#also if they could make it so it’s like percy’s talking to the viewers the same way he did in the books i’d be the happiest mf around

[ajbullet]

My thoughts on episode 4 of PJO: spoilers (chaotic edition because I JUST watched it and the thoughts are so fresh)

-First off: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

-Ok, good. Had to get that out. Second: best 30 minutes of my life

-I don’t think you guys will ever be able to fully comprehend how much I love Annabeth Chase and seeing Leah as her has only heightened that love. So imagine how elated I was to watch an episode full of my girl. She slayed, owned, and ate this episode. Whatever you want to call it. She did it

-“Are you awake?” The long-ass pause before Annabeth answered. As soon as Percy spoke, I was so hoping he was talking to her and not Grover (sorry I love him but). And then she answered

-She finally opened up to him!! We got some of her backstory!! She’s finally feeling comfortable!!!

-Percy’s face when she said she was seven. He was so surprised. I think he realized instantly how long this girl has been going through so much. They are only twelves years old. But she was a child when this began for her. Like you could tell he couldn’t believe it

-Grover mocking Annabeth was probably my favorite line from him yet. He’s so unserious I love him. Also, the food part was too relatable

-Small detail but the sky was so freaking pretty in the background. Such a unique thing to add and I loved it

-“Can I ask a dumb question?” As soon as he said it I knew Annabeth was gonna be the one to respond and she did not disappoint.

-“little girl” Annabeth’s reaction. I got chills. Leah deserves an Oscar/Emmy (whatever the actor award is) for that scene alone

-Loved Enchilada (don’t know how to spell her name and don’t feel like going back to check) but she talked too damn much. I was like get back to my kids please. Oh and back the hell up

-My BOY GOT STABBED NOOOOO. Oh he’s fine (plot twist: no he’s not)

-Annabeth took that mf DOWN for a second

-The monument!!! It was so cool!! Interesting that it’s a monument to Athena. I think I remember that from the book but either way that’s cool

-The. Entire. Conversation. Between. Percy. And. Annabeth. Oh. My. Gods.

-The fake accent??? Where did that come from?? I had to rewind twice just to make sure I heard right. Like what in Percy’s mind told him to do that? What wires crossed or came undone? How far had that poison reached? Because that was so unserious and I fell even more in love with his character

-He likeeeeeeeeeeees her

-Annabeth’s smile!! I’ve been waiting to see her smile like that and it was so cool to see! My girl is finally happy! for a second

-“You’ve done more for me in the past two days…” “If I had to pick someone, I’d…”

That required my BRAIN

-Plot twist: (again) Percy is not fine

-The splashing water was so funny. Like I get why but come on that was something else.

-Percy seeing what Annabeth has already sacrificed for him and his quest: her relationship with her mother. He sees what he has already cost her and what helping him means to her and omg it was heartbreaking

-One thing I absolutely adore about the books is that Annabeth’s intelligence is never in doubt by the reader. It’s not Percy or other characters saying she’s smart again and again with no proof. It’s not the narrative shoving the fact that she is smart in your face over and over. She proves she is smart. She proves she is inventive and strategic and intelligent by her actions and thought process and it’s almost never mentioned verbally. That whole idea of show vs tell? It’s perfectly shown through Annabeth acting intelligent instead of people talking about how intelligent she is.

Like how she splashed Percy with water or pulled the fire alarm. The viewers are shown she is smart, not just told.

-Annabeth’s willingness to sacrifice herself for her friends. Her only caring about Percy being poisoned, bot the monsters, and helping him. She knew she would die going up against the Chimera, even calls it the “demigod killer”, yet she does it anyway so her friends can succeed. She opened up to these boys and now she was giving her life for them

-Percy doing the same. Exact. Thing. The trick with the sword. The whispered words against the door, even as they shouted at him to open it. He knew for sure he would die and wanted it to be for a good cause. He didn’t even know if he could fight the chimera, but it was better him than Annabeth

-That boy looked so sick someone please help him

-oh, someone did.

-Dude I told my dad about the whole “Rick not knowing the River wasn’t right under the arc” thing and I was so excited to see how they did that and honestly it worked. Poseidon’s first way of helping Percy was by pulling him into the water, showing him to “just breathe”. My dad laughed when we watched it.

-oh I forgot! I love the first scene with Sally. Had some ptsd from swimming lessons but got to see young Percy so it was worth it

-Also the fall was shot so cool. I felt like I was falling with him

-He can breathe underwater! We knew this! But it’s still awesome!

I can’t even wrap my head around next episode. We are going to be fed so well after this short-ass episode and I am so ready. This episode already gave more Percabeth than I was expecting all season and I wanted to cry it was so adorable. This show is the only thing getting me through each week.

(Also, if you couldn’t tell, I finally figured out how to do italics instead of just capitalizing everything. Go me!)

#annabeth chase #percabetn #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #percy and annabeth #percabeth #pjo fandom #pjo series #pjo tv show #percy pjo #pjotv #pjo #pjo disney+ #pjo spoilers #pjoverse #annabeth percy jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #percy series

[hepaidattention]

I'm v curious to see how the pjo show will portray Percabeth and Percy's feelings for her throughout the show.

cause imo, in the books Percy straight up doesn't even realize he has feelings for her until much muuuuuch later (whether it be oblivion or denial), but in like book 3 he's so worried for her he's starting fights with god's. she's literally all he thinks about in the Titans Curse, but never in a romantic way. Percy never thinks about her in a romantic way till probably book 4, when she kisses him, and even then it's a rare occurrence until book 5.

we just knew he had feelings cause he'd think stuff like "wow she's beautiful," or prints out a picture of her and keeps it with him, or constantly thinks about her when Rachel was around, or think Aphrodite looked like her. ACTIONS wise I know exactly why Annabeth was yelling at him by book 5. he never showed romantic feelings for her outwardly except for rare occasions that could be interupted as friends, even when she kissed him. not until, again, book 5 when he asks for a good luck kiss and literally screams at everyone not to touch her when she's injured.

anyway, so I'm interested to see how they're going to display it for the viewers on the screen when we won't have Percy's narration telling us obvious things that show us he loves her. I'm wondering if they're going to be more straight forward with it. in the books you knew Percy liked her but again only because of his thoughts, and not until book 3 tbh. but in the show s1 already had so much implied Percabeth. like Percy looked at her so many times like he wanted to marry her right then and there that is was shocking to me (not complaining) cause Percy really only acted like he saw her as a friend by that point in the books.

SO I wonder if they're going to continue this trend of just having Percy look at Annabeth longingly a lot and hope those who haven't read the books catch on, or will they go a step further and having him talk to people about his feelings? will Percy talk to Grover about her? in the books they would never, Percy didn't even know Grover had a girlfriend at one point. they weren't the type of bromance to talk about their feelings. however TV show Grover and Percy would easily talk about their feelings. they're more open and vulnerable around each other in the show.

and if they do that, then are they going to make it canon (canon to me is if Percy knew he had feelings for Annabeth before book 4 of 5 and said it himself. he never says he has feelings, and even talks about his feelings for other characters like Calypso and Rachel, so to me its not canon that he did know unless he said those words himself) that Percy is aware of his feelings before book 5?? or are they just gonna have scenes like in s1 with Luke where he calls them an old married couple and Percy and Annabeth ignore it. I could also see Grover just teasing him about her and Percy just acts like he never even thought about it

idk I'm really interested on how they're going to show us in TV form. half of me wants it to stay canon, but the other part of me wants to see a Percy verbally attest that he likes her but she'd never like him like that - or say something like Annabeth was too good for him (which I always got the feelings was half the reason why Percy didn't pursue anything till much later). even after Annabeth kisses him he's like "as friends???? hmmm???" and I truly do no think until she yells at him for being a coward that it occurs to Percy that "Oh, that WASN'T a good luck kiss then." like he WANTED to kiss her but he didn't think she liked him like that EVEN AFTER SHE KISSED HIM. sigh. sweet, dumn Percy. how I love thee.

but show Percy really isn't as a dumb as book Percy was in the first book, so there's a huge possibility they'll make it more obvious. I feel like for the sake of wanting fans invested in the ship, they'll make him more aware of his feelings imo. they already did so in s1, and book 1 truly was just Annabeth and Percy learning to be friends.

no matter what, I cannot wait for s3, because I would do anything to see Walker act out Percy worried about Annabeth. PERCY TRYING TO FIGHT MR. D CAUSE HES NOT WORRIED ENOUGH FOR ANNABETH???? I literally cannot wait.

