#worst tv shows

[mo-mode]

I keep seeing people say stuff like “wow Athena is just so neglectful” “I can’t believe Athena left them to die” “she doesn’t even care about her” like NO SHE DID CARE GUYS SHE CARED SO MUCH THAT SHE ACTIVELY ALLOWED A MONSTER KNOWN AS THE DEMIGOD KILLER TO NEARLY DESTROY HER OWN TEMPLE AT THE MOST SACRED POINT!!!! ATHENA CARED SO MUCH ABOUT ANNABETH AND HOW “IMPERTINENT” SHE WAS THAT SHE WOULD RATHER WATCH HER OWN SACRED GROUND BURN THAN SEE HER DAUGHTER SUCCEED AND THAT’S KIND OF FUCKED UP GUYS

[writeouswriter]

Broke: Acknowledging that a character who is an objectively terrible person is also a complex and intentionally well thought out individual with different levels of nuance you can empathize with in some ways while not in others is immediately “woobifying” or “poor little meow meowifying” them.

Woke: “This character is a bad person” and “this character is still a person” are two statements that can, should and do coexist and admitting that they exhibit nuance and depth and are more than just their bad actions doesn’t immediately excuse or condone their bad actions or mean that you’re ignoring or trying to soften the canonical version of the character.

Bespoke: That’s the whole point, that’s always been the point, to be made to empathize with horrible people so you can understand that they can be anyone, that bad people can be likeable, can be interesting, can be human, are human, and it’s scary to think about all the ways they’re just like you and all the ways they’re just like everything you hate, forcing the use of critical skills in media analysis, forcing a confrontation of the duality of man.

Whatever Level is Above Bespoke: But sometimes, yeah, sure, maybe they are a poor little meow meow, what are you gonna do, get a lawyer

[wishfulsketching]

Bit of a mixture of several equests, especially @nygmatic-fanatic and @imactuallysoup (I changed the tv show, sorry)

Ed ruins every game show. Ivy wants to watch the discovery channel while also hating the discovery channel. Oz demands to see the news every time they're on. Yes, even during a movie.

[thatrandomblogsays]

Annabeth, and others, often treat Percy as if he’s ridiculous or obtuse for his reactions to the demigod world, when in reality he’s a (relatively) well adjusted kid who was raised by a loving parent. His actions make sense based on his upbringing

- parents arent supposed to be neglectful

- parents are supposed to be easily attainable, loving, and present in a child’s life

- if you’re in trouble, you should call for help, there isn’t shame in admitting you’re in over your head, you’re twelve

- you shouldn’t have to jump through life endangering hoops to get your parent’s attention

Annabeth acts like he’s ridiculous, but he’s right. Annabeth knows how the Greek world works, but Percy knows how the real world is supposed to work. & rightfully calls out the BS. But it’s hard for most demigods to agree because what kid wants to admit the way their parents treat them is awful? That their actions are those of aloof, negligent, even narcisstic people who are unwilling or incapable of giving the proper love and support a child needs. That even if their godly parent does love them, it’s a pathetic, horrible, attempt at love you’re better off without.

[ghostly-schematics]

I think what more people need to understand is that the pjo cast were cast with the intention of matching the reasoning behind their book appearance, rather than just how they were described. Luke, for example, was described in the books as a blond, muscular surfer kind of guy. At the time of publishing (2005), that was your generic attractive character, and he was described like that to make you trust him more so the betrayal was more unexpected. Now, almost twenty years later in the show, he looks like a tiktok fuck boy because that’s what people now tend to like more. On the other hand, Annabeth was blonde in the books because that was what made people doubt her intelligence, which isn’t something as common now. However, racism is still very real (as proven by people’s responses to Leah being cast), which makes people underestimate her, giving way for the same character arc. This concept works with the rest of the castings as well. Grover still gives the vibes of a lovable loser. Percy looks ready to sass a ninety year old man. Chiron looks appropriately wise and the Ares kids look ready to fuck you up.

The only character that I would say is different is Clarisse. In the books she’s described as big and muscular and ugly, as it was quite common at the time to say ugly = bad which is something that has not aged well at all. Dior’s casting goes against those negative attitudes and ties into the theme of “not everyone who looks like a monster is a monster and not everyone who looks like a hero is a hero”

And at the end of the day, everyone in the cast perfectly captures their characters’ personalities regardless of their appearance

[lesovyart]

((shows up to Willow 2 yrs late)) I LOVE THEM

[delinquentluvr]

and to nobody’s surprise my favorite vox machina member is scanlan

[callme-l]

People who haven't read the books don't know that they have just witnessed the birth of one of the biggest rivalries in the saga (Percy and Ares), second only to Zeus and taking care of his children

[fandomcringebucket]

PILLS - ST. VINCENT (MASSEDUCTION)

[meep-meep-richie]

´´ I won´t let you down, dad.´´

[lottieurl]

plane crashes and smoke monsters and polar bears on an island and the worst thing that happened to any of those people is having a father

[peteytheparrot]

A Series of Unfortunate Events liberated me as a child in the way that it shows how utterly incompetent adults can be about children, like none of them care to understand how these children are feeling because they don’t see them as real living human beings, because they’re just kids! They don’t know any better!

