professorhayforbreath

[professorhayforbreath]

How is it that such a popular book series can have a 2 films and a tv show and the best adaptation is still the musical with such a low budget but so much love to give

[professorhayforbreath]

"pick a side" is really that song like you've got ruegard bickering, silena threatening to pulverize someone, clarisse hyping her up, and luke telling his dad to get fucked. it's all there.

[professorhayforbreath]

there's a tree on the hill up on half-blood hill that protects us all, and always will

#:;( #this would hit so much harder if show grover actually had any guilt/blame for thalia's death #tlt musical you make everything better

[professorhayforbreath]

Criticisms of show!Sally’s character do not have anything to do with how realistic she is. PJO TV is not a standalone TV production. It is sold as and marketed as an on-screen adaptation of a preexisting primary source. The criticism is about how well-adapted she is.

Sally Jackson was not written from scratch for TV. It doesn't matter if she's realistic or not.

Sally Jackson, introduced to us through the primary source of the books, is a character with a set of personality traits, the major ones of which do not track on screen.

Book Sally: is explicitly said to never raise her voice Show Sally: very much raises her voice when she's stressed out

or

Book Sally: is explicitly said to make Percy feel safe, secure, and comfortable Show Sally: leaves silently when Percy asks if she’s getting rid of him; consistently does not explain to Percy the situation, leaving him doubtful and scared

The character in the show isn’t Sally Jackson. She’s a realistic depiction of a particular kind of a mother but that isn’t Percy Jackson’s mother.

P. S. Book Sally is also a realistic character. I know that most people are familiar with the on-screen version of parenting but there are parents who do better.

#sally being written the way she was in the books *served a purpose* #multiple purposes on multiple levels actually! #for the narrative it was important that among a cast of characters with parental issues #percy and sally were the exception #it's why percy was the child of the prophecy and the catalyst for change--he experienced firsthand that parents don't have to be Like That #throwing that out the window is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material i'm still shocked it happened #the real life reason for why sally was written the way she was is because it's a *fantasy story for neurodivergent kids* #not a drama dedicated to realism not a character study of a stressed mother #it's fantasy in the sense it has fantastical elements yes but also fantasy in the sense that it's an escape #for a target audience who rarely experience any kind of parental love other than conditional #so to have a neurodivergent character with a mother who is unconditionally kind and understanding and gentle? #that's so so important. i know it was for me growing up #people praising sally's depiction in the show are doing so based on the expectations of an entirely different genre and aim #for this genre it does not belong and in fact works against the purpose of the story #sorry for the rant i just hate this aspect of the show a lot it's my roman empire or whatever #also in light of this entire discourse can i just say how depressing it is to have people constantly insisting #that parents who don't yell at their (disabled and heavily struggling!) kids are entirely unrealistic and infeasible #like man. #pjo show crit

[professorhayforbreath]

i blame the mouse for the deradicalisation of luke castellan

#disney are cowards <3 #softening flattening and declawing everything like what's even the point #anyway banger tags

[professorhayforbreath]

the Riordans: the show will highlight more Annabeth and Percy’s dyslexia.

The show: taking the mentions of dyslexia from it (them not really being able to read Auntie M’s sign, the zoo truck etc..) kinda giving up about it after one episode

"the show will highlight Percy and Annabeth's dyslexia"

#like. 'more'? where lol. literally where #the book isn't perfect but it still does a lot of good things #we get examples of how percy and annabeth's dyslexia affects their reading throughout #(the newspaper slipped under percy's cabin door #aunty em's sign #the zoo truck) #percy struggles to learn and spell the greek myths for mr brunner's class because of how similar a lot of the names are #meanwhile in the show we get 1 floaty text effect #and a brief mention from luke that every demigod has adhd and dyslexia #and percy's a borderline expert on greek mythology like. #i wish they would have done more to show how percy's learning disabilities affect... wait for it... his learning #honestly i could see a non-book reader forgetting percy is adhd and dyslexic after episode 2 #and i could even see them not registering that annabeth is neurodivergent as well #which is. bad. that's so bad #at least the movie used the floaty text effect pretty consistently so you couldn't forget #like that's the barest of bare minimums but the show couldn't even manage that #we could squabble about scene changes all day but this is something i think deserves serious criticism #they forgot the core of the story

