there's the 'lady luck' comment he makes.
similarly, on lana's side, you obviously have the end of the trial when she says he did well, but there's also that additional moment post-trial where she's the only one to notice — in a group comprising her, ema, phoenix and gumshoe — that he's 'hiding', listening to their conversation. point is, there's enough to suggest that she might have been the nearest thing edgeworth had to a mia; his 'chief prosecutor' to phoenix's plain 'chief'. they're as close as two people can be in a relationship where one of them is constantly lying and the other is von karma's star pupil.
rfta is pretty straightforwardly depicted as the case which solidified edgeworth's resolve to do what he did; i don't think i have to prove that. rumours about him have reached new heights, his car and knife were involved in goodman's murder, he makes an unprecedented mistake in court by failing to connect the evidence room and carpark incidents, thus forcing the chief of police to enter the trial to do so himself, and he's publicly revealed to have relied on falsified evidence to secure a conviction in the sl-9 case, all of which only happened because of lana. jake marshall even claims that from the beginning — that if you trace edgeworth's rumours back to their source, you end up meeting one person: lana skye.
and it gets worse because at the end of rfta, she thinks he's fine!! she literally says, 'i was afraid the pressure would break you, but you rose above it,' and reminds him he's nothing like gant because he's not alone. she leaves the case thinking he will be okay. and then, what, like a week passes, and she finds out that he wasn't, and that he's gone, and it's her fault. even after she was freed from gant's control, even after she had finally stopped lying, she couldn't prevent herself from claiming another life. so much for 'lady luck', i suppose.
and the game reiterates this multiple times. gumshoe states at the start that edgeworth's ties to those higher up in the department have made him the subject of constant rumours, and phoenix says (in front of ema) that he shouldn't be held responsible for the forged evidence because that was all lana's doing, which then leads to edgeworth commenting (again in front of ema) that he feels as though 'something inside him has died.' it all goes back to lana. we can argue and say that it was technically gant's doing that caused all of this, but lana still took actions that led to it. even her complicated friendship with edgeworth isn't spared; it's that closeness between them that exacerbated those rumours. how could she not feel responsible in some way?
and with ema, it's rather obvious, isn't it? if she hadn't gone poking her nose into things, none of this would have happened or come to light. and, of course, she'd never choose anyone over her sister, not for anything in the world — it's simply not a question, but that's the problem, isn't it? it's not a question. it's not some hypothetical moral dilemma. it just is. she may not have killed neil marshall, but she still has one king of prosecutor's blood on her hands. and now she has to live with that. she just. has. to live with it. no matter if he chose otherwise.
moving on from that a little, i think it's actually wild how much of ema's journey to becoming a forensics investigator is paved with bad memories. neil marshall's death and her subsequent inability to testify are what drives her to begin pursuing it, her first proper investigation results in her idol's "death" and when she finally graduates, the person who saved her sister has been disbarred, and she can't even help because she isn't allowed to. all that pain and constant pursuit of her goals, and she's still the same ema skye, still that girl shrouded in darkness, always one step behind the truth, one step a little too late. no wonder she was angry in aa:aj. i would be furious.
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