#im not mad about it though

[that-lego-frog]

so i spoke with a friend from my hometown and there is apparently so much community theatre drama that i simply HAD to go see a show in town when im there for my pre top surgery physical

and of course the show theyre doing is one i was the lead in 4 years ago that directly led to the community theatre schism that fractured our small town theatre industry forever as well as several lawsuits and general facebook drama

i am so excited

[whiterabbitguitar]

Welcome

I've been playing classical guitar for 2 years and it's slowly taking over my life.

[slimylayne]

Very cool new statesman one from channel four but someone’s like straight up spilt some shit on it or something because there’s a huge mark across his face lmfao

[kethabali]

okay very freaky how similiar the timelines are last time it was also shortly after the 1 year mark but i didn't become really ready until another year passed and i'm pretty certain that will happen this time too... i am so predictable

[thankstothe]

this show rewires you fundamentally in 60 seconds and then just goes on to have more seasons. audacity

[valtsv]

the goncharov stuff was on my dash, have no idea what it is (still dont) and i just started reblogging with the mindset of “i’m sure i’ll figure out what it is in a bit”

goncharov context

[intotheelliwoods]

Poptart to Poptart to Poptart to Poptart communication.

[unnonexistence]

hermann thoughts: if i discredit newton and his approach enough, the martial won't give him the equipment for his kaiju drift, and i can protect him from himself. if he despises me for it, so be it. there is little i wouldn't sacrifice to see him safe.

newt thoughts: this is a Best Science competition and i have to Win

[grimstrawberry]

If I don't make light of everything, I'm gonna explode.

[mirrorhouse]

the more i think about it the more im convincing myself that if the show does do past book-plot-adjacent devil's minion that ends in a memory wipe instead of turning, then it means they've already incorporated a version of the period after daniel's turned where he ends up separating from armand and lives with marius for a long time. BUT that period of separation has become daniel living a human life for four decades instead.

book daniel focuses on his model towns, frequently disregarding almost everything else around him; show daniel focuses on his career above all else and ruins his marriages and relationship with his daughters....

but even with no past dm the separation after show daniel's turning works well too, on a much smaller scale. either way i just don't see them being able to incorporate that particular dynamic between marius & daniel in the future considering the differences between book & show daniel and for time reasons too, which is why i feel it's "already" happened in an altered form, either decades ago or during the timeskip between seasons. daniel's still gonna interact with marius in some way but i can't see it working out the same as it does in the books yknow

[aroaceleovaldez]

i'm so happy you brought back up the topic of rick's shitty writing of anyone even remotely non white / "white passing"

with that being said, do you think the shitty script he gave to annabeth in the show has to do with him just being deeply uninterested in adapting his story to include characters of color? bc it seems like once rick encounters a character that cannot be easily erased all ethnic or racial identity of to fit them into an usamerican specifically white ass narrative, he gets lost.

i just keep thinking how the only thing that "changed" about annabeth as presented in the show was her race but her plot relevance and her characterization got downgraded severely. meanwhile percy, whiter than before (wheres the mediterranean god look......................................), got half her functions. like i just look at rick in context and i wonder if he just gives so little fuck about characters of color he cant even write a decent character arc for an adaptation of a very established persona

thoughts? thank u!

I wouldn't be surprised if it's Rick (and the writer's room, since it actually seems Rick isn't all that heavily involved if much at all with the script itself based on some interviews) just has internal biases that he refuses to reflect on. It would be a consistent trend with the uptick in offensive writing in the books themselves (see: the troglodytes in general, all the Jewish kids in CHB being in Hermes cabin, etc etc). Rick seems to want to engage with these topics but refuses to actually assess how he's approaching it and his own biases while also overemphasizing his engagement with the topics. It's a kind of big talk/words vs actions type thing to me.