[professorhayforbreath]

ik it’s been forever in internet time but i’m gonna die mad abt the way the live action atla show got a good amount of backlash and criticism from the fanbase meanwhile the pjo show was THAT horrendous and the fanbase treats critics like they’re out to kill their mother. as someone in both fandoms am i crazy bc i keep fucking seeing people say yes 💀 like!! these shows, whose original series were both about a 12 year old boy born with godlike powers going on quests with his friends to save the world, released in the 2000s, and had a shitty movie adaptation, now reboots released within weeks of each other, both committed nearly identical crimes of character assassination, exposition dumping, dumbing down their source material, sanitizing “problematic” elements (that the characters originally had to overcome), and wasting actor potential (also at least live action atla had good action scenes CANNOT say the same for the pjo show)—and i’m seeing like mainstream(ish) social media coverage of new atla show critique by people with millions of followers all across different sites, but nothing even close to that for the pjo show?? if that coverage exists for the pjo show somebody fucken send it to me bc like!! the pjo series is Not an unpopular series, i get it’s a book series and not a tv series so i didn’t expect the popularity to be exactly the same, but Damn! i feel like i need an hours long video essay comparing the two audience reactions to these series’ first season releases bc they were WIDLY different

#the pjo show would be getting FLAMED if not for rick's involvement #i really don't get how it's 2024 and people still have so much goodwill for him that they've heaped praise on this adaptation #solely because his name is attached to it #it's a genuinely bizarre phenomenon like people don't do that for any other writer/creator #'rick understands his own characters/story' he has spent the last decade and a bit proving he absolutely does not lmfaooo

[professorhayforbreath]

every time i get curious and go into the tags of more recent riordanverse installments i'm happier with my choice to disregard everything after the last olympian because holy SHIT rick riordan just doesn't know when to fucking quit. maybe like, 8% of hoo is canon to me. i never finished toa. i barely remember mcga. and i never intend to read tsats or cotg. rick riordan never published anything after the last olympian, what are you guys talking about haha

#genuinely cannot get over how stupid the premise of cotg is. #even as a 10 yr old reading hoo for the first time i was never sold on the idea that percy would be so eager to go to new rome #as IF percy jackson would be chomping at the bit to leave sally and new york behind #for a boring city in california!! #it might just be me but i never understood what the appeal of new rome is supposed to be lol #like what the fuck is even there #rr crit

[professorhayforbreath]

The post made by toughkookie88 made me think a lot about Percy and Poseidon’s dynamic in the books and why it works a lot better than it does in the show.

Yeah, I did like Poseidon showing sadness over not being there for Sally and Percy, but… Poseidon has had a lot of kids. A lot of them. And, while it must have been hard not being able to help Percy at all, because he had to pretend like he didn’t exist, the laws in place ensure that the Gods mostly have to leave their kids to their own devices, anyway. Was Poseidon also this way over Tyson, while he was living on the streets (He should have been)? Why does he keep having kids?

Also, it didn’t make a lot of sense for Poseidon to surrender. Zeus wrongfully accused him of stealing the bolt, why wasn’t that a factor? What were the stakes? Was Poseidon’s only loss pride? So, if Percy hadn’t been in danger, he would have allowed the war to continue, and put his realm and the entire world in danger? If they’re trying to say that Percy’s more important to Poseidon than anything else, then it makes no sense that he was sent on that Quest in the first place. Sure, maybe Poseidon wouldn’t have taken away Percy’s chance to rescue his mother, but, before that, when Hades was sending Furies (and Zeus was sending lightning bolts in the book), Poseidon wasn’t exactly sending people to remove Sally and Percy from danger. Probably because he knew that he’d need Percy to take care of this for him.