[edwinspaynes]

Dead Boy Detectives being canceled is still one of the Top 10 Worst Feelings I Have Ever Had, but hey. Could be worse. Guess it could have been canceled on a cliffhanger with the obvious Set(TM) on different planes of existence, not speaking to each other after a desperate kiss

[watchyourbuck]

six of hands, three of souls

day 3/7 for @buddietommy-week | soulmates

buddietommy | 6,2k | explicit

And Buck was happy, he really was.

Finding your soulmate was a privilege. A luxury, if you will.

Finding your soulmate twice was, however, a bit unexpected.

OR: a buddietommy soulmate AU (Includes established buddie + the soulmate talk + Tommy sucking them both off at the end of the night).

Read on ao3

[autism-alley]

hi originally posted this at the end of a long thread of back and forth, here’s the og post if you want full context but i feel like this needs to be its own post especially bc i keep seeing this argument being made—the argument that the kids (in this case it was annabeth) SHOULD just know the monsters are monsters and who they are and how to defeat them before ever encountering them, that it’s a problem if they don’t.

the problem is not if 12 year olds should recognize a trap when they see one, even if they’re smart 12 year olds, and if that’s realistic. that is entirely beside the point.

the problem is rick riordan wrote a book series whose formula is bringing myths to the modern age and he’s not sticking true to that in the show—percy jackson and the olympians’ Shtick is taking these classic, ancient threats and giving them a new face. these traps work because these kids are not walking into a cave marked with Get Out and getting ambushed by monsters—the monsters are disguised as harmless mortal human beings, in harmless mortal human being places (for the most part) and i think we—and more importantly, the show—are all forgetting the mist, the magic involved here. it’s not just that medusa is a “creepy lady with her eyes covered” it’s that there is ancient magic at work here, magic that, like the systems of abuse pjo exists to criticize, has been evolving and continuing its malevolence for millennia. it’s formulaic, that’s the point. it’s the same trap you’ve learned about all your childhood, the same trap a thousand children before you learned all their childhoods, and still, it works. you fall into the trap. because that’s how generational abuse works. it’s a trap. it isn’t enough to learn monsters exist, what they look like from a second hand story that originated thousands of years ago. if you want to escape alive, you have to adapt as quickly as they do, recognize their face, and ultimately, beyond any individual trap, the game itself has to change. real, generational change.

so. the problem is rick riordan wrote a series with a formula for action that perfectly captures the overarching, systemic conflicts he was commentating on, and then threw that formula out in the show because it was “unrealistic”. i don’t give a damn about realism when it works to the detriment of the story. this is a story about generational abuse, yes, but it’s told through ‘a tale as old as time’ and that’s why it works so fucking well. and when it comes to basic storytelling, if your characters know the threat before they even walk in and you do practically nothing to then make up for the stakes you have removed, that’s a flaw. now you’ve lost the entertainment value for your audience, on top of also lessening your themes.

something else that is so. honestly soul-crushing as a writer and a creative, is that to me this is reflective of the way we are now afraid to tell earnest stories. stories where we care not for listening to the people who want to pick apart fictional, mythical, fantasy stories for not being “realistic” instead of aligning with our target audience who acknowledges reality is not what makes a story. think of your favorite movie, show, book, comic, what have you—has the reason for your favoritism ever been because it is the most reasonable, the most grounded, the most practical out of any you’ve seen? or is it because of the emotion? the way it speaks to you, to your life and the person you are? the journey it takes you on? is the percy jackson and the olympians book series so good because it’s inherently realistic?

the secret to storytelling is, very simply, focus on your story. everything else is secondary. if it’s written well, it doesn’t matter to me that the characters walk into a trap that, to the audience, is obviously a trap. because i can understand how the characters don’t know it, and how the story falls apart if the narrative just tells the characters it’s a trap from the jump. that’s what dramatic irony is—first used in greek tragedies! this is literally a tale as old as time in every sense except for the end—where it’s happy. and it’s not earned if we don’t first see, over and over, the status quo as a tragic trap.

it’s not about if annabeth (or the other kids) is “smart enough” to not walk into a trap, or about if she’s just too prideful to not walk into what she knows is a trap (or any reason that could apply to the other characters), it’s that annabeth, at the end of the day, is a character. she is a storytelling tool for the messages of the narrative. that doesn’t make her any lesser. in fact ignoring it reduces her, because it reduces what she represents. it’s about how rick riordan, or whoever else at disney, has fumbled the storytelling bag so ridiculously hard that they can’t take the simple, effective formula outlined from start to finish (by good ol 2009 rick himself) and adapt it to the screen without answering the most unimportant, derailing, anti-story questions.

[evagreen-stories]

And the award for the worst TV adaptation goes to...