#morning discussion

[p0ssession]

Goldfish exploring a rotting rib cage. Inspired by a fish bowl shaped like a torso that I saw while out with friends.

[nellasbookplanet]

I know that after Downfall the perspective of 'the gods are a FAMILY' has permeated fandom on both sides of the kill-all-gods argument, but frankly that isn't all they are and acting as if it's suddenly their only motivation flattens both them as characters and the narrative they (and bells hells) are in.

The Wildmother and The Raven Queen didn't 'let' Lolth get away with nabbing Opal and killing Cyrus because she’s their sister. Come on man, we've already seen that the primes are plenty capable of opposing and fighting their siblings on the side of mortals (is the calamity a joke to you??). I'm not saying the primes aren’t capable of picking the lives of their betrayer siblings over mortals (downfall showed as much) but that's not what the situation with Opal and Lolth was about in the slightest.

They let Lolth 'get away with it' not because she’s family, but because this is the very rare instance of them not only having the same goal, but of them actively fighting for their lives. As far as we know that has only happened once before on Exandria, and that time they also entered a truce to defend themselves. The vast majority of the time, the primes picking their siblings over mortals won’t happen because mortals can’t actually threaten the gods (normally), making the 'they're family argument' a moot point. The primes won’t necessarily agree with Lolth's methods, but they won’t go throwing away both hers and their own champions in a meaningless struggle when they need all their strength to stop the fucking apocalypse.

[isagrimorie]

Star Trek Voyager 5x11 - Latent Image

Seven: Tomorrow will be too late. We'll have already rewritten the Doctor's program by then. Janeway: And, violated his rights as an individual.

Latent Image Gifset series Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

[cheekyvank]

wait hold on. just remembered the pic phil released of dan in nun form editing the baking video. at the end of the baking video he took the outfit off. so this means that he put it back on. for editing ??

[arithmonym]

necro-cav pairs on tandem bikes. thank you for your consideration 🙏

[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!

[oozeandgoo-art]

Stubbornness.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I have to weigh in 'cause while I am definitely a service-top Erik truther, I do agree with the previous anon who said he could be a sub/top. I think his control freak personality becomes too much at times and he needs to CHILL OUT and relax a little, and the best way Charles can help him do that is by taking control from him in bed and ordering him about, but with Erik still 'topping' it lends the illusion of control while stripping the actual responsibility of decision-making from him.

the council's come to a Rather Unanimous Conclusion oh wow that was easy

[stromer]

“He’s improved his eating habits, he’s reading a book almost weekly to try to improve his brain… I know that sounds silly, but as a captain at 23, that motivates you, that motivates our group… He’s the engine for our team" — Conor Garland Quinn Hughes via the Dropping Gloves podcast

[benevolenterrancy]

some ballpoint doodle done during a work meeting that turned out pretty cute

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

I do think that any fan who believes Tolkien intended readers to view characters as deserving of death, instead of simply meeting death as a consequence of their actions (or that one state-sanctioned execution), is fundamentally missing the ideology conveyed in ‘Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.’

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Randomly thinking about “tolerate it” (narrator voice: it was not random) and how under the cloak of fiction it is ostensibly inspired by works like “Rebecca” (which Taylor said she read during the 2020 lockdowns I believe?), with the line of “you’re so much older and wiser” indicating that the speaker is significantly younger and inexperienced compared to the person she’s speaking to and a pretty direct reference to the plot of the book.

But I saw something somewhere once that stuck with me about how it might not be referring to relative age between the characters but chronological age as in the passage of time in a relationship. And that made me think about how in a contemporary context, it might not necessarily be referencing an actual age gap between the two characters, but rather a sarcastic or cynical response to the man’s claims that he has matured (“you’re so much older and wiser [than you were before/than you were when we met/etc.]”), which then made me think about that line in relation to the woman. And that it could be taken like, “you act like you’ve matured so much in our time together and like you know everything, while I’m supposedly still stuck as the girl I was when we first met.”

