broadwaybuttermilk

[broadwaybuttermilk]

#introverted king

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Will it be seventeen songs murdering Joe or will their be songs about Travis?

I’m not sure tbh. I don’t know when she actually finished the album so I don’t know if the timeline of their relationship / when she was recording this album overlapped.

Whatever the case, I just hope she continues to ignore Matty’s existence and makes no mention of him 😭

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I got in my car today, plugged in my phone and went to the music app, and dead ass thought “ooh i’ll listen to the tortured poets department!” like when did I get this delulu

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I still remember what you said to that little girl in the hospital about Luke Skywalker: "He's proof that it doesn't matter where you come from or who your family is." Sweetheart, you're proof too.

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Back on my Screenwriter soap box while watching PJO: They should have bought a bunch of oil diffusers.

(I’m not being nit-picky. I swear. Just hear me out.) So the weirdest thing to me in episode six was how Percy just…figured everything out so quickly without any visual indicators? Like they know time passed because it’s dark outside, but how did he know it was Thursday? They know they were affected by the lotus flowers, but how does he know it was pumped into the air? This irked me because even if he’s smart enough to figure some of this out himself (which he is) we as the audience should still be able to follow his thought process.

What if there were oil diffusers?

So imagine the trio walks into the Lotus, figures out this is like the Odyssey, and decides not to eat anything. They waltz in super confident that they cracked the code, but they were wrong. How do we know? Because the moment they enter the crowd, we get an establishing shot of a lotus-branded oil diffuser letting out steam.

Immediately, we as the audience realize their mistake, making it just that more tantalizing to watch. As the episode continues, we realize they’re everywhere. There’s a diffuser in the plants, on the counter, between the game tables, always right out of the corner of our eyes. They just keep churning out lotus-scented oil into the air, which we can infer because we’re smart. (Remember that.)

Now when Percy realizes what’s going on, we know HOW they’re doing it and HOW Percy knows!! Because they were there the whole time.

Onto Thursday.

How did they know it’s Thursday? I didn’t see any visual indicator. Did you? (Seriously, did you? Like yeah, it’s night, but they don’t know it’s Thursday.)

Consider: A watch.

What if Hermes has the only watch in the casino until the trio walks in with their own?

Let’s give Annabeth one of those cheap, funky watches that gives the time, day, month, year, etc. Something you get from a kids toy catalogue. It’s waterproof, glows in the dark, has an alarm or whatever. I feel like Annabeth would have one of those. (And honestly, she might already. I forgot.) The most important feature for us, though, is the day. It clearly tells us the day of the week.

It’s pretty easy to establish that Annabeth has the watch. Just do it the same way they establish the date: Percabeth arguing over it in the truck. Annabeth shows him the watch. Establishing shot of the watch’s face. That’s it. No bells or whistles necessary. Then when they get to the casino, Annabeth checks it one more time (without an establishing shot, she just does it casually) and they walk in.

(It’s so easy, it’s painful. I mean, come on.)

While Grover is walking around alone, he tries to check the time and realizes there’s no clocks. (Which ngl is super common in casinos already, but it’s creepy nonetheless.) Yada yada, he gets sucked in by Augustus and that’s how he gets got.

Meanwhile, Percy and Annabeth keep meaning to check the time, but every time they do, someone tries to hand them an appetizer or a drink, which makes them forget OR Annabeth’s hubris keeps her from checking. (Percy: Time check? Annabeth: Its only been five minutes. We’re fine. We need to focus.)

And that brings us to Hermes. After their chat, yada yada, Annabeth “leaves” and Hermes gets all cryptic, then he makes a BIG show of checking his watch, and THAT’S when Percy realizes something’s wrong because oh no they haven’t checked the time. So he finds Annabeth, they see it’s dark outside, they check her watch, and it’s Thursday.

“But we didn’t eat anything!” Annabeth says. Percy looks at the diffusers by the entrance. It dawns on him. “They’re pumping it into the air.”

That’s how you VISUALLY SHOW US THINGS instead of Percy somehow just figuring everything out and telling us!!!!

