#louis will kill me if i don't change him ig

[oh-alicent]

wait this would actually be hilarious

Actual funniest way Armand changing Daniel could have gone down is that old man having a medical emergency 3 minutes after Louis leaving the penthouse and like bro falls down some stairs and Armand’s life flashes before his eyes cause Louis just said not to harm Daniel and now it going to look like he did.

[heteromerous-rhyming]

while i'm feeling stabby let's talk about action scenes in the percy jackson show (bc i refuse to let this go i refuse i do)

bc the actions scenes otherwise were not unfortunately memorable for me i'm going to be talking about the first and last ones and why they don't work both on a cinematic level but also on a character level. did i want to address the disappointingness of the st louis arch fight? yes. but literally cannot remember it beyond the fact that it was disappointing. which says a lot imo.

so. let's start with the mrs. dodds fight shall we?

i'm going to say it. taking away the sequence where percy assumes that he's wrongfully in trouble kills a bunch of subtle character work in the series.

in the books percy has a short monologue at the beginning where he starts off with "am i a troubled kid?" and so the lead up to mrs. dodds attacking him does several things. we, the reader understand that percy didn't (consciously) do anything, so we feel the unfairness when he's pulled aside - this scene asks us, the readers, to sympathize with the kid, not the authority figure. it sets up a fundamental theme in the books, that authority figures, and more specifically adults, can be challenged, can be wrong, can be terribly unfair to children. and this is important considering the protagonist of this story is dyslexic and has ADHD???

and they take it out. and it's really really galling.

there's so many other things that i could say about the character work in this scene. so many, like the fact that mrs. dodds' monologue about the gods is misinterpreted at first to be about the school - setting up the connection between the school administration unfairness and the gods unfair attitudes towards their children. like the moment when percy thinks that it might have been his ADHD acting up when mrs. dodds got up the stairs quicker than humanly possible. there's also less foreshadowing for mr. brunner being chiron, like the pen turning into a sword isn't even properly shown hello the pen suddenly having magical properties could be completely divorced from mr. brunner gifting it to percy.

there's just. a lot. of character work I'M LITERALLY SCREAMING IT'S NOT EVEN A HARD SCENE JUST PLEASE WHY IS THE SHOW ALLERGIC TO TENSION LIKE PLEASE

but they don't add in the conversations, they don't add in the moment of self-doubt, they don't add in mr. brunner. mrs. dodds just approaches menacingly. in broad daylight. like sir. the mist can cover a lot but it showed ares as a kidnapper. it doesn't make that much sense that it completely erased people's perception of mrs. dodds. like please.

(also idk if this is disney, but i think that it was incredibly frustrating that they really just removed percy's being treated as a delinquent and as a troubled kid. the show begins with the monologue but the monologue is kickstarted by percy being at "Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York." HELLO??? you could have had the exact same monologue but you change it for subpar themes????)

ok so it doesn't work on a character level.

does it work cinematically?

HELL NO.

this scene has already been torn to shreds and back (BUT NOT ENOUGH) so i'll be short. EVEN THE SPY KIDS HAS IMPACT SEQUENCES. ONES THAT LOOK REALISTIC MIND YOU. there's no impact. percy isn't pushed down by mrs. dodds, he just. trips? ig? silently? without any noise? ahahaha the lack of noise??? someone else has already mentioned the lack of noise but yeah once you hear (or don't hear) it, you can't un-hear it.

ahahahaha

ok but surely the show improved as they went on, as the filmed more etc etc. sure. but like. also no. (and also though i'm sure they did film these episodes in order lets also keep in mind that filming is not always linear)

ARES FIGHT SCENE WOOOOO LET'S GO

ok i did lose the video (i looked for it i swear, i took 30 min trying to look for it, which really isn't that long but yeah) but a lovely tumblr user here (i think i know who it was but i don't want to be embarrassingly wrong) edited the ares's fight with his internal monologue and an awful recorder rendition of that one song from the titanic and it really does encapsulate my thoughts. but yeah if you aren't familiar with the video.

when i was watching the final episode i swear i was trying to turn all critical brain functions off but it was really hard for me not to notice the increasing amount of time that ares just lets percy get up. i just watched dune (second part) so i was spoiled for good fight sequences but something i did notice was that in dune, when there is a pause in a fight it is FOR CHARACTER REASONS. the characters are DELIBERATELY NOT ENDING THE FIGHT. and that was not the impression i got from ares. it really wasn't.

and that took away from his authority/menace as a god ngl.

so yeah was the fight better than the dodds fight. 100%. like 500%.

does that make it a good fight sequence.... ehhhhhhhhhhhh....