In the books, while Poseidon obviously cherishes the memory of Sally, and loves Percy (I think he loves all his kids, though that doesn’t necessarily make him a good father), Percy’s a kid that he’d never wanted in the first place. Those two things can be true at the same time. Best case scenario, Percy has a tragic fate because he’s a hero; worst case scenario he dies at sixteen and takes Olympus down with him. And, at this point he doesn’t know Percy or have any reason to trust him. Of course, they’re going to be awkward and distant at first! Percy didn’t start out as Poseidon’s favourite. He just won him over by being himself.

referring to this post

go off! honestly u nailed it all. their relationship in the books is very layed and nuanced and most importantly earned. like, with the arch, in the show percy falls while in the book percy takes a leap of faith. this is a big difference.

it's like the show is allergic to earning things. in the books, percy's arguments and fights w the gods are built up and have consequences (he literally gets cursed for stabbing ares—this is why u don't fuck w the gods), percy has an entire arc in tlt abt learning how a hero's fate is tragic and then rejecting that tragic fate, and he becomes poseidon's favorite, like you said, by being himself over the course of multiple books. meanwhile percy in the show is the specialist little boy just bc he exists. he talks back to and fights the big meanie gods bc there's no consequences so why would they bother building it up, he mocks the idea of a hero w the "pinecone's fate" line bc he's so genre saavy, and he's been poseidon's favorite this whole time. none of this is earned!

#they really changed the dynamic between percy and poseidon and i'm sick of people acting like it won't have narrative consequences #once again. the butterfly effect #this part of the show really irked me and this puts into words why

[professorhayforbreath]

The issue is that some fans look at the show as "something Rick made" rather than "a show" and then turn around and look at the movies as "something that Rick did not make" rather than "the movies". Like, we're never going to have a good conversation about what makes a good adaptation unless you kill the author and leave him in the ditch.

The movies function great as movies. The show functions as shit as a show.

Not to even mention the weird ass cult of personality around Richard Riordan in the PJO and adjacent communities. People constantly and rightfully critique him for being shit at writing queer stories without turning them into 2023 Tumblr post, being horribly stereotypical at writing POC (and especially WOC), being biased as hell in writing women (which became even more obvious now that the show is out), being really weird about the cultures he chooses to "represent" (read: appropriate from and profit off without giving back), as well as his overall views, whether they are in the books or surround his space as a writer. Riordan isn't your kind Uncle, he's a millionaire that genuinely does not give a fuck about you. It's unhealthy to have such a strong parasocial tie with a straight white rich man that has in some way failed nearly every community he tried to write about (aside from the "community" of straight white people).

Whoever Riordan was when he wrote the first five books (hint: he was Not Rich), he no longer is. He lost fucking track of what made his books good because he barely writes his own stuff anymore because he's no longer putting in the effort. He doesn't need to, he's rich. He knows there are countless of fans that will "read it anyway" and "watch it anyways" and otherwise engage without considering pirating.

Media that has the least input from him (the movies, the musical) score as being better at capturing the spirit of his own books, and that should tell you something.

P. S. The first five books hold some sort of place in my heart, but I consider the rest of the franchise money-grabbing, clout-chasing trash. Mysteriously enough, his best post-PJO books are (likely) ghostwritten.

#i always forget that most people in the fandom think he's still a good writer lmao #his writing peaked around the same time the actors in the show were born #and yall think the show is amazing and criticism is invalid just because he's in the writers room. please #it's always 'well the show is more accurate to rick's original vision' #all that tells me is 20 years ago rick riordan wrote a book that was significantly better than he intended lmfao #just because you like a writer's work doesn't mean everything they do is flawless let's use our brains #woke up angry today hello

[professorhayforbreath]

the funniest (cursed) thing about the whole "actually since its normal for parents to get overwhelmed when their kids act out, it's realistic (and thus good) that they made Sally get frustrated with young Percy in the show" thing is that the extent of young Percy acting out is like... crying no at the swimming pool? Locking a car door? Quietly asking his mom why she wants to get rid of him? Like I cannot imagine more tame expressions of fear from a young child

#peer reviewed <3

[professorhayforbreath]

the funniest (cursed) thing about the whole "actually since its normal for parents to get overwhelmed when their kids act out, it's realistic (and thus good) that they made Sally get frustrated with young Percy in the show" thing is that the extent of young Percy acting out is like... crying no at the swimming pool? Locking a car door? Quietly asking his mom why she wants to get rid of him? Like I cannot imagine more tame expressions of fear from a young child

