#maybe it wasnt the only way

[carto0ncritter]

I just want to say that I personally disagree with the claims that Stolas is a coercive rapist. You don't have to agree with me. I just want to share my perspective. Alright, here we go.

Let's start at Harvest Moon Festival: 'When this happens, it's not really something I fuss about...' and 'Well, I'm not a fan of someone I offered a job to about to off my easiest lengthy ticket to Earth behind my back.' Notice how Blitz says 'easiest lengthy ticket' here, not 'only ticket', and Blitz knows about Asmodean Crystals, as evidenced by Unhappy Campers where he forces someone to use it to create a portal to the living world, so the Grimoire was never the only option Blitz could've used to run I.M.P. Sure losing the grimoire would've disrupted business for a bit, but again, it was never Blitz's only option. It's also been confirmed in Ghostfuckers that I.M.P used to assassin jobs in Hell before Blitz got the Grimoire from Stolas, I.M.P was running fine without the Grimoire, if Blitz couldn't get his hands on the Grimoire or the Asmodeun Crystal he and his could always just run missions in Hell, so the coercion argument already falls flat there, but let's beat it up a bit further shall we?

Now let's look at Ozzies, at the ending of it Stolas never pressures or forces Blitz into having sex with him or quote 'We could talk, or… watch a movie, or… maybe cuddle?', Blitz turns Stolas down here, and Stolas never forces or pressures Blitz into doing said things with him, and you know what this also proves? It proves that Blitz has always the self-agency to tell Stolas 'no I don't want to fuck you', which also shows that Blitz actually wanted to have sex with Stolas, which we can prove by the text messages Stolas and Blitz had after Ozzie's.

The text messages at the end of Western Energy show that Stolas is actively giving Blitz the option to not fuck him, which also tells us that Blitz always had the option to tell Stolas no, and hell, we can see in the All 2 U song that Blitz turned down Stolas most likely asking Blitz to stay after the sex, proving even further Blitz always had the self-agency to tell Stolas no, which shows that Blitz wanted to have sex with Stolas.

And I'm not even counting everything about what happened in Full Moon episode. Blitz literally sings about how much he enjoys sex with Stolas, spends the whole day buying things to use on Stolas, begged for Stolas to keep the deal, said multiple times about how much the deal is something he enjoyed and wanted to keep, and told Loona and M&M about how Stolas never forced anything on him which lead to months without intimacy between them. Where is the coercion??? Simply, it's not there.

Now let's look at Apology Tour, Blitz wants the arrangement back, to fuck Stolas again. Which tells us something that the people peddling the bullshit 'Stolas is a rapist' argument entirely ignore, Blitz is the one unhappy with the arrangement ending, not Stolas, Blitz.

Also, Blitz has the Asmodeun Crystal by this point, he could've easily have just told Stolas to fuck off and leave if he was truly being coerced and raped by him, but he chooses to stay because at this point he thinks this gesture is a farewell gift from Stolas, and it's been made very clear that Blitz has strong feelings for Stolas by this point despite his self-hatred, that he doesn't want to lose Stolas, which also helps to further prove that Blitz wanted to have sex with Stolas out of his entire free will.

Blitz having sex with Stolas was a way for Blitz to be close to Stolas without having to be vulnerable, and when Stolas gets rid of the arrangement Blitz is scared because it would force Blitz to be vulnerable towards Stolas.

Is all of this really the behavior of a person who felt coerced into sex he didn't want to have? Because I think it's pretty clear that Blitz at no point felt coerced into having sex with Stolas, and the people that claim otherwise I have good grounds to believe aren't even watching the same show anymore.

i think i can sum up everything you said here, from my pov, in one sentence: "A part of Blitz craved Stolas' "affection" and "interest" in him because he had never experienced true love before (+ all the trauma in his past really fucked him up when it comes to opening up his heart and recieveing love and not pushing people away), and pretty much got hooked to the "relationship" despite Stolas' gaslighting, name calling and manipulative tendencies"

long story short, blitz fell in love with his abuser and is unable to break free. symbolically, he cant break the chains

[moeblob]

A lil guy !

[ch1zzie]

The original in the bottom

Plus the picture I mainly drew but decided to draw the rest for funny

[arovalentines]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[skydrag0n]

AU where Tim Drake gives up all his money and runs away with Lonnie

[usertoxicyaoi]

found this super interesting. this person below is an acting coach and scriptwriter that's worked on/working on: kinnporsche (2022), only friends (2023), playboyy (2023) and mansruang (2023):

[chasing-faith-and-fate]

Moon 16

Pt 2

Moon 16 p1 | Moon 17

[puppppppppy]

AND I MET THE CHANGE GOD TOO. OKAY. COOL OKAY

[crustyfloor]

"Ivan isn't loved by anyone-" You were fooled by his warped perspective.