(why did the scenes with luke have more tension than the ares fight hello)

and character wise. assassination. all the assassination. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE CULMINATION OF PERCY'S CHARACTER ARC AHHHHHHHH. sorry. but like this was the point at which percy decides he's done running. and stands up to ares with all the taunts and quick thinking that we know him for. unfortunately the show thought itself better and erased that theme ahaha.

so this really is just a fight for the helm. no big reveals, no reading the actions and emotions of a god, no strategy, no trying to get to the water and ares stopping him. like

WOULD IT BE SO HARD TO JUST FOLLOW THE NICE LOVELY SCRIPT THE BOOKS GAVE YOU FOR EXAMPLE: shot of percy looking at the water, shot of ares looking at percy looking at the water, maybe a pan to the water here, percy moves towards, ares blocks. YOU CAN IN FACT SHOW BATTLEFIELD STRATEGY IN A MOVIE. BC BATTLE STRATEGY RESULTS IN STRATEGIC FIGHTING. WHICH IS WHAT THE VISUAL MEDIUM IS SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD AT. RIGHT? RIGHT???

ahahaha sorry just feeling stabby i don't really know why. anywho off to the senate meeting. i'm running a bit late but i did rsvp with a knife sooooo

[phantomsofmyformerself]

This is a genuine question and if I say something offensive I wholeheartedly apologize. But how do you think they could've written Claudia's inevitable death in a way that didn't reproduce racist stereotypes and still made her go with a bang (like the line about coming back to haunt them all)? I've tried to think about this, because the trial did look, sound and smell like a lynching and was awful, but the only way I could see this happening in a 'respectful' (not actually respectful because there's nothing respectful in killing her, I'm just using it because I couldn't think of another word) is as if it'd happened off camera. But I also think it would be awful to just hear that she died and not even have a proper scene of her? I saw Delainey saying they never talked about the trial like that, that Santiago mocked Claudia the same way he'd mock Lestat's accent if he was the target too... So, I don't know if they had many options to make it less worse? Torturing and killing black characters is nothing new and a disservice television has done for years. But not only cutting their Achilles' heel, but showing it too, with close-ups even, showing Claudia without her hair, the animations that didn't even match their skin tone etc. They could've told the story of the episode without any of that. They should have.

btw i am white! everything i say is from a white perspective! (feel that is important to note)

i think there isn't much they could really change (that i can think of), in concerns with wanting to remain truthful to the book. claudia dies, she is burned by the sun after a trial, and she pops up in later books as 'nightmares/hallucinations' for both lestat and louis (the line about haunting them is so that for future seasons they can bring her back in that way, similar to a dreamstat type thing and i am very excited for this)

i think the animations not matching their skin note is, perhaps, an example of the coven's racism? maybe? i'm not too sure. but yes, i don't think it was really necessary. i suppose having close ups of claudia without her hair was trying to show her face turned to look at lestat whilst burning (as delainey said, she was looking at him for help which does def add something to the scene). but i understand how significant hair is in black cultures, and i do agree with you anon, they could've had claudia looking at him before that moment.

i think the change from it being a closed trial of just the coven and lestat (i think? correct me if i'm wrong) in the book to a sort of mob spectacle does add the elements of lynching to the scene that wasn't really necessary and again, ig is only there for theatrical reasons but

if you want an answer in 'fixing' it. i'm really not sure, other than having it been a closed trial.

[blueiight]

I'm not saying you were arguing that Lestat + Claudia have the exact same dynamic as the books but you questioned why viewers (probably especially show only people) often put Louis and Claudia together as an entity vs. Lestat and I'm just saying the show made VERY specific choices and changes that enhance that reading of their dynamic. Race is the most obvious factor but there are also just story beats that don't happen in the books and to me all those choices make Louis & Claudia feel closer to each other than they did in the books. In turn it also makes Lestat feel more isolated than the books and supports the escalated violence in the show that he may not have felt compelled to act on in the books.

Any time you see major story changes from the book I always ask why they made that decision and what purpose it serves the characters. For example having Claudia live on her own for 7 years and then leave on her own again in 1x06 is such a huge and deliberate distinction from book Claudia being completely physically dependent that it completely changes how we view the dependency of L&C's relationship. The reason she's not allowed to leave isn't because she can't survive without him (as it is in the books), it's because HE can't survive without HER (as lestat says, come home and make him happy). She is not physically dependent on him in anymore, he is emotionally on her. The reversal is so huge it has major implications for the rest of the story (i.e. why Armand needs to kill her).

i was saying that bc lestat + claudia have similar dispositions still in the show that i see relatively underdiscussed but u make a really great point.. ig where book fans project lestat’s views onto claudia show fans now project show louis’s views onto her? this is soo fascinating omg the show is in active convo w/ everybody. i do think show louis has exhibited a sense of emotional codependence on claudia which adds onto why our good yandere armand feels the urge to do what he do, but where i diverge w/ u is that ive also said before that show claudia’s attempt at living on her own for 6 years was misery. it was a divergence from book claudia but it wasnt really a successful attempt for show claudia?. she was hiding in dingy university corners playing at being a student. she didnt even get out the southern half of the united states before being assaulted by bruce & going back to new orleans. and while adolescence had always existed, where the show places l+c now in a post world war 2 europe, the concept of teenager rly coalesces in that era. so i think theres still some of that dependence show claudia could have on louis, but with madeleine and the theater in a post world war 2 europe there could also be a loot the show goes on that direction