#this entire aspect of the show is a web of stupid decisions #the flashbacks were a good idea but i hated how they used them #there are so many scenes they could have made into flashbacks instead #like the backstory for blue food or the aftermath of any of the other field trips that went wrong #or something showing percy's experiences at school that puts more emphasis on how his adhd and dyslexia affect him #and then seeing how sally supports him #just so many things they could've done to build on details provided in the book #and show the audience how loving and understanding percy and sally's relationship is #they still could've taken some time to show how sally lets out her frustration--AWAY from percy #and let us see her perspective without contradicting percy's characterisation of her #instead we got a handful of flashbacks where sally is responding with disproportionate anger to incredibly mild resistance from percy #in situations that are just stupidly written on their own #(the son of poseidon is scared of swimming?? a school won't let percy attend because he drew a creature and wandered onto a roof??) #and that's most of what we see of their relationship. like fuck off #srry this got long i have a lot of issues with how they handled this part of the show #tl;dr they should have picked/written better scenes to make flashbacks of #and also #show sally is a different character and i don't like her.

[professorhayforbreath]

"Why do you not like show Sally? Do you not want her to be a complex, nuanced character with flaws?"

I'm sorry, was "she's the sweetest mom ever, a calm and down to Earth person, a little meek from years of abuse... oh, and she also killed her husband, and she enjoyed it immensely" not nuanced enough for you? Is murder not a character flaw?

I'm sorry, but Sally being this sweet angel, with a real darkness in her heart is the most amazing thing I can think of. It's relatable, really. I think most quiet types can relate, on the outside we seem like nothing moves us, but there is so much anger and sadness and fury we have to bottle up sometimes, especially in abusive environments.

#as the show continues to stew in my brain i keep returning to a handful of things that are (to me) its biggest issues #and one of those is sally #like... they completely mischaracterised her. show sally is a whole different woman #and everyone just accepted it?? #book sally was such a wonderful character #they pretty much rewrote her entirely for the show #and i absolutely despise what they did to her </3 book sally jackson your quiet yet powerful rebellion will always be special to me

[professorhayforbreath]

There are many things that frustrate me with the writing of Annabeth in the PJO TV Show, but I think one thing that I haven’t seen people talk much about is the mini-arc of Percy needing to help Annabeth with her sense of fun/humanity.

Just so we’re clear, I absolutely hate this arc.

Prior to the show’s premiere, I believe there was a quote from Rick discussing new-ish things that we’d see in the show, and one of those things was Percy helping Annabeth “tap into her humanity”. I can’t find the exact quote, but it should be on the series update Twitter account if you search it.

When I first read this quote, I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but I thought maybe we’d get an expansion of the theme of forgiveness that we got in the original books, or maybe we’d get an arc about Annabeth’s pride and how that gets in the way of her relationships with others. Or maybe they’d try and break down the ways in which Annabeth helps to uphold the gods’ ways of doing things, and align her more with the mortal point of view (which they essentially did, but not the overall point).

What I certainly wasn’t expecting was for them to strip Annabeth of most, if not, all of her smaller/softer traits, and give her this unusually stoic and stiff personality, where she suddenly has no familiarity with casual aspects of the mortal world (movies, Disney world, common idioms), and needs Percy to introduce these concepts to her in an effort to “unlock” her humanity.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Words cannot emphasize enough how much I despise this arc. Not only is it entirely nonsensical for Annabeth not to be familiar with these things (she was with her dad at least until the age of 7 and she goes to a camp full of other children who are regularly in contact with the mortal world; do you seriously expect me to believe that at no point in her 12 years of life, she never saw a single film, heard of Disneyworld, or heard common idioms and slang terms from her camp-mates? Seriously???)

But ALSO!

Book!Annabeth had PLENTY of humanity to go around! Even with her pride and initial coldness towards Percy, she plays hackeysack with him and Grover on the first day of their quest! She has a cute silly crush/admiration/infatuation on Luke. She nerds out big time over the St. Louis Arch! She’s the first to steal clothing from Waterland! She screams and cries when she encounters the mechanical spiders! She has an expression of sadness when she shares her backstory about Thalia and Luke! She gets lost in her little construction game at the Lotus, so much so that Percy has to use her phobia to pull her out of the trance! She grabs Percy’s hand when they first enter the Underworld because she’s scared! She tears up when it’s time to leave Cerberus!