[sonknuxadow]

it just hit me that the movie is coming out next month imgonna throw upppppppp

[aroaceleovaldez]

i hope this doesn't sound like a silly or weird thing to send you, but i'm autistic and have long thought of nico and a handful of other riordanverse characters as autistic and i love your posts about why nico in particular seems intentionally autistic-coded. but i've been thinking, if rick did intend for any of his characters to be autistic, why wouldn't he say so outside of the text at least? i can't think of a good reason why not, when he goes out of his way to be explicit about so many other characters' various marginalized identities and has confirmed things like reyna being asexual outside of the original text. so it gives me this nagging sort of doubt that maybe rick just made nico come off as so extremely autistic coded by accident, somehow. if it wasn't an accident i do kind of wish he'd say so because there's next to zero explicitly stated autistic representation in, like, any media so it'd be nice to have here even if not strictly necessary. either way though, like i said, i love your posts and i agree with you 100% about autistic nico! some others i like to think are autistic are annabeth and leo.

(Most of this is gonna be kind of a tangential ramble to your point and i apologize in advance just bear with me)

This actually touches upon something I've been meaning to do a write-up on recently, which is: depending on the coding, that is our explicit statement. In most coding, actually, that's kind of the point. (Also something something Death of the Author.)

You may have noticed a recent trend across media of characters saying things directly rather than expressing them in a natural way, and often this includes incredibly stilted dialogue of characters explaining things in very politically correct, wikipedia-esque descriptions and terminology that make absolutely no sense for the characters' personalities or mannerisms. This is born out of the idea that if something is not stated in explicit terms, no amount of evidence below an outright direct exact statement will ever count - if two characters of the same gender have an explicit kiss and wedding on-screen, it doesn't matter because they never said the word "gay," etc etc.

In PJO, prior to more recent books, we get plenty of examples of characters explaining parts of their identities without direct statements. Percy never needs to say in outright terms that he has PTSD from Gabe - and it doesn't make sense that he would! He's 12! He's never been diagnosed for that. He probably doesn't even know what PTSD is really. But we, the audience, know without a doubt he has PTSD, because it is clearly expressed to us. That is coding. Tyson is coded as having down syndrome. Nico is coded as being autistic. It doesn't make sense for Nico to turn to the camera and explain that he's autistic and what that means, because he definitely never got diagnosed for it and probably doesn't know what that means cause the diagnosis literally did not exist when he was growing up - and heck, autism terminology was still kind of getting sorted out back in 2007 when TTC was published, so it's unlikely we could have feasibly gotten any exact terminology wink-wink-nudge-nudges short of something like how Percy outright mentions other students called Tyson the r-slur in Sea of Monsters. And in fact we see that same exact style of coding with Nico later on in the series. Nico never turns to the camera and says word-for-word "I am gay, I am mlm, here's me wearing my exact pride flags" (until TOA/TSATS, which... did the exact thing i mentioned about characters speaking like theyre trying to get a good grade in therapy, or giving a powerpoint presentation). But it is never unclear that HoO is telling us outright that Nico is gay. It's not just hinted at. It's there, in your face. But entirely because no one ever outright says "gay" specifically it's technically still only coding. We know he's gay, we know the characters have trauma/ptsd, etc etc. We don't need it spelled out - that's just kind of condescending. It's like if you said describing a character with "eyes like moss" means they were "green-eye coded."

Nico being autistic-coded isn't hidden. It's not a secret. It's very overt. If you know what autism looks like, well, yeah, there he is. Even if you only know very vague 2007 media presentation of autism, Nico in TTC is easily recognizable enough as autistic because that's the point. Tyson is easily recognizable as being coded as having down syndrome and it's very clearly very intentional! It's just never spoon-fed in exact terms to the reader because it's not necessary! You've already been told the information necessary to tell you what is up with this character, so just plainly going "oh they're [x] in exact terms" is very much telling-not-showing and feels redundant. And while there are places for that kind of thing, most of the time it's very unnecessary. Sometimes coding is subtle, sometimes it's obvious, and yeah there are times where writers code characters unintentionally, but the textual evidence is there, and that's the whole point.

And that's what Death of the Author is about - it doesn't matter what the author intended at the end of the day, because if it's in the text it's in the text. You can look at author intent to try and figure out what that text means, but the text is the text. A Separate Peace is a very classic example - author John Knowles denies there being homosexual subtext, and meanwhile one of the protagonists living in 1942 puts on a pink shirt while saying he doesn't mind of people think of him as gay. What the author says after the fact doesn't matter - if it's there, it's there. So Rick saying anything outside of the books is completely irrelevant. And Rick talks about this a lot - he actively tells people that his statements outside of the books are just his own thoughts, but what's in the books is what's in the books, and if the text supports it then that's all the evidence you need.

