#I’d post the link but tumblr yknow

[chloe12801]

Uhh, here’s some information you may or may not like to know, someone made a p0rn video cosplayed as Trevor and it involves Mr. Raspberry jam 🫣

[aroaceleovaldez]

Tumblr kept breaking when I tried to reply to the ask about this since the post is too long, so answering this here finally:

A non-comprehensive list of misc things I’d change in HoO, since apparently people wanted me to elaborate further (Re: [This post]). Semi-off the top of my head since I don’t feel like re-reading all of HoO with notations right now. Also this will be followed up by a Things I Would Change About TOA post as well at some point, since that was also requested and kept breaking, but my brain is exhausted from getting this post set up so that will wait. I will link it [here] when I complete it.

Going under a read-more cause it’s very long. Literally Tumblr crashed like three times while I was trying to answer the original ask:

As said before (and what is a given):

1. Goes without saying - fix all the distasteful offensive character descriptions/traits. Similarly, fix the whole "these characters inexplicably look down upon their cultures" cause that's stupid and it's really annoying every time one of the Argo 2 crew brings up something about their cultures only to immediately go "but THAT'S SILLY and WEIRD."

2. Remove Calypso from the active plot, rather than the current canon retconning that doesn’t work saying that she was never actually released from Ogygia like she was supposed to be. There's no excuse for why she wasn't, unless it's supposed to be the gods sent Leo to release her to fulfill that promise, but that's not really implied to be the case at all. There's no excuse for the Olympians to just go back on their promise, since Hephaestus is established to visit Calypso regularly and basically is her only friend. It isn’t the type of thing he’d let be overlooked given all the characterization we know about Hephaestus, and given they are explicitly friends it can’t be that Olympus just “forgot” either. Also Calypso doesn't actually add anything to the plot of HoO or TOA besides serving as a love interest for Leo (not even a motive, just a love interest that "fixes him,” because he already has motive in saving Jason from being the hero of the prophecy and helping save the Argo 2 crew/camp/etc from Gaea etc etc.  Leo's romance arc completely derails the established depressive spiral/destructive character arc that's been set up for him and it basically ruins Leo's entire character. He's a tragic character! Let him be tragic until he's done being tragic and then the end of BoO and TOA can be him starting his recovery arc! (I have some thoughts for how Calypso could work removed from HoO but an active character in TOA but that’ll be for the TOA post.)

If Leo still ends up on Ogygia, then have it be clear that Calypso's already left and the island is abandoned (which imo is WAY more narratively compelling for readers of the first series, because you already know the context of the island, but for readers who don't have that context it leads to this being an interesting mystery - who was Calypso? What was this island and why do all the signs/notes left by her imply she wasn't always alone but usually was and was desperate to leave?) and Leo has to collect the scraps left behind to build an escape for himself while he goes through a fun identity crisis. At some point maybe Hephaestus shows up and Leo gets an interaction with his dad that probably does not help his identity crisis and then he goes back to the Argo 2 to have a further identity crisis about how the rest of the crew got along in his absence (a good identity crisis or a bad identity crisis? depends on how they did without him! you decide! I personally like "they managed okay" and Leo feels Really Horrible About That Cause It Feels To Him Like They Don't Need Him. I like Leo's tragic arc, okay? It's compelling.) Iirc Leo’s also the only member of the Seven who doesn’t get to have some kind of direct conversation with their godly parent, at least in-person, so yknow. It’d be nice to have. Also if you want Aro/ace Leo Valdez this is the perfect spot to put it while he's having his identity crisis on Kiss Kiss Fall In Love Island, or when he gets back.

3. Jason's stab wound in BoO is not healed by the Power Of Friendship, and instead they use the Physician's Cure for that so it doesn't feel like they're literally deus ex machina-ing their way to cheating death like 3 times in the same book. It makes more sense to use Potion Of Don't Die on Wound Of Excruciatingly Painfully Slowly Killing You instead of Whoops You're Already Dead, Just Get Better. Ctrl+Z That Real Quick.

Given they already used the Physician’s Cure on Jason, Leo doesn’t die/get revived at the end of BoO. Instead he just almost dies, probably lands in CHB’s woods somewhere, and is found and patched up with the series ending on him being on the mend and starting on the path to healing and getting help for his Numerous Issues that he was putting off for The Entire Series. Which parallels nicely to Nico basically having the same thing (overexerting his powers to near death, ends series getting medical treatment/being on the mend and the indication that he’s moving on to a happier period of his life). Again, grand happy ending rather than aggravating fake-out.

Further notes: 

- Heavily tweak Ella's character cause I get what Rick was going for, but the execution is… not awesome! Please, there's already so much ableism in HoO just. hmm. We can do better.

- Jason and Piper break up in HoO, probably around MoA when they start seeing Percy and Annabeth interacting and after they’ve had time to hang out with each other and realize their arranged relationship is Kind Of Fucked Up, Actually. (Probably something something them having gotten to spend time actually getting to know each other between TLH and MOA while they’re both at camp.) They have no problems with each other specifically and do genuinely like each other, but it just gets really awkward given all the memory manipulation and being set up as a "picture perfect couple" - emphasizing stuff like them both being children of really famous movie stars in their universe, or Jason as a son of Jupiter/Jove (an "all-father" type god) [and Juno - mother figure goddess and goddess of marriage]/"son of Rome" and Piper as a daughter of Aphrodite (goddess of love, also Aphrodite/Venus indirectly is associated as a sort of "mother of Rome" due to Aeneas). They just feel like they have too many expectations being put on their relationship and even though they do both like each other it feels too forced for them, but they’re comfortable staying just friends. This just gives way more opportunity for low-stakes character conflict among the Argo II crew outside of Monster Of The Week Chapter so things don’t feel unreasonably busy and chaotic and we actually get some consistent development. Just a nice mini-arc to follow in the downtime. Also while we’re here, more directly establish Piper’s bisexuality earlier on. If she’s already having an arc where she’s contemplating her romantic life, throw in a couple of nods to like “Piper thinking about her old childhood crush on Shel, the kid of a family friend she’d see when her and her dad visited Oklahoma” or something. Literally anything just to establish some kind of set-up to her getting a girlfriend later. Just for consistency’s sake.

- Bunkernine has a very good post about wishing the Argo II didn't have the magic plates from CHB, which I agree with in concept. Like I was just saying, MoA through BoO lacks a lot of little moments where we get to really focus in on the characters, probably in part because Rick was struggling to juggle so many parties given this was his first foray into writing a major cast that size. We can definitely cut out a lot of the random unnecessary fights and dramatic moments that don't really do anything for the plot and instead replace them with little moments of casual life on the Argo II - the scenes like those that do exist in HoO are some of HoO's most memorable moments to me! And they'd help a lot with how the characters never felt fully and properly fleshed-out. Let them exist as a cohesive group without two-to-three of them being absent at any given time! I don't think we necessarily have to remove the magic plates entirely because they do solve a fundamental problem ("where are these kids getting food?") but like, there is nothing stopping them from still cooking and just using the plates to get ingredients! Let these kids bake or something! Even just for fun! Though also I have personal headcanons about the Argo II crew's cooking skills and I really like the concept of like, during HoH or something at like 3am everybody hears something and they all suspiciously shuffle into the mess hall. And it’s just half-dead Nico standing there in his PJs making food for himself because Dammit They're IN VENICE and he’s FROM VENICE and they DON’T HAVE TIME TO STOP AT HIS OLD FAVORITE RESTAURANTS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT STILL EXIST and he Hasn't Had A Proper Meal In Weeks so By The Gods He Will Make His Mom's Old Recipes At 3am before he keels over from this quest. He just stares at everybody and goes "What are you all looking at. go away." and the rest of the crew just shuffles away awkwardly and leaves him to it. (Is Nico’s 3am meal actually good? Who knows. It is left a mystery.)

- Tweak the god characterizations. Remove the "gods splitting" thing and maybe play more with different aspects of gods/verisons of gods across history/city-states/etc presenting themselves instead. The Roman gods are not wholly equivilent to the Greek gods and it's actually really interesting from a historical perspective, and I think there's a lot you could do with that but instead it gets flatted in HoO which is sad to me. Just generally though, with the god characterizations, like. [uncomfortable pagan noises]. Which is almost impressive because it is difficult to write the Greco-Roman pantheons poorly since a good portion of them are basically just very complicated metaphors turned into personifications and characters. So they work fine for narrative purposes when applied accordingly, and yet! and yet!! Rick managed it! He managed to really bungle it in HoO and TOA. Because instead of leaning into the aspects of metaphors and dynamic characters he just fell into 2D tropes, gimmicks, and stereotypes. Off the top of my head the only deities written Okay in HoO is like. Hades/Pluto and Thanatos. (even Chiron in TOA is extremely lackluster, it's sad.) In the first series it ranges from “okay” to “actually really interesting” so it’s sad to see that drop-off and I would like it to be fixed.

Some potential examples for this: Play with the historical ties combo of like, Athena, Minerva, Enyo, Bellona, and etc! Annabeth and Reyna parallels! if the first 2 books are about the trios, let MoA be about Annabeth and Reyna and both their connections to Athena(/Bellona). Let Reyna be a second half in the Athena prophecy! It'd be cool and fit with her thematically and would set-up the whole Getting-Blessed-By-Athena thing later in BoO and make that scene feel so much cooler!

- Also retcon the whole "Hestia appears as an 8 year old for no reason" thing. And maybe also Artemis only appearing as a teen, because while Artemis has a mythological excuse, Hestia doesn't, so it just feels weird and at worst comes off as a little aphobic (depicting a character who explicitly is uninterested in relationships/romantic love as a child despite them being an immortal god with no basis for appearing as a child or even being comparatively young to other gods) with how it relates to aphobic tropes about disinterest in romance being "childish".

- Remove the "no children of Minerva" thing. Also maybe emphasize the aro/ace vibes there cause Athena being implied to be the only ace character in the entire series who a.) isn't literally a child/teen nor appears as one, and/or b.) hasn't had an unfortunate relationship that makes them disinterested in romance, but also at the same time being the only one out of herself/Hestia/Artemis to have relationships of some sort (having kids, implied to possibly be romantic but unclear) issss bad! actually! Bad tropes, don't like that. (Again aphobic tropes of disinterest in romance being “childish” and something that can be grown out of, or a result of trauma. Also it feels weird that the only a-spec characters in the series are all women. Can we have a male a-spec character please.) Just let Athena be aro/ace and vibing and occasionally having brain children cause she can do what she wants and everyone is aware of this and chill with it (And being a-spec doesn’t mean she’d be disinterested in having kids). Also maybe make her feel less cold cause "a-spec character is cold and loveless" is also an aphobic trope that PJO!Athena falls into, actually.

- Speaking of aphobic tropes, fix the Hunters! Please. Please just redo the Hunters of Artemis entirely. Holy cow. I wrote up an entire alternate oath/rules set for the Hunt because it's just so weird and poorly done. There were male Hunters of Artemis in Greek Mythology! Multiple! And most of them were chill! The "swearing off all romance" thing is also questionable, because depending on what versions of myths you’re looking at it’s potentially implied the Hunters had romantic relationships among themselves. And in Greek Mythology all the Hunters were definitely not all pre-teens. And it feels especially bad that the only adult Hunters we ever see are explicitly ex-Hunters who are heavily implied to be not ace and definitely aren't aro and are also implied to have "grown out of" being disinterested in romance. (That gagging noise you hear is me being sick of how many aphobic tropes the Hunters are juggling).