#pjo #just me #just me and my long long rants #percabeth #percy jackson #annabeth chase #pjo tv series #pjo show #pjo tv show #pjo spoilers #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson and the olympians spoilers #yeah um i post these because i need to rant not to argue so dont bother #i will delete your comments if you just find it fun to try to prove someone wrong #im not here for it and its a waste of everyones time

[autism-alley]

alright sorry to be a bitch about casting, but i’m gonna bc i do think it’s important to illustrating the feel of a character (if you come to me to bitch and whine about black annabeth get the fuck off my lawn). myself and others have already talked at length about the writing of the series, so if you’re looking for more weighty criticism, just scroll thru the pjo crit tag, now is my time to be a stickler for details, and this is a live action show, a visual medium, the casting is important for reasons beyond an actor’s ability to deliver lines. embodying the character purely in an actor’s personality isn’t enough—they need to physically feel like they could be this person to really sell it (there’s also something to be said abt not having to cast someone who supposedly feels like the character they’re playing just as themself—it’s called acting for a reason, but i digress).

just. take in the official viria pjo art of sally jackson.

look at this woman. look at her!! that is MOTHER. that is the woman who worked herself to the bone to single handedly raise perseus jackson, flaws and all. that is the woman who rocked up to the battle of manhattan with a shotgun and A WILL. that is the woman poseidon himself called a queen amongst women and offered a palace to. with warm lighting only outshone by her reassuring smile and the candle of percy’s blue birthday cupcake—that’s sally jackson. the composition of it, her pose and welcoming smile, makes the viewer feel like we are percy jackson, and it’s our birthday we’re being beckoned to join in the celebration of, a special moment between mother and child.

now look at this woman.

i feel like i’ve had this english teacher before, asking me why my autistic ass was tweaking out in the middle of her lesson on iambic peranimeter. i’m sure she’s a nice lady in real life, it’s nothing against her as a person or her skills as an actress, to me she just lacks the warmth and gentleness crucial to sally jackson’s feel as a character. that is my own subjective take. she doesn’t make my shoulders relax at the sight of her. her smile doesn’t make the tightness in my chest go away. looking at this sally jackson, i feel everything her character ISN’T meant to embody. i start feeling stressed out. like everything is somehow a lesson and she has grand expectations of my answer. and the script does NOT do her any favors with lines like “you decide how ugly this gets” at VERY MINOR “outbursts” of percy’s. paired together, the script and the casting, we get what feels more like all the chastising teachers in percy’s life rather than his loving and patient MOTHER. and i don’t wanna hear another one of y’all defend this depiction as more accurate to parents of ND children or i’m gonna lose it.

now finally, look at this woman.

we can bash the pjo movies for all their inaccuracies and adaptation flaws, but if there’s one thing they nailed, it’s sally jackson. the kind eyes. the welcoming and reassuring gaze. a tired yet inherently trustworthy face. she’s so open. she feels so special, so giving, even if she herself has little. i can see myself laughing in her kitchen, making seven-layer dip or blue cookies. i can see her handing me an extra few jelly beans after a long shift at the candy store. i can see myself as percy jackson, able to put aside another school expulsion because that’s my mother and she’ll never let me doubt she loves me. i can see why poseidon, god of the sea, would fall in love with her in a way he hadn’t in thousands of years. i can see him offering her the world.

i don’t know if this casting impacted the official art, it did come first, maybe that’s a well-known fact and i just sound like a jackass—nor is official art is the end all be all (looking the og official pjo art dead in the eyes)—but this woman just deeply strikes me as the same sally jackson as the one in viria’s art and the pjo books. she’s sally jackson in way show sally vehemently just… is not.

#pointing at show sally #this woman looks like she’ll yell at me #this woman looks like she’s going to tell me to wait outside in the hall to talk after class #just because rick riordan slapped a ‘sally jackson’ name tag to her does not magically make her feel like sally jackson to me #literally any other depiction of sally jackson? mom. momma. #that’s my mother she’s taking me to montauk now #anyways school has been busy as hell ik i have people to get back to and asks to answer i just wanted to crank out a quick post #that i’ve been wanting to get to for a while #pjo show crit #pjo tv crit #ris raves

[redlazuly]

so i've just joined the pjo series discourse on sm (i've read all the books) so maybe people might have already said this but i feel like the monster fights are kinda underwhelming ?? the fights themselves but the atmosphere around them too. i'm just going to say it point by point to be clearer :

Mrs. Dodds: she's the first monster and threat of the show. i was waiting for something scary and surprising, that would have terrified percy or something. but instead the "reveal" was slow, and there wasn't even a fight, he just kind of opened the sword (even tho we don't even see him doing it) and she just. dies like that ?? it was really easy and i get that they can't just kill percy in the first ep but there wasn't even a bit of struggle or anything. tbh this first fight really dissapointed me. there was mystery that creates an intrigue but she just wasn't scary or a menace imo (EDIT : I HAVE NOW REREAD THE SCENE AND IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT THIS IS EXACTLY HOW THE FIGHT PLAYS OUT IN THE BOOK (extract down below) so forget everything i said in this part, i'm sorry. )

2. The minotaur : i liked this one much more than the first one, the car chase was thrilling and the atmosphere of the scene was really cool. i've only got one little thing to say about it, but i think it's just a me thing and i'm nitpicking (idk how to make gifs so i hope you can picture it in your head) :

when sally takes percy's jacket to lure the minotaur away from the boys and uses it as a red cape like in a corrida, i think it kinds of take the attention away from the fear of the monster in itself by being comedic. AGAIN i know i'm nitpicking here but why not say it.

(also i regret that the last scene was so far away from the camera and from the camp border. i know it's bc it's percy's pov but i loved percy's desperation in the movie (I KNOW IT'S BAD) when he's failing to save his mother and finally sees her (and her emotions) when she is gets taken away from him.)

3. Medusa : i LOVED what they tried to do with medusa and how they tried to make us sympathise with her. however, the fight was REALLY dissapointing to me. it kind of happened from nowhere. it's implied that it's annabeth plan but it really happened way too fast and did not give enought time for the viewer to appreciate the threat that medusa can be. it felt way to easy for them to beat MEDUSA. the fight lasted 5 seconds max and it felt shy in a way, like as if they didn't not want to fuck it up.

+ special mention : 4. Clarisse: I'M NOT SAYING SHE'S A MONSTER, I'M JUST PUTTING HER HERE BC TECHNICALLY SHE WAS A THREAT TO PERCY. i like dior's acting, idk anything about her outside of the show but i'm going to be honest : not knowing the cast at all, at first i immediately thought she was drew 😭. she IS a really pretty girl but for me she doesn't emanate clarisse's ares' daughter vibe. when her spear broke she was so GOOD, but appart from that she's just really chill i think ? like she's not menacing, she just kind of a mean girl bully (which clarisse is ig but she's not a menace enough imo) and tbh i think she's just not as "rough" as i think she could have been.

tldr : i think the fights were not scary enough and did not set a good tone for the series. they were also too easy and fast for them to be enjoyable.

of course i still enjoy this show a lot so i will be watching the next episodes and the rest of it so maybe there will be improvements. please yell what you guys think !!

it's the first time i ever talk so much on tumblr, so i hope it was readable. if there was any mistakes please tell me, english is not my first language.

#pjo series #pjo fandom #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #the minotaur #mrs dodds #clarisse la rue #pjo tv show #pjo spoilers

[zzz-sunflowr]

What I didn't like with Percy Jackson and the Olympians ep7

Opinions and criticism because why not

pushing aside the fact that the very first seconds in the episode were so confusing, I really don't like how the role of the person explaining the myths to us went from Annabeth in the books to primarily Percy in the show. Annabeth explaining who these people and monsters are to us was one of the first things that showed us as viewers and readers that HEY, this is the daughter of the goddess of wisdom, that role being given to Percy just doesn't make sense. While yes, you could argue that Sally explained it to him as a kid although I'm really not sure Sally would be explaining to her child about fucking Procrustes out of all people. It's just a very valuable trait of Annabeth that was just taken away for no reason.

Charon had literally no reason not to take the money then, it's not like demigods haven't been visiting the underworld for ALL OF MYTHOLOGY

The flashback scenes with Sally, they add nothing to the plot so far. You could literally take them out and nothing would change AT ALL besides one line. While yes you could argue it's meant to show how hard of a time Sally had with Percy, it genuinely just makes it seem like Percy was a burden for her. It doesn't make her likable, it sure as fuck doesn't make her a fighter like Sally was in the books.

speaking of child percy KIDS DONT TALK LIKE THAT WHAT IS THIS WRITING?????????????

ANNABETH JUST STRAIGHT UP FUCKING DIPPING?? ANNABETH WOULD NEVER JUST LEAVE LIKE THAT THE SHOW MADE IT SEEM LIKE SHE DIDNT EVEN TRY TO GET OUT

Hades. What the fuck did they do to Hades.

Also hades just taking a 12yos word like oh sure ok Kronos is coming if u say so

#me talking to myself #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo tv show #pjo series #percy jackson show #annabeth chase

[poisonpercy]

Watching episode 2, here’s my thoughts

Stalker Annabeth and the “You drool when you sleep.” My girl!!

“PETER JOHNSON IS HERE!” Lol

“Yeah, Grover, I heard him the first time.” Mr. D is so funny. I feel like he’s severely underrated in book canon

“But did you?” Sassy Percy my beloved

“Excuse me your highness.” Lmao. I love how Mr. D cringed at that

Nooo not Mr. D messing with Percy and making him like that he’s Percy’s father 💀💀 Honestly, that scene is hard to watch. It’s too embarrassing for me lmao

The way that Chiron was just standing in the doorway is funny 🧍‍♂️

“Oh, no, Mr. D is not your father.” “I could be.” “Yes, but are you?” “Why must you ruin everything?” Lol Chiron and Mr. D are an underrated comedic duo

Mr. D telling Grover not to overthink it is cute. Glad to see that Mr. D’s care for the satyrs is present in the show

I like how Annabeth showed Percy around camp in the book. Chiron showing Percy around is fine, but it was better with Annabeth

Camp looks cool. It doesn’t look anything like how I personally imagined it, but I like how they made chb. The cabins look cool. A lot cooler than I ever imagined them lmao

Chiron’s horse ass 💀

The blue jellybeans 🥺

Luke my beloathed

IS THAR JUNIPER????! Or just some random wood nymph

Mr. D and Chiron as besties. You can pry that from my cold dead hands

“I assume that they would get really squishy or something. Like an old banana, maybe.” Yes, Grover, that’s exactly what would happen if a human was crushed to death. Grover’s not even wrong. His delivery of the line is just cute and hilarious

Mr. D is my favorite character so far. His casting is perfect imo. No notes

I like how they’ve done Percy’s nightmares so far. It’s kinda cool how the nigh are scenes are just there without any explanation so you as a viewer are like ??? but the moment you see Percy jerk awake you’re like “oh, nightmare!”

