#tossawary pjo

[tossawary]

I enjoy the efforts of the "Percy Jackson" show to make the kids better at catching on to the monsters and other mythological figures they meet. It suits the fast pacing demanded by the limited number of episodes. It fits with how vigilant and clever the characters are. The idea that half-blood children are desperately trying to memorize the lore and often end up in danger despite their best efforts is tragically compelling to me.

Knowing that it's Medusa ahead doesn't make Medusa not dangerous. It's interesting to have Medusa use their knowledge of her story and compassion against them. I enjoy seeing these kids trying to make good and kind choices with the knowledge they have.

Also, I was scrolling Wikipedia for a list of Poseidon's children while chatting with someone after the latest episode (7), and I found out that there's a lost Euripides play about Bellerophon (son of Poseidon), rider of Pegasus (another child of Poseidon), the hero who slew the Chimera. It involves Bellerophon doubting the existence of the gods and trying to storm Olympus on Pegasus??? That sounds incredibly cool. I so badly wish that I could read that lost play.

And thinking about these plays and how much I enjoy these stories made me finally fully realize that the opinions of my lit classes and even greater academia on these stories must have nothing on the arguments held at Camp Half-blood. This camp is fully of traumatized and troubled teenagers with swords, whose emotional investment in these stories outclasses everyone else on the planet, partially because their very survival depends on their knowledge of this lore and the grace of their godly family. They must have OPINIONS on this stuff that takes "fandom" behavior to another level.

The "Is Euripides' Medea a girlboss?" argument has been permanently banned as a subject by Chiron after one long and bloody summer of debate.

[tossawary]

Ha ha, thank you! I feel a little self-conscious sometimes about having both semi-serious thoughts and some snappy little joke and being unable to pull the two apart, but I want people to have context. I also think it's just fun to consider both the tragic implications of an element in a story and the funny peculiarities of daily life.

Every few years, by the way that this world has been set up, Camp Half-blood is going to receive a 14-year-old girl with an absent godly father and a shitty stepfather and maybe also a neglectful mother who just doesn't know how to handle any of this, and this teenage girl is absolutely right to be furious with how much her life sucks. This is sad! She doesn't deserve this!

But this is also a 14yo girl. She's probably going to express her discontent by frothing at the mouth to tell everyone that Euripides' Medea was "totally right, actually" and "should have killed Jason too, honestly, he sucks so much". And any hapless camper who points out that "Didn't Medea also kill her own children???" is either going to be completely ignored or get pulled into an increasingly personal argument that ends in a fistfight.

(It doesn't help that this play is refencing figures who are everyone's cousins here and supporting one figure over another probably involves some saving of face for your cabin. Like, "Apollo cabin, square up! Someone dissed our boy Orpheus again!" Which is just a half-joking example, I'm sure that every cabin is full of contradictory opinions on the heroes are "their" heroes. But summer camp feuds are a part of the experience and some people are going to get EXTREMELY over-invested.)

Which is just going to make Chiron, who has been dealing with this shit for thousands of years, go, "Here we go again." As soon as he's done settling this argument, he's going to have to turn around and have a concerned one-on-one chat with a different teenage demigod about if they're actually being serious when they say that Achilles / Patroclus are "relationship goals".

I love reading meta by @tossawary because it's always like, thoughtful insight that approaches the media from an angle I hadn't considered before, and then a one sentence punchline that lays me out on the floor.

[tossawary]

Okay, I kind of really dig what they're doing with Grover in the "Percy Jackson" show (as of episode 5) especially because the actor playing him looks and sounds like such a "good kid". Such a nice boy! (And also because Grover grows to be such a "rebel" and force for change among the satyrs and other nature spirits over the course of the books. The roots are here!)

Percy, slowly: "Grover, did you... manipulate the god of war while we were gone...?"

Grover, shrugging defensively: "I emphasized with him! I was emphasizing with him!"

Percy & Annabeth: "..."

Grover: "...To manipulate him. Look, all he needed was someone to listen to him! And I was just there! Listening!"

Annabeth: "Pumping him for information."

Grover, doing a little hand wiggle: "...Eh...?"

Percy, looking sympathetic, absolutely making fun of his friend: "Compassionately, of course."

[tossawary]

I finished the first season of "Percy Jackson". Overall, I liked it! Pacing was very rushed at the beginning, but I think they recovered quickly after the quest started and made their limited number of episodes work pretty well. I thought that the changes they made were usually interesting and fun, and that the actors did a good job.

One change that is really standing out to me is Poseidon being presented as... hmmm... it seems like the show is making more of an effort to present Poseidon as "someone who would have been a Good Dad if only the tragic circumstances weren't stopping him". More humble. More heroic. More caring. Especially compared to nearly all the other gods as presented in this show.

And ultimately? I think I really dig this presentation of Poseidon as "the good brother" and "the good father" here, because I definitely think a hero is what Percy wants to see in his father right now, even if he has complicated feelings about his father's absence, and it gives Percy more reason to plant himself on the side of the gods when Luke first challenges him. And, perhaps most importantly, it sets up a good(ish) opinion of Poseidon that's going to take a hard knock when Tyson shows up in the next season.

If Poseidon seems decent now, it creates a compelling sense of betrayal when Percy later learns he has a cyclops half-brother who had an even worse childhood than he did. The show seems very aware of the original story and its themes, so I suspect that they intend to put further stress on Percy and Poseidon's relationship later on as Percy actually learns more about his father and the gods, especially when Luke is just going to keep challenging Percy for siding with the gods at every turn. I'm really looking forward to Tyson appearing now and shaking things up again.