Nico specifically is a case where yeah, he's clearly autistic-coded. It's very obvious and very obviously intentional when he's younger, and as the books progress it remains a background trait of his but is still notable (except for when it gets forgotten in TOA/TSATS like everything else, including the adhd/dyslexia, but i digress). It's a clear pattern within the first few books that Rick is intentionally including. It doesn't make sense, especially for the year the book was published, for the reader to be directly told in explicit terminology that Nico is autistic, because the reader is already being told that Nico is autistic.

And yeah, Rick doesn't mention Nico being autistic-coded outside of the text, but he also doesn't mention Tyson being coded as having down syndrome. He also said one time that Percy doesn't have PTSD at all, which is very incorrect starting from book 1. Again, Death of the Author. Whatever Rick says outside of the books does not matter, because he already said it in the books. And there's plenty of other stuff in the books that Rick doesn't touch upon, particularly relating to character identity - did you know Leo is Native? Sammy mentions that the Valdez family is Native in Son of Neptune but we don't get any specifics and then it's like never brought up again anywhere. That happens all the time in the series - and outside of the series - Rick can't possibly address every single point to confirm/deny everything from the books. That's what analysis is for! And that's why my blog exists 👍

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Understandably So no one mentions charles when talking about the Logan movie and again Understandably So This Aint Bout Him however i do confess that as someone who had never seen Logan until like. a month ago when i was binging all the movies and without knowing a single thing about it aside from laura i cant lie i was in fact jumpscared by him being there. especially for at least like 3/4s of the movie

[dennistakesamentalhealthday]

dennis is an angry character btw im sorry but he is full of rage but that rage is not exclusive his anger does not negate sadness and fragility and insecurities in fact they work together and dtamhd was one of the first times where his anger was not used as a joke via a surface level rage explosion from him but instead explored the fragility of his anger. the way he keeps reassuring the workers he encounters (and himself) that he's not mad. when he tells daisy he's not mad but he is a little bit upset. dennis is angry and that anger is what makes him so fragile. he was upset and it manifested as rage bc he doesnt know what to do with his own sadness

[skitskatdacat63]

Catie i need to know in the famous interview w ron dennis DID FERNANDO EAT AN APPLE OR A PEACH??????? This is important information and im getting conflicting data. It looks like an apple but in my head its always been a peach

Okay so I don't know how to find that interview itself but I did remember that they showed it in Nando's doc, so here:

The peach thing is a seperate thing. I understand why you'd be inclined to think it's a peach in this interview, bcs the peach thing is so iconic but this is def an apple. I like to think that this is just an extension of the peach thing. Because wasn't it that Ron Dennis hated any messy fruit eating? An apple is also messy honestly, so I like to think Fernando is particularly trying to be a bastard here as well, but a peach is perhaps too obscene to eat in a public interview SJFKVLV

[oceanwithouthermoon]

i think its weird that i have to make this disclaimer but the internet is crazy so wtvr,, anyway,,

if i say i dont like something, that doesnt mean "that thing is bad and nobody should post it.."

i swear literally every time i even mention that i dislike something, people will go "wow does that mean u fucking hate me cuz i post that thing? ur a fucking stupid bitch and all ur opinions r wrong" LIKE ?? er.. no. just because i say i dont like certain characterizations of certain characters (the saiki k fandom is CRAZY about this cuz i can state an opinion on literally any character and a group of people will still go 'well only we're allowed to post our opinions about them because we're always right!1!1!'), or certain ship tropes (mentioned my hatred of toxic yaoi maybe once or twice on here months ago and people STILL get mad at me as if i said toxic yaoi lovers r evil or something), or certain ships, or WHATEVER, does not mean that i HATE the people who are posting them or that i think they shouldnt post them at all, NO, im just posting about my personal tastes on my personal blog and it would be extremely weird and hypocritical if i decided that i was the ONLY person that was allowed to do that,,

i think the only reason people assume that is because there are a lot of other people on here who ARE like that, and a lot of people toe the line between posting that they dont like something and posting that they think everyone who likes that thing is stupid, annoying, and wrong,, so i guess all i can say is, sorry for whatever made you make these assumptions but they arent true about me so plz leave me alone ʘ‿ʘ ur doing the same thing to me that ur accusing me of but i didnt do it in the first place so ur just actively being a dick for no reason