Luke explaining demigod qualities to Percy instead of Annabeth?? Please stop stealing roles from my girl

Hearing Luke speak makes me want to scream. I know what you are, Luke 😠

Clarisse!!! I love her. Her actress is so pretty

Badass demigod in a wheelchair doing archery. Ok, I absolutely love that!

Percy sucks at archery. Love my loser son

Percy in welding gear is so cute. He also sucks at it but at least he looks adorable

“Is there a Greek god of disappointment? Maybe someone should as him if he’s missing a kid.” Oh, Percy. He’s so relatable. Love this little dude

“They like the smell of begging.” Lmao

Percy burning the blue jellybeans to talk to his mom 🥺🥺 Percy saying he thinks he’s made friends. I just know Luke’s betrayal is going to hurt

“Ignoring me is one thing, but he doesn’t get to ignore you…I’m going to make him see us both.” Momma’s boy 🩷🩷

Clarisse’s delivery in the bathroom scene is so good. Love her

That being said, the bathroom scene is not great. Very underwhelming

Annabeth just stalking Percy is hilarious

Leah is such a good Annabeth. Absolutely love how she portrays her. That’s my daughter!!

“She’s my little sister.” Then why did you betray her, Luke. Why did you ask her if she loved you in the 5th book, Luke 😒

NO WHY ARE THEY PRONOUNCING THALIA LIKE THAT?!

The weapons and armor look so fake to me

Annabeth calling Percy sunshine is so cute wtf

ANNABETH FIXING PERCY’S STRAP ON HIS ARMOR!!!

Annabeth’s invisibility cap is so funny. I love it

The swords are so tiny??

Percy just by himself in the woods during capture the flag is so funny. He’s just a baby boy

I am once again saying that I love Clarisse. She’s perfect

Percy is doing so good during his fight in capture the flag. Also Clarisse’s scream when Percy breaks her spear is hilarious.

“Were you here the whole time?” “Yes.” STOP THIS IS WHY I LOVE ANNABETH

“I’m sorry.” *pushes Percy into the lake* Love that

Claiming scene is boring. The book does it better

Also no hellhound? What’s up with that? That’s kind of important

“Who stole it?” “You did.” “What?!” PERCY BABY I’M SORRY BUT THEY’RE FRAMING YOU. MY BOY IS INNOCENT (except for all the atrocities)

“I am Sally Jackson’s son!” “Who’s Sally Jackson?” “She’s the one that cared enough to call herself my mother!” <- I love momma’s boy Percy

I kind of wish Percy figured out Sally was still alive and wasn’t told. I like how they handled Percy accepting the quest in the book better. It felt more authentic to Percy’s character

Ok, I like this episode a lot better than the first one. They’ve changed some things around that I think they should have kept, but otherwise the show is looking good. There was not enough Annabeth in this episode. I don’t know why they are taking away all her roles and giving them to other characters, and I don’t like it. Give me Percy and Annabeth bonding before the quest or give me death. I still feel like the show is not doing a good job of showing me why I should care about the characters and the plot, but I have hope that that changes

#pjo adaptation #percy jackson #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #skys post

[ravendruid]

Game Night

This fic is part of the Critter Genfic Bingo to fulfill the Game Night and Modern AU slots, and is set in my Gamer AU. Read on AO3

Vax’ildan rarely gets to spend his own money on games these days as they are often gently covered by his subscribers, but a new game caught him unaware, so he didn’t have time to set up a donation goal or even make a poll to ascertain interest from his followers. The plan was simple: Vax was going to record his first playthrough of the game in solo mode and finally give YouTube a try. If it got a good response, then he would ask a friend or two if they wanted to play with him on stream. However, as his plans are wont to do, everything went down the drain when he mentioned buying the game on his next stream, and chat begged him to play live. 

“Well, I guess that answers it,” Vax jokingly replied to everyone’s requests. “Let me talk to some friends and see if anyone is up for it. Hopefully, I’ll have a group for the next stream. How does that sound?”

Vax’s chat went wild with names and requests of other streamers he could ask to play with him, but the main name in common was very clear: Keyleth. It took him a while to cede to ask her, but he made no promises that he would be able to convince her to play the game. In the end, it was easier than he thought. All Vax had to do was tell his girlfriend that she could customize her character and show her the different options for races and classes, and she was in. The next challenge was finding two more people to play, which Keyleth also fixed by asking Percy, who in turn asked Vex’ahlia. So a party was formed, with Keyleth and Vax squad streaming so their viewers could watch both their points of vision.

“What are you guys playing,” Vax asks as he starts building his character. His is an easy choice to make, and he starts customizing a half-elf rogue to look slightly like him as his chat flies in approval and suggestions. 

“I think I might try a ranger,” Vex’ahlia replies. Because she’s not streaming today, the audience will have to wait to see the reveal of her character, but on Vex’s screen is a female half-elf with a ponytail braid.

“Are you going to get a bear companion and call him Trinket, dear?” Percival teases his girlfriend. Everyone in Vax and Keyleth’s audience is familiar with Trinket, Vex’s large Newfoundland dog. At almost 70 kg, Trinket’s massive form and shaggy brown hair make him resemble a bear, which is where the joke came from one day during Vex’s first streams.

“Don’t tempt me, Percival.”

“What about you, Freddie?” Vax leans back on his chair, admiring his character. 

“I’m playing a human fighter, of course.”

“Chat is asking if you’re going melee,” Vax leans in to read the questions on his screen.

“No. I’ll be ranged.”

“Keyleth, darling, what are you playing? You’re so quiet.” Vex mutters, adding piercings to her character.

“Oh? Sorry, there are so many options and hairs. It’s a lot,” Keyleth sounds and looks overwhelmed. She’s not used to playing this type of game, especially for the first time on stream. 

“It’s okay, darling. Take your time.” Vex’ahlia reassures.

One of Keyleth’s biggest insecurities about streaming a game that is so out of her comfort zone was related to how her regular audience would react to the change. She usually streams cozy games that a lot of people use for body-doubling, and she loves providing everyone with a safe environment where they can go to escape from their daily lives. An adventure roleplaying game with a lot of action, dialogues, and possibly fights is not what her target audience usually looks for. However, Keyleth was pleasantly surprised—and relieved—when the poll results came in favor of her playing the game on stream. It turned out that a lot of Keyleth’s followers were avid players of tabletop roleplaying games or were generally interested in the game itself.

Although she felt better about how her audience would respond to the new game, Keyleth was still worried about stepping out of the bubble that shielded her from trolls. With a much more popular game being streamed—adding the fact that she is a woman with her camera on—Keyleth still couldn’t shake the fear that something bad could happen during the streams, which is why she recruited her best moderators, Pike and Grog, who were more than happy to stay on the sidelines and keep everyone on track.

“Okay, I think I’m done. Sorry, it took me so long,” Keyleth finally announces an hour after the stream starts. On her screen is a female half-elf druid with space buns and braids almost as red as Keyleth’s hair. She quickly reads the chat and smiles at everyone’s compliments about her character, most saying how fun her hair looks.

“No problem, love. Is everyone ready?” Vax asks. Everyone agrees, so they quickly name their characters after themselves before they move on to the next screen.

“We have to make another one?” Keyleth shouts, raising her hands to her head. On everyone’s screen is another character whose race and appearance can also be customized.

“What the fuck is a guardian,” Vex’ahlia asks, going over the different races available.

“I think it’s someone who will protect you and keep you alive,” Vax explains, quickly building a generic male elf. “You don’t have to fully customize them if you don’t want to. Just pick a race and whatever you want them to look like, I guess.”

“Yeah, right…” Keyleth looks distraught at her screen. “You know what… Chat, pick a race,” Keyleth asks. Her chat window quickly fills up with people firing races: there are a few elves, some asking for a dwarf, and a couple of people asking for a Githyanki, but the majority of the requests seem to be Drow, which is the preset anyway. It doesn’t take everyone a long time to finish building their guardians, and finally, the game begins. 

A lot of fun is had for the next few hours: Vax steals everything he can get his hands on (and flirts with the vampire NPC), a wizard is saved from a portal, and the group goes through their first dungeon, the overgrown ruins of an old temple where they find a sarcophagus in a dank crypt.

“Guys, I found a sarcophagus. Do you think it has a treasure inside?” Vex’ahlia asks. 

“We should investigate,” Percy crosses the threshold and waits for Vex to join him before he continues. 

For some reason, neither of them notices the notification in the corner that says they failed several perception checks, so once Vex’s character is by Percy’s side, he opens the lid to the tomb, making several explosions go off and fire erupt in the chamber.

“Vex’ahlia!” Percy screams in real life, jumping out of his chair so fast it tumbles back and hits the wooden floor with a loud thud. 

“I’m alright, darling,” Vex reassures him from the room next door, cackling at her boyfriend’s reaction. Her and Percy’s portraits on the left side of the screen are gray with a skull symbol next to them, indicating both characters are dead.

“What the fuck happened? I was gone for thirty seconds,” Vax shouts, sitting on his chair. He had just gone to the kitchen really quickly to grab some water for himself and Keyleth when he heard Keyleth’s screams.

“When was the last time you saved, brother?” Vex manages to ask, still laughing. 

“Right before we walked into this room.” Vax shakes his head, unamused. “Are you okay, Freddie?”

“Ye–yeah, I think so. That was—” Percy draws a long breath and releases it slowly, and when he speaks again, his heart has slowed, and his voice is back to normal, “—unexpected.”

Once Vax reloads the game, he goes through the room ahead of everyone to make sure he disarms every trap before they loot the sarcophagus. “Let this be a lesson about greed, everyone,” He jokes once the valuables are successfully stashed in his inventory.

Because one tragedy doesn’t come by itself, not long after, the party is suddenly ambushed by undead skeletons, making Keyleth scream in panic as her character gets knocked unconscious by one before she gets a turn to do anything. 

