#thea rants

[theaaacalligaris]

thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea thea

guess who :))

Erm I have no idea

[amaltheas-garden]

love how the prequels were criticized for convoluted plots/bad dialogue/wooden acting, so they made the clone wars show to further flesh out the characters and make audiences actually care about them, and then a decade later they make a live action show with said animated characters with (you guessed it) convoluted plots/bad dialogue/wooden acting. It's like poetry, it rhymes!😭

[a-very-bored-blogger]

I believe the reason why pop music today is often compared to pop music back then (think 60s-90s) are often due to the change in lyrical composition over time.

We often see a recurring pattern in lyrics in most songs nowadays being more simplistic, often lacking depth and having a very surface level meaning to reach a 'sense of relatability' towards modern audiences. Due to that, people often perceive modern songs to be more repetitive - at least lyrically. I'm not saying this applies to most artists, just moreover towards pop artists like Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo.

Compare these to pop artists back in the day. More complex story telling that happens, music about telling the stories of others rather than themselves, making it less relatable. Think Billie Jean or Roxxane.

Overall, I don't know where I'm going with this byt but I think that I speak for a lot of people that a lot of popular songs today sounds more repetitive and lack depth, especially instrumentally and lyrically.

(this is why I like the Arctic Monkeys)

[theaaacalligaris]

@jameson-hawthorne do it or I’ll hunt you down

Considering the grandest game is another trilogy, I'm gonna need to see Jameson proposing to Avery.

[yourleftpinkytoe-blog]

I really want to address some shit that’s been on my mind recently. (This could be applicable to all fandoms but I’ll be taking specifically about the aftg fandom)

I really don’t like how some of you talk to people regarding shipping. Like I get not liking a ship. I myself can’t stand Andrew and Neil being shipped with Kevin. i always pictured Neil and Kevin having like a sibling dynamic and maybe Andrew thinking Kevin’s hot but nothing ever comes from it. Now I know I don’t enjoy content that contains this ship. So what do I do, I IGNORE IT. Rather than harass people for enjoying something I’m not a fan of (like some people) I just don’t interact. It’s not hard to scroll past something if you don’t like it.

I’ve seen so much shit discrediting and shit talking people who just don’t share your opinion. Like with ReneexJean, bro from the text we have it’s basically canon. Why are some people (cough cough jerjean shippers cough cough) just dismissing it so hard. Like just say you would rather read about two male characters WHO HAVEN’T TALKED EVEN ONCE ON PAGE then the border line canon straight ship. (Ik ik but tsc hasn’t been released yet im only talking about what we currently have canon wise)

No hate to jerjean I’m just using it to make a point. But I could also bring up the stuff with Thea and Kevin. They are canonically together. If you don’t like it FUCKING IGNORE IT. You don’t have to shit talk Thea because you don’t want her with Kevin. You don’t have to harass people who ship her and kevin. You can just scroll past it.

Idk why people feel the need to make everything about them but Holly shit I’m so tired of people not understanding the concept of not being an asshole over fictional people.

Don’t even get me started on how some of yall talk about Nora. Like bitch. SHES THE GOD DAMB AUTHOR. She could write anything about her characters and it doesn’t matter how much you bitch or moan that shits canon. Ignore it if you hate it that much but don’t harass her or talk down to her for literally giving us more information about the characters we love.

Some of yall are just so entitled and it makes me want to rip my hair out.

Anyway :b here’s some silly Kevin art I did in class<3

[theaaacalligaris]

@bexlaughlin someone caught us lacking…

[amaltheas-garden]

my hot take of the day is chunky chenille yarn was a mistake and i hate it more than the knitting with unspun roving trend

[theaaacalligaris]

It happens in my brain

Every time Nash randomly appears in the books, I just imagine audience clapping and cheering sound effects like when a celebrity appears on a Disney show 😭😭

[2deadkat]

This is gonna be the most hot take I’ll ever have…idk who knows, but I think Geronimo Stilton would’ve worked better as an ensemble cast with Gerry being the clear lead instead of a one man journey, especially into the later books with how they add the extended cast. Or at least missed out the potential there…

Like a Stilton family ensemble would’ve worked better with what they ended up establishing…

Hell make it a two-hander with Thea since it’s like opposite energies with similar positions

Plus it would make sense given the Thea sisters spin-off and how they share the same fame tho one considers to be more popular than the other…

[e-adlirez]

Thea Stilton Treasure Seekers Review/Ramble

Behold, an impulsive ramble about a possibly-obscure trilogy that's been translated to English during quarantine-ish, adding to the obscurity.