The version of the Hunters i have written up is, and I quote (from my notes): "Hunters can be any age, species, and gender identity (so long as they are comfortable enough being occasionally referred to as “Huntresses,” “Sisters,” “Maidens,” and etc). Relationships between Hunters are allowed so long as it will not endanger/distract from the Hunt or endanger any other Huntresses. Having a child is not allowed within the Hunt and any Huntresses who wish to do so must leave (purely because having a pregnant person/young child on the Hunt is dangerous, and safety is the number one priority - especially as Artemis is a protector of youth and goddess of childbirth. Once they turn like, 12 they can join, that’s fine. Everyone knows middle schoolers are the optimal combination of bloodthirstiness and ability to wield a weapon)." Also, just as like, a side-thing, I wanna see a clear-sighted mortal Huntress, because we're told thats a thing but we never see them. Closest we get is like ancient semi-immortals and Technical Nymphs, or other Huntresses who are of unspecified mortal/demigod status.

- Similar deal - fix the Amazons. they're… better but still a little wonky.

- Some slight tweaks to the Cupid Scene - Nico still has a confrontation with Cupid cause that is a very compelling scene that works well for Nico's character and informs a lot about him (and serves a purpose in a very meta way - not so much for the plot but reflecting something the first series did occasionally which was a kind of showing an example of a situation, usually a negative situation that either mirrors or directly references a type of situation a kid may find themself in, and explains and shows sympathy for the character being hurt in that situation. Which is notable because the demographic for the series is young middle schoolers and particularly neurodivergent kids, who are probably approaching a lot of new social situations or may struggle with empathy. It acts as an introduction to “unfortunately this is a bad thing that happens sometimes, and it hurts people, which is why you should be nice to this kid. Look at beloved character. Here’s an elaboration on why they’re hurt so you can understand.” So for the purposes of that, the scene of Nico getting outed would likely remain, but it would still keep the very overt “WOW THIS SUCKS, THIS IS A BAD SITUATION.” stuff) Most of the tweaks are just slight adjustments to minor prelude dialogue and/or setting, like. Jason does not forget that being gay is a thing for a second. And etc. But Nico having a very literal metaphorical conflict about grappling with how he views the concept of love by LITERALLY GETTING KICKED AROUND BY THE GOD OF LOVE is actually kinda badass from a narrative analysis perspective. This is exactly what i meant in the previous bullet points about the gods in a lot of myths and classical stories playing the roles of personifications of metaphors and that being used well. Admittedly I'm 50/50 on tweaking Cupid's general attitude in the scene itself, because a more hostile Cupid lends itself better to the meta use of the scene as described before but a more sympathetic-to-Nico Cupid who is nonetheless still kicking the shit out of him is interesting from a metaphor standpoint (something something Nico overcoming internalized homophobia but in the very literal form of it’s the god that literally presides over protecting gay love [yes that is an actual thing Eros/Cupid is the god of] beating him up).

- Remove Reyna's “prophecy” entirely. It's stupid and pointless and doesn’t make sense with her character at all. Just say she's ace. There is not a single scene in any of the series that ever indicates that Reyna believes that she can only be happy if she’s in a relationship and that’s some kind of internal struggle she needs to overcome. The closest we ever get is Reyna being upset that her best friend disappeared and when he returns she finds out he had forgotten about her completely. Which does not apply to the “prophecy” at all. We just don’t need it.

- Absence of "a character" can work! Jason's lack of personality and backstory can work but it works best if it's absence is felt and properly explored. This works best if we get more information about Camp Jupiter from SoN and from the other Roman characters, especially Reyna (and maybe even Nico referencing his trips there!) because that inherently informs us about what Jason's life was like there. Have other characters note things about Jason and highlight the fact that this is absent from Jason's own POV! He's lost that part of his life! It was taken from him! That's such an interesting dynamic to have and explore! But we don't get any of that!

Side-note: Part of the problem with Jason's amnesia is that it feels so awkward especially compared to Percy's amnesia because we already know what Percy can't remember. We have the context that informs his character, even though he can't remember it, so that absence is felt and it feels really compelling! Also, Percy is unfamiliar with Camp Jupiter, and we're unfamiliar with Camp Jupiter, so it feels new and interesting (even though we don't actually get much about it so we never actually form any real attachment to it and that's a problem later on in every subsequent scene when we're supposed to care about what happens to Camp Jupiter but we. don't). The reason it doesn't work for Jason is because we don't know what's absent and we already know CHB. Jason also already knows about demigods and stuff, so if you're a new reader starting at HoO it just doesn't work. Because Jason already knows everything and we're being led from his POV primarily for that portion of TLH, and even Piper and Leo's backstories both heavily include being pushed around by Gaea/and or Hera/Juno, so if you aren't familiar with the universe you're just being hurried along and it ends up feeling weak. At least with Percy even if you don't know the contexts of his backstory, we can feel the implications of other characters referencing things about him extremely often, so you feel the weight of his memories being gone, and he doesn't know about the roman gods and you, the reader, aren't expected to know much if anything about it either. We don’t get the full demigod debriefing (but that's also the second book) but we at least get a Camp Jupiter debriefing. The first two books are a bit messy in those specific regards with setting up the camps for the series, and we don’t really see the camps much for the rest of HoO (except for CHB, of course).

This is personally why I stand by that if we ever get a roman series it should be a three-part series from Reyna's POV, because leading with Jason is basically like trying to lead PJatO with Annabeth - a demigod raised in camp and surrounded by the knowledge of this stuff their entire life. It doesn't work as a character who's acting as an introduction to this world for the reader. There's no real clean way to work that out for HoO unfortunately, since literally all our protagonists are given established pasts involving knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology being real and half of them are either already at camp or have been to a different camp. I'd say best solution would probably actually be leading from Piper for TLH and tweak her character set-up slightly in that she Does Not Know What's Going On At All re: Gaea and the Giants. She just knows Something Happened To Her Dad and she's the POV we follow into TLH, because that mirrors Percy in beginning of TLT well (with Sally being kidnapped)! It's a fun call-back for the old readers and a good lead-in for the new readers.

- Fix Nico backstory inconsistencies caused by Rick almost making his birthday in March and confusing himself over it. He's 12 in TLO, 13 in HoO. He was born January 28th, 1929, and got put in the Lotus Hotel and Casino in 1939 (If you wanna be cute, we can specifically say May 1st, 1939, to reference the musical). Hazel is one month older than him chronologically and one year older than him post-revival. Something something also smooth out the inconsistencies about Nico being raised in Italy and how Maria met Hades and stuff. Fill in the rest as you will.

- I do stand by that the entire PJO timeline is not one-to-one with the real world. That's always been a thing with the series. We're basically condensing everything from ~1998 to ~2020 into an 18 year timeline. We don't need to be exact with things. Don't get too bogged down with it.

- Make the whole "injuries caused by celestial bronze/imperial gold for demigods makes their souls self-destruct" thing specifically relating to cursed weapons/materials or feature some more volatile abomination combo weapons like Backbiter (with Backbiter being described as unstable due to being both celestial bronze and mortal steel). (Ex.: the spear used to stab Jason in BoO is just cursed, and maybe Octavian's catapult plan is a "well i put a bunch of mortal steel and imperial gold in a pot and melted them together a bit and now it really wants to explode so im gonna just chuck the entire thing and hope it kills everyone lots and lots <3" which is tbh significantly more dastardly and fucked-up, which makes Octavian a bit more compelling). Having it just be a plain trait of celestial bronze/imperial gold doesn’t make any sense and is only referenced like twice in HoO and never again in basically the entire three series. Again: consistency.

- Make a more prominent reference to the whole "btw there are retired adult Romans just living wherever but they're legally required to help any campers who request aid" thing, cause you could totally do something really fun and cool with that but idk what.

- PICK A THEME! First series theme was family! Second series theme is….. we don’t know! It felt like maybe a theme was intended at some point but we lost it. Forging a new life for one’s self/choosing your own path/etc could be a good theme, or something similar. or found family. or both. We’ve got a bunch of characters absolutely ripe for “I didn’t think i’d get this far and now I have to like, actually consider what i want to do in life. huh” arcs! (Frank! Leo! Hazel! Jason! Percy! Nico!) Do something with that!

- Lean more into the characters having aspects inspired by myths, or legends being mirrored in plot points: 7 against Thebes, the Argonauts, etc etc etc. The first series leaning into it heavily worked really well! More of that! HoO and TOA suffer a lot from lack of mythological basis to lean their plots on, despite there being plenty to work from. It instead just kind of messily mashes random misc myths (haha, alliteration) together into a very incoherent plot. Annabeth is known to be explicitly based off Atalanta, Percy is mostly based off Perseus and Theseus, Leo has loose connections based off of Demophon of Eleusis and possibly also his brother Triptolemus, etc etc. There’s stuff to work with! Poke around at the mythological figures of the original Argo and maybe match them up a bit (though most of the Argonaut myths were used in Sea of Monsters, so focus more on the figures/archetypes rather than just exact myths of what they did. For more plot-things, maybe consider Seven Against Thebes, though admittedly the plot of that is just Kinda Depressing.)

- Slightly related to that - lean into Piper presumably mirroring Orpheus! Or even if she isn’t supposed to, let her do that, because it fits with her thematically SUPER well. Her charmspeak is OP and that needs to be appreciated. In canon she brings Jason back from the brink of death in TLH and just straight up gives Festus a soul/free will/sentience. Let her go Orpheus-mode on everybody. You can even tie that in with the half-hearted snake theme that Rick tried to throw in there that didn’t work at all. We can make this work, just lean into it. It’ll be fun.

- Remove scene of Nico confessing to Percy at end of BoO. it’s just. random and feels sudden and OOC. Give Nico time. You could maybe replace it by having him come out to Reyna on his own terms while they’re on their quest discussing their adventures thus far and them having a very sweet little emotional moment rather than it being a weird out-of-place afterthought comical scene.

- Remove Bob and Damacus. They’re just half-literal dues ex machinas for Percabeth in Tartarus that don’t make sense. It feels extremely cheap and doesn’t fit with the established mythos of either figure (and Bob feels extra awkward without the context of knowing Sword of Hades). If they do run into a figure who helps them out in Tartarus, Arke could possibly be a good option - especially since in SoN Percy meets Iris. There’s a lot potentially you could do there with Percy mistaking her for her twin and stuff like that. If we want a figure to more-so take the role that Bob fills (Nico encouraging an immortal to be sympathetic to Percy and thus indirectly helping him later) that role could be filled by Nyx instead of making her a minor antagonist - imply Nico encountered Nyx in Tartarus or something and she took pity on him as someone who also understands the dark, and he told her about Percy and so Nyx is willing to help Percabeth escape. Plus imagine how COOL a Nyx & her children vs Tartarus/Titans/Giants fight would be. That’d be a significantly more memorable scene than the Tartarus fight scenes we did get. (“Why would Nyx help though?” One of Nyx’s kids is LITERALLY a goddess of friendship [Philotes], we have excuses.)

- On a similar note, this is more of a TSATS thing, but for goodness’ sake STOP THROWING CHARACTERS INTO TARTARUS. You’re overusing it! It only works when we use it sparingly! In fact, just in general Tartarus works better the less we see of it! Nico going through Tartarus once in SoN-MoA, yes, that works! Especially since we have almost no idea what happened to him down there, just that it was Terrifying and Horrible and he Barely Survived. Not going into much detail means we get more out of it. The only exception to that really was when Percy realized that Nico saw Tartarus as it truly was the entire time, because that’s one hell (ha) of a punch to the gut in terms of added information! Percabeth falling into Tartarus in MoA? Eh, fine, sure, because we’ve established that Nico (who is implied to be more resilient to that environment on virtue of being a child of Hades) talked about his experiences down there so they know what to expect and how to survive. Though it does kind of just feel like Rick went “Oh wait hey I can use this to make angst!” and then overused the hell out of it. It feels way weaker in general in HoH because of how much detail we get, because Tartarus has been built up so much until that point that literally anything we get will feel lackluster in comparison, especially with how it kind of feels like Percabeth just. breezed through it with little more difficulty than they’d usually face on their quests. Solangelo jumping into Tartarus in TSATS is honestly just a blatant “Oh boy we can make Solangelo into Percabeth 2!” and it doesn’t work at all because NICO HAS ALREADY BEEN TO TARTARUS.