“I don’t think we’re strong enough to defeat these guys,” She cries.

“Yeah, we are, look.” Vax’s character appears next to Keyleth’s and stabs the skeleton that attacked her twice, leaving it with two HP. “I’ll always be here to save you, Kiki.” Vax’ildan being cheesy with his girlfriend on stream is not news, but it still manages to send both their chats over the edge. This will surely make the next fanmade supercut.

“Alright, lovebirds. Shall we kill these assholes, then?” Vex teases them. 

The battle doesn’t draw long once Keyleth’s character is back up—still at one HP, but up nonetheless—and this time, when they find another sarcophagus, the group allows Vax to spearhead the party.

“Well, that was fun, right, everyone?” Vax asks a few minutes later, once they get a new NPC ally and discover an arcane book that they put away to ask their wizard friend to check later. 

“Yeah. I wasn’t expecting it to be so fun,” Keyleth admits, leaning back in her chair and pulling her hoodie up. She can feel her battery draining fast. They have been streaming for a few hours longer than what she usually streams for, and her body is already reacting to it. 

“Even when I died,” Vex’ahlia jokes, petting Trinket’s head on her lap. She’s glad she’s not on camera today. Her hair is a mess and she’s wearing a stained t-shirt she stole from Percy’s drawer. 

“I did not like that part at all,” Percy chimes in, combing a hand through his shock-white hair and making it messier than it was.

“Just be glad I saved right before you two dingus went and set all the traps off,” Vax rolls his eyes at his sister and her boyfriend. His gaze darts over his screen to Keyleth’s stream, and he sees her bury herself in her hoodie and pull her knees up to her chest. For others, it might look like she’s just cold and getting comfortable, but Vax knows she’s overwhelmed and overstimulated, and she needs to relax, so he seamlessly brings the stream to an end with the promise of another one very soon.

More adventures await this group of chucklefucks, many mistakes and perception check failures that lead to not-so-good results, a lot of flirting with NPCs—Vax finds himself torn between the Vampire and the Wizard—and even a few not-safe-for-work unexpected scenes that make Keyleth slide down her chair and hide under her desk. At the end of the day, there is no denying that game night in general, and the new game in particular, is a huge success overall, and that everyone has plenty of fun playing and watching it.

#critical role #cr fic #critter genfic bingo #vox machina #perc'ahlia #vaxleth #modern au #gamer au #I'm so glad to finally post this. It has been tormenting me for over a week. #This is the fic I wrote and then decided to start again from scratch.

[just-1other-nerd]

I think we as a fandom don't talk enough about the fact that the added "Who's the traitor" drama in episode 3 was a nice change.

When the episode started and Percy got the prophecy and learned about the traitor part, you could see that bit was bothering him. Naturally, a friend betraying him isn't understandable for someone who's fatal flaw is loyalty and it was great to see Percy trying to wrap his mind around that concept. (Top performance from Walker in this scene)

I kinda disliked how they dealt with this in the book by brushing it off as "Prophecies often aren't what they seem and their cryptic nature just the way it is, better not to thing about it too much". It took the weight from that potential danger.

In they show they then proceeded to make Percy choose Annabeth even though their relationship is very cold at this point but she is in fact very competent. And as it later turns out, Percy calculated the prophecy into his decision because he never thought they'd get along, thus she can't be a friend who betrays him. This is a smart choice on Percy's account, even though he's eventually proven wrong because they become friends.

And then there's Grover. When Percy goes to him to tell him his decision, it is framed by cinematic tricks as if Percy suspects Grover to be the traitor which is smart from a filmmaking perspective because this way they make him suspicious to the viewer and he would make a great mislead. It also would make sense that Percy would think this way because Grover already betrayed him when he got him kicked out of school and this way he'll see it coming. But then of course this turns out not to be true as well, in fact Percy had fully trusted Grover, even so much that he thinks he's the one person who'll never betray him.

And that once again made sense for Percy's character since paranoia isn't in Mr Loyalty's blood, he can't be walking around suspicious of everyone so he makes the choices that make him feel secure.

I think that the resulting drama of this conflict was so good for multiple reasons. This way the characters have to overcome internal and external struggles to be able to work together as a team and that makes their teamwork feel more earned. Their relationships become stronger by overcoming that conflict: Percy knows more about Grover's and Annabeth's backstories now and can understand them better, Grover knows that his best friend doesn't blame him anymore and trusts him and his abitity to do the job and the thing that stood between Annabeth and Percy is out of the way now, Percy and Annabeth are truthful about the offers Medusa and Alecto proposed towards them and show where their loyalty lies. The drama was also engaging to watch even if you know who's the traitor. I asked myself questions like how will this effect them, will they be able to move on? Credit to the writers for those excellent character dynamics and dialogue bits and to the actors for those stellar performances.

The changes make it so that the prophecy directly influences Percy and his relationships in the series and I really liked that especially compared to the book where a Damocle's sword of betrayal was hanging over his head and he just acted like it was almost nothing.

#percy jackson #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #grover underwood #annabeth chase

[setzappersto-pew]

Alright, I'll get on my soapbox again.

In regards to "the kids seem to know everything": this stems from the shorter runtime. There's not enough time to have them hem and haw and be confused for many of their encounters. This may be a detriment to the suspense and the tension, but not enough for me to cry foul. Plus, they're smart! They've prepared or have been prepared for this! It was a quick cut from Santa Monica to Crusty's, implying they took Hermes' cab and he told them about the secret entrance. Hermes probably told them about Procrustes as well. As funny as this scene in the book was, it's okay to gloss over it a little, especially for Disney's ratings. Additionally, all of Percy's confusion on the book, while accurate to the book character, was meant as a teaching moment for the reader to learn about mythology alongside Percy. The viewers here are still learning, but they have less time to do it in. So exposition and expedition is necessary.

It doesn't seem impossible or improbable that Percy would jump to accusing Kronos. Ares had talked about Kronos before, Percy already maybe knew a little bit. Nearly all his dreams take place in those vast sandy dunes around Tartarus, so he made the connection that the voice in his dreams (who is not Hades, he realizes) was coming from there. All the pieces were there, they were shown and not explicitly laid out, and Percy connected the dots. They also "connected the dots" and think Clarisse stole the bolt, so clearly they don't know everything.

In regards to Sally: do you mean to tell me that a single mother of a stubborn, impertinent, ND child who is in mortal danger due to being a demigod would never get frustrated with the situation or with her 8-year-old son who is throwing a stubborn fit in the backseat? Any mother under normal circumstances might. It's clear she has anxiety about Percy's safety, it's clear she's stressed about how best to help him. She has to make hard choices, choices that will upset Percy in the moment because he's 8. He's internalized the guilt about being difficult already (through no fault of either of them), and to a troubled 8-year-old mind it might feel like everyone including your mother is against you. So she snaps a little, has to be a lot more firm because he won't budge and is being an impertinent little shit by locking the door. BUT...what this tells me, what her talk with Poseidon tells me, what her interactions with Percy in episode 1 tell me...is that she made an effort to be more patient and to ensure Percy never felt that way ever again. Percy does not seem mad at her for anything, like he is in the moment in the flashback. He feels so safe with her. She's firmly on his side, makes sure he knows that's he's not broken, he's a miracle, she doesn't want them to be apart but it has to happen. 12-year-old Percy understands, 8-year-old Percy doesn't. They showed us the past and the present to show the development of Sally's parenting, to show us the hard choices she had to make, to show us her humanity, to show us both her and Percy's struggles and how it colors their relationship. In the book, we see Sally through Percy's POV, so she's more idealized. Here, we're taken out of the POV and can see Sally struggle.

I know critical thinking is not as easy for some people. If it's not spelled out obvious, some just don't get it. If so, this is not meant to tell you to just do better. This is directed at those who bitch and moan at these disparities and complain about the lack of "show, don't tell". There is A LOT of exposition by necessity. Some things are glossed over and expedited for brevity's sake. But when the examples above are shown and not told, when there are implications in the subtext, y'all don't pick up on it and claim that it came out of nowhere or it's out of place...and that must mean that this show sucks and is terrible, right? 😑

I'll say it again: judge the show for what it is and what it does, not for what it didn't do or could have done. You're allowed to have your own opinions, but please try to form them based on actual constructive criticism.

#percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson #sally jackson #pjo tv #riordanverse

[sunny-rose]

Watched the first episode of the PJO TV show and I have Thoughts.

Warning: this is long, entirely too nitpicky, and written like an English essay (sorry). It also isn't wholly positive so there's that...

I've come to accept that we'll probably never get a perfect adaptation of PJO but that doesn't mean I'm not slightly disappointed by the amount of small details that were omitted or outright changed for the television show.

It's very minor, little touches that at first appear insignificant or trivial but ultimately lead to a watered-down story and an experience that lacks the depth the books have.

The first thing that comes to mind is when Percy pushes Nancy Bobofit into the fountain. Not only could we have avoided the Disney Effect Budget rearing its ugly head, having the ambiguity from the book would have added a great layer of mystery to who Percy is and what his powers are.

In the books, Percy doesn't see Nancy go into the fountain at all. He states, "I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain" (9). I'm no film director, but a good way to interpret this scene might have been to have a quick cut - like implying that Percy blinked and she was in the fountain - instead of showing her being Force pushed into the fountain. It keeps Percy's powers ambiguous and continues to build up intrigue. It's about the suspense of that moment, rather than showcasing Percy as a demigod early.

