#not SUPER diverse

[artificial-angels]

wanted to draw the ponies in my style 💥

[avephelis]

just wanted to say it's really awesome seeing the positive reception to chunky mikey LOVE YOU ALL 🧡🧡

[evenmyhivemindisempty]

My controversial opinion about Hob Gadling is that I believe he’s absolutely the sort of guy that “puts things behind him”, and tries to wash his hands clean of the things he feels icky about. This is implied pretty well in the show, with him blithely moving from soldiering and robbery to printing, from slaving to… whatever it was he was doing in the 19th century instead. That being said, this is not at all the same as actively trying to atone, or even making a concerted effort to be a better person, and I really wish fandom could tell the difference!

[intotheelliwoods]

Playlists are here!!

Poptart Bops <- <-

Sprout Sounds <- <-

Big Leo Beats <- <-

[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!

[griem]

ijbol idk man releasing screenshots of very polarizing things said in a private discord server between friends in a public "callout" post is #the most #tumblrific thing ive ever seen LOL.

#opinion 😱 in tags

[gourde]

"Guilt" by NERO (Welcome Reality) "Only" by Nine Inch Nails (With Teeth) "Undefeatable" by Sleeping With Sirens (SONIC FRONTIERS BABAY) "Ruiner" by Nine Inch Nails (Downward Spiral) "Dramaphone" by Caravan Palace (Panic) "Eraser" by Nine Inch Nails (Downward Spiral) (Yes three NIN songs IT'S TOUGH TO FIND SONGS STARTING WITH VOWELS)

playlist made of each letter of your url tagged by @haneys yaay music yay! aa this was hard theres so many songs that start with letters... i made them all kind of sonically coherent to help me pick

"Bright over me" by Tempers [link]

"Over Deh So" by Kahn [link]

"Ruins" by O.Children [link]

"Root" by loefah [link]

"Enter Ed's Head" by Dosoene [link]

"Loudmouth" by Stephen Vittiello [link]

"Inertia creeps" by Massive Attack [link]

"ATARI FRONT PROGRAM" by Utsu-p [link]

@gourde @krafterwrites @lttleghost @isaacbrooke @eggthew @cinnapaw @adultswin if you want to play with me and share your music :)

[cocoa-rococo]

happy pride, everyone

[pcktknife]

would splatsune inku be an octoling, inkling or a secret third thing

inkling probably. If a character was introduced into the splatoon world that was clearly based on miku I think they'd go with an inkling (bigfin squid to ME) or a secret 3rd thing (japanese spider crab to ME) before an octoling just cause like marketing or something. inklings have been the default for a long time yknow also her classic hair silhouette looks closer to inkling tentacles. that being said in-universe I could see her being some dome octoling's side passion project too.

[thefirstknife]

I'm gonna be 100% real with you in that this is an entirely earnest question and not meant to be me throwing shade or being obtuse in any way.

Osiris is Jewish? I missed this in lore somewhere probably?

Yep! In the opening cutscene to Curse of Osiris, Osiris briefly curses in a non-English language when trying to arrange the cubes. The language spoken is Hebrew! This is due to his voice actor, Oded Fehr, who is Jewish and from Israel and naturally speaks Hebrew. Here's my other post about it!

If it had been just his VA being Jewish, we could speculate about it, but Osiris speaking Hebrew is canon due to this cutscene; they let Oded say this and also kept the line in. This makes him Egyptian Jewish and canonically speaking at least three languages: English, Hebrew (cutscene) and Arabic (the word "sagira" is Arabic for "little one"). Here's also a link to the old Curse of Osiris reveal stream where the devs said that "really early on we made a commitment, we wanted to make sure he was Middle Eastern and he's actually even voiced by Oded Fehr." This shows that his heritage and little details surrounding him are very much relevant.