Now, you may be thinking “Oh but do they have the budget for that??” Do you know how cheap these props are? Just bulk buy like six oil diffusers, slap a homemade sticker of a lotus flower on them, and keep moving them into every shot. And they’re quiet!! They wouldn’t interfere with the sound, the steam is visible enough to be caught on camera without messing with the lighting, they actually look really cool in some lighting, and they fit the atmosphere of a hotel/casino!! Then the watch is like $15, fits with Annabeth’s character, and totally matches her outfit.

It’s CHEAP! It’s EASY! It DOESN’T CUT INTO THE RUN TIME! It’s AESTHETICALLY PLEASING! ANNABETH GETS A SICK WATCH!! NO DOWNSIDES!!!!

The biggest problem with this show isn’t how accurate it is to the book or how much money they have or that they’re “Disney-fying” it. The problem is they are TELLING US things instead of SHOWING us. And not to beat a dead horse because everyone’s heard of “Show Don’t Tell” but like??? This is exactly why everyone is taught this over and over again in school?? Because people still do it anyway all the time???

There’s also something else I learned (or really just picked up) when I got my B.A. in Creative Writing: Good shows are predictable.

Whether it’s a case of the audience learning what’s going to happen before it happens or them watching the show again and realizing how obvious the answer was the whole time, audiences always want to feel smart. They want to interact with the material. If you don’t give them the opportunity to pick apart the mystery themselves by setting down clues, they’ll give up on interacting with the show and lose interest. That’s why you SHOW them things. There are several moments where this show is completely unpredictable, not because it’s complex but because it doesn’t let you predict it. That doesn’t make it bad—the comedy and character development is doing a great job of carrying the show’s weight so far. But it definitely doesn’t make the show good.

It’s like Rube Goldberg machines. Or dominoes! We don’t watch those crazy 1000+ domino videos so we can watch the last one fall. We watch it to see HOW they fall. Take one domino out, and it’s unsatisfactory. It doesn’t work anymore.

But some oil diffusers and a watch??? Little clues that make the realization that more visually appealing??? THAT’S SATISFYING

Anyway, these are just two things that could have been done, but weren’t. Most of the show is stellar. I think it just needs a little bit of editing here and there. I studied this for like years, and I needed to get this off my chest. That’s it.

Rick Riordan, if you ever see this, I am available for hire :) I would love to be a script doctor please please please please

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Percy’s first time driving and he’s already getting road rage,

At that moment Percy has decided that he is a New Yorker and does not need nor want a car

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FUN FACT if you go to 20:01 in ep. 6 right when Augustus jumps on the table, you can hear a guy in bell-bottom jeans say “That is not groovy, man” this is completely true

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God I’m so happy yall know what I mean. The pain is DEEP

Yk people always say “I was born in the wrong generation etc etc.”

But what about those of us who were born in the wrong universe. Now I’m not talking like “oh I hate this world boo hoo…” I’m talking dragons.

I was meant for a world with magic and gods and fairies and nymphs and mermaids and dragons WHERE THE HELL ARE MY DRAGONS!?!?!?

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i genuinely do love that echinda was changed from random coffee drinking lady in an elevator to legitimately terrifying eldritch white woman who follows the kids around with a placid smile dressed in an h&m cardigan.

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stop showing me ai ill fuckin kill you

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The fact that this PJO show is allowing rick to make small changes that he didn’t get to make on the original. The fact that the show is basically his developed, matured take on the story, and he’s using it to create amazing thematic parallels and meanings? I’m obsessed with it

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when grover said that he thought he knew who stole the lightning bolt i couldn’t help it and pulled a jim from the office to my imaginary camera because oh baby boy no you don’t !!!!

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#She has one fear now

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annabeth asking percy if he just pulled her out of the water with his powers and him being like dude i don’t know i’m improvising was so on brand

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“it’s okay, i’m okay” YEAH WELL IM NOT

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me resisting the urge to explain every detail of the Percy Jackson show and all the foreshadowing to my parents

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watching Percy talk annabeth through what he believes to be his death TWO episodes in a row... ohh that hurt