The only way you could make Nico going into Tartarus two times work is if he fell into Tartarus a second time to replace Percabeth falling down there. Because we’ve established he knows what it’s like down there, he survived it once, and he is actively sparing someone else he cares about from suffering his same fate. And then he can return once again even closer to death and A Little Fucked Up and it turns into a rule of threes where we know “Oh, Nico can’t go back to Tartarus again because if he does he’ll Lose Himself Completely” which is way more interesting than romance angst for the sake of romance angst. Especially since again, we don’t see it, it’s all only implied. Also it then also turns Tartarus into even more of a “Nico is probably the only demigod who could ever even hope to survive Tartarus” which keeps Tartarus as an ominous thing. Percabeth falling into Tartarus lessens that by a lot because it implies that it doesn’t matter that Nico is a child of Hades; that had absolutely no bearing on his ability to survive down there. TL;DR: Stop throwing characters into Tartarus. Either throw Nico in twice in a row and no Percabeth or Nico and Percabeth once only and never touch it again.

- More heavily set up Percy’s emotions/mood/etc being influenced by water around him. If we keep most of Percabeth in Tartaurs, then this would really make the Achlys scene pack a bigger punch. Up until HoH everything is “oh how quirky” but the minute Percy’s surrounded by the rivers of the underworld and the acid/poision you get hit with the “oh shit” realization that Percy Is About To Get SCARY.

- Maybe have Annabeth keep her blindness from Tartarus, or trade Jason having glasses to her having glasses as a result of that, since vision is actually an aspect of Athena so it kind of fits her more, thematically-speaking.

- Change the judo flip percabeth scene in MoA to Annabeth picking Percy up and spinning him around in a hug/swinging him into a dip cause that’s cuter, makes more sense given Percy’s PTSD, and still highlights Annabeth being very strong and showing off in front of the Romans while they’re still being lovey-dovey.

But also, related to that, you could potentially make a sub-arc for Percabeth throughout HoO (so that they actually have like. some type of character development that fits them rather than them feeling stagnant the entire time) about Annabeth learning she doesn’t know as much about Percy as she thought (learning about Gabe [since as far as we know she actually doesn't know much if anything about that!], seeing his behavior change with different types of water, etc) kicked off by the judo flip scene, and possibly vice versa (Percy learning more about Annabeth’s time spent traveling with Thalia and Luke, growing up at CHB, her relationship with Athena and other campers at CHB, etc) so they gain a deeper understanding of one another. If Percy keeps his curse of Achilles, that could also factor in (contrasting Percy’s “perfect” image [relationship, near-immortality] against Annabeth realizing she doesn’t know as much about Percy as she thought [could also parallel that dynamic to Jaspiper, which opens opportunities for Annabeth/Piper and Jason/Percy bonding] [Or Annabeth/Jason and Piper/Percy bonding! I want more Annabeth/Jason and Piper/Percy parallels so bad. They’re almost there but we never get them. Please.]/ the Argo II crew learning about Percy’s past) with Percy being more prone to seek out conflict or solve problems with violence due to the Curse of Achilles and eventually recognizing that [possibly after Tartarus] and it scaring him just as much as it frightens Annabeth. Maybe at that point Percy tries to make some sort of deal to rid himself of the curse.)

- Maybe also explicitly parallel Percy getting the curse of Achilles with Nico’s help to Poseidon giving his lover Caeneus iron skin. There’s no really smooth way to do it, but maybe even just a during Nico’s pov him going “I heard about this myth once and got an idea. It didn’t work.” Just for that added through-line of connecting the series and further establishing “yeah, no, Nico’s been gay this whole time. this isn’t a new thing. we aren’t pulling this from thin air.”

- Give Piper a different weapon than the knife from the beginning cause she stops using it eventually anyways. Also just... no cornucopia. That part is just stupid and there’s no point for it. If we have to keep it as a plot object, give it to someone else - Nico could work because then there’s actually at least a valid relation there regarding his godly parent (yes, Pluto sometimes has cornucopia associations). Also Nico having a cornucopia would be kinda funny in a subversion of expectations thing. Maybe even have Nico go on a little exposition-y rant complaining about Hades/Pluto versus Plutus (the Greek god of plenty/wealth, later merged with Pluto).

- Similarly, either remove Diocletian’s scepter (if we have multiple characters who can boss around skeletons, why do we need an entire separate extra object whose sole purpose is to let them boss around skeletons?) or let Nico keep it but it loses its abilities, so it’s literally just “well now he has a cool bashing stick for bashing things.” Or let him use it as a cane to highlight him being disabled!

- As I slightly touched upon in a previous bullet point, give Piper more connections to her dad’s community in Oklahoma - where’s all her family friends? Tristan is a major pop culture figure in the Riordanverse, so it’d make sense that people from the community he grew up in would like. know him? But all we ever hear about is Piper’s Grandpa Tom. Even though apparently Piper is already good enough friends with Shel presumably before Piper moves to Oklahoma that the two start dating soon afterwards. Heck, again, have Piper reference Shel specifically. Just at any point. For any reason. Just to establish that she knows people her own age that exist outside of CHB.

Similarly, flesh out the background Romans in Camp Jupiter more in SoN and possibly also BoO, particularly the ones Jason references by name but we never see anything of, besides at most maybe more background references. Highlight them either through the SoN trio interacting with more characters while at camp (and we’re left to glean specific details of Jason’s past through others, which would make Jason more compelling and how these details are absent from himself but present to those around him, playing into his memory loss more) and possibly also through Reyna (and maybe Nico)’s POV(s) in BoO. (And maybe if we get a Reyna POV in MoA, then there as well).

- Let Reyna use magic! We establish that she studied under Circe and then never see anything come of that other than referencing her Tragic Backstory™. It could be a fun point for Reyna and Hazel to bond over, even!

- Remove the random “Hunters of Artemis death fodder” scene with Orion in BoO. There’s no reason for that. It’s just kinda dumb and feels bad given it’s basically just “We’re gonna kill a bunch of nondescript allegedly a-spec coded characters now for no reason. <3” like ???. That served no purpose. It just felt weird.

- Also just as a like, logistics thing - change the route Team Statue takes in BoO from the huge jump over the Atlantic into Peurto Rico into them traveling up into like the UK, then over to Iceland and Greenland and then Canada and down the east coast rather than the huge jump and up the east coast. The smaller jumps make more sense given the entire POINT of their quest taking as long as it does is that Nico can’t make extremely large shadow-travel jumps at that time. Plus if they’re traveling south then they could pass through Maine and we could maybe cameo Nico’s old school and that’d be fun. The pit-stop in Puerto Rico doesn’t really give us much that we couldn’t have just gotten from Reyna explaining it anyways. If they pause in Maine that can be where Nico and Reyna have a heart-to-heart about their tragic backstories and past experiences with horrible ghosts that they had to exorcise.

- If Team Statue travels a northern route we can make jokes about Nico learning specifically 1930s British English before he moved to America. The gang goes to London and Coach proceeds to incessantly make fun of Nico for not only using British slang, but using OUTDATED British slang (which is made weirder given he doesn’t have a British accent).

- Also extremely tiny detail but a specific acknowledgement that Piper was helping out Nico once they got back to the ship when Nico’s getting rescued from the jar. Since Piper just kind of drags him off-screen. Just any kind of follow-up to that. Like Nico doing his classic “You were vaguely nice to me. I would now Die For You.” Just them having basically any kind of interaction or acknowledgement of that scene, mostly cause I think it’s funny.

- Let Annabeth keep her laptop, and get rid of the sphere of Archimedes cause it just feels kinds pointless and random? We don’t really have any emotional connection to Annabeth’s laptop (and her hat gets replaced in Demigods & Magicians anyways) so her losing it doesn’t really feel impactful at all. Maybe have Leo use Annabeth’s laptop while she’s in Tartarus and that acts as the point of guilt for him rather than weird random curse stuff with a random new introduced object. Instead of “oh no fortune cookie thing or whatever” it’s him feeling guilty he saved Annabeth’s laptop but couldn’t help Annabeth herself. Especially since Leo would also have his Ogygia identity crisis in the same book so he can feel extra bad about himself for a bit, to lead up to his role in BoO nicely (sometimes a character negatively spiraling is more narratively compelling than them having positive development for the majority of the series and that’s okay! Let him be tragic but again he gets a happy ending and an implication post-BoO that he’ll begin a road of healing/recovery surrounded by loved ones. It works out.) AND there could be a very sweet moment once Annabeth gets back from Tartarus and Leo gives her the laptop back and it’s a huge relief to her that one of her prized possessions was in safe hands while she was gone and that she has it back when she thought she might have lost it.

- Further highlight Jason’s whole Greek/Roman/etc identity crisis. Bonus points if we go further into acknowledging Jupiter/Zeus’s epithets and roles and Jason having some epiphany that the Romans look to him with the expectations of Jupiter/Juno as king and queen of the gods making him some kind of perfect leader, but he’s not that at all. He’s the son of Jove and Juno, father and mother of the gods. He doesn’t want to be a general or praetor or anything like that, he wants to spend time with his friends and family at a summer camp where they’re safe. He wants to regain the childhood he lost being raised as a perfect soldier and get the chance to go to school and learn about his long-lost family and do cheesy summer camp activities. He is a wolf but he is not a creature built for the hunt - he is part of a pack.

- Touched upon it briefly in a previous bullet point but Curse of Achilles can stay/go, does not particularly matter to me either way. I do think it’d be funny though if Percy does keep the Curse of Achilles that he also randomly gets the Nemean Lion’s pelt back. Initially maybe as like a gift from Hera/Juno to help him cover his Achilles’ Heel while he’s running around with no memory just as insurance so he doesn’t die (with bonus points of the Romans being introduced to Percy either wearing the stupidest looking coat ever or wearing just a straight up bullet-proof lion’s pelt, which would even further solidify his “Are We Sure This Guy Isn’t A God In Disguise” vibes). But then later on into the series it’s just kind of part of his outfit or maybe even a running gag. The praetors have their magic bullet-proof cloaks, Percy has a very silly looking bullet-proof fur coat that is sometimes a whole lion.

- Keep Hazel’s blackouts. There’s not really a reason for them to disappear altogether for her? They’re somewhat tied to her powers and are a consequence of her coming back from the dead, which also helps keep the concept running in the series that death is a consequence that can’t just be easily evaded, even while we’re operating with the Doors of Death being open. That way future deaths in the series don’t feel like they could be as easily negated/avoided. Also, Hazel is disabled! This is a disability of hers! Why are we somehow magically getting rid of it without even an explanation as to why? Heck, if we’re getting rid of Piper’s knife, Hazel’s dreams when she has her blackouts could be used to supplement the dagger’s insight into the future, since we’ve already established that Hazel gets prophetic dreams sometimes anyways. Also fun thematic matching for the Death Sibs with them both having disabilities and random ways to glean the future (Hazel’s blackouts, Nico talking to ghosts). Her blackouts would probably improve slightly over the course of the series but never fully disappear, and it ends up mostly a thing of she can tell when they’re about to occur and prepare quickly for that or let someone know before she passes out.

- Get rid of Frank’s curse in SoN instead of waiting until The Tyrant’s Tomb. If we’re going to get rid of it eventually anyways, do it during the big scene of him freeing Thanatos. Let him have his cool big moment of embracing his destiny and that breaking the curse the first time he does it rather than him doing it twice but it only breaking the curse the second time? Also if the curse is broken earlier on then Frank’s entire arc gets to be about him realizing he has a life to live, since in SoN a major part of his character is that he’s not afraid of death because he’s used to the idea that his curse could kill him at any point. He’s actually pretty reckless for the beginning of HoO because of that. If he realizes that he no longer is at risk of dying at any given moment because he thought about candles too hard, then that opens the opportunity of him having a whole existential crisis about what he actually wants to do with his life and him looking to the future for once.