So the Treasure Seekers, huh? :3

Coming out a little prior but more or less over the course of quarantine and thus a lot of people not having ready access to it, the Treasure Seekers is what turned out to be a trilogy of what it says on the tin: the girls hunting down cool treasures as a result of going down the world's biggest and highest-stakes scavenger hunt written a hundred-ish years prior to the present time.

Gonna be giving MAJOR spoilers for the first book in the trilogy, and there'll (probably) be one post per book in the trilogy. If you haven't read the book, here's a copy on the Internet Archive you can read before skipping ahead to the review, enjoy, it's pretty good. If you've already read the book or don't care about spoilers, please proceed below the cut :3

The story begins with the girls on summer vacation in Scotland. Shenanigans get started when they meet this old hermit woman who has in her house a mysterious heirloom tapestry with a mysterious poem on it.

The tapestry has this poem that talks about a place with sweet winds, petals that will lead you to something beneath them, something about midnight and birds, and an alabaster garden created for the "jewel of the palace" (like me to you), that is guarded by a friend with deep feet. Sounds like a whole lotta cryptic shnit the theory heads would enjoy :D

Anyway so the girls go visit Beitris (the hermit woman) the next day to return something they borrowed from her only to walk into a holdup :D

Said holdup-ers are these two grunts led by this mysterious lady hiding her identity under a black fedora and thick-framed Ray Bans. The girls deal with that situation real quick and get the guys to scarper (if you're wondering how they did that, "the police are coming"), and once it all blows over, they find that the thugs only stole the tapestry despite ransacking the entire place like raccoons. Such a realization leads to a revelation on Beitris's end, so she entrusts the girls with the tapestry's backstory in a segment I will describe as LAAANNNEEEE LOOOORRRREEEEEE (said in a MatPat voice, we'll miss you king :'])

-

The tapestry was a family heirloom passed down to Beitris by her grandmother Petra, who got it from her older sister Aurora Beatrix Lane, who is basically British Amelia Earhart. Wasn't into girly shnit, liked being outside and also archaeology, studied in the University of Cambridge as an Archaeology major and learned how to fly a plane, all while punting early 1900s gender norms into oblivion with her pants and motorcycle. Motorcycle queen, plane queen, archaeology queen, but then everything changed when this British Amelia Earhart did a British Amelia Earhart.

The context behind Aurora Beatrix Lane's disappearance is something relating to her work with her mentor Jan Von Klawitz, who was doing archaeology things with her and probably got up to some wild shnit, but we would never know because Aurora is very secretive about her plans and her destinations, and she only came home to the UK once, after her first trip, and that was when she gave smol child Petra the tapestry to guard because it led to "a very precious treasure", but she can't show it yet for the time being. The vibe was Aurora was planning on using the tapestry to show the treasure it hides once she's done with her archaeology shenanigans.

But then she did an Amelia Earhart but completely untraceable since she never revealed her destinations, so uh there's that :D

-

Back to the present, this little storytime from Beitris has gotten the girls sucked into a rabbit hole. They are now hyperfixated like nobody's business and this Aurora Beatrix Lane is JUST LIKE THEM FR, and as a result they decide that y'know what they still have a few days before classes in Mouseford starts, and while they're at it, they're gonna find Beitris's tapestry and maaayyyybeeee find the alabaster garden. First destination: Girton College at the University of Cambridge, Aurora Beatrix Lane's alma mater.

The girls take a quick jaunt to Girton by train and then by bus to have a lil' chat with the dean, who reveals to them that they're looking for the central archive if they're gonna be looking for the deets on a student from a hundred years ago, but uh the archive is closed for the day, please come tomorrow. (Wonder why, maybe it's because they rode from Scotland to Girton by train which takes a shnitload of time. /nsrs but fr tho I wonder if the original Italian had them drive over there by car-- they did rent an SUV, and going by car would be way faster, like it'll only take a seven-hour drive faster) They come back the next day, are let into the archives, and oop, they find a well-preserved diary with Aurora's initials hidden in the Stanley Library.