Which then made me think of the “right where you left me” of it all and did you ever hear about the girl who got frozen time went on for everyone else she won’t know it and the bit in Miss Americana where she talks about how celebrities get frozen at the age at which they got famous, and how she’s had to play catch up in a lot of ways not just in her emotional growth but kind of in general. (Which also made me wonder if she’s ever been called out for immaturity/lack of curiosity/lack of education about things in her life…)

Which then made me think about the rest of the song, and @taylortruther’s posts yesterday about “seven” and “Daylight” and the way Taylor idealizes her youth yet contrasts it with an almost sinister reality in its wake, and the line, “I sit by the door like I’m just a kid,” because the discussion raised that her relationship let her recapture some of the childlike joy and wonder she’d lost. So this line is a double-edged sword: the speaker sits by the door with childlike hope that the person will come home and cherish her, but on the darker side, feels like the child dealing with the monsters she doesn’t have names for yet and the feelings of isolation she felt as she aged.

I’m not saying the song is necessarily autobiographical; like most of the songs on folkmore, it’s clearly a fictionalized story based on media she’d consumed and created, but we know a lot of the fictional songs were infused with her own feelings and experiences and… This idea swirling in my head picked up steam and now I kind of can’t stop thinking about it. Sorry but I’m a little obsessed now.

Like maybe it might start to shed light on why she identified so strongly with the novel in the first place…

[robinsceramics]

Go players <3

image description: a tableau of ceramic sculptures. Two vaguely humanoid blob figures with discs for faces, one white and one black, face each other across a yellow Go board. The figures each have a Go bowl at their right-hand side.

also, for those interested: this is a fanart!

listen (lowers my voice) listen. I watched Hikaru no Go and it hurt me. so naturally I did fanart about it. the black figure represents Hikaru—he has terrible posture but he looks eager to play. he's looking upward like a child. the white figure all neat and upright is Sai. Hikaru is bigger than Sai because Hikaru eclipses Sai eventually. Sai shrinks as Hikaru grows...

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Hey. I want to talk about how we, as a fandom, talk about Stede.

I want to preface this with the fact that I adore Stede, in all his multi-faceted, complex glory. The way that he's been brave and allowed himself to fight for a more authentic life is incredibly inspiring to me. I'm a lot like Stede, both on the surface-level "we're both femme gay men who are unable to present as anything else" and on a deeper "we both feel a sort of fundamental alienation from our peers and as a result are easily susceptible to peer pressure and tend to self-isolate as a learned coping mechanism and accidentally hurt others by assuming they don't want us in our lives." I think MANY people in this fandom find it very easy to relate with some of Stede's deeper issues, I don't presume I'm alone here.

And it's very true that there is a loud chunk of this fandom who vocally hate both of the main characters and talk about Stede like he's just some bumbling idiot. I get wanting to push back on that.

But I don't think it's really helpful to argue that people should police the way we talk about Stede. I can understand why the "Stede is my stupid bitch <3" and "Stede's cringe" jokes can hit a bit too close to home for some people, but I don't think that every joke post should need to come with a disclaimer that's like "I don't actually think Stede is a loser." Lord knows I've made my fair share of "Ed's such a dork <3" posts, too.

The thing here, I think, is that when people say things like "Stede's so cringe, I love him," that's from a place of deep affection and growing self-acceptance. I've worried about feeling "cringe" before, for a lot of the things that Stede does, too - not reading social cues correctly, for talking in ways that don't match up with the social situation I'm in, for loving things too much, for being a gnc gay man. If Stede's 'cringe,' and I love him so much...then how can I be mean to myself for the same things?

I don't think anyone who actually likes Stede and says things like "he's so dumb I love him" is being mean or simplifying the character, especially not just in a short joke post. If you've actually watched the show, then you KNOW Stede isn't dumb. Sometimes jokes just aren't that deep, and I think these posts, at their deepest, are no worse than "I relate to this guy a lot and he's really silly and I love him." It's okay if that kind of post annoys you, but it's also important to remember that they're coming from people who also love and relate to the character, and aren't malicious at all.

At the end of the day, I guess...I just think it's important for people to feel able to relate to Stede and write about him in ways that are meaningful to them, and sometimes our needs won't jive, and that's okay, and we can be mindful of that.

[terezicaptor]

Pac and Tubbo literally gay kissed during the happy pills arc?? Chat is this real

[kaiserouo]

fuck weekly meeting