Bonus opportunity for this - maybe Frank actually gets fire powers as a result of his curse breaking. Ares/Mars has an association with fire so it would fit for him as a son of Mars. Plus, then we could also have an even more overt dynamic of Frank and Leo acting as each other’s parallels and foils and the two of them slowly growing more used to one another and actually becoming close friends. Lots of bonding over getting used to their fire powers and overcoming their mutual fears of fire and probably also solidarity in having lost their moms. Just - the boys are bonding! The boys are bonding. Fire boys hours.

- Related to Frank’s curse, give Hazel and Frank parallel narratives of them realizing they have a future ahead of them (Hazel re: getting a second chance at life and Frank re: realizing he’s no longer at risk of spontaneously combusting) and them grappling with trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives and how they want to live them after everything is said and done. And also being motivated for once to make it out the other side in one piece because they’re determined to not waste the opportunity they’ve been given. The two of them coming to terms with realizing they have a future if they can make it through this (which is also a fun contrast to Leo and Nico actively almost sacrificing their own lives for others and having essentially an opposite character arc for the majority of the series).

- Especially while Frank (and Hazel) are having these arcs, going back to the idea of Leo getting stuck on Ogygia alone for a bit - very strongly contrasting the arcs of Frank’s mental health improving over the series while Leo’s is very steadily decreasing (until BoO at which point again the series ends with Leo getting help and beginning to improve/heal).

- Also further emphasizing Leo and Nico’s parallels throughout HoO. They’re both autistic on top of the usual adhd/dyslexia and have issues with social interactions and care a lot about Hazel and are having a majorly bad time throughout the entire quest and are pretty depressed, etc etc etc. Again, parallel narratives at the end of BoO with them healing and things looking up for them - I think I’ve mentioned that like four times now you get the idea.

- Make Frank ADHD/dyslexic. There is literally no reason for him not to be and him being the outlier for being neurotypical feels weird and doesn’t fit with the literal entire worldbuilding we have for demigods. If it’s part of “demigod instincts” or whatever then Frank should be ADHD/dyslexic! And it’s not even a “the Romans aren’t ADHD/dyslexic” because we’re explicitly told they are! They are specifically also ADHD and dyslexic! So why isn’t Frank? There’s no reason. It annoys me.

- The Frank/Hazel/Leo “love triangle” can stay but it’s significantly more one-sided. Frank is mostly just intimidated by Leo for multiple reasons (mostly fire-related reasons) and Leo is mutually intimidated by Frank (because Frank is bigger than him and Leo is scared of everyone, really, but especially people who are bigger than him, because they could beat him up. Which is basically everyone). Hazel is not romantically interested in Leo and Leo is not romantically interested in her, though they are very close and do have a very confusing time trying to figure out the whole Sammy situation. Frank still misinterprets this as Hazel and Leo being romantic. Leo does not realize Frank is misinterpreting that as them being romantic and think Frank just hates him for the general reasons that Leo has found people usually hate him for no reason over. Leo wants nothing to do with that situation though. Eventually they all sort it out and become a very strong trio.

- Again as I briefly touched upon before, maybe give Reyna a protagonist role in MOA if not an outright POV. Probably an outright POV, with the main POVs of the book being her and Annabeth. Again, themes of historical associations between Athena and Bellona and playing with that, alongside making Reyna more of a prominent player earlier on in the series and letting us see more of the Romans. Use this opportunity to heavily parallel her with Annabeth (and also highlight her parallels with Percy, and Annabeth’s parallels with Jason).

- Really I just want more Annabeth/Jason and Percy/Reyna parallels. There’s so much you can do there. The blond(e) gifted kid/smart aleck raised at camp and their best friend, the former newbie raised with a difficult home life. Percy and Reyna both have dogs (Mrs. O’Leary / Aurum and Argentium) and pegasi (Blackjack and Skippy). And a sibling they don’t see often (Tyson / Hylla).  You could have notes about Jason and Thalia and Annabeth and the dynamics within that and how those internally parallel each other. Or more about when Reyna encountered Percy and Annabeth while on Circe’s Island. Really anything more about Reyna’s time on Circe’s Island. Heck maybe you could parallel that to Percy’s difficult time in school, since Circe’s whole thing was that she was training the sorceresses living there, so that’s kind of like a school environment. Paralleling first quests between Reyna and Jason with the events of the first series with Percy and Annabeth.  Etc. etc. etc.

- We are taking BoO and just. Throwing it out the window, really. We don’t have time to unpack all of that. Just start mostly from scratch, same extremely rough overarching elements are there.

- Also actually just. Rework the whole main prophecy too while we’re at it. It kinda sucks. It’s just kind of a weak prophecy. “To storm or fire the world will fall” or whatever; we can do better. I don’t have the brain power to write a better prophecy right now but just [see my recent post] for notes about what I think makes for a good prophecy in the series and why the main HoO one is kinda lame.

Footnotes:

Again, I will be following this up with part 2 electric boogaloo: Things I Would Change About TOA* (*That I can say without spoiling Deadangelos too much) at some point and I will link that when I make it. If you made it this far, gold star.

[incesthemes]

Hi! I read your (excellent) meta about s8-10,l and I would love to chat with you about it. But tumblr etiquette is hard, and I agree with your analysis in part and disagree in part, and the places where I disagree are controversial. So I was wondering if you'd prefer to have me respond on reblog (my thoughts are too long for a tag rant), on a separate post with you tagged, or just link to your post but not tag you? Or uh, maybe something else I havent thought of (like perhaps some thoughts are better left unshared lol)?

Anyway, thanks for the interesting meta!

ohh hi, thank you for reading all that, i know it’s a long one :) i can’t say i really mind what you choose to do with it; honestly i’m so curious about your thoughts i’d be happiest talking to you directly about them through like dms or something (yknow for the gratification of conversation haha). but yeah i don’t care either way, feel free to do as you like

[suffarustuffaru]

Hey so. I’m currently writing a queer analysis of Re:Zero that I plan on publishing online after S3 ends, and I’d really like to reference some of your banger analysis about Otto. But I know that I, personally, am going to be avoiding linking my Tumblr account to that for privacy reasons, and so — uh. The answer to this might be Really Obvious, but. Would you WANT me to reference you as a source?

Sorry if this question is too obvious: I’ve never actually done this before so I’m not entirely sure what the etiquette is here.

aw a queer analysis of rezero in general is lovely wow :D !! id definitely love to see it once youre done, thats amazing !! and im flattered that youd like to reference some of my otto analysis!! and dont sweat it about asking <3 i think for me personally if you intend on posting this somewhere like on twitter or tumblr you can link back to my tumblr account if youd like - if its on something like reddit then HAH id prefer not to have my tumblr linked to it. though yknow if you do post on reddit shoot me a link and ill send a WOOO AWESOME ANALYSIS WOOOOO comment right underneath it. <3

otherwise you know if theres anything i can elaborate on or answer for you otto-wise i can help with that if needed!! godspeed with your super awesome analysis anon really looking forward to it <333

[chilly-out-here]

an attempt

let's see if this works! hopefully by not tagging this it doesn't get recommended to anyone since. I feel like it reads as fucking insane without context (honestly even with context). but just in case if you're not reading the fic and somehow still ended up here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52369693/chapters/132478987

and before I say anything I’d like to first shout out this tumblr post for letting me link this in the chapter notes in the first place bc I Would Not Have figured it out myself:  https://www.tumblr.com/gentrychild/653404474056081408/ao3-how-to-insert-imageslinks-into-the-notes-of# 

so!! Milgram The Musical!! there’s a couple key parts to how I imagine the tech for this thing to work. I don’t know all the details for the format of the show (frankly it doesn’t matter a ton lol), but I’m imagining it to be like. for each prisoner, there’s interrogation (basically like their VDs, except on stage), then blackout for quick scene transition, and then they sing their song. then blackout and they move on to the next prisoner and rinse and repeat. except for 010 who Causes Problems, which would be the climax of the musical and leads into the theoretical resolution.

so yea! I figure there’s probably 12 songs? one for each prisoner, plus two group numbers at the beginning and end (Undercover ft. the prisoners singing their parts, plus an unspecified ending song lol). there’s only one trial bc that would be PLENTY enough content for a musical already, so the songs are probably some fusion of the t1 and t2 (and t3 when that comes out?) songs. idk the specifics of that don’t really matter. also just, note, none of the prisoners have names in the show bc even I have my limits lmao. so if I’m talking about the characters in the musical I refer to them by their number, if I’m talking about the characters in the fic they get their names.

but anyway the important thing is! I think the main tech objective for the show is to make sure the visuals and sound of every prisoner’s song feels distinct, both from the other songs and from the interrogation scenes. the secondary objective is that the songs should feel kinda surreal; they take place in the prisoner’s minds, so they should be very separate from “reality” (in quotes bc what even is Milgram). so most of my planning was done with that in mind :)

DECK:

okay. so! most of the show’s tech is probably lighting/projection-based to accomplish all the different tones and aesthetic shifts, but there are some fun little things with the deck too, not least of which being the y’know!! rotating disc!! à la Les Mis or Hamilton. I think it’d at least be super cool for Undercover and 010’s song (which has some Deep Cover stuff fs), and definitely in other places too because the songs are all kinda wild lol. I found this tutorial and, in my humble opinion, Kazui and Hinako are indeed insane enough as directors to want this, and Kotoko and Kazui are indeed insane enough to build this: http://theaterdad.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-make-revolving-stage.html?m=1 

in terms of physical set pieces, there’s of course the interrogation table and chairs, which comes on for every interrogation and comes off after every “sing your sins.” there’s also the Warden’s chair (whatever the fuck Es is sitting on at the beginning of Undercover), and maybe some bonus pieces for the prisoners’ songs? like possibly school desks for 004, hospital bed for 005, round table for 010, that sort of stuff.

SOUND:

I don’t know a whole ton about sound, but I imagine Yuno’s trying to set it up so that the interrogation scenes feel like you’re watching two characters from the outside, and the songs feel like you’re immersed inside the character’s head (since yknow,,, that’s kinda the central conceit of the show lol). I’m envisioning that she’s gonna have the interrogation dialogue sound like it’s mostly coming from the stage (so like, the closer to the stage a speaker is, the louder it is), and the music sound like it’s kinda coming from everywhere at once (so all the speakers are similar volume). so that’s why she’s doing a ton of repatching to get the individual speaker control she wants to create that illusion. overall I think she’s just trying to have fun with the whole thing which. as she should!!

PROJECTION:

so!! like I said earlier a big goal for the tech of this show is to make everything feel distinct, and the projection would be a GIANT part of that. I’ve only worked one show with projection in it but there’s so many frickin possibilities you can do with it so,, here we go!

first of all—the INTERROGATIONS. most theaters have stage monitors (basically just security cameras pointed at the stage from the house, which can be viewed in dressing rooms so actors know where they are in the show and can keep track of their  entrances). and I think it’d be really cool to also project that in the background in real-time as the interrogation scenes are happening (probably in black and white). partly to just make those scenes a bit more visually interesting, and partly bc I think it would severely fit the aesthetic?? plus that way, except during the blackouts, the projection won’t disappear and reappear as much, which I think would look cleaner and more cohesive.

BUT still very distinct!! bc in contrast to the camera vibes in the interrogations, the songs have their own cool colorful background art and visuals and fuckinnn stock footage projected!! whatever fits the vibe lmao. I think Haruka basically Goes Off—like the designer roles were decided for the show before they went on break, so he’s been working on this for months. each song’s visuals have their own style and color palette (yknow,, like how Milgram MVs work lol).