Y'know what that means, LANE LOOORRRREEEEE

-

So two months into her accompanying Jan on his excavations, she notes that Jan's been acting a bit sus lately-- being very nervous, being extremely protective over his luggage, being weird about hiding some of the relics he's found, and also a weird-ass incident where while exploring a small village's old castle, Aurora found a hidden chamber with a tome inside that Jan immediately snatched and was like "I'll take care of it don't worry, don't worry about the protocol stuff I'll be fine I'll take care of it". And then he went back to "normal" after that. Hmmmm.

A month later, while Jan was talking with one of his collaborators on their train to England, Aurora stumbled into the tome again, suspiciously in Jan's personal luggage instead of being properly archived and catalogued like it should've been. She read it, saw a thing about the Seven Treasures of the World, and that caused her protagonist genes to kick in since now she's now very tempted to look into finding them and showing them to the world.

After that, she went to some libraries to investigate and eventually decided to confront Jan about the whole treasures thing and his first reaction was he was pissed, calling Aurora a snoop and everything poking into his things. Then after calming down he said "just pretend to not see", but oh no, dear reader, Aurora was not gonna pretend to not see. She ain't gonna pretend to not see the fact that her mentor was actually a treasure hunter and collector who'd been using his occupation as an excuse to snatch some nifty treasures and keep them to himself like every European country who's stolen artifacts from Asian countries ever, ohohohooooo noooo, she's gonna do something about it.

-

The girls scuttle on over back to Scotland and Beitris, to find that uh oh dear, the thugs came back again and this time they were asking about the girls specifically. Beitris pulled the same trick the girls pulled to get them to leave. So NOW the thugs are looking for the girls for whatever reason and wanna know their deal. Anyway, the girls show Beitris Aurora's diary, tell her about the summary, and also that unfortunately some of the pages are missing, and the diary doesn't say shnit about the tapestry so far. Beitris helps by giving them a letter that Aurora sent to Petra about the tapestry and its treasure, but interestingly mentions that she should "only trust Robert".

Since I haven't mentioned him before, Robert Neville was Aurora's flight tutor, a flying medic, and was toootttallllyyyyy just friends with Aurora you guys they were totally just frie--

He is dead in the present time, but his nephew John Neville is a (former) lighthouse keeper for the Ar-Men lighthouse in the IÎe de Sein, Brittany, France. So the girls head on over there, land in France, insert a thing where Vi feels like she's being watched but is like "maybe it's just a me thing, I dunno".

They head over to the Île de Sein, find an old man who turns out to be John, are invited to his house, tell him about their situation, and John mentions that he himself has been researching like crazy too about Aurora ever since hers and Jan's simultaneous disappearance over the same place at the same time in the same terrible storm. And also the fact that Robert was totally devastated when he got the news and spent years looking for her. He gives them his notes that he's accumulated over decades of researching in his pastime (which amounts to just Aurora's trip to Mexico), and tells them that since Aurora was looking for seven treasures, they'll need to find out where her seven trips took place, which will not be easy because Aurora was extremely secretive, and she only made her first trip even remotely public.

First place is Mexico so might as well head on over-- oh god the holdup-ers are back to holdup.

The thugs snatch Aurora's diary and book it before the girls can do much besides get an impromptu ocean bath, and oh dear, the thugs' boss has them now, and it's not the mafia cosplayer lookin' woman. But that's something I'll address later :3

Nonetheless, they carry on since the thugs never stole John's notebook, and they use it to go to the Puuc Route in Mérida, Yucatán (sounds very specific until you realize that Mérida is the capital of the Yucatán, and one thing everyone and their mother knows about the Mayan ruins there like Chichen Itza) to find more clues.

They do some more research on the Puuc Route, find some clues about "an invisible place, guarded by the chattiest of creatures", discover that it means they have to go to Uxmal, get a dub against the unfortunately acrophobic thugs, and realize that yes, Aurora did in fact sneak another one of her diaries in there.

This one doesn't have as much Lane Lore to contribute besides a clue that the girls find leads to Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, India, a city known for its perfumes :3 sounds like "sweet winds", doesn't it? Oh and there's also something about a place with two lakes, which turns out to be Lakh Bahosi, a bird sanctuary about an hour's drive away from Kannauj. The girls head on over and try to do some investigating, but it doesn't take them that long to find a pair of grunts struggling under the weight of a very familiar tapestry while their boss was struggling to supervise them with her heels constantly digging into bird sanctuary dirt.