Another detail I wish they'd left alone was the timing of Percy learning that he's a half-blood. I understand that they wanted the explanation to occur early in order to keep viewers watching and have them understand the premise but I think it was a mistake to have Sally bring it up on their trip to to the cabin because it ruins the tension. It's implied in the books that Sally knows something happened to Percy at Yancy, but she doesn't want to push him on it. And Percy doesn't want to mention it because he doesn't want to cut their vacation short: "But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that" (40). This is EXCELLENT characterization. We can tell that Sally is stressed, that this cabin is her escape. Percy mentions, "As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face" (37). Percy, sweet, kind, Percy doesn't want to ruin his mother. He knows this trip means a lot to her, that it's a brief moment away from Gabe and the complications of her life and he doesn't want to take that away from her. It's STRONG characterization and allows us as viewers to see Percy as something more than a trouble kid; he really loves his mom. Having Percy learn about being a half-blood at the cabin helps expedite the plot but it takes away from a genuinely sweet and good moment for him, takes something away from his character.

I'm not even going to talk about omitting the Fates I'm going to admit full stop that seems weird to me. It's such a small detail, could've been like a ten second scene that adds to the weirdness and mystery but they just didn't?? Go for it?? That's fine. (Honestly they probably should've cut out Grover telling the principal that Percy pushed Nancy into the fountain and replaced it with the Fates but hey. I'm just a uni student).

My final gripe about subtext erasure from the television show is, of course, Gabe. I can absolutely 100% get behind the idea of why they turned down the implications about Gabe. This TVLINE article by Keisha Hatchett contains interviews with the crew of the PJO TV show and in one of them, Rebecca Riordan explains that, "When you see it visually, it is triggering and difficult to watch. That is why we came at Gabe in a different way, because this isn’t supposed to be a horror show." I can absolutely agree that toning Gabe down was the right choice, especially considering the age range for the television show. I just wish it had kept a bit more of the subtext. Having Gabe shake Percy down to cash might've been a little much but there were smaller details in his conversation with Sally that could've been kept that would've flown over kids' heads but had allowed more mature audiences to realize that Gabe wasn't just your average douche.

In the books when Sally asks to go to Montauk, Gabe asks, "So this money for your trip... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?" (35). As a child, the implication of this completely and totally flew over my head. Even as a high school student this line didn't seem weird to me at all. It was only now, in my last year of university, as I was rereading the series, that I thought to myself, "That's so controlling wtf." To imply that Sally, a woman with a job, is being financially controlled by douchebag Gabe is pretty chilling and although it is undoubtedly still abuse, it's also something that I think wouldn't go too far. As it stands, Gabe feels a little bit toothless and if they stick to his canon fate, it'll feel a little bit unwarranted. In that same TVLine article, John Steinberg mentions that, "When you’re reading a story, you can read past the parts that could be upsetting if you’ve stopped to give them more thought. You don’t really get to do that with the show. It’s all in your face and it’s all presented in a much louder way.” I think that even keeping just this one line isn't too "in your face" but still gets across how much of an absolute jackass Gabe is.

I also think that although it was a strong choice to have Sally stand up to Gabe immediately, I do have a bit of an issue with her characterization. One of the first paragraphs you get when you meet Sally is Percy specifically stating, "I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even more or Gabe" (33). The books make it a point to show that despite Sally being on the quieter side, it doesn't mean she isn't an absolute badass. She's calm, rational, and cool during the Minotaur scene and then of course kicks ass during The Battle of Manhattan. The books have proven over and over again that Sally's kind, sweet nature is a strength and not a weakness. I can absolutely get behind seeing this side of her earlier in the TV show, I'm just concerned that they're forsaking her softer nature for something more "cool mom." Part of what I like so much about Sally is her kindness, the way she seems to be the embodiment of a warm hug on a hard day. It's not the vibe I got from her TV show counterpart.

Okay that's it, that's all my grievances. I've only seen the first episode and despite this mega page of my negativity I still think that the show is pretty good! It's infinitely better than what we got before and I can tell that there's so much passion and love put into the show. The young actors who are portraying the starring roles are absolutely brilliant, they're killing it, and I hope they have a bright future. I think the show looks great considering it's a Disney+ show (I've seen your special effects, Mouse) and I genuinely hope that the show is enjoyed by old fans and new ones. My brother said, "Hey, the first half was pretty cool" before the pacing kinda nosed dive off a cliff - high praise indeed.

I'm probably still going to watch the show, just to sate my own curiosity (though I'm probably NOT going to write another English essay on why I wish we'd kept some subtext) and I hope that everyone who's sticking with the show enjoys it. I don't think it's bad by any means, I'm just a pretentious literature nerd and this is how I digest media.

So yeah, here's to another decade of Percy Jackson!

#percy jackson #pjo tv show #if you made it allllllll the way to the bottom of this post you're amazing #I don't want to read this thing and I wrote it #again don't hate the show or anything I just think we left a lot of nuance on the table and that makes me sad so I had to exorcise it

[angeltannis]

Pros of Bride of Frankenstein (1935):

-The Bride looked really fucking cool. I loved her snappy, almost animalistic head movements.

-I liked learning more about the first monster, though he continues to be so tragic :c I loved the idea of him befriending a blind man who couldn’t see him to be afraid of him. And when the monster sympathetic cries with the guy!! 😭

-I guess this movie is considered by some “the earliest queer horror film”? Because of Frankenstein and Pretorius’ weird thing going on, with them creating life together. Also apparently the director of both Frankenstein and BoF was an openly gay man, so both the queer interpretations of BoF and the whole ordeal of the monster in general makes a lot more sense through that lens.

With Frankenstein being my favorite of the classic horror movies I’ve watched so far, it got me a little emotional to think about a gay person nearly a hundred years ago making a story that connected with a modern gay viewer (me) without me even knowing that tidbit. The pain radiates.

-not necessarily a pro or a con, but I thought it was wild how they caught audiences up by having actors portraying Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron sitting around talking about the first movie, lmao. What a weird choice. I guess it worked, though.

Cons:

-why was The Bride in the movie for less than five minutes?!? The way these old movies culminate in the last 10-15 minutes and then just abruptly end drives me nuts!!

-Hays code censorship could be very clearly felt in this movie. The weird ass “happy ending” of the monster killing himself and the bride in the name of saving the doctor (who was never anything but cruel to him) was strange as hell.

If they wanted to have a happy ending, why not have the monsters establish a friendship and leave somewhere together 😭 Guessing this had something to do with it, though:

-I thought there’d be some explanation as to why her hair is Like That. There is not.

Overall rating: 7/10

Note: I was in a pretty bad mood when I watched this, so I may not have been in a space to fully appreciate it. I may revisit this film at some point.

#horror #the great horror movie watchathon #also the version I watched was ‘’colorized’’ which I assumed was professionally done until I started the movie #and it was fucking colored by AI #so it kept shifting colors constantly in that uncanny AI way #there was a significant audio delay too 😑

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Legend of Vox Machina: Belly of the Beast (2x11)

Another great episode, sorry to be a broken record!

Cons:

This whole show, I've been so impressed with their ability to get in all the most iconic lines I remember from the stream. Even if the circumstances changed, most of the epic dialogue has made it in. This was the first time I fully expected a line to be in a scene, and it didn't come. During the Scanlan and Kaylie scene, Scanlan said during the stream something along the lines of "of my many faults, ego is one of them. So now, knowing you're a part of me, makes me love you even more." It was a line so good that Matt gave him advantage on his persuasion check. I was sad it didn't make the cut! I feel like thematically it still would have worked. It's funny, but also it still works for the tone of the scene.

The immovable rod being replaced with a sword that Kaylie gives Scanlan is fine, but I wish there had been one line of dialogue somewhere to explain what the sword did, as it ends up being so pivotal later. Maybe I'm underestimating the viewers and it's completely understandable as is, just a small note.

The check-ins between Umbrasyl and Thordak don't seem to add much. It feels like they're only there to remind us again that Umbrasyl wants Vestiges, and Thordak is impatient with him. Not a bad scene, just not anything particularly needed, I feel.

Pros:

The Vax stuff with the Matron of Ravens is STUNNING. Also, did anybody else notice that when we see him with the golden threads of fate in the leadup to her conversation with him, there are six threads? One for the other six members of Vox Machina, perhaps? Everything about the buildup and the imagery and Vax's newfound peace with his fate is making me want to weep.

You start off with seeing him scared, then there's the conversation with Scanlan where Scanlan tells Vax not to let fear hold him back, that he needs to "take the plunge". He's talking about himself and Kaylie as much as he is about Vax's problems, but it resonates so well, and we see Vax take that to heart as he accepts his fate with the Matron later on, diving into the pool of blood.

I love Vex and Keyleth following Vax to the temple... Vex saying "do not go far from me", and Vax gives the tiniest little nod, but pulls away and goes in alone... the SYMBOLISM. The HEARTBREAK. It's such a nice contrast, seeing Vex and Keyleth standing outside, completely isolated from the trial Vax must face, wanting to be there to support him but not knowing how. They discuss Keyleth's feelings for Vax, and Vex tells her: "don't let him get away." Which like. OUCH. But anyway. I love it when Vex and Keyleth get their moments.

I could wax poetic about the visuals of the Matron's temple and the actual meeting between her and Vax for a long time, but suffice to say, it was stunning, it's clear a lot of time and thought and energy went in to making it look as beautiful and intimidating as it possibly could. The Matron tells Vax: "My beautiful champion. There is much to fear, but not death, for it gives meaning to life." Basically, his task is to honor and protect the transitional moment between life and death, shepherd souls to their rest. I know a lot of religions and myths have similar figures, gods who are there to guide souls to the land of the dead. I always find it such a beautiful, simple, calming idea. Having someone like Vax take you by the hand as you reach the end of your life and take you where you need to go? Lovely. I'm still crying about it, though. Oof, this is all going to hurt.