I’m gonna go on a whole separate rant about lighting but projection-wise:

001’s visuals mostly resemble the Weakness MV—so very colorful and very much drawn with nice smooth water/bubble animations, but also plus some of the edgy writing and glitchy stuff in All Knowing and All Agony. I think Haruka does project (haha,, pun) a little bit onto 001 (wow I can’t imagine why), so the art for that song hITS. 

002’s aesthetic is probably closest to Umbilical with like. pink void, balloons, the DNA staircases (possibly Haruka’s first venture into 3D modeling? which he uses later for Undercover and stuff), and the photographs (provided by the actress), but I really like the water ripples from Tear Drop so there’s some of that in there too. 

003 is most like Bring It On with all the video game aesthetic glitchy stuff going on, except add in a bit of spray paint imagery bc I think that’s really cool. 

004 is probably mostly It’s Not My Fault? I mean BUGS,, and honey and stuff. some classroom things like in After Pain (specifically the chalkboard has some stuff on it?) and a few real-life shots, but a lot of weird bug things yknow. 

005 is mainly Throw Down for all the flower symbolism (this is where flower stock footage comes in lmao), plus elements from Triage like the hospital bed, heart monitor, and of course the many many surgery receipts. 

006 is based mostly on This Is How To Be In Love With You (magazine vibes, again photos provided by the actress), but with a bit of the angsty stuff in I Love You (the fucked up carousel is good shit). 

007. is. interesting. since half and Cat are so different it’s a little hard to picture how the combined version would work (current idea is it starts slow and ballad-y for like. a couple lines, and then launches into jazzy vibes—perhaps something a bit like Theater by natori (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3rDLizb4sI)). but I’m imagining that 007 is a PERFORMER during his song. by that I mean when it gets jazzy he straight up walks down from the stage into the audience and has a whole Moment prancing around in the house with spotlights (aren’t we glad Fuuta set up the movers??). so my idea for the projection is that it’s mostly abstract and collage-y kinda like the instrumental break in Cat, and it does reflect the instruments (like the dancing saxophone lol), but it’s also got things like the apple, the glass, cigarettes, all the magic trick stuff, and the ring, and occasional cut-ins of irl stock photos of things like the bar. just little hints up there that are easy to miss if you’re focusing on all the Extremely Distracting actor in the audience and crazy dancing collage happening. also, color palette is probably warmer/red-er just to lean into the whole theater thing a bit more.

008!! I love the feltboard look at the end of Magic and I think that’s the main aesthetic the visuals would have, but with occasional cuts to irl photos of disturbing stuff like the taser. kinda like how Purge March does it? I almost feel like it’d be a bit like one of those analog horror things based on kids’ content, where the scary parts are 1) mostly just implied and 2) don’t last long but the juxtaposition is really jarring.

009 my beloved,, I really like the filming/camera vibes from MeMe, so the visuals probably involve a lot of that, and also the trains and glitch effects like in Double. ALSO. the MANNEQUINS. I have a mental image of Haruka sitting there debating what to do for 009, and then he looks up from his desk and sees his little pose reference mannequin and he’s like. Oh Yeah. so he takes pictures of it and photoshops it over/into some stuff, basically just turning it into like a whole mixed media art project thing (like this sort of vibe—Tatsuya Kitani MVs are frickin insane /pos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymtNhd_3CB8). and THEN. TAROT CARDS. after their pokémon battle Yuno lets Haruka borrow them, so he takes photos and uses them too (and uses the mannequins with them). the complicated disjointed mildly unsettling mixed media video collage aesthetic is *chef’s kiss* and I think it’d fit well with 009 and the film look.

010!! home stretch!! I don’t have much to say other than I think it mainly follows the Deep Cover vibes (bc seriously that MV is GORGEOUS), so plenty of chess piece imagery to go around. but also,,, wolves,,, more stock footage lmao. 

and fINALLY!! UNDERCOVER!! very geometric and following the general Milgram aesthetic. definitely the projection design closest to the MV it’s based on. not to spoil anything but there might be a bit more detail on it next chapter? didn’t hear that from me tho ;)

and now!! hilariously short thing to finish this section off. after each prisoner’s song, there’s a blackout for them to exit and for the deck crew to set the interrogation table up for the next scene. during that transition I think it’d be fun if there was a pre-recorded video of them answering some of their interrogation questions as a little sendoff yknow? plus that helps not completely kill the momentum after each song.

LIGHTS:

oh my god. hi. me. HI. this is my SHIT. okay. so. LIGHTS. starting with a fun little aside about LEDs and incandescents—imo incandescent stage lights are the prettiest and most natural looking, buut they’re also less versatile than LEDs (for example, you need physical gels to change the color of incandescents, but a lot of LED light fixtures can have colors changed from the lightboard). there’s pros and cons to both and there’s pros and cons to having a mixed lights grid (currently working in a place with both—I actually like it personally but it is hard to match the colors/tones a lot of the time). most of the theater world is moving towards LEDs in general (partly for convenience, partly as regulations are shifting away from incandescents) but Kazui is a stubborn mf who’s held onto an incandescent grid for THIS long and he’s gonna keep it as long he possibly can lmao. Fuuta convinced him to let him overhaul the whole thing and mix in some LEDs over the summer (mostly a bunch of moving lights), so he’s got a bit of both to work with.

for the Milgram aesthetic, unnatural white LEDs is lowkey the vibe?? I think just a couple white spotlights on the interrogation table would kinda be all they need. Fuuta is definitely getting a shit ton of use out of his movers for that since they can be pointed in good angles as needed. and for UNDERCOVER,,, oh boy he has some FUN with that one. if you program them right white movers make really good searchlight lookin things let me tell you!! I did them for a show recently and they looked AWESOME but I didn’t get to keep them in the final version (“it’s not a light show” which. fair but ok) so I’m vicariously living my mover searchlight dreams through Fuuta <3 and also, the Undercover MV has a ton of cool white spotlight type things going on?? like spotlights pointed through bars which casts cool dramatic shadows. definitely he gets to play around a lot with that :D

and then on the flip side~!! for the prisoner songs!! I think the general lighting for those is mostly done with differently-gelled incandescents, since they just look much prettier and smoother in general. I think the more natural look would also help to make the songs more immersive, especially in comparison to the interrogations—Fuuta’s definitely the type of guy to take something like a hybrid grid and really use it to his advantage to emphasize that contrast in overall feel.

each prisoner song definitely has its own lighting scheme too, which are all set up to look cohesive in conjunction with the projections in each song, so now all those are getting balanced for color and intensity so it looks like it all flows together with the visuals.

001’s general wash color is like a bluish white? so like R#051 (Surprise Pink (it looks mostly white in practice)) plus a bit of blue. not a ton of color bc the projections here are so colorful.

002’s lights are actually probably cooler tones for the most part to contrast with the pink projection. largely based on Tear Drop since the lighting there is super blue and it’s so PRETTY.

003…R#003 Dark Bastard Amber my beloved <3 (nah but fr DBA looks so good on red hair, it’s also kinda golden-ish which I think would look good with the saturated video game color tones on the projection).

for 004 like. literally all of After Pain is so Surprise Pink it’s ridiculous (plus a bit of Dark Bastard Amber for like,, yknow the murder at sunset). I like Surprise Pink for the color contrast with the green honey, might also want to test some purple?

005! I’m thinking of this one gel color that’s a really nice soft light blue, I believe it’s R#60 No Color Blue? again not too much color for the lights here since the projection will have a lot of flowers.

006 is very much a pink wash. probably Surprise Pink mixed and contrasted with a darker purple? I haven’t worked with a ton of purple but it’s a pretty versatile color and I think it could be good for the angsty I Love You type projections.

007 would start in a special light, and then when he goes into the audience that’s all a person with a followspot lol. at that point there’d only be enough light on stage to keep the projection looking natural (very low DBA wash perhaps).

008 is another Surprise Pink-based lights wash without too much color since the visuals would be pretty vibrant on their own, but much darker and bluer for the grimmer projections. I feel like purple would be nice as an undertone for her for some reason?

009 is. interesting. I could see Fuuta having to rack his brain a little for this one (since I’m racking my brain over here lol), but. if I remember correctly No Color Blue plus a tiny tiny bit of Surprise Pink can kinda make a semi-convincing white white? I think that, plus some bright RGB Color Moments in the visuals, could hopefully do the job okay.

010 HI OKAY LET ME LIGHT THIS SONG PLEASE. fuckin BACKLIGHTS DUDE the SATURATED COLORS the PINK?!? THAT is R#039 SKELTON EXOTIC SANGRIA if I’ve EVER fuckin seen it (bro just trust me, the color itself looks hella dark but when there’s light shining through it it’s so VIVID and PRETTY okay I just. yes). that mixed with some kind of really saturated indigo (part of me is even wondering about black lights??) would be so good.

COSTUMES:

okay costumes!! so!! as we have seen Mikoto’s been very busy lol. he’s not the main costume designer but he’s like. assistant costume designer and the guy in charge of Making Stuff (lead craftsperson I think it’s technically called?), which in this case are the prisoner harnesses and the Warden costumes.

costume breakdown! each prisoner has their actual clothes, plus “jumpsuit” (whichever white jacket thing they have), and a harness. everything except the harnesses seems like it could probably just be bought/sourced from somewhere (which is still, I can say from experience, A Lot Of Work lmao,, so the rest of the costume team has been similarly busy). I’ve gone back and forth about whether they should change costumes for their songs, but I think everything’s smoother if they just keep the jumpsuit. 

the exception is 010, who gets to do a quick change in the blackout before her song bc the Deep Cover drip is too good?? her harness and jumpsuit are probably attached somehow to be easy to remove at once. I’m imagining the way it works is that right at the blackout, the actress takes off the jumpsuit/harness setup, Mikoto goes on with deck crew for the scene transition with the coat, hat, and gloves (not enough time for a pants change so let’s just say she’s already wearing black pants and combat boots). he helps her get those on (let me tell you gloves are hARD in quick changes) and then he walks off with the jumpsuit/harness.

and finally the Warden! so Mikoto’s in charge of making the cape and the hat, and everything else can probably be sourced and modified as needed. someone’s probably having a lot of fun making the key necklace/props though!

well that was fun!! aren’t we glad I didn’t try to put all this in the notes?? I sure am lmao. the inherent slapdash-ness of the whole thing was kinda freeing actually and I had a blast just Saying Stuff, bc tech for Milgram The Musical has been living in my head rent-free for MONTHS and I’m glad I got to just put it all in words!! maybe I’ll do another one of these in the future if I need it lol. but anyway if you actually read to the end of this then 1) kudos <3 and 2) I hope it was at least moderately interesting, or at least enjoyable!

I don’t really know how to end this so. hope you have a nice day :D

[fancy--that]

click this link if you have fingers to click it with yknow like just if you want to

https://app.temu.com/m/us10wWRGW832tl3

Accept my invitation & Win credit & coupon!

pretend you’re me

>has friend obsessed with Temu >friend asks you to post his Temu link on Tumblr

now be you >you live in the United States >so you download the Temu app (first link) >you DONT make an account >then you click the second link >then my friend gets free shit

i promised him i’d do this and he only needs like 2?? more people to do it you just download the app, don’t make an account, click the second link and then you are free to delete the app afterwards and never have to deal with Temu ever again.