Anyway so the girls concoct a little scheme to steal the tapestry and the thugs fall for it like fish for a fishing lure, and they managed to scatter with the tapestry. After getting to a private space in the sanctuary, they find a clue that leads them to a set of coordinates that they find is a beeg tree. Oh and the treasure seems to be a present that was made for someone close to Mumtaz Mahal, as in "the jewel of the palace", the woman the Taj Mahal was made for; and the tapestry has a set of coordinates that is leading them to a beeg tree, with deep roots/feet. Oh hell yeah it's all comin' together.

They get to the tree, deal with the mafia lady for a little bit, find the treasure, and it turns out it's a very exquisite perfume bottle made of alabaster called "The Perfume of the Earth". They find a little note from Aurora explaining the treasure and its value and the significance of finding it, and now the girls have found the treasure Aurora had been searching for, and now's the time for a villain reveal?

So I haven't talked about him yet and have glossed over this guy for the entire ramble. See the mafia lady, Cassidy? Yeah she's not the big boss here. It's this guy who has a whole secret base in Denali National Park, Alaska, and has been overseeing everything behind the scenes. And by everything, I mean everything: He was alerted to the whole thing with Cassidy's first raid of Beitris's house, found out about the girls' involvement, and for a good half of the book, was trying to figure out what the girls' motives are for interfering with his line of work and what they might know about this whole thing he's looking for, which is the alabaster garden.

This guy has been keeping tabs on the girls through Cassidy and her thugs, who've been stalking the girls ever since France. He and Cassidy figured out in Paris that the girls are Mouseford students on vacation, and he was the one who gave the orders to snatch the journal from there. He was the one who told the goons to tail them to Mexico, and he was the one who managed to look up the girls' names, backgrounds, reasons for being in Scotland, all from the comfort of his base in Alaska. And only then, only then did he go to India himself to supervise and put a cap to his goons' buffoonery.

Who is this guy? Well, he is a treasure hunter who just wants to enjoy the treasures Aurora Beatrix Lane has hidden from his great-grandfather a hundred years ago. That's right, meet Luke Von Klawitz, the current heir to the Klawitz legacy and the treasure trove Jan Von Klawitz left behind in spite of his disappearance. Unfortunately Jan was better (and old enough) to secure a family legacy of greedy artifact hoarding.

So while the girls were in Lakh Bahosi, Luke was too with the goons and Cassidy (who is not his right-hand man and more just... a subordinate trying too hard to impress him), being the babysitter with these guys on leashes, as he tries to keep their stupidity under control. He intercepts the girls as they're about to leave Lakh Bahosi, blocking their path, and asks about the alabaster garden. The girls obviously don't spill and prolly would've gotten themselves blackbagged and interrogated had a friend they made prior to Lakh Bahosi not shown up in her dad's truck and came in clutch. (It sounds cliche and like it came out of nowhere but trust me it makes sense in-universe-- after the girls left the friend's family restaurant that they were hanging at, Luke's goons came over to interrogate them about the girls and where they went. Subtlety, who is she?)

The girls bring the perfume to a nearby university so it can be brought to a museum, send the tapestry back to Beitris, and return home to Whale Island, to read the last bits of Aurora's second journal and presumably to

So that's the book :D I put in a LOT of spoilers, but I'd say that reading the book is still worth it because you'll be able to get the connecting tissues that tie the organs of this story together. H-hopefully this all made sense . .'''

First things first, if you're not used to how Scholastic kids' novels are written, then uh, you might wanna get used to it, because the English translation of Thea Stilton is very... that. It's not beating the kids' book allegations in English, unfortunately. On the brighter side, though, it's pretty good for Scholastic standards! The pacing's very fast, but it feels about right-- gives me the same energy as diving deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole and going to all sorts of places because of the hyperfixation responsible for consuming their sanity for all of a week or so. The dialogue isn't nearly as atrocious as the worst it's capable of being (oh trust me we'll get to that). The tapestry puzzle and how the girls work towards solving it is very coherent and logical for the situation they are in at the beginning, and it's very satisfying to see everything come together and for things to slowly make more and more sense in the poem despite it being as vague and puzzle box-y as it was.

