#whatever does the job

[xoxoemynn]

As I've been oversharing, Daphne is terrified of loud noises, and given we've had intense thunderstorms almost every night this past week and my neighborhood believes fireworks start July 1 at 5PM and go for as long as supplies last, it has been a very long week. Thundershirt is useless. Tranquilizers may or may not mildly help, idk, could be a placebo effect.

In a change from previous years, she now also insists we seek shelter in my basement closet. (I don't fit, so it's just her in there, I have to sit on the floor a paw's length away.) If she's feeling brave, we can sit at the top of my basement stairs, which is honestly less comfortable for me but whatever.

Today I read some people have success playing music, and when the first fireworks went off tonight I already had some playing so I just turned up the volume and kept it right next to her and....

SHE DID SO WELL!!!!! Even with the professional works that were SUPER loud and went on forever!! She had some periods of shaking/panting a lot with some wild eyes, but for a lot of it she was even snoring!! Didn't even try to leave the couch. Sometimes got a bit skittish if I moved away from her, but that's it!!!!

Music is magic.

Going to cry I'm so relieved.

(For the record this is still a fireworks hate blog. I'm just thrilled to not be spending the night on a hard floor again.)

[sonknuxadow]

its kinda funny that the chaotix are like the only characters who mention having to pay rent or buy food or whatever and theyll take any job that pays because theyre desperate for money but none of the other characters are struggling in this department at all even though most of them dont seem to have jobs. its like the concept of needing money to live exists for no one in the sonic universe EXCEPT for vector espio and charmy

[otaku553]

More doodles for the one piece spy x family crossover

[saturday-byte]

I'll rust with you - Steam Powered Giraffe

(reblogs > likes !!)

[logicpng]

Don't fear the reaper...

[ Image description in ALT. VHS effect done with NTSC-RS ]

[turtleblogatlast]

Something I really like is that April’s constant stream of odd jobs she goes through is somewhat reflected in the boys as well. Like, you have April working at random pizza places or getting a crane license or being fully willing to apply for a job at a place clearly made out of cardboard. Then you have the boys as well who do anything from working as a basketball mascot, building a massive dog park, being waiters, getting a whole band gig at a theme park, etc, etc-

Main difference is that April actively applies for these jobs (and is hopefully paid for the short time she’s in them) whereas for the bros the jobs usually find them (and they practically never get paid.) It doesn’t even stop at jobs either, they just seem to casually amass skills in general.

I don’t know, I like how both April and the turtles are just so ready and willing to do things. Sure, they’re not always good at these things, but they do them readily! In a way, being heroes is just another job (well, more like volunteer work/vigilantism/another fun activity) that they initially took on because of their general sense of “why not?”

They’re very willing and open to trying out new things despite their tendency to revert back to what they enjoy (and how commonly trying new things ends up going wrong), and I think that adaptational interest of theirs really helps them be well rounded in multiple regards.

[sergle]

had another consult w Dr. Boobs about my reduction to check on my healing progress, and I continue to get a good grade in boobs

[robobee]

got beseiged by demons and edited this mac conner illustration to be jordeclan

[tropicalcontinental]

Human fear is the window to the soul or whatever ://

[salt-n-salt]

just remembered i have free will and can actually draw the same exact profile of smoking security guard Shane 3x and post it. BYE BYE ART BLOCK

[tempestmothstorm]

pt 2 of memes that vaguely relate to the ambiguous nihilism theme essay and stuff except this one is a lot dumber

[ocudeus]

[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!

[comradesummers]

btvs season 7 episode 16 storyteller my beloved! episodes that start out really fun and zany but end up being surprisingly sad and poignant my beloved! reflections on the act of narration, on who is telling the story and what their perspective is my beloved! buffy being the badass speech giving girlboss general for most of the episode (because that's how andrew sees her) but then actually admitting how desperate and vulnerable she is to andrew of all people because she knows no one will believe him if he tells them about it my beloved! buffy refusing to let andrew deflect the guilt of murdering jonathan because if there's one thing buffy "you have a choice, you don't have a good choice but you have a choice!" summers can't stand it's people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions my beloved! andrew actually admitting that he murdered jonathan my beloved! the episode ending on andrew not being able to narrate to the camera anymore because he knows there's nothing he can say that can make it better my beloved!

season 7 mostly sucks but when it hits it hits okay

[skitskatdacat63]

Thinking rn about the trifecta of malicious compliance: Max giving one word responses and speaking to interviewers outside, Lewis wearing all that jewelry, and Seb wearing his underwear on top of his racesuit.

I guess I see Lewis and Seb as the most influential in the sport in this way, genuinely caring about getting justice and speaking out. Whereas, I love how for Max, it's like his disinterest in the bureaucracy in F1 circled back to him seeking justice. If that makes sense? I just mean, to me at least, he doesn't feel like the type to want to stand out like Lewis and Seb did, he just wants to drive, no? Yet him standing up against the FIA in this way is so brave and maliciously compliant in the exact same way. And you can see Lewis respects him for it to, considering he spoke out in Max's favor too. Makes me wonder what Seb's response would be if he was still in F1.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 148

Danny is enjoying his vacation. He’s surrounded by so many creatures who are delighted to show him around, and there’s a bunch that are even called ghosts! Those ones seem to have deemed him as their favorite person, which isn’t hard, but they have also apparently decided that they have to follow him everywhere, including all the way home. And to whatever world he takes his next vacation-slash job as Clockwork’s student at. 

Oh well, he’s sure it won’t be that noticeable.