A lot of Destiny storytelling about heritage is told through names and languages as little details to pick up on. For example, Elsie Bray is very much heavily implied to be Muslim. Back with Beyond Light lore, we got a lot of details about the Bray family, including Sylvie Bray, the mother of Elsie, Willa and Alton. She was shown speaking English and French (+ a single Italian word), and Elsie was shown replying to her using French and the specifically Muslim term "inshallah" which is Arabic. This is repeated in Lightfall's Collector's Edition in Elsie's booklet, showing that Elsie followed the same faith as her mother, or at least honored it:

"Oh daughter," Mom squeezes me tight "You can't make them love you, inshallah. You have to let go."— The horror consumed her as easily as the Stasis. She felt like a frightened child cast loose in the wind. Alone. Every assertion of control met by a temper tantrum in the face of a hurricane…. "Inshallah." She half-remembered her mother's words, and let go.

Words hadn't saved her, or her mother's faith.

Adding this mostly to show how details about names and languages are used to tell us information without having to spell it out directly, but rather to add to the storytelling. This means that these details about Osiris aren't just random, or at least their outcome isn't, now that it's been allowed to become canon through one of the most important cutscenes.

[bleachbleachbleach]

I was taking a book recommendation quiz and now the only thing I can think about is the Seireitei Communications putting one out for shinigami (Hisagi's attempt to get buy-in for mass importation of books and movies and music and such from the Living World).

Like, how do you not read this question and think about comedic master Kuchiki Byakuya bemoaning the inability to choose more than one option:

I mean, like:

[raphaelesbian]

was writing Shinigami and had the thought of like, "I wonder how common it is to speak English fluently if you're Japanese?" So I looked it up and

not common!!! which does make sense, esp since English and Japanese are such different languages, but like. I believe even more strongly now that the english in TMNT 2012 is partially non-diegetic.

Like, I already HCed that in Tale of the Yokai everyone is speaking Japanese, and the English is just for our benefit, but like. that basically confirms it, right? Like there's no way EVERY character in that episode is fluent in English. meaning the turtles MUST be fluent in Japanese, at least enough to communicate as much as they did

so, any time the turtles are communicating without April, Casey, or another English-only-speaker, I'm going to say they COULD be speaking Japanese, and it's only English bc it's an American TV show. Turtles talking among each other? Japanese. Splinter and Shredder's confrontations? DEFINITELY in Japanese. Leo and Karai? Could be in Japanese. just saying.....

[jumalanpelko]

Will we be seeing more of the previous suncat?

Yes! I plan to add like a chapter from their point of view (im using they/he when talking about previous suncat, but if he had more time he might have formed different identity) since i think it mirrors our Guard and Suncat and is just a tragic story.

I will use it to kinda symbolize some trans issues and feelings ive had about my identity.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

I thought DIVERSITY & INCLUSION was a good thing? 🤔

It wasn't enough for Disney and Serena Williams to spit on Pat Tillman's legacy, they doubled down by publicly berating Harrison Butker.

Despite the NFL's reputation as the National Felons League, Harrison Butker chooses to be an upstanding citizen & athlete, deeply committed to his Catholic faith and values.

Serena & Venus used their Espy Platform to CATHOLIC shame Kansas City Chiefs' super bowl winner, Harrison Butker.

A CATHOLIC university invited Butker to inspire their graduating class. Harrison dared to encourage EVERYONE (including the women with a desire to become mothers and homemakers) to be proud and unashamed.

[virtualcarrot]

been seeing old fans of the graphic novel complaining about goldenloin's new design compared to the old with pictures of the comics' design side by side with the movie's calling the new one terrible

i promise you can miss the long hair without dismissing the new design as a whole

especially considering the efforts at diversity in the movie

[deepseacityunderground]

i think that veganism as a political movement has a lot of interesting things to say about how food agriculture has been shaped by consumerism and the way its alienated the average westerner from food production especially around meat. its a cruel cruel industry for everyone involved and it sucks.

unfortunately it also overwelmingly falls victim (like a lot of other socially progressive political movements lol) to a complete inability or perhaps a refusal to engage with rural indigenous communities especially in the global south. which is ironic because (like a lot of other socially progressive political movements) much of their theoretical framework for reforming society Depends on rural indigenous communities especially in the global south ^.^