The Lane family lore is very well-thought-out, and Aurora Beatrix Lane is the perfect spiritual predecessor to the girls, what with her love for adventure, love for travel, strong moral compass, and the strong compulsion to elbow drop every single feminine social rule under the sun. I can totally buy her being someone the girls would totally hyperfixate on researching, because she feels like that kind of compelling character-- a passionate young archaeologist who decided to put her own safety on the line for the sake of what she believed in and to dunk on Klawitz and his selfish (and very illegal) goals of hoarding the treasures of the world to himself.

As for the villain, I'll be real gamers, Luke Von Klawitz is probably the most intimidating if not terrifying villain in the entire franchise. He has drones spying on every corner of the world for him, he has goons he can contact at any time and have them do his bidding (to mixed results it seems), he has cutting-edge technology that he uses for terrifying means, all in the safety and comfort of his secret underground base in Alaska where he has his little basement filled to the brim with historical artifacts he's kept all to himself to enjoy. Lemme run this through you again:

He was able to learn the girls names, the university they're studying in, and why they were in Scotland in the first place, all without ever meeting them face-to-face or having his goons interrogate them directly. All he needed to learn all of this was the (not very helpful) research by Cassidy, and a few commands put into his world-connected supercomputer.

Are you intimidated yet? I sure hope you are :D this guy's got a lotta potential is what I'm saying. He's a bit of a brat who wants what he wants and wants it immediately, but he's also a bit of a chess master who looks over things in the background while his minions do all the work for him. Really the only thing holding him back is the incompetency of his goons, and technically it's not even that they're very stupid-- Cassidy and her grunts Stan and Max are very good at swooping in out of nowhere to wreak havoc, dip in and get out before anyone can do anything about it. They're decent if not good at the job they're usually assigned: low-level grunt work. Unfortunately they're not good at much else, which drove Luke insane this entire book, haha.

The girls' dynamic with Cassidy, Stan and Max was refreshing in the sense that the girls aren't always getting punted by them, and the goons aren't always taking Ls just from physical contact with the girls. Cassidy and the goons always had the element of surprise on their side, being able to show up out of nowhere and do their thing before the girls have time to even blink; but once the girls figured out their whole shtick, it was easy to learn that they are easily outclass-able by five mouse Oxford students in braincell count and thus act accordingly. They force the girls to think fast and come up with some snappy plans on the spot, and the girls force Luke to realize he hired Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Tweedle Dummy as goons :D

Now uh, I have been complimenting this thing the entire time, but there is one little thing I have an issue within this book, and that is the whole... Power of Friendship thing they've got going on throughout the book.

Yes, unfortunately, the Friendship Curse has claimed this hardcover series too, and while it's not the worst here, it's still... it's still a bit atrocious :D

For instance, the conclusion Cassidy and Luke come to for the girls' reasons for interference is "friendship". Literally, Cassidy literally says to Luke, "It seems they did it out of friendship, Sir", and then Luke responds with an evil cackle and is like "FRIENDSHIP? THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP DOESN'T EXIST IN THIS WORLD! AIN'T NO WAAAAYYYYY THEY'RE NOT FIVE SCHEMERS WHO WANNA GET THE TREASURES THEMSELVES", which is like... I don't get that vibe from Luke anywhere else in the book? Luke values efficiency and getting what he wants-- he's not hired Cassidy to be all buddy-buddy with her, he hired her for a job and she has to work to fulfill said job. He just wants competent employees, and y'know what, that's valid. Not a single part in that have I seen "ew power of friendship". It's very villain for the sake of villainy kind of energy, which I don't think fits Luke with the other bits of information we get of him? He's following his great-granddad's footsteps-- not a single minute of that did that mean "the spirit of friendship doesn't exist get yo head outa the cotton candy"

Then there's... how this applies to the girls.

inhales

WHY DID THEY MAKE VIOLET THE GROUP'S FRIENDSHIP PROPHET GRAAAAHHHH

I probably would make a full-blown rant about this at some point, but one thing I never liked about any of the hardcovers was how Violet of all people is the group's assigned friendship prophet. She'd occasionally make a comment about how uh something something the power of love is the strongest of all, and every single time I don't like it :D

Sure fine you can chalk it up to character development since her early months in Mouseford, but in the earlier books it's heavily established that she's the pragmatic one, the braincell keeper, the one who keeps the girls' group ADHD on track or the one who reminds them that "hey we've been at this for a really long time and it's now 2AM, we should really turn in now". Being a friendship prophet is a Colette thing, not a Violet thing, and I'm not trying to insult Colette or anything like that. I would be far more okay with it if Colette was the one to go on about the "power of love" because she's literally the HOPELESS ROMANTIC! She's the one with her head in the clouds, the one most likely to fangirl about ships in movies, the one who chooses to ship Romeo and Juliet and pretend to not see the entire second act of said play for the sake of believing in love.