Meanwhile back at the tavern, Percy is fully nerding out explaining the cool trap he wants to build. The herd seems completely numb to whatever he's on about, until Grog cuts through the technical explanation with a much more simple order to go dig a big pit. Loving Percy getting to be his nerdy self more this season, as obviously last season he had to be fully dark and sinister for most of the time. It's a good balance, because we still see him being a broody bad-ass on occasion, but he also gets to be a goofball. God, I love him.

Kaylie and the rest of Dr. Dranzel's traveling band are heading out, and Kaylie really doesn't have a lot of patience for Scanlan's frantic attempts to make amends, build a bridge towards something good between them. She basically tells him that after all that he's failed to do, he would have to do a hell of a lot of good to make up for it. Poor Scanlan is deeply shaken by the revelation of his long lost daughter, but he doesn't quite take the right lesson from his experience with her, either. He tells her that she might be the missing piece in his life, instead of framing it around her experience instead. And during the showdown with Umbrasyl, he nearly gets himself killed in his efforts to prove himself worthy. He and Vax have a moment where they both talk about the new weight they carry. "I just found out I'm the Champion of the Matron of Ravens." / "I just found out I'm a father." / "You win."

And that opening fight with Umbrasyl... so cool! I love that the trap works, because Vex does a trick shot that sets it off even though Umbrasyl saw the pressure plate. I love that they get him pinned, but he's able to break away. I wasn't sure if they'd go with Umbrasyl's ability to turn invisible, as I wasn't sure how that would work visually, but how it worked visually is that it looked SO COOL. Every time he spews acid, his gaping mouth appearing and the acid raining down when you don't know exactly where it's going to come from... everyone running around trying to do their best, but nobody can get a solid hit on him... 

And then Scanlan has his idea. This is different from how it happens in the stream, but it is so Scanlan to suggest getting inside the dragon via his asshole. Just... delightfully unhinged and unsettling imagery, everyone. I loved Pike's reaction of exasperated disgust. Scanlan takes the sword he got from Kaylie, and activates it so it's immovable. This means the dragon can't take off without poking up against the blade of the sword. Effectively pinned once again, Vox Machina does a ton of damage. But Umbrasyl manages to rip himself free, taking Scanlan and Vax with him: and Grog too, who embeds an axe in his hide and hangs on via rope as the giant dragon takes off into the air. Vex ends the episode with what we're all thinking: "oh no..."

So... yeah! I feel like I'm always a little unequal to talking about the action sequences in this show, because I'm mostly just bowled over by the creativity and variety and skill. So many moving parts, so many fights in this show, and yet each one feels distinctive and has its own bad-ass moments to shine. Our party is split once again, with Grog, Vax, and Scanlan all with Umbrasyl, while Pike, Percy, Vex, and Keyleth are on the ground, watching their friends being carried away.

One more episode to go, and then I have to wait forever for more of this amazingness!

9/10

#review #tlovm #tlovm review #critical role #the legend of vox machina

[myth-carver]

Rambly ass liveblogging impressions of Legend of Vox Machina ep 1 Japanese dub by a pro translator

I am literally just copypasting all the stuff I wrote in Discord lol...

so I started ep 1 in Japanese and my first impression is... the person they got to play Vex sounds startlingly like Laura holy shit 😂

the writing in the first couple minutes was ok, they preserved some of the jokes fairly well but ofc some things just don't translate very well

the opening with the LotR type dudes was still pretty funny but the names of the merc groups I didn't feel like they completely succeeded in keeping the joke there, unsurprising since that would be a hard reference to translate

oh I turned on the Japanese subtitles and they're a straight translation of the English rather than being CC of the Japanese dub, damn. I mean that's great for Japanese viewers that want the closest-to-the-original experience that they can get but less helpful for yours truly lmao

writing this down for my own notes/amusement...

Personal pronouns and grammar:

Vax: ore. so far he's bog standard modern Japanese male like you'd hear as the main character of basically anything anywhere lol.

Vex: watashi, speaks kinda femme with ~wa on the ends of her sentences

Pike: watashi or atashi, probably watashi, will listen for another one. grammar is pretty bog standard modern Japanese girl style but it's funny to hear her use ~deshou bc I'd picture her being the type not to break out desu/masu with her friends personally

Keyleth: watashi, so far bog standard modern Japanese female, she feels a little less formal than I would expect

Percy: ore. he's a lot more informal/less old timey-sounding in Japanese than he usually is in English, but tbh there's not a good way to translate the way he talks that wouldn't also make him sound like kind of a weirdo/imply unintended stuff so it's probably for the best

Scanlan: ok he first used boku when seducing the tavern keeper's daughter but when he's alone with VM he uses ore. Boku has got more of a like softer nonthreatening image to it and musical artists often use 'kimi' and 'boku' for their 'you' and 'me' in song lyrics, so I could see him using it on purpose to try to project that 'romantic lead' kind of image lmao. Ore is more what you expect to hear a typical young guy use, it's kind of macho.

Grog: ore, not much to say here, he's exactly what you'd expect a big macho bruiser dude to sound like. He doesn't quite have Travis's funny sideways way of phrasing things unfortunately, it's more standard Japanese. They did not use any dialect or anything to sub for the accent but that sort of thing is hard to translate.

oh my god I got to Scanlan's bedroom scene 😂

they don't really translate the joke in the song alas, like I think it's still a funny scene without it but

"My lady's rose I will pluck/My love it's time for us to (fuck)" got turned into "Kimi no hanabira wa / Mou boku no mono sa" meaning "Your petals now belong to me" or "your petals are now mine" they didn't try to put in a pun here but they did keep the meter and rhyme lmao

amusingly when Percy asks Scanlan to put on some pants, they kept that exact line in Japanese, but "pantsu" in Japanese means specifically underwear so Japanese Percy is asking something a little different 😂

Japanese Scanlan is very polite to the tavern keeper. 😂

I feel like the dub writing is pretty sharp. I haven't checked out the more direct translation in the subtitles yet but they gave the dub script to a competent dialogue writer. the gang is as funny to listen to bantering with each other in Japanese as I would expect Vox Machina ought to be.

ironically in some ways it's easier to listen to than the original cast bc they're just actors doing a job and less self conscious about the fact that they're Acting as their D&D characters lmao

it's not quite the first time the CR gang ever got into a recording booth as Vox Machina but almost lol

lmaoooooo when Keyleth's like "Vex and Vax only care about themselves" Japanese Vex and Vax are like "we'll fucking kill you"

boo when Scanlan's like "I want to bed everyone in the realm" they translated it as "I want to bed every girl in the realm"

not surprised though sigh

they translated the "drain the basilisk" joke pretty directly but Japanese viewers if they're into this kind of cartoon do probably know what a basilisk is so

...ok I really like Scanlan's actor

when he gets on a roll he resembles Sam kinda like 3/4ths of the way lmao and he can do the falsetto shriek thing

and I do feel like he captures the spirit of the original performance pretty well, even thinking about the original tabletop performance

oof they tried on the "introducing Vox Machina" song but that one was a lot rougher than the previous song 😂 I imagine adapting all these songs was probably pretty hard to pull off

oh my god I can't decide if Kima sounds so off bc they're having her use really polite grammar since she's talking to Uriel or if they really just gave her Generic Girl Femme Grammar, god I hope it's the first one

but she used "kashira" ffs

that's like something you expect to hear out of the mouth of the main character's sweet middle aged anime mom who's gonna die in the 2nd scene lmao

....lmao Pike's dubious blessing is funnier in Japanese tbh

I felt like Ashley didn't quite know what to do with the scene in the original version, or maybe the dialogue was just a little off idk? but Japanese Pike flubs it up a little bit and is like "I'm sure everything'll be, uh, super awesome!" that kind of mood 😂

it's the same idea as the original ofc but maybe a little better executed

I'm ngl obviously nothing can beat the original Critical Role cast when it comes to the actual voices, but I kind of like the dialogue writing better in Japanese 😂

I think so far my only real gripe with the dub is they should've used Keyleth's speaking style for Pike and Pike's speaking style for Keyleth lmao. neither of them sounds totally off, it's not super bad or anything, but Pike sounds a smidgen more goody two shoes than she should and Keyleth sounds a smidgen less goody two shoes than she should

I'm sure that just comes down to, y'know, the person doing this adaptation is only working off these episodes to interpret who these characters are as people

one thing that is interesting to me is Japanese Percy and Vax are very very close in speaking style

it feels like Vax leans sliiiightly more toward "nice approachable guy in his 20s" and Percy is slightly more clipped/businesslike, but very slight differences at best

ok that's the end of ep 1, I'll probably finish watching the dub later

it is still so surreal to me that you can now watch Vox Machina speaking like 9 different languages 😂

#critical role #legend of vox machina #lovm #tlovm #cr spoilers #lovm spoilers #tlovm spoilers #lvm #lvm spoilers #my posts

[sokayisaidiot]

Why Tommy is one of THE BEST written characters in existence.

Alright, that’s it

Here I give you my fuckin Take on why Tommy is one of the best written characters out there and can easily compete with best-selling Novels like Percy Jackson and Harry Potter. I’m sick of a trashing that doesn’t even make sense. So buckle up. Here I will tell you why Tommy has one of the best written characters in history of Books and Movies. Remember, I write this all in my perspective and take many examples of other character books as well

Before this all starts, I will also talk about the main characters of some series, since Tommy has the reputation of being a “main” character.

When I look at the books I’ve read, I see a large range of characters and there way of making the story interesting.

Now, to establish a good character, we need key points of motivations, to make them relatable and bla bla blub:

Personality

Part of the story

Their Powers

Flaws

Relationships

Prized Possessions

History/the backstory

The moral and story the character tells

First tho, I want to explain some words I’m going to use here!