And you stripped her of all these things, because you’re so desperate to overemphasize the Percabeth romance, and you felt that it was absolutely necessary to have Percy educate Annabeth on “unlocking humanity”??? Why!!!!

Not only did Book!Percy help Annabeth discuss things about bad parents and approaching forgiveness, but Book!Percy already had something important to offer Annabeth: loyalty, trustworthiness, and reliability. You didn’t need to take away her already-present traits and wits to convince us that Percy was the type of person she needed in her life, because we can already see what he offers her in the books. So why oh why did you feel the need to give us the silly “tap into your humanity” arc? Why did you turn her personality into something that it wasn’t? Why did you take away her depth just so her character could better serve Percabeth?

I don’t even necessarily agree with the criticism that this version of Annabeth feels like it prioritizes Percabeth more, but I can see why people made that complaint. Y’all took away so much of what made this character endearing, because you felt like it was a much bigger priority to have Percy help her unlock humanity than to let her be human prior to meeting him and outside of him. Not only does her personality get shafted, but her relationships with other people get shafted too! Her interactions with Luke are affection-less, she sent Grover off on his own in the Lotus so she could go off with Percy, and I don’t even think that she and Chiron interacted once this season; I don’t even think she mentioned the part about her calling him to come pick her up after she attempted living at home again!

But don’t worry; we’ll get plenty of scenes doubling down and tripling down on how Percy is the center of her world now! Yay!

#i did not know he said that what the fuck #op thank you for mentioning how ridiculous the movie and disney world things were #HOW did people let those slide #i thought i would get less annoyed with this show as time went on but no i just keep disliking it more and more tbh :(

[professorhayforbreath]

the show has made me really appreciate the musical's choice to not only have annabeth fail to recognise medusa, but to make her ANGRY at herself for not picking up on it, then using that as a segue into her desire to prove herself to her mother, her insecurities and her dreams. it works really well

what's funny about the discourse on whether or not annabeth should've known it was medusa is that in the book she acknowledges outright that learning about the myths and applying it to the real world are not the same thing: 'at camp you train and train. and that's all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. that's where you learn whether you're any good or not' (pg 170)

annabeth who desperately wants to prove herself via the quest, but who falls short because she has mostly theoretical knowledge she hasn't yet applied to the real world and is frustrated with herself because of it is, to me, far more compelling and realistic than annabeth who just knows everything because 'she's the daughter of athena and that means smart'

#pjo show crit #pjo tv crit #pjo show #tlt musical #pjo adaptation

[professorhayforbreath]

y’all headcanoning poseidon as purposefully sending medusa’s head back to sender knowing gabe would open it is like. entirely missing the point of sally jackson’s character and also SO fucked up if it was poseidon?? who used medusa’s head to kill an asshole man?? like!! what the fuck! not to mention sally jackson?? ms. sally jackson? who kills her abusive husband? who on multiple occasions rejected the help of the man who is both a god and her former lover bc she wants to build her life herself—? and who does it? “if my life is to mean anything, i have to live it myself.” those are sally jackson’s words. the abuse itself was already incredibly watered down in the show and that is upsetting. to have gabe accidentally kill himself because he’s a bumbling idiot waters down her agency against her abuse and is even more so upsetting. to have not just a man but a literal god kill her husband for her is so. do you not see how that’s even worse. and then add in that god being poseidon and the method of murder is medusa’s head? i don’t even have words to articulate it, just—

no matter how you cut it, narratively you only disrespect and degrade sally when gabe’s life is taken by any hand that isn’t hers, and having that hand be poseidon’s is just wild.

#this fandom gives me such a headache sometimes #the show did sally so dirty at every turn and fans went cool and what if we make it even worse #it's the same reason the scene in episode 7 where poseidon shows up because sally summoned him rubs me the wrong way #the implication that she can and has been doing that the whole time #when the point is supposed to be that she didn't have support!! #i feel like it really diminishes the power of her story as a (functionally) single mother of a neurodivergent kid #yeah fuck all that apparently a literal god comes to her aid at the drop of a hat :/

[professorhayforbreath]

i think it's reductive to take "its not like the books" in it's most literal face value interpretation. it's not bad bc it's "not like the books" it's bad because it discards the books for something worse

#everything in a story is the way it is For A Reason #if you change things you have to be careful #and i don't think they were careful