[popurikat]

Trying to make sense of parts of Future (Mystery Skulls)

Since my last analysis went so well I thought I’d make this post as well, especially because Future really did confuse me and I know others might be lost as well; so lets discuss this together! It will be lengthy as I am basically spewing my thoughts out right on the videos immediate release date (there will be a read more option after my first thought to avoid long positng). Well first things first, I wanna address that I've been curious about what kind of spirit Arthur's arm could be (since I am not too well acquainted with any canon on its background part at least) and I think I have concluded that the closest thing to it could be is a Tenome; which is a Yochai that possesses a man's body and moves the eyes to the palms. "found lurking in cemeteries, hands outstretched, as if he has only recently lost his vision and is searching for something. Get close enough, and you’ll find out in quick succession that a) he’s not blind, but looking with eyes embedded in his hands, and b) what he’s looking for is a snack." (fyi, most of my mythos information is coming from Wiki just as a heads up)

And sure enough he found a great source for his hunger. Something he has been EYEING since the start. Which now leads me to my next points on the video...

At first watch I was convinced that each strand found on Mystery’s heart represented a singular soul bond, I thought that blue was for Vivi, Green was for the hand, pink for Lewis, purple for Shiro, Yellow for Lance, Orange for Arthur, and black and white were unknown. Which, didn’t settle right for me. SO I went in and re-watched the clip a couple more times and saw this:

Vivi’s (blue created after she got hurt) and Shiro’s (white created after she died) strands were connected to the strands located next to them. A start and an end. Mystery’s promise to Vivi to stay at her side for generations as he was spared upon prior defeat of Mushi. And then of course we have the promise of power and sustenance for Shrio as they held a symbiotic relationship for most of their lives that was only severed due to an interference. These double strands of fate are especially clearer in the scene with Shiro in Future. As the black strand gets clearer the more she gets injured or emotionally hurt, it eventually leads to the leak of the white strand on her death. Meaning; Black/white=Shiro; Purple/Pink=Lewis; Blue/Green: Vivi; and Orange/Yellow: Arthur. And why am I inclined to believe Lewis and Arthur are apart of Mystery’s heart? Well that's because those two were the only ones fully streaming before Vivi’s and Shiro’s appeared. We know that Arthur lost an arm to Mystery and discovered his identity (ergo losing most of his trust in him) insinuating both strands to arise early on of his color scheme, as well as with Lewis’ death occurring under the protection of Mystery when they were grouped and having his soul go restless/ in pain. It wouldn’t make sense to add family members or side characters not included in the mainline story to this grouping unless they would play an important role in the finale, which isn’t likely since we have only one more video left as Ben stated it was going to be a 5 video series. I am also inclined to believe each person has two strands because of Kitsune lore: “ Kitsune keep their promises and strive to repay any favor. Occasionally a kitsune attaches itself to a person or household. They follow their word of honor. They become self-destructive if they break a promise, and when someone else breaks a promise, they become deadly enemies.” Plus, It would make sense as to why in this short battle Mystery sprouted his last 3 tails when it came to Vivi and Shiro and how their connections affect his power. (more on this in a bit) But, furthermore; if anyone else notices, the Band-Aids on the heart are also remotely located on the sections of Vivi’s and Shiro’s strands specifically because for both, Mystery has vowed to protect them and has failed. 

Now then lets talk about a few things on Mystery’s ultimate form shall we? The final form of a Kitsune, its celestial form as shown here is called a Tenko. (yes I am aware of the Kumiho, but that is a fully evil, flesh eating, 9 tailed fox that specialize in illusions and well Mystery has never been portrayed as human). The Tenko makes even more sense when taken into consideration that Mystery’s third eye (typically a form of wisdom connected to overpowering the mortality of ones self) opens. So how was this done in such a short amount of time? “Kitsune do not accept aid from those who are not willing. they do not ask for help, and as such, most aid must come from another's initiative. Kitsune are emotional and very vengeful. Kitsune will lose their temper at the slightest provocation. Once someone has earned a kitsune's enmity, the kitsune will begin enacting revenge that can become quite extreme. On the other hand, those who have earned a kitsune's trust and loyalty will see a friendship that can last through many trials. Freedom is very important to the kitsune. They do not accept being forced into something they do not wish, and do not like being bound or trapped. Doing so weakens the kitsune.” Mystery as we know is very much controlled by his emotions, going head first into things constantly based on reaction and his inability to control his power under distress. His tails arose in the fight sequence every time he fulfilled his oath AND used 100% of his form/power. Therefore, his tails grew because he wasn’t holding back anymore, not his grievances, not his appearance, nor his hesitance in his evident distress of being bound to two entities that both required his aid.  My last note on these images comes from a tumblr user’s reverse audio clipping (https://nebulous-rain.tumblr.com/post/633555549749952512/ok-so-yknow-that-one-reversed-part-of-future). The rewind of the clip of Mystery’s transformation plays “When I’m With You”, which yes, cool a possible Easter egg to the next song! BUT what is this song about? Let me just bring up the first line of the song: “You got me hanging by a THREAD...I wish I could turn back time...I wish I could rewind life...” and before the chorus “I’m gonna make it right”. We know that this can refer to rectifying the wrongs of Lewis’ death, but more accurately to do so we need to defeat the evil inside this mutt that is pulling the strings of this whole fiasco. And this might just be the intro portion of the next mystery skulls mind you as we’ve also gotten many false starts with the previous two videos where hellbent used “every note” and future used “enemies” alongside the main song. BUT WE HAVE TWO YEARS ANYWAY, WHY BABBLE ON ABOUT THIS. LETS MOVE ON!

Hearts in this series have not been just for identifying the dead or for aesthetic purposes, they are the life force of each powerful legend. I am actually surprised to see Shiro have a heart as she started off as a creation from Mystery and therefore her lifeforce is just his blood and without it she is nothing. I am curious about her color pallet though, her heart is purple and pink. Lewis’ is gold/yellow with touches of orange. And Mystery’s is just red, but it has a mix of everyone’s essence within it to keep it tied and whole. Shiro’s could be colored this way in reference to Lewis’ aid to help find her creator; which would explain why Mystery surrounds himself by color as he required outside help and how Lewis’ heart is yellow in reference to how recently Arthur helped him remember his friends/hidden memories. One thing we have learned about hearts is that they can be broken repeatedly and can be ripped apart from the body, but they can be repaired too through resolution/hope. Lewis restored his heart in hellbent by using Vivi’s flower petals and finding hope that he will get revenge, only for his heart to be repaired again through Arthur’s touch. Shiro may have withered away, but her heart is essentially not broken, she’d need Mystery to restore it as it was flung into space (and that again relies on Mystery finding his sanity and finding it in himself to even bring her back). And as for Mystery himself, he’s gonna need the whole gang to reach out to him to extract the parasite within and restore balance. I really want to know more about the heart properties and how they give their users their powers as well Vivi is able to summon her strength through a material connection (bat) that function in its own way as the vessel a heart does since its connecting her to her ancestry.

NOW to finalize, I offer you two queries:

WHO IS ARTHURS HAND REACHING FOR!? I know it seems like Mystery, but that would be counter productive for the hand demon if he has Arthur interfering with his control. Is it still after Lewis as we’ve seen previous times where his arm acts up only in Lewis’ presence and when specifically other “magic” is at play? If so, is the goal to ward off Lewis and Vivi from defeating Mystery? Is Arthur gonna use the arm to find his own power as we’ve seen when he is able to momentarily cease control of it he kinda ruins anything electrical he touches and well, electricity is currently running rampant in there.

and lastly, I am really curious how touch sensitive hearts are, We know that even the smallest of brushes can detect memory/links to the person holding it (as seen with how Shiro managed to get soul flowers in hellbent), but the fact that Lewis was so in touch with the feeling of Arthur EVEN THOUGH ARTHUR GRABBED HIS HEART THROUGH HIS METAL HAND MIND YOU!, that he still managed to feel the disturbance instantly. So my question is, is the touch sensitivity reliant on how close someone is to someone? I would like to say yes cause when Shiro touched his heart he didn’t react instantly, he felt her rummaging his memories and was awoken, but he didn’t kick her butt by fully reforming until after she had long since stepped on his heart and then forced the memory of Mystery to arise. But yeah, its a nice little detail.

Either way, thanks for reading! Feel free to add on, comment, or even dm me about more Mystery Skulls information and theories! Love to hear them!

[asterval]

just thought i’d make a pinned post hi

🧎‍♂️i’m dan or aster

💨i’m 25

👍i like to post about things and stuff on this blog. sometimes lupin iii, dan vs, metal family, sakana comic, mob psycho as of recent, pictures i enjoy, other things i can’t think of off the top of my head

🤡my main is @carnivaldisk don’t follow it worst mistake of my life (i am only kidding i still enjoy gorillaz on thursdays)

🦶i think that’s it. i post art sometimes and i forget to tag everything but i do tag bad things. yknow the ones. this is a sfw blog i will never rb nsfw with the exception of artistic nudity (will be tagged)

❌ do not follow me if you’re proship or anything along that nasty ass line or are even ‘neutral’ on proship related topics. don’t care didn’t ask plus i hate you

❤️‍🔥i have an oc tag #oc tag i hope it works

if u would like to find out more information about this tumblr owner, please click this link

[cosmicyeen]

I know tumblr is held together by digital duct tape and everything but i really do like it. The posting system especially. Like you can make whatever sort of posts, a short textpost, a gifset, a video, a song, a link, and any combination of that. What other site lets me post a dozen paragraphs broken up by images and gifs.

Im not restricted in character count like on twitter, im not restricted to video format like tiktok, or to a caption below an image slideshow/video like IG, or to a single video like youtube, or to any variation of stories. Resdit has the right idea with tge long text posts and video/image/link options. but tumblr lets you have nearly the same freedoms as the Op *even in the reblog option*

It offers a level of freedom in the content format that i really don't know if i can see elsewhere on other well-known sites.

Plus the timeline is actually chronological and not controlled by an algorithm. The search bar is absolute dogshit, plus the adult content ban is bullshit. But like, for all its flaws it offers a surprising level of originality and everything.

Like where am i gonna go to rant about my creations if tumblr goes under or changes completely? I'd honestly just have to start my own site if i hope to have that sort of control over my post formats yknow.

With the lack of targeted ads, displayed follower numbers, mandatory public likes, word censorship, and connected personal info, i think it's the sort of site that we really won't know we'll miss until it's gone.

no tumblr-like sites are gonna appear again. The reason tiktok grew so big was because of its intense algorithms and appeal to ease of virality, stuff that's really necessary if a site wants to make it. Tumblr's sort of been grandfathered in from a different time. Any tumblr-like site that's made now won't have the momentum to compete.