Mary Sue/Gary Stu:

Those are characters who are flawless, have missing chunks of personality and mostly one way written. They are easy to achieve when you are trying to make your character look badass.

Examples in some Fandoms are

·      Rey Skywalker (Star Wars Sequels 7-9)

·      Hermione Granger (Harry Potter Movies)

·      Bella Swan (Twilight)

Tree-System:

Imagine a tree. You plant something small and soon you have something giant with many branches, roots and connections. You have the seed you plant and with caring and care you let it grow. Then you have somewhat a sapling. The tree grows with the care and soon you have a tree with many branches.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personality

Negative:

Tommy’s personality is very brash and out of control = He’s barely containable in fights, going off to do his own risky plans and starting two or so fights. He can’t forgive a person very easily like Eret, who took it a long time to get forgiveness and Techno, as he shot Tubbo at the Festival. He makes decision that also cost his life like the duel because he hates losing

Tommy can be very lazy, giving the thought he wouldn’t have to do the hard work = Shown when he tries to steal the hearts of seas from Eret or potions from Techno, bargain with “drugs” by Puffy and Ponk or gives other people the work he doesn’t want to do like he did with getting cobblestone

Like a child, he often clings to close people and annoys others for attention = His desperate attempts to have company or someone praising him shows, when he tries to get Philza’s approval (or a pat on the back), constantly looking out, if Tubbo’s either okay or where his is,

He doesn’t like to wait or doing things in the long run = He constantly asks when something is finished, when they could go or in his exile, when he was allowed to go back to L’Manburg

He doesn’t show often his cooled down, scared and vulnerable side = He often overshadows his trauma with a facade of jokes and bad hidden hurt he brings out. When he talks about something bad, he’s clearly confused, not really knowing on how to understand it. Also he runs away from things he can’t control a panic attack like visiting the final control room or looking away from the holes in Logstedshire

He runs without head into a battle so often as possible = Only when they had their final showdown for the disc, Tommy was seen preparing in story, thinking it would be his last fight

---

Positive:

But as he has negative traits, his positive shows to many people clearly.

His unwavering loyalty to the closest of people = His loyalty to Tubbo, Wilbur And L’Manburg are, were and always will be a part of him. He stands against anyone who goes against that, even if it means pain in many ways.

Passionate about dear projects of his = You can see Tommy talking about his discs or see an video where he would spent days getting different discs. Those things are very known to be rare things, so for Tommy to possess it gives him somewhat power. L’Manburg was the same passion, even a bit more, as you can see he was ready to give up his most prized disk. The last and in the moment is his hotel

Bravery like no one makes him as one of the dangerous person on peoples hitlist = He stands up for others. He stood up to L’Manburg. He in the end didn’t care that he lost a life. When he sees a foe, he won’t stand down and submit, he will fight against the oppression and tell them that in the face. During the mission to get a visa, he stood against Schlatt, even if they were clearly in the loose of people and disadvantage. Or getting an apology of Sapnap for killing Niki’s fox. Fighting against 5 people with just one ally while the other is a hostage.

His leadership = There are not many people who can take it up, but Tommy is an exception. He can coordinate people with his loud voice and somewhat thought plans. He is charismatic, even if he’s not so good at it like Wilbur, he still can motivate people to fight for themselves or others. He’s seen to lead others into battle and taking in the fighting part a leading role

Unselfish. That’s one of the most arguable things about Tommy`s character = You can´t look at a kid and say he is selfish because he wants to get something dearly back. Especially Tommy, after he gave the things up, he cared about. But if something is happening again, he will lay it down to do the other thing. As seen by the egg, he had a hard time thinking what to do. He, in a long time, didn’t want to be catalyst for something to happen. Not when he in the moment could have stopped it. So doing this act for himself ones, was a good decisions, since they clearly weren’t ready for war

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part of the Story

Outside of the story:

Let’s all just get something “straight”. What would Dream SMP without Tommyinnit. Now. Don’t get me wrong. All the creators on the SMP are amazing. They are all wonderful and deserve every bit of Attention and fame they get. But just imagine.

We heard from Tubbo, he was the one, who got him into the SMP. Schlatt and Wilbur came because of a “visit”. Quackity was added because TOMMY said he was bored. And from that, we got somewhat of a tree system. As Tommy was invited and drawn into conflict by Sapnap (shoutout to best boy!), he got more people.

He also has the highest viewership and kind of shortest streams, since he is doing college next to Youtube and Streaming. He can’t give up his high viewers since all of those 200.000 (average) – closing 650.000 People (doing something like a big lore stream in prison or the disc final), choose to watch him.

Also a reminder again, Tommy has his storyline as does everyone else. When we saw Tommy and Techno during the partner up arc doing something with the dogs, they saw the start of the red vines arc BUT said they were on the wrong storyline. Tommy was asked by the eggpire writers if he wanted to be a part of the story and he said yes. Why do you think he nearly says nothing about the egg. He leaves it to the writers. Also, it was said by one of Wilbur’s Character descriptions, that Tommy was okay with others doing something with his character, while Techno was more reluctant with his.

Let me say it again, every creator is awesome and individual! Nobody should be compared to others. But with Tommy coming to the Dream SMP, there really was a change in the game.

Remember, that’s because we also have a BT (before Tommy) and AT (after Tommy) Timestamp in the wiki!

Inside of the story:

Now, with Sapnap, Alyssa, Ponk and Tommy in the first ever big conflict its shown the importance. People assume Tommy is one of the conflict bringers, even though he was dragged in it by having something stolen by Sapnap and then forced to fight with him, to get it back.

The Consequences he’s got where having his discs get stolen. This is what Tommy’s biggest character motivation was the first two seasons. Those discs are known on the server and when you think about gifting something to C!Tommy, it would be a disc.

Techno = Disc Wait

Badboyhalo = Disc Pigstep, Chirp

HBomb = Disc Pigstep, Wait

Tubbo = Stal

LazarBeam = Far

Tommy is a openminded boy who longs for funny little adventures and pranks, since he is just a young person. It’s in his nature.

So why, when he does something, are people looking on him?

Because the things he was and is a part of some of the biggest events. And him being so loud and brave and rash lets him stand out. If you look at the old (hah) Revolution of L’Manburg, who can you hear talking the most and the loudest? Tommy and Dream. They were the most outgoing about the war with Sapnap, Tubbo and Wilbur following. Fundy was more quieter (thankfully he has so much more lore now).

Tommy’s character is known to fall or be dragged head first in almost every conflict. He has connections to who? Mostly everybody. So of course he’s connected big parts to the stories.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Powers

Okay. Every “main” character or character with huge importance to the story has some kind of power. Looking at Dream, who is a “demigod” or Ranboo who I don’t even have to talk about. So what about Tommy?

Well. He doesn’t have any. Tommyinnit is one of the people, we get to have as an “human” character

Hannah = nature “Spirit”

Karl Jacobs = Timetraveller

Antfrost, Technoblade, Ranboo, Fundy = Hybrids

Dream = Something something green blob

Awesamdude, Puffy, Philza, Sapnap, Eret, Schlatt = Adding Features (wings, eyes, body parts)

Badboyhalo, Skeppy = completely different species apparently

Tommy has, as we know of the moment, a not confirmed power. The assumptions of the egg are not clear, since we haven’t seen those interact in a while. All we know is, Tommy didn’t get hurt, destroying a part and not feeling anything, while being in contact. That in canon considered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Flaws

As talked before in personality and also in an assumption, we see the pattern of loyalty and brashness repeating.

Flaws are the most important parts of a character. It shows the struggle of their adventure and learning how to live with it.

Percy Jackson learned loyalty is nothing, if you don’t have someone to project it on.

Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker learned being a hot head didn’t really bring him forward and it’s important to have a plan

Frodo Beutlin learned that it is okay taking care of yourself and what attachment means

Anakin Skywalker learned fear is controllable and it shouldn’t be a remaining part of your life

Tommy learned over the time that his rashness could hurt others, loyalty couldn’t come back to him like he gave it out and he learns even more in the coming future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relationships

Tommy’s relationships is a mess of strings. Some are badly knotted and some are very clear.

A characters connections is an important part for the character himself.

Relationships in life are

·      Enemies(-figure)

·      Rivals(-figure)

·      Friends(-figure)

·      Family(-figure)

·      Lover(-figure)

·      Complicated family(-figure)

·      Complicated friend (-figure)

Relationships are a part of everyone’s life. Not with everybody is a good relationship holdable. Either it’s because their hurting each other or another person. People change and that’s a part of life.

Tommy realized, even tho it hurt, that Techno wasn’t good for his mental state and health. It went against everything Tommy ever stood for.

And Tommy and Tubbo’s relationship wasn’t really that broken. It’s normal for friends to fight. Normal for them hit their heads in. Tommy and Tubbo were surrounded with people who were, at the time, a terrible addition to their mental life.

The Dream SMP doesn’t talk it out, hell the talking club was just destroyed because they preferred fists over words. So why do you think everything is going out with a fight, if it’s all they learned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Priced Possessions

Every character has to something a connection.

Might it be Percy Jackson and his sword

Might it be Harry with his glasses, broomstick and wand

Frodo and his stupid ring

For Tommy we all know it’s his ender chest inside and secret chest. He keeps many belongings in his chests and always has been one for those things. He kept flowers, compasses, Friendship signs and most importantly, his discs.

The care for something of items are important. Might it be a teddy, old photo or jewelry. People get protective over it, because it holds sentimental value to the person.

If you ask me, to let go of my teddy bear, I will show you my middle finger. Probably beat you up too.

You can’t just throw out your memories into a fire or pit of lava. This is just showing you never had a care and everything you had a memory with it before would have been gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

History/Backstory

We don’t have much here, but still something to work with.

A Hero doesn’t have an easy live. And it’s an said thing that every Hero needs an origin Story.

