#no live blogging this time

[helenaalmost]

👍👍👍👍👍

[bacchuschucklefuck]

couldnt draw my thang for mid-autumn so treated myself to a calne redesign instead

[gentlemanmotorslifestyle]

[gayfranzkafka]

The Nisenan tribe in my local area has the opportunity to purchase 232 acres located on a historic Nisenan Village site called Yulića, but they have a limited time (until April 4, 2024) to raise the needed funds. You can learn more about the fundraiser and donate here.

Especially if you have ever enjoyed any of my writing, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Aren't Dead, it would mean the world to me if you'd consider donating what you're able.

I'm also happy to take commissions and donate the funds in full to the fundraiser or to write anyone who sends me proof of their donation oneshots upon request; dm me or send me an ask if you're interested!

Reblogs are appreciated to spread the word. Thank you <3

[howtodigatrench]

painted dessert attacks for picosheep and @lion-buddy !

[godsfavoritedumpsterfire]

[toastybugguy]

why can’t gay people just be normal and say I love you, why’s there always gotta be some great dragon in the middle saying shit like “a half cannot truly hate that which makes it whole” and “you’re like two sides of the same coin”

[daily-sifloop]

Loop the prettiest princess in a dungeon and siffrin the handsomest knight saving them

Day 81: the hero always gets the princess!

[katkat030]

“It’s definitely spicy” Pearl, circa 2024, while ZITS casually die of heat in the background (followed by False calling her completely unfazed)

[ae-cha08]

We can trust in God, knowing He will align our heart’s desire with His and ultimately give us His very best blessings – all in His perfect timing. 💙

[gothamite-shenanigans]

thinking of that one time i hadn't slept in like a week and i got stuck in an elevator with dick grayson on the way up to the floor i work at in WE, and i accidentally told him he's shaped like a dorito and how a lot of people like doritos and then said very seriously, "I prefer potato chips though, no offense" but thankfully he laughed it off and didn't even look uncomfy??? like idk how he does it but like that man istg

anyways i have nightmares about this and still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about it and have avoided the oldest wayne kid since this incident

[evilkaeya]

PEOPLE'S PRINCESS DAZAI OSAMU

[gentlemanmotorslifestyle]

[esthers-wine]

🦉

Septembers bitter wind bites at your ankles, as your boots crunch leaves, the smell of the old books you’d borrowed comforting you.

It was the time of year when, you were born again while everyone else slept in darkness.

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.