If Colette had a line where she gushed about the power of friendship, I would've just chalked it up to "that cheesy-ass statement is something she'd totally say ngl", as opposed to the jarring whiplash I get from seeing Violet of all people call upon the Power of Friendship.

Again, probably will rant about this at some point (lemme know if you're into that idea), but yeah -m-

Literally just chuck the power of friendship bits and replace them with something more practical/realistic/grounded/whateveryouwannacallit, and it's basically perfect! Even the bits where the girls make friends on their journey is believable! Those don't have to be altered at all! Geuh it drives me insane, almost to the point of wanting to do something about it....

Well, that's enough rambling for today. I can't use up all my steam on this first book-- I plan on making ramblings for the second and third books, after all.

See ya Stilton fans, and for the newcomers from Twitter, welcome :D I hope you enjoy your stay :D

[theaaacalligaris]

🫶🏻🫶🏻

Happy Pride to those who celebrate 🏳️‍🌈

Mostly addressed to these two: @theaaacalligaris

@rebeccalaughlinsblog

[wyverningx]

people on The Internet Dot Com keep being absolute idiots about thea muldani so here is your reminder that she's a ravens success story — she grew up in an environment where she was asked to give her all and engage in incredibly unhealthy practices, but the result of such sacrifice was that she was rewarded for it with US court and a pro team. she was part of a cult and "left" in the sense of gaining physical distance, but all of her experiences reaffirmed that the toxic ravens environment was the most effective way to a successful exy career. it is fucked up that she believes others should go through the same thing in order to be "worthy" or "good enough," but i simply do not understand why so many people look at her and think that she should be crucified for being a representation of a finished, successful raven. especially not if she's unable to recognize abuse in others, which tbqh is something that is very common in cult-like settings. you don't want to look something-that-could-very-well-be-abuse-happening-to-others in the eye, because if they're being abused, then you could potentially be being abused, too, and what do you do with that? do you have any idea how hard it is to come to terms with that reality, especially when you are told day in and day out that this is the only way to get to the top? that this is how you make it in the sport? that someone who is being harmed by the coach or the team captain absolutely deserved it? that people who can't hack it are weak, but you're not weak, you're one of the best, you'll do whatever it takes?

is it extremely shitty that she blames jean for his own sexual assault? absolutely, yes. but she doesn't have the whole picture, and it's clear that jean intentionally deceives her (with the comment about him being fragile/clumsy, etc.) and lets her believe he had more agency in his sexual experiences than he truly did because it's a coping mechanism that also serves the purpose of letting her fill in blanks so he does not have to explicitly tell a lie. besides, if there is any singular raven that both kevin and jean view fondly, wouldn't they want her to believe whatever it took so that she didn't ask too many questions? wouldn't they both want her far removed from the reality of the moriyamas and human trafficking, because her uncovering the truth would put her entire life at risk?

people can have friends that are imperfect or do not understand them completely or that fuck things up sometimes. i get that jean's experiences put people on-guard when it comes to how he interacts with other characters, but god damn. she was his mentor. she taught him everything he knows about being a backliner. she made horrible and judgmental assumptions about his experiences. all of those things can be true at the same time. does she not deserve the opportunity to change upon receiving new information? does she not deserve the ability to take a step back, as ravens are dropping like flies and all eyes are on evermore and the perfect court, to consider that maybe she was a victim in all of this, too? that plenty of people are capable of making it to the top without calling another human being the master and turning a blind eye to the king beating his own men? that maybe kevin and jean and all of them were terribly wronged? why is she the only person in this series who's not allowed to grow as a person by developing a more nuanced understanding of rape and sexual assault and learning how to be a better friend to someone who had no choice?