Tommy, said not really anything about his past.

All we know is that Tommy didn’t have anyone, presumably an Orphan, he knew the sleepy bois already a long time ago and he never learned on how to ride a bike, saying he never really had a family.

Signs that he didn’t even leave half a good life are:

·      his knowledge on stealing and preferring this over working for it

·      Liking to live in weird spaces like carved out holes in sides of hills (his hobbit hole or the basement by Techno) or living in his tent over a hole house

·      His liking of cobblestone and dirt, which are easy gettable blocks

·      Holding his goodies and friends close to him

·      Craving for attention or contact in general

And now for the part with the dream SMP.

We saw how it changed him. We saw his trauma and all the bad things that happened to him.

And that’s why we say his actions came from those past experiences and things. We are NOT excusing them, but showing. Past trauma CHANGES a person. It brings experience and a heavy amount of pain and anger. ESPECIALLY at a young age, you will change due to your experience in life. You will grow worried and anxious. Tommy did that. He grew more anxious, angry, scared and also experienced.

Stop saying trauma doesn’t explain it. Yes. It does. His lashing out came from his past and negative experience. Imagine growing up in a world where this is the norm. War and banishing. As well as death. Tommy has reasons why he is acting and does stuff.

Understand it. You don’t have to forgive him or anything. But understand it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The moral and the story the character tells us

When we see Tommy, we see a boy who went nearly through it all. Mental/Physical Abuse, Abandonment, War, Suicidal thoughts, betrayal, Death, etc…

He doesn’t show forgiveness for his abuser. Still has signs, that he fights with the past abuse, but he tells us a story of learning from past mistakes, that even in the darkest hours, there’s a way out. Things will, can and be ugly and those are dark hours, but in no way should you think that it’s over. Life is more than one way and can always turn into a new direction.

Life takes something old away from you. Life gives you something new. You lose someone, you find someone new. Friends can turn into enemies. Enemies can turn into friends. You can meet the weirdest people. You can meet the most amazing people. You can be alone and in the next second, you’re not. You will often lose, but you also can win if you give everything.

Life can be weird and that’s okay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Fazit (that’s german)

The thing is, he is very real for many viewers such as myself. He acts like how many teenagers his age reacts.

He doesn’t be “baby”, because he shows the “ugly” sides of trauma. He shows that attachments are good and you shouldn’t forgive your abuser. In no way. He shows that acting out and lashing out are two things that happen, when you have been in wars for many times and nearly just know that.

He has many flaws and mistakes but those make him even more real. He is showing how he is growing.

As a person, friend, (pseudo-)family.

He is real to many of the viewer since he doesn’t have any powers that are existing in our world to solve their problems. He knows that nobody would have helped him and Tubbo against Dream if he didn’t pay others.

Also that you can’t be friends with everyone and that it’s okay that not everybody likes you.

Tommy´s character is the most human and realistic character in a way of how we would react. We are humans who are lashing out and who are having ugly sides.

And also please stop saying that, since I really can relate to Tommy and I don’t want to be feeling like a “bad-written Character”…

And Don’t even get me started on Tommy’s acting dude!

He is one of the best actors and that one livestreams! In from off 200.000 – 600.000 People!

On the face cam alone is so much to see…  

·      You can see his face with each emotion shifting,

·      when something funnily weird happens, he looks dead eyes in the camera

The voice acting…

·      His breathing,

·      the stuttering in his voice,

·      THE GODDAMN EMOTIONS IN HIS FACE

HIS MUSIC CHOICE!

·      He changes the music fitting for the situations as in fighting scenes or funny moments.

·      He also has some funny bits with his music.

·      Like a goddam DJ!

The ingame character

·      His movements and head stares

·      The jumping around when he gets overactive

·      Long stops when he thinks or is sad!

You can see, I am a person from Tumblr and saw way too much bullshit around tommys character.

Stop critiquing him so badly.

You could say, I woke up and chose violence

>:D

#tommyinnit #mcyt #dream smp #character analysis #dream smp character analysis

[utilitycaster]

Would you be willing to explain your weird double-blind study of people's interpretations of media? I definitely get why many studies on that subject are impossible (or nearly impossible) to control for, but I'm very intrigued what your concept is!

Oh sure! That said I realized it's absolutely not double-blind, and I was some combination of very tired and distracted, I think, when I made those tags.

Anyway: I would love to see how different groups experiencing the same piece of media would react given different contexts within fandom, eg, one given complete access to any metanarrative they could find and one that could only consume the text without commentary. This is the part that's basically impossible to control for on any scale, because you'd pretty much need to restrict social media to an extreme extent, and also you still can't control for other fandoms/fanfic/pop culture knowledge that would drive response. You'd need a massive sample.

I've thought about this a lot w/r/t Critical Role, because I watched Campaign 1 with the knowledge of the relationships in the end as well as permanent deaths/temporary absences (eg, I knew Percy doesn't permanently die on Glintshore and I knew Scanlan would come back but that Vax dies at the end). However, I had little fandom contact, and was not watching it while it was airing so I would have had to check archives anyway. I also never watched Talks for C1 except the finale wrap-up and a handful of clips.

Notably, this meant that I found out that Percy/Keyleth was apparently a ship of some popularity only from a Sam Riegel ad read, and I had literally no idea Pike had a crush on Percy until the wrap-up (nor did anyone have it confirmed, but I hadn't even like, speculated).

I've also mentioned that because I wasn't involved in the fandom (in an attempt to avoid further C1 spoilers) for early Campaign 2 I only learned Bowlgate was a whole thing from Talks, since I, as a reasonable person, was like "oh cool justified conflict!"

And unsurprisingly from my posts this week I've been thinking a lot about both about the ways in which people interpret things because of what they've already decided to be true/desirable as an outcome, whether or not that interpretation has any validity; and how one would attempt to decide, in a summary, what was actually important for a viewer to know for plot reasons. Like, is there a point to making bowlgate a big thing in a summary if it never really was? Is there any value in covering an unrequited crush that was only mentioned in supplementary materials, when any actions involved can be reasonably interpreted as entirely platonic? What would someone who only consumed the text think was important, or even realize was a factor?

On some level this is also me asking "is my spoiler aversion worth it?" because I think it is, anecdotally, but I'd love to know if this is a widespread phenomenon.

#like...another thing to consider is that vax was far from my favorite and while I sspect this would have been true anyway #I also suspect the combination of knowing his fate as well as my later involvement in fandom contributed

[stomp-that-ho-regard]

There’s this idea that BY’s have been trying to push post-hiatus, that Laura gave Marisha ‘nothing to work with’, and that she clearly didn’t like the idea and didn’t want to go down that path. 

Hell, even on twitter about two weeks back, some dipshit claimed that Laura was “going out of her way to avoid shipping moments”. When? Where?

Right after Beau’s confession, Laura started playing Jester as being a lot more directly engaged with Beau; talking a lot, keeping track of where she was, getting even MORE frantic whenever Beau went down in battle, and generally being extra soft and cute with her. (Also, the ass smack? Hello?)

Then, she kept doing the ‘does anyone have a crush on me’ thing, and while it was mostly played for laughs, I also think she was intentionally trying to create a situation where Beau would confess directly. I absolutely believe she was fishing for a confession. Having Jester change her behavior toward Beau supports that.

What else was Laura supposed to be giving Marisha at that point? What else was she supposed to be doing to convince ‘those’ particular viewers that she was on board? She could only do so much in order to balance Jester staying in character with also using the bit of meta-knowledge she now had. If she had suddenly done anything super blatant or aggressive, it would have seemed OOC and too abrupt.

(Of course, after the hiatus-from-hell, the cast no longer cared about being abrupt and said “Fuck it! Let’s meta-game the shit out of this!”)

So no, Laura was not “going out of her way to avoid shipping moments”. She wasn’t avoiding moments at all, and in fact initiated the majority of their moments after the confession. She opened up several opportunities for Marisha to have Beau easily slip up and blurt everything out and then see what happens. (Weirdly enough, Marisha seemed to be the one holding back.)

And here’s the thing, if they had discussed it beforehand, and Laura did have a problem with it, I feel like Marisha never would’ve had Beau confess in the first place! Because what would be the point? She could’ve done what Ashley did in C1 with Pike’s crush on Percy, and kept it to herself until the campaign wrap-up. Right? That would’ve been the simpler way to go.

But instead, Marisha had Beau confess at the table, very clearly, for everyone to hear. And then the following week, on Talks Machina (the episode that BY’s love to ignore lol), she doubled down on it! Marisha was absolutely gushing about it; about Beau’s feelings, about Jester, and even about Laura. She seemed giddy. 

Do you really think that if Laura had told her ‘no’, that Marisha would have been acting that way? I don’t think so. It wouldn’t make sense for her to have been as excited as she was if there was no possibility of seeing where it could go.

Also, I really don’t think that the woman who liked these two blatantly romantic fanarts... 

...would simultaneously behind-the-scenes be going, “No. We’re not doing this.”

So I do believe they were both very much on board for turning this into something. And that’s why it suddenly getting kneecapped so aggressively stings so much, and is still confusing as fuck.

Laura has never directly addressed any of this. And though I don’t expect her to, I’m still kind of hoping she does whenever the campaign wrap-up happens. Or even any time after that. All I need to hear her say is that she was up for it, she was into it, she saw the connection they had and it would have made sense. Any or all of those answers would give us vindication.

It would shut up all the morons who have called us ‘delusional’, who say that we’re ‘making up conspiracy theories’, and that we were ‘reading things wrong’.

#op #beaujester #it would have to be laura #because at this point #i don't expect marisha to ever address this in a fully honest way #she's made it clear she wants it buried #which is really ironic #considering she's the one who injected this into the narrative in the first place