[this got a wee bit long so throwing it under a cut]

I was having a couple of conversations about this topic recently - one being group reading/discussion of WottG and how, allegedly, the slightly different characterizations in that book are inspired by the actors in the show. Annabeth is repeatedly and frequently described as motherly and maternal in the book, plus some other misc characterizations that make you tilt your head and go "Wait, what about Leah made you want to write Annabeth this way?" and concerns about it leaning into stereotypes. (It's also strange, because in the show Sally is MUCH more aggressive and less maternal, and this is painted like it's supposed to be a girlboss thing cause her being too soft and motherly was too weak or something? But now book Annabeth is now being described as all soft and maternal??? What. What is happening.)

Another conversation that i had with my therapist (cause we talk about pjo a lot lol) and later repeated and discussed more with other folks on discord more specifically regarding the show was a lot of discussion about the casting. Particularly casting choices and how the writing either is refusing to take casting into consideration to respectfully approach how things would be changed to avoid problems or are actively changing the script for characters in a way that is potentially if not downright offensive. Clarisse is the number one example i bring up because a lot of people say that the reason a plus sized actress wasn't cast for her was to avoid the "fat bully" trope. The thing is, there is ALSO a POC bully trope that is just as bad if not worse, so if they were actually taking offensive tropes into consideration one would expect them to avoid that too (especially since Percy was cast as a pasty white boy - which just makes it all look worse)? (Also other plus-sized characters like Dionysus and Gabe were also cast as skinny, same with Tyson. So it just seems like they don't want to cast plus-sized actors either.)

But also they're rewriting stuff that actively puts the casting decisions into worse tropes. Like hey, why is Percy (a white guy) the one who knows the "real" versions of all these myths and is expositioning them to Annabeth (a black girl), who in the books is supposed to know more than him? Why does he know better than her for some reason and have to guide her? Why is Percy teaching Annabeth about pop culture and how to be a kid? Not to mention stuff like the show constantly encouraging the viewer to doubt or distrust characters like Grover and Clarisse and Annabeth as red herrings as to who the traitor is. Plus there's no adjustments to stuff from the books like Annabeth initially being somewhat aggressive/antagonistic towards Percy, or Clarisse's aggression and bullying towards Percy to try and circumvent those being bad tropes in the contexts of the casting.

And there's an ongoing trend of characters who are antagonistic towards Percy in the books being divided into two groups: those who continue to be antagonistic towards Percy in the show, or those who are tweaked to suddenly become kinda silly-goofy and significantly less threatening. Gabe, Dionysus, Ares, and Hades are all examples of characters that should be antagonistic towards Percy but are softened SIGNIFICANTLY and played for laughs in the show. Echidna is played as a twist antagonist because she initially because she approaches the kids as very sweet and helpful. And they're all cast as white! Meanwhile other characters like Clarisse, Luke, Zeus, etc, are still antagonistic towards Percy (plus also like Annabeth initially and again, Grover being painted as a major red herring). Plus some new additions like Hermes, Mr. Lin Manuel Miranda himself, being wholly introduced into the plot when he's not supposed to appear until book 2, and all he does is sabotage the quest. Like, it's weird! That's a weird writing decision!!!! I get wanting to get that sweet sweet LMM cameo money, but, why is Hermes an antagonist here???????? he's not even supposed to be here yet!.

We also have stuff like Poseidon (who, like many of the god/major kid pairings so far seems to have been cast to match each other appearance-wise) saving the day for Percy and being this weirdly good dad, versus the books where we get the iconic "I am sorry you were born" line and Percy and Poseidon's tension is part of their arcs. Notably, Poseidon does this by ceding to Zeus, who is actively about to start a war. While Gabe is rewritten to be a total loser, Sally is MUCH more aggressive and her yelling and screaming at young Percy is supposed to be sympathetic for some reason? If Gabe were acting like Sally does in the show, he would actually be significantly more like his book counterpart! The show is making active decisions to paint these characters the way they do!