So like, just remember. It may be a hellsite, but at least it's the first of the nine circles

[shark-appreciator]

There’s a Fanfic Tropes Ranking System going around and I figured I’d make mine too! Link in the reblogs of this post because yknow, TUMBLR

[sword-of-summer]

All of them answer every question fuck you

ahahaha no i respectfully deny your "fuck you" and i accept the ask and so-

i am 5'10", and i don't wish to be taller or shorter- i am the perfect height for hugs and messy hair, and yep, i like it here-

dream pet would be a mix of golden retriver and a husky called Holly and a chonky cat called Loki- yes ofcourse my future kids have names everyone should name their future pets-

ripped jeans/black pants with a Darth Vader tshirt or a Ethnic Fusion Kurta with black sneakers/artificial leather slip-ons, and if it's cold, a black jacket open obviously- and a black wristwatch i love my black wristwatch.

favourite video game was Clash of Clans and going even back, GTA Vice City and, the og- MARIIOOOO

three things/people are Oreos, Nutella and Pizza. The Holy Trinity-

"Beware me my fingers are smeared with chicken popcorn grease"

you didn't mention an opinion, @chunkybirb, so imma give my opinion on Vanilla ice cream and Nutella- ANYONE WHO HADN'T COMBINED THESE TWO COMBINE THESE TWO THEY ARE FUCKING AWESOME

im either phlegmatic or melancholic bruh idk maybe ik or maybe not

im v v v v ticklish

not an allergy, but an intense hatred for ketchup- i vomit if it gets too close to me fuck you ketchup

im heterosexual

any between tea and coffee but full milk coffee (ik, kill me), never had cocoa- but i love a chocolate or nutella milkshake

both. both is good. (cat and dog)

i would be an elf cause hell yeah, knowledge and wisdom

favourite youtuber is Samay Raina, a stand up comedian turned youtuber who is just awesome-

as i mentioned in 1., i am 5'10"

i would not change my name cause it's the coolest fucking name ever, i am Tanay, and Tanay in Hindi means Son, and my parents literally named their son Son, and hell yeah i like it

i forgot how much i weigh- last i checked it was 75 kilos, but ive gained weight since 2019 so yep, gotta walk in the mornings

yes i believe in metaphysicality cause one- it seems cool- second- me and @theclassyghost discussed a metaphysical life theory that i really really like and metaphysicality gives preservation of knowledge so i believe in spirits

SPACE. SPACE. SPACE.

im not that religious, no

pet peeves no well nah not really

nocturnal def nocturnal i sleep at 4.50 anyway hehehehe

fav constellation is Cassiopeia

fav star is Sirius tho

what the fuck are ball jointed dolls

i do have a fear of losing people that's just anxiety i guess

yep, global warming is real

never thought that much about reincarnation tbh but maybe, i do

fav movie is Spider Man : Into The SpiderVerse and Inception and The Dark Knight Rises and Revenge of The Sith and yes, for my indian gang, 3 Idiots and Gully Boy

yep i get scared v v v easily

i have had no pets but i plan to once i grow up

@chunkybirb 's blog is fucking cool awesome and *chef's kiss* a masterpiece

blue calms me. i love blue.

live in Norway cause pretty lights, snow, and less people than this overpopulated country i am in

born in Mumbai, India

v v v dark brown like it's almost black but no it's dark brown

introvert

horoscopes and zodiacs, i do read them, never believed that much tbh-

HUGS I LOVE HUGS

i really wanna visit my brother i haven't met him in a long time i really wanna play cricket w him just like old times

my sister- she's annoying but well i care for her

nah

tattoos idk bruh im okay idk may get one or may not get one

nope, smoking is ewwww *vomits*

ah my crush- she's cool [ if she exists

when the chalk doesn't write on the board but goes iiiiiieeee I HATE THAT

a sound i love is rain pitter pattering i just hhhhhh sends me into happiness

nope fatass here

nope fatass here

favourite actors have to be eddie redmayne, oscar issac and pedro pascal- and margot robbie and winona ryder in the actresses section also yes, elliot page

bruh already answered in 30.

im okayish!! spotify and tumblr, cool combo-

my hair are okay being black for me

yesterday, monday, from 6.40 to 6.50

music

uhhh naah not that i know of

well in Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase books, the sword of Frey aka Sumarbrander TALKS and demands to be called Jack, so here i am

bakwaas, music and comfy

yep, i believe in evolution

unfollow on hate and when they dm me sending nsfw pics ugh why are people like that

follow, well, i like people and they seem cool, so i follow them

fav kind of person is the one who'll sit with me for hours not even talking and just vibing to music

fav animals are beavers, doggos and cats

three fav blogs are @chunkybirb, @theclassyghost, @little-boats-on-a-lake, @aredhel-of-gondolin, @sue-me-imbadass, @alleenkaas, @my-ackerman, @brrrrrrrrrrzone

fav emoticon has to be ☹ this me seeing my stupidity outrank others

fav meme has to be Butternut is a master of psychological manipulation

INTP

Libraaa let's go

no dog, i have

black darth vader tshirt, black pants, black sneakers and black wrist watch

i have no selfies my phone has no cameras i live in eternal darkness

what the fuck are platform shoes

i, uhhh, i remember weird things like what i drew in class in 3rd while i was supposed to be doing english

lazy ass here, no front flips possible

i like birds they fly

nope i don't Iike swimming i like blankets

wrapped up in blankets reading books sounds better than both

ketchup

hyperspace travel

nope none

reading writing eating sleeping

my friend

tumblr seems cool

i have around 60-70 idk

yes i can run but why

yes they do but what's the fun in that

nope I'd fall over

sapphire let's go

koala bear or panda

sunflower or the one on a lemon tree

ketchup store

one cup of coffee is enough, tysm

read minds that sounds cool cool yeaaahh

nope never wore it a black clothes guy here BatMan

winter winter all year long

i don't know and i don't wanna try

i don't know and i don't wanna know

everyone cause they are better than me

bookstores cause bookstores any bookstores

sneakers, black onez

apparently some gas bitches mixed up to form a planet

non vegetarian but i partake meat just twice or thrice in two weeks

i don't know they don't seem like liking

naaaaaaaah

bugs ew

spiders ew

about the fact that i come off as arrogant and overconfident while in reality it's just that my communication skills suck

i can draw averagely whenever im in a mood

this thing im answering but i like answering it

uhhhhhhh brain freeze- idk bruh questions are good they give knowledge

yep, while sleeping

ahh yes calming, they are

cloudy days cause fucking cool vibes

hehehe wouldn't you like to know, weatherboy

CumuloNimbus i really like it's name yknow nimBUS

dark blue, dark blue always or black

naaaah no freckles

fav thing is when they laugh and it's just happy and we're both laughing like shitheads but who cares we're rebelling against depressing life and we laugh

both. both is good [ fruits and vegetables

sleep but i have to answer 170 questions cause @chunkybirb

sky sky sky it's my blog's header duh uh sKy

sweet and sour candy. SWEET AND SOUR CANDY.

dim lights it makes me feel cool

ahhh so here we go- Mooncalfs, Thunderbirds, Phoenixes, Sphinxes, Dragons that seem to be Space Nebulae, and more and more and more

i really feel like a boomer sometimes

i love everything about this site/app it makes me feel happy cause i like the people and the posts

uhhhhh i think too much about everything cause i just do. i like thinking

"He's dead, guys. For the sake of The Force, please watch Star Wars now he wanted to discuss it with you" actually no i would just say "A big shoutout to Garlic Bread he loved Garlic Bread"

myself cause i should be sleeping but sleep is for the weak and i am the weak and the strong i am a paradox-

that i obsess too much on things and try involving people it never works out

nope. had braces for 4 years, that beat out teeth showing smiles

i prefer computer-tv ahahahahaha

never tried them, so IDK

naaaaah not motion sickness- never travelled by sea so idk seasickness

lobed ears

yep i believe that deeds do count in life and beyond

idk bruh i don't believe in physical attraction too much- bodies are fake- mentally/metaphysically tho, im a 7

ahhhhh many many Stupid Genius, Tani, Tanu, Tanya

i still do-

i really want to talk to a therapist. converse. and discover.

im both, i am both.

10:1 is the ratio- giving 10, receiving 1

uhhh nothing just when i am right and people use the old "disrespect" argument

3, Hindi, Marathi, English

girls

uhh no i am not

my hair i love them everyone says things about my hair but i love them

knowledge vibes i give, someone tells me- and that's all i ever wanted

anyone i know tbh, my mutuals, my friends, my discord friends

ahhh no i wouldn't but i wish i was born 20 years earlier

bleh bloo, neither like nor dislike

i don't know if i have one

i don't know, haven't had physical contact in a long long long time in a galaxy far far away

the above point stands but i would like to ig

anything i write, 3 hours later, i instantly hate just idk why

anything i write

that i am normal no i am not and i am not okay hahahahaha

65-70 ish people

somewhere around-

many many many don't ask please but okay if you do ask

somewhat

uhhhhh idr exactly but i won't tell in public duh uh

mediummm hairrrr

last year lockdown i became harry potter

i don't know buddy i seriously don't know

yep i do cause knowledge i like knowledge

naaah never tried

no i definitely cannot stand on my hands or my head for more than 30 seconds

yep, im pretty sure i answered most of them correctly-

og link-

[quinnathy]

hey all! i have a blog now

hey there acquaintances and enemies and all in between, my illustrious tumblr dot com followers and whomever this post may reach, i come bearing an announcement! 

i, quinn, am officially the owner of a blog. (whee!)

i dont normally post stuff here on tumblr aside from my reblogs (which im sure many of you followed me for) but um yknow if you’re ever interested in a quick read and want to support a nonbinary writer advocating for the downfall of capitalism.... here’s the link (again)!

alternatively/also, here’s the link to the subscription for my tinyletter, where i’ll email you if i have a new post on my blog or just if i have some exclusive content that wasn’t enough to be a post but was good enough to tell y’all.

i only have three posts rn, but they’re decent reads! i’ll link them here as well for convenience’s sakes

here’s a personal favorite about my secret brownie recipe and the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, filled with an odd nostalgia and some thinly-veiled (okay, blatant) allegories

here’s a more casual one about jeff bezos and his phallic-shaped rocket

and here’s one about nfts and how they’re no good

and yeah! i’d really truly appreciate it if you could... give it a try. you would have my heart and then some sort of claim to my corpse, maybe, if i were ever to die

hope i’ll see you over on the dark dandelion! farewell, dear reader :)

[ofmymuses]

i’m really interested in getting back into adminning  &  i’ve tried to go about it on my own recently but i’ve found that running a group entirely by myself is rather  ...  hard  DFGHJK  sO this is a call for anyone who is interested in helping me run a group??  maybe like,  1 - 3 people??

any help would be super lovely:  keeping the main active, answering messages, updating pages, bouncing ideas off each other for tasks / events / plot drops, helping with graphics, promoing the group, etc

a few ideas i’d love to do:

01)  (murder tw)  a murder mystery group that’s not really focused on a group of friends or anything but rather 1 (or 2) masked killers going around and just having their fun with the entire town, sending anonymous messages  +  showing up at events to scare (and hurt) the locals

02)  (murder tw)  a murder mystery group that is focused on a group of friends but also has a town-aspect to it. in which the group’s mutual friend goes missing shortly after they all go off to college - 1 of them went back to pay (mutual friend) a visit and then they were filed as a missing person the day after.  &  people could apply for one of the mutual friends or as one of the town residents: all of the friends would have a motive for wanting (mutual friend) dead  +  the town would basically be split between those who don’t think one of them is the killer and those who think one of them is  ...  spoiler: it is one of them  -  i have a blog set up for this idea which you can see at this link; i unfortunately don’t remember the login for the account

03)  a college roleplay that has a secrets element. i think this is always fun; i love seeing what kind of secrets people come up with  &  how characters react when said secrets slowly start getting revealed. note that i know literally nothing about greek life

04)  a zombie apocalypse group!! anyone who knows me knows that i love me some zombies. there’s so much potential: we could do it 20 years post-outbreak and have all of the survivors living in a safe zone (think the beginning area of the last of us 1) or maybe 1-2 years post-outbreak so it’s not super long after but long enough that the survivors would’ve gone through some shit  -  i have a blog set up for this idea which you can see at this link; and i have the login for the account so everything will already be set up if we decide on this idea  (though i’m totally open to making changes to the pages)

05)  a pre-doomsday town group (semi-inspired by the film greenland) in which the end of the world is slowly approaching but it isn’t here quite yet.  so basically: an interstellar comet is going to simply “pass” the earth but it’s eventually realized that it won’t just pass by; a few particles will actually make contact but the government is assuring everyone that it won’t be dangerous by any means.  it’ll basically be ran like a typical town rp but have plot drops / news report posts updating on the comet (or whatever we decide to do). i’m thinking this could actually be a limited-run group that could close with a news report of a countdown to the big comet hitting?