also someone tried to "gotcha" me by saying thea and jean aren't friends because she uhhhh (checks notes) calls him a teasing nickname and says "i'm going to break your ribs" as though threatening your friends (especially ones you play a contact, violent sport with) is the worst possible offense ever in the same book series that people regularly ACTUALLY fistfight each other and pull knives on one another. i'd argue that these are actually huge indicators that they do like each other, because she's probably one of the only people in the world who he can express himself around and even say things like "i'm not from paris" exasperatedly. you know, like you do when people you care about tease or poke fun at you. those are actually probably some of the most normal interactions jean has pre-TSC, especially as she is not needlessly cruel to him like literally everyone else in the nest is. and not only is thea one of the only people who has any sort of comraderie with him and who makes the effort to see him after his injuries because she cares, but she also makes it past wymack and kevin and renee and neil guard-dogging him. does that seriously mean nothing? do you think renee fucking walker (who was ready to brawl on-sight at evermore) would have let someone like zane waltz into abby's house if kevin said a single negative word about him?

i have seen some incredibly wonderful and nuanced takes about most characters in AFTG, but at the same time, the way thea is treated and criticized in a more severe way than literal murderers in the series for her possibly-willful ignorance is utterly crazy to me.

idk. just some food for thought

[dayurno]

darling, have you any kevjeanthea thoughts to spare? i've been going insane since i found out jean was thea's puppy and also their Mailman. i'm in need of your wisdom rn.

<3 (@stabbyfoxandrew)

OF COURSE hello darling aerie i hope you're doing well also you know exactly what you're doing referring to jean as thea's puppy don't you. i think i hauve covid....

as of right now i have two ideas which are not really that distinct but cause me great amusement... first i thought about established pro era kevthea and jean ending up in the same team as them (possibly the olympics?) while being a trainwreck himself and kevthea immediately taking him under their wing :) this is like the standard aftg poly fic scenario and i fall for it all the time because it's so GOOD. i think at first kevin's the one who's kind of laying it heavy on jean because he's worried he might do something stupid but thea is ultimately the one drawing jean by the back of his neck and being like you're acting ridiculous. live with us. and he does... AND THEN OF COURSE the evergreen offer of a threesome, the unbearable tension, the constant mistaking of jean as either kevin's or thea's boyfriend, being so close it gets inappropriate. the perfect culmination i think would be a night where they actually do sleep together and jean wakes up under kevin and thea like what the fuck just happened

AND I DONT THINK THEY EVER TALK ABOUT IT. or like define terms. or even boundaries. but it happens and its there and jean is just casually added to their every activity like hes always been there in the first place :) i think theres something just so fun about a dynamic like that for poly ships sorry sorry sorry. jean thinks he's a single man until it's christmas 2011 and he's having dinner with thea's family

my Other idea was well of course the nest-era moment. i was thinking thea has a the boy is mine moment with jean until she realizes that jean has a crush on her too and she's Very flustered about it because it's definitely not what she expected would happen out of this situation. i don't know if it'd change much about canon but i think itd make the scene where kevin takes thea to see jean in tkm very tense >:3 and you know how she was like should i come back? to kevin i think they could do something similar for jean like. finish usc. get a little better. and then we'll come back for you. and they do :3

[psalacanthea]

fucking infuriated rn ngl. i can't believe ppl think this is GOOD news

no! just removing the sub-minimum wage for disabled people is NOT a good thing! It's not a good thing! WE DON'T HAVE A SYSTEM IN PLACE TO MAKE IT A GOOD THING. Do you know what happens to low-functioning people when they nix the sub-min wage?

They get FIRED.

If they're LUCKY, someone in their life has the money to get them into a social program or SOMETHING, but most of those are just daycare. They don't help them learn skills, they sit them at a fucking table with baby toys and coloring books and then ignore them. Yes. They need a support person to do a job, and yes it takes them a long time, but they are learning skills and progressing, being a part of society instead of being ignored and hidden from it.

They're not improving the system. They're pretending to Do the Right Thing. It's vastly different and it's infuriating. The ONLY way this will be a good thing if it comes with sweeping changes to disability support for the most impacted people.

But it won't.

because that's expensive

[theaaacalligaris]

I love you💗

Happy pride month, ml @theaaacalligaris ❤️

[bookinit02]

911 really does not know how to follow through on their plots. everything feels somehow dragged out and glossed over at the same time, and then resolved in some slapdash unsatisfying way. and they’re like: here’s beenado! here’s a denny nde on halloween! here’s a funny boils curse! and it’s like. ok sure that’s fine. but not at the expense of everything else? it wouldn’t even take much is the thing. it would be so easy to write this coherently. and they just. choose not to