Admittedly, part of it may just be they got overzealous with their casting (not inherently a bad thing! diverse casting is good!) and then proceeded to not consider how that casting affects the way the characters are perceived. It also doesn't bode well for certain guesses we can make going further into the show - Thalia is very at odds with Percy initially. She's a very aggressive character. They fight a lot! Also Annabeth's description already implies that they're tweaking Thalia's character to be more "tough love" versus the books where she's significantly more of a bleeding heart when she first meets Annabeth. Like, I'm very happy about Thalia's casting, her actress seems amazing, but also I'm VERY concerned with how they're going to approach her character to make sure it doesn't end up wildly offensive. Athena is similar - we can guess based on casting decisions so far that they're going to try and cast Athena as similar in appearance to Annabeth/Leah. The show has already painted Athena has antagonistic and uncaring towards her daughter. If projected trends continue, these things are not gonna be great.

And the show does seem to rarely want to engage with these topics - like the scene with the cop in the train. You can tell what they wanted to address by having Annabeth be the one to confront him. The thing is they were too cowardly to actually have that conversation! They paint the kids as being unreasonable and getting unnecessarily upset when they aren't directly being accused of destroying a room, therein painting the cop as the one in the right in that situation. The implication seems to be a little bit they were going for "Oh, this is Annabeth's hubris getting them into trouble" but. that's such a bad way to do it! That's like the worst way you could have done it! (This is also a trend in books from HoO onwards, more or less - Rick tries to engage with certain topics, often using characters of specific demographics, and then proceeds to do a really bad job of it.)

There are also some aspects that are just like - in the books, Luke being a middle-class blond-haired blue-eyed pretty white boy is relevant! Because the fact that he has privilege from that particularly in how he's perceived is part of how he came to where he is and why he acts the way he does. Percy not having those same privileges, and having aspects like constantly inherently being labeled as a trouble-maker just based on his atypical (neurodivergent) behavior and coming from a lower socioeconomical background play heavily into his character!!! Percy being both a poor and disabled kid (and implied potentially POC) plays DIRECTLY into why he feels so strongly about standing up for other disenfranchised kids (in SoM, explicitly including other disabled kids and kids of color). It directly relates to his experiences and standing up for kids who are like him because he didn't have that, versus Luke whose perceptions and goals are very self-oriented. Now, in the show, we've essentially swapped Percy and Luke's appearances, and that paints a very different narrative. And that's important to acknowledge!

[nomstellations]

open discussion the community on here is so rough i would honestly leave if i had anywhere else to go. the us vs them mentality is strong and very harmful, when people try to talk to each other they just argue and never listen. the community is split between the two stances of "you like nsfw vore porn and are a freak" or "you are a wholesome only sfw vore lover/you are a minor" with no room for nuance because its been pushed out by all the arguing. its hostile and it sucks and i don't blame anyone for wanting out. theres so many issues here that cant be easily fixed but all the god damn fighting doesnt make it any easier

[kagoutiss]

green beetle black beetle

[oceanwithouthermoon]

saiki kusuo accidentally making common sayings/expressions literal by subconsciously activating his powers..

happy/giddy = "feel like im floating/i feel floaty" = actually levitating

embarrassed/flustered = "my face is on fire" = hes actually on fire

shocked = "i froze up/i was frozen in place" = cryokinesis..

angry = "smoke blowing out your ears" = ACTUAL SMOKE

glaring at someone from behind = "burning holes in the back of their head" = actual fucking laser eyes ouch dude

ignoring someone = "giving the cold shoulder" = temperature lowers every time theyre near him

[mushed-kid]

had to draw him myself as well

[orionshounds]

#1 pet peeve as a shadow enjoyer is that "faker" is not shadow's nickname for sonic, it's sonic's nickname for shadow. shadow never calls sonic faker once in sa2, and i don't believe he's done it in any other media either?? sonic only called him faker in the first place because the news thought he was responsible for the crimes shadow was committing.

besides, having an insult-turned-friendly-teasing type nickname doesnt really. fit? shadows personality at all?? but it DOES fit sonic's perfectly

if anything, shadow would go with a dismissive "hedgehog", but he's a straightforward guy and usually just calls people by their names