06)  a sweet + simple small town group:  the town is inspired by arcadia bay from life is strange in which it’s a picturesque seaside town  &  there’s a family that’s been living there literally since it opened and they’re super rich and influential and own like, half the town’s businesses (aka the prescott family)  +  everything is just super nice and chill and :)  (btw i’m def down for it being in a different location too and not inspired by lis, i just think a seaside town sounds so nice)  -  and i.... may or may not have started setting up a blog for this idea which you can maybe or maybe not see with this link; 99% of the pages aren’t done tho

i’m totally open to doing things other than the ideas listed above  &  throwing ideas around, though i’m personally not interested in doing the following:  marvel / dc, multifandom, smut-based, celebrities, superheroes

a few ending notes:

i would honestly prefer not to have an ooc discord for the group, though i’m not 100% against it  -  i’ve just had some pretty nasty experiences with ooc discords in the past and think members posting ooc on their blog and / or having an ooc sideblog work just fine

i would, however, like to make an admin server for us  ~  i think this would probably be the best way to talk all together if there’s more than just 1 person who’s interested  &  i can make different channels for ideas + worldbuilding n stuff like that

i really like the idea of not doing activity checks every week but rather interest checks every month and also having “doing tasks, replying to memes, doing character development memes” all counting towards activity  -  this is to help with the stress of being active and so people don’t feel like they need to get on every day and write, yknow?

if you’re interested, please either give this post a like  +  i’ll slide into your dms or send me a dm here on tumblr and i can give you the link to my discord or we can just toss ideas around together here (unless more than 1 person is interested  -  then i’ll make the admin server and sent a link to those interested so we’re all in one place together)

[nothingunrealistic]

just for fun, some snapshots of this fic as it was being written, with commentary. under a cut to avoid dumping dozens of screenshots in a row on anyone’s dash. also i’m going to reblog this and add some more because tumblr is cutting me off from saving any more changes but i’m not done saying what i wanted to say.

i got this prompt back in july, dropped it into a new google doc, and then didn’t do anything with it until october. as you can see, i didn’t immediately have any good ideas, so i just let it percolate in the back of my mind (along with one or two dozen other writing prompts and projects) for a while.

then, three and a half months later, i finally had an idea! at three in the morning! (not pictured: half a dozen links to pages about autistic burnout, meltdowns, and shutdowns. research is important but it’s not as fun to look at.)

sometimes you think of dialogue well before you think of how to fit it into a scene.

this was eleven days later.

finally! some actual prose! and a way to tie the story to the events of canon! (after this, i worked on this particular fic every day until it was done.)

just putting stuff in brackets works basically every time. the bracketed notes start out as a more high-level interview of what’s going to happen, then get broken down / separated / elaborated on further until they pretty much stand in for individual paragraphs / sentences / lines of dialogue or inner monologue.

see: stuff from the Big Block Of Text getting copied and pasted to where it should be.

pretty sure *this* big block of text got written on one of the rare occasions where i actually managed to write for the entire hour i have set aside specifically For writing. if i were to break down the revision history further, it’d almost certainly show that many of these paragraphs started out as bracketed not-quite-prose, some of which still remained at this point. (also pictured: one particular line from mafee that did not make it into the final draft.)

more details from canon and just details in general.

mafee does Not have rights. (also, it turns out it’s much easier for someone to press their hands against their whole face if they’re not wearing glasses.)

by far the funniest change i made while writing this.

writing any new character’s pov is an adventure in trying to nail down how they’d talk inside their own head. doubly true for any new billions character given that no one talks like a normal person on billions; triply true when it’s a character like rian who Knows no one talks normally and is trying to fit in with the Accepted Dialect.

i’m like dropping hints that winston is having a bad time right now.

winston is having a bad time right now.

rip post-it note fidgeting; long live pen fidgeting. (another research topic: what *do* quants do all day that they might still be working on late at night? well, possibly, backtesting and optimization of algorithms.)

two character threads that started here: rian trying (and ultimately failing) not to make it obvious that she Cares about winston, and winston speaking more tersely than usual, for obvious reasons.

i watched Many clips from the show trying to figure out whether the doors at axe capital ever stayed open on their own, what sound they made when people opened them, and if it was even plausible for characters to hear construction noise through the glass when the doors were shut. (on that last point, i ultimately decided that if the mase cappers could hear becky lynch yelling through a closed door — and most likely they did hear her before they saw her — they could certainly hear power tools.)

“everyone else went home” was the best reason for mafee to walk back into the tmc office that i could think of. he just wants to hang out with Someone yknow?

mafee’s made the noise worse not only by leaving the door open, but also by sitting down loudly and talking a lot!

mafee’s use of “quisling” is a very specific shoutout to the incident he’s describing. axe declared that there was a quisling in the office; mafee had to ask what that meant, and donnie defined it for him; a few episodes later, mafee went out of his way to drop “quisling” into the conversation when talking about it to someone he wanted to impress.

getting the wording of this exchange just right was tricky. also rip mafee’s chair spinning.

switched up the placement of hammer noises and drill noises so that it’d be a Continuous, unrelenting noise that forced mafee to talk louder still and ultimately became too much for winston.

also had to figure out how to fit this comment from mafee into the flow of the scene.

mafee jumps to act as soon as he realizes something’s wrong; rian thinks about what the best course of action would be first.

rian’s got a pretty idealistic perspective on how taylor operates. (this connects nicely to a canon comment from wendy about how taylor tries “to solve every problem [they] see.”) she’s also still working out How people talk here.

wanted to include this early point about it being quieter in taylor’s office, but i couldn’t really make it work.

this was the first point at which i had a clear idea of how this fic was going to end / would conclude in any satisfactory way. bringing that “rian cares but doesn’t want that to be Known” detail full circle.

punctuation pickiness! (and the door is finally closed!)

you know what sounds even worse than metal on wood? metal on metal!

i spent so much of one day just working on these few paragraphs.

and then i got the idea to throw in rian’s recollection of winston’s description of the mase cap office either late that night or the next morning and wrote most of it down while sitting through a meeting. (ft. more emphasis on the Separation between rian and winston & taylor.)

DUMBO is an acronym (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) but it isn’t always written in all caps. i found a style guide (from a college department in nyc, though i can’t remember which one) that declared it should be written as Dumbo rather than DUMBO and decided to go with that.

mafee is WELL out of the loop here. no wonder he wants to leave.

i went pretty hard on “mafee is being Less Than Kind And Understanding about this whole situation” and eventually had to have him walk it back with “well i didn’t WANT him to suffer or anything.”

this is everything i managed to get done in the Designated Writing Hour (and then some) the night that the supernatural finale aired. oops.

i was torn between rian hearing Something to alert her of taylor’s presence and hearing nothing at all; ultimately i chose the latter. (this revision was also from the brief period of time where i changed the google doc to a landscape layout in the hopes that the Changed Visual would shake some more ideas loose. it worked, a bit.)

see: rian Not hearing taylor.

this detail was added pretty late — one of the last changes i’d made the day before posting. (i’d also switched the google doc back to portrait mode at this point.)

[capxtony]

the perils of shipping...

So, basically, something that I’d never thought would happen - happened.

I fell head first into stucky fanfiction - and the stucky fandom in general.

I’ve steadily been making my way through the many, many fics of steve/bucky that I have found to love on AO3 (slightly more of them than stony).

It was an accident, really. I wanted to find some fics of Steve & Bucky platonically, as best friends, specifically of hurt/comfort (my favourite trope), because I love Bucky, he’s always been one of my favourite characters. I found fics and tropes similar to how I ship/read/write stony, I specificially like Bucky’s boatload of issues (like Tony). I have read platonic stucky fics before and wanted to find more, but there aren’t many that are platonic, so i hesitantly went into the ship fics to get that good post-TWS hurt/comfort I was looking for, and lo and behold, there’s some amazing stuff out there, and now I’ve gone into reading many different types of stucky fanworks/art, etc.

So, I’ve had a temporary hiatus on reading/writing stony fics, and I have been a bit less active on this blog, though I still do reblog things like stony fanart and stuff occasionally. I won’t change this blog, it will still just be stony or avengers content. Discussions are welcome! DO you ship stucky and stony? What have your experiences been like? Did you go from one ship to the other or just embrace life as a multishipper? Did you try another ship and it didn’t work out?More of my own opinion on this and news of my fics below.

In general, I guess I just love the kind of trope of Steve being protective/comforting and dealing with his own baggage, or just being darn sexy, particularly paired with some of my favourite MCU characters - my fave characters are actually tony, bucky, nat in some sort of order, then steve (who i still am not completely happy of his characterisation in civil war - more specifically the end fight, and his decision in avengers endgame, yknow being a little out of character, yada yada), so yea. 

I don’t really ship ‘stuckony’ (steve/bucky/tony) as I’m not a fan of polyamorous ships in general, though I have nothing against it - as a change from when i first came into ‘fandoms’ in general years ago, I wish no ill will on any ship, or shippers, I believe any fandom or ship hate is just hate and I don’t condone hate on fictional things that bring people happiness (especially as I’ve seen that in general, a lot of people find comfort and solidarity in fandoms or ships when facing difficulties in real life). I don’t see much point in comparing ships, I guess - they’re just different, people ship different things depending on what they like, we’re all slightly different in our preferences, and that’s fine, that’s normal.

I generally go through phases of liking/reading a particular fandom/ship for a while, well more of an obsession than phase (what can i say), and then moving onto another, and coming back to it, etc. I am not choosing one ship over another. There is one stony fic that I haven’t updated in a while that I was passionate about (Calligo) and I do want to finish that at some point, I’ll probably aim to finish it with one or two more chapters. 

I don’t think I’ll create a stucky blog, as i just reblog stucky stuff on my main multi-fandom blog, arielgryffinpuff. And, as usual when getting into a new fandom or ship, I already have loads of ideas for steve/bucky fics and have started writing several of them, though in the past 2 years (2 years! Jesus) I seemed to have lost so much motivation to write fanfics, preferring to read them obsessively instead, or finding new shows to watch, as my motivation in life has dropped in general, but I think I’m getting a bit better mental health wise now. 

So, I plan to begin writing a bit more, so if you’re interested in stucky, or my stony fic, expect some updates and new works on that posted on AO3 some??time??, and I’ll link them on my tumblr’s as well. I could even accept asks for stucky fics. However, I don’t plan on writing any new stony fics any time soon, though I had some ideas laid out a while ago, so maybe I’ll get back to them one day. 

[runawaymarbles]

2 genuinley answer the last anons question: ppl are mad that 1. ao3 lets people write shit like pedophillia, incest, abuse stuff, etc. which is. yknow. not a GREAT argument, 2. they don't allow the writters on their site post ko fi links n such (iirc you can get banned?). overall its sort of a what can you do thing ig.

Let me direct you to AO3′s terms of service: 

You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled

If you ever see underage sex that is not tagged, you can report it to the policy & abuse team. And then exclude the tag from your results. I believe there are also site extensions that will block the tag permanently for you.

And again, if you don’t want to risk seeing such content, simply do not use AO3. Wattpad exists! FFN exists! Like the other anon said, why make that everyone else’s problem?

As for point 2, you will only get banned if you refuse to take your ko-fi link down after you are asked to. The reason that you cannot attempt to profit off your fanworks on AO3 is to make it possible for the legal team to defend fanworks in court. Since otherwise you are profiting off of someone else’s copyrighted works. Which is illegal-- and yes, fanartists do it all the time, but it is still technically not allowed, which is why sites like redbubble play whack-a-mole with the stuff.

It wasn’t that long ago that fanfic authors had to post “I do not own these characters, I promise I’m not making money off this, it’s just for fun!!!!!!!” disclaimers and their works still got taken down.

There are very good reasons that AO3 operates how it does. You can disagree, and you don’t have to think those are good reasons, but it’s more than a “what can you do.”

What you can do is use fanfiction.net, if you don’t like seeing explicit content (though since they don’t technically allow it, you’re more likely to be surprised by it since people don’t warn properly-- I’d recommend not including the M tag in your search results) and link to your ko-fi from your tumblr instead of your AO3.