[tossawary]

Don't know how Luke Castellan's heart isn't melting over how cute Percy is in the new "Percy Jackson" show. Percy's here like, "Well, I'm only going on this quest to save my Mom and maybe flip off my godly deadbeat Dad while doing it, and also I picked Annabeth to come with me because she seems willing to shove me off a bridge to get things done." Like, okay, I know that Luke is probably not thrilled that Annabeth is going to be in danger, that's fair. But man, for me, it's like, "I've only had this Percy for 3 episodes and if anything happened to him, I'd go feral."

Also, it's tempting to write an AU in which things are fumbled and otherwise changed juuuuust enough in bad ways that 12yo Percy actually defects with Luke. I mean, I think Percy is angry enough to make a bad choice out of spite and maybe grief, and smart enough to then pretty much immediately be like, "Wait, I fucked up. I want out." And I think that potential plotline is delicious. Also, Percy would be a terrible self-appointed spy / secret agent (if he decided to do that instead of just booking it) - "Sure hope someone from Camp Half-Blood doesn't angrily kill me for being Luke's evil lackey before I can betray Kronos at a crucial moment!" - and that would also be great. Don't worry, he totally has a plan to have a plan! Also, he told Grover about this when they ran into each other during some clash between sides on a quest, and Grover can totally keep a secret!

[tossawary]

I'm watching "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" with someone and we were talking about going back to give "Star Trek: Discovery" another chance, so I flipped over to look at their episode list and had a really funny "holy shit" moment.

Season 1 of "Star Trek: Discovery" came out in 2017 and had the UNIMAGINABLE LUXURY of FIFTEEN (15) episodes. Fifteen!!! "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" (2022-) is stuck with TEN (10) per season.

Feels like horrified vindication after all of the complaining I've done about how the recent "Percy Jackson" show could have done so much better with its plot pacing, worldbuilding, and character work if it had had double the episodes, or even been able to have just 10 episodes instead of EIGHT (8) to do SOME decent exploration of Camp Half-Blood as a location we're meant to like. (*Westley about to get tackled by a Rodent Of Unusual Size voice* "24-episode seasons of television? I don't think they exist.")

[tossawary]

I've only seen 3 episodes of the new "Percy Jackson" show so far and my main complaint with the first two episodes was pacing. I thought the pacing in the third episode was much improved and overall very good, but a lot about the first two episodes felt rushed to me.

I think episodes 1 and 2 both could have been two episodes each to slowly introduce us to Percy, Grover, Sally, Mr. Brunner, Mrs. Dodds and the Minotaur, and then to the Camp, to Annabeth, Luke, Clarisse, the satyrs and the different cabins, etc.. I mean, I think what was there was pretty solid! I like the actors! I don't think it's badly written (I think making Luke show Percy around the camp was a good choice to make later things hit harder, since we will have more time with Annabeth on the quest itself later), but I would have liked more breathing room scenes, like when Percy burned the blue jellybeans, for things to settle in, and I blame the studio for not giving this show a longer season to work with.

As it stands now, the first two episodes felt more intended for existing fans, rather than for onboarding new fans. I feel like a frog being thrown into boiling water instead of the water coming up to a boil around me. If you're not familiar with this religion & lore already, if you don't know who the Twelve Olympians are, the introduction to the Camp doesn't give you much of a foothold, which is quite unfortunate when PJO was many people's introduction to this stuff.

The blue food is not really explained. The tension of the mystery with Mrs. Dodds kind of gets thrown out because it all happens so fast. There's no time to slowly build a feeling of normalcy and then wrongness. Percy's relationship with Chiron is undermined by how little time they get together. Percy finding out who his father is happens SO QUICKLY that we don't have a proper understanding of what's wrong about his claiming when it happens. The camp looks cool and I want to see more of it! How it functions is barely explained! We barely get to meet anyone! It feels like Percy is there for less than 48 hours before he's leaving on a quest again, so there's very little time to build up his attachment to it. I have less emotional investment in Percy's conflict with Clarisse because we barely get to understand what daily life at Camp Half-blood might be like (although I understand putting less focus on Clarisse now knowing that you'll be able to play catch-up during future storylines).

I think the show is making pretty good choices with the time that they have, I just wish they had MORE time. I don't think that they have to include every little detail and scene and character from the books. I like a lot of the changes they've made just fine. I just feel like the writing and acting is being undermined by the fact that there's very little time to set things up so that you can knock them down, and that it takes more time to show something visually than it does to read a sentence. Everything in episodes 1 and 2 is moving so quickly that some of the magical aspects feel... less magical to me because there's less time to develop contrast. And the show doesn't have as much time to potentially develop cool NEW things, to slide in more new funny character interactions, because it's all so smushed down. I want more time to see these actors shine together.

(Although, admittedly, it is VERY funny to feel like Percy is stuck in some sort of speedrun version of the story. Every day is a new rollercoaster of Percy not knowing what the fuck is going on and going with it because he's not given the time to ask questions. Sure! This might as well happen next! His life sucks already. That part feels very true to the books, although I think the feeling could still be preserved if the show was given more time.)

I'm tired of 8 episode seasons. I don't know if I think that PJO needs a full 20+ episodes to tell the story of the first book, probably not, but being constrained to only 8 instead of at least